Iâve now read this dialogue twice, and Iâm still not sure whether any of it is very relevant to EA (as opposed to being a clever critique of the rest of the charity world). Any chance you could summarize the central points of the piece, or at least what you took away from it?
Notably, Jessica says in the Less Wrong comments that âGiveWell is a scam (as reasonable priors in this area would suggest), although I donât want this to be treated as a public accusation or anything; itâs not like theyâre more of a scam than most other things in this general area.â
I do not find her evidence very convincing. Some of it relates to private information which she privately messaged to Jeff Kaufman. The first part of this private information, a rumor relating to GiveWellâs treatment of an ex-employee, was disconfirmed by the person in question according to Jeff. The rest of this private information is advice to talk to specific people and links to public blog posts.
The rest of the evidence seems to center around arguments that international charities like AMF create dependency and apathy, sourced from a YouTube philosophy video creator and apparent worker in international development who cites personal anecdotes and Dambisa Moyoâs book Dead Aid. This person alleges that AMF and other organizations have put the local bed net makers out of business and says that he has personally seen many families that only bring out their bed net when the AMF inspector comes around. Jessica emphasizes further that the strongest section of the video is where the he says that (quoting Jessica) âthe problems caused by aid are extremely bad in some of the countries that are targets of aid (like, they essentially destroy peopleâs motivation to solve their communityâs problems).â
Arguments about dependency and building sustainable institutions instead have been discussed a plenty in EA circles over the years, and I wonât rehash them further here. I just want to note that Moyo says herself that her critique should not be applied to private NGOs, and even aid critics accept that health interventions, like those of most GiveWell top charities, can have positive impact.
I also do not think that, even if the evidence was rock solid, this would mean that GiveWell is a scam; people can be wrong or disagree without it meaning that theyâre scamming you or that theyâre deluding themselves.
I think âX is a scamâ is generally not a good framing, because its divisiveness distracts from interesting facts about social reality.
I think âfunctional information-processing institutions are important & we donât have those to the degree weâd likeâ is an important point (and one I havenât seen made elsewhere in EA).
If you didnât see it after two read-throughs, I donât think Iâll be able to make a summary that conveys the relevance.
Maybe these excerpts draw it out a bit?
Worker: âDo you think any charity other than us would have run the calculation we did, and then actually believe the result? Or would they have fudged the numbers here and there, and when even a calculation with fudged numbers indicated that the intervention was ineffective, come up with a reason to discredit this calculation and replace it with a different one that got the result they wanted?â
...
Carl: âWhy donât you just run a more effective charity, and advertise on that? Then you can outcompete the other charities.â
Worker: âThatâs not fashionable anymore. The âeffectivenessâ branding has been tried before; donors are tired of it by now. Perhaps this is partially because there arenât functional systems that actually check which organizations are effective and which arenât, so scam charities branding themselves as effective end up outcompeting the actually effective ones. And there are organizations claiming to evaluate charitiesâ effectiveness, but theyâve largely also become scams by now, for exactly the same reasons. The fashionable branding now is environmentalism.â
...
Carl: âHow do you even deal with this?â
Worker: âItâs already the reality youâve lived in your whole life. The only adjustment is to realize it, and be able to talk about it, without this destroying your ability to participate in the act when itâs necessary to do so. Maybe functional information-processing institutions will be built someday, but we are stuck with this situation for now, and weâll have no hope of building functional institutions if we donât understand our current situation.â
Iâve now read this dialogue twice, and Iâm still not sure whether any of it is very relevant to EA (as opposed to being a clever critique of the rest of the charity world). Any chance you could summarize the central points of the piece, or at least what you took away from it?
Notably, Jessica says in the Less Wrong comments that âGiveWell is a scam (as reasonable priors in this area would suggest), although I donât want this to be treated as a public accusation or anything; itâs not like theyâre more of a scam than most other things in this general area.â
I do not find her evidence very convincing. Some of it relates to private information which she privately messaged to Jeff Kaufman. The first part of this private information, a rumor relating to GiveWellâs treatment of an ex-employee, was disconfirmed by the person in question according to Jeff. The rest of this private information is advice to talk to specific people and links to public blog posts.
The rest of the evidence seems to center around arguments that international charities like AMF create dependency and apathy, sourced from a YouTube philosophy video creator and apparent worker in international development who cites personal anecdotes and Dambisa Moyoâs book Dead Aid. This person alleges that AMF and other organizations have put the local bed net makers out of business and says that he has personally seen many families that only bring out their bed net when the AMF inspector comes around. Jessica emphasizes further that the strongest section of the video is where the he says that (quoting Jessica) âthe problems caused by aid are extremely bad in some of the countries that are targets of aid (like, they essentially destroy peopleâs motivation to solve their communityâs problems).â
Arguments about dependency and building sustainable institutions instead have been discussed a plenty in EA circles over the years, and I wonât rehash them further here. I just want to note that Moyo says herself that her critique should not be applied to private NGOs, and even aid critics accept that health interventions, like those of most GiveWell top charities, can have positive impact.
I also do not think that, even if the evidence was rock solid, this would mean that GiveWell is a scam; people can be wrong or disagree without it meaning that theyâre scamming you or that theyâre deluding themselves.
Edit: Cleaned up a couple of sentences
I think âX is a scamâ is generally not a good framing, because its divisiveness distracts from interesting facts about social reality.
I think âfunctional information-processing institutions are important & we donât have those to the degree weâd likeâ is an important point (and one I havenât seen made elsewhere in EA).
If you didnât see it after two read-throughs, I donât think Iâll be able to make a summary that conveys the relevance.
Maybe these excerpts draw it out a bit?
...
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