This [lottery winners feeling they should pick some specific charities to donate to the best of their abilities, rather than donating to EA Funds] could be good if the donors allocate the money better than EA Funds could!
This is certainly possible. But it also seems quite possible that the allocation made by a randomly selected donor (who thinks about it a bit more than they usually would but also feels distinctive pressure to, choose specific charities, rather than delegate the decision to the funds, and maybe other pressures as well) is worse than the allocation made by lots of individual donors, some/many of whom decide they can’t do better than to defer to the Funds.
That said, if many donor lottery winners turned out to have a bias towards making their own grants, and had a less good track record than EA Funds, that would convince me that your concern is probably right. But I think it’s worth running a larger experiment before giving a lot of weight to these concerns.
I agree an “experiment” might be informative. I think we should assign these various concerns quite high weight before we run an experiment though (although I’d be happy to be talked into thinking that they are less likely than I currently think they are). Whether we should then run the experiment depends presumably on how great and how likely the possible benefits and costs seem to be, including how easily we think we could retrench the costs of the experiment if they turned out to be real (e.g. convince people that they shouldn’t donate to the lottery after all and should instead be deferring or donating directly).
I think if we view this as an experiment (but grant that it may well lead to worse allocations of donations overall and reduce discourse and information quality for the community), that would make sense, but that the recommendation in the original post that most small donors donate to the EA lottery should be presented much more tentatively (making clear that this is an experiment that might lead to worse outcomes and will need to be re-evaluated in the future). This would reduce costs in the event that it turns out that it’s actually better to encourage many donors to donate directly themselves, defer to the Funds, save to donate later etc.
If the worry is that smaller groups will have a harder time fundraising, I don’t think this will be the case
This actually wasn’t one of my concerns. It does seem pretty clear that donations would be allocated across a smaller number of donation targets, if they are decided by only a small number of lottery winners. (Historically, it seems that each winner has selected only 1-4 donation targets. It’s less clear if we have as many as 200 winners, but that seems relatively unlikely in the near term). Donations being allocated to a much smaller number of donation targets than they would be if donors made their allocations separately could be better or it could be worse, it seems quite hard to tell.
Generally, it seems like there are a lot of considerations that would determine whether most small donors donating to the lottery should be expected to be a positive or negative move (mostly depending on whether the allocation made by a small number of randomly selected donors (influenced by certain conditions) is better than the allocation made by a larger number of individual donors (in different conditions) and which of these has the better influence on EA discourse and information, including depth of investigation, diversity of thought and novelty of experimentation etc.), whereas the original post seems to present the situation as being quite straightforward (based largely on the one argument about how the winner(s) will be in a better position to make decisions than those particular individuals would have been if they didn’t win. That said I’m sure you’ve thought about these questions more than me so your intuitions about them likely better tutored than mine.
This is certainly possible. But it also seems quite possible that the allocation made by a randomly selected donor (who thinks about it a bit more than they usually would but also feels distinctive pressure to, choose specific charities, rather than delegate the decision to the funds, and maybe other pressures as well) is worse than the allocation made by lots of individual donors, some/many of whom decide they can’t do better than to defer to the Funds.
I agree an “experiment” might be informative. I think we should assign these various concerns quite high weight before we run an experiment though (although I’d be happy to be talked into thinking that they are less likely than I currently think they are). Whether we should then run the experiment depends presumably on how great and how likely the possible benefits and costs seem to be, including how easily we think we could retrench the costs of the experiment if they turned out to be real (e.g. convince people that they shouldn’t donate to the lottery after all and should instead be deferring or donating directly).
I think if we view this as an experiment (but grant that it may well lead to worse allocations of donations overall and reduce discourse and information quality for the community), that would make sense, but that the recommendation in the original post that most small donors donate to the EA lottery should be presented much more tentatively (making clear that this is an experiment that might lead to worse outcomes and will need to be re-evaluated in the future). This would reduce costs in the event that it turns out that it’s actually better to encourage many donors to donate directly themselves, defer to the Funds, save to donate later etc.
This actually wasn’t one of my concerns. It does seem pretty clear that donations would be allocated across a smaller number of donation targets, if they are decided by only a small number of lottery winners. (Historically, it seems that each winner has selected only 1-4 donation targets. It’s less clear if we have as many as 200 winners, but that seems relatively unlikely in the near term). Donations being allocated to a much smaller number of donation targets than they would be if donors made their allocations separately could be better or it could be worse, it seems quite hard to tell.
Generally, it seems like there are a lot of considerations that would determine whether most small donors donating to the lottery should be expected to be a positive or negative move (mostly depending on whether the allocation made by a small number of randomly selected donors (influenced by certain conditions) is better than the allocation made by a larger number of individual donors (in different conditions) and which of these has the better influence on EA discourse and information, including depth of investigation, diversity of thought and novelty of experimentation etc.), whereas the original post seems to present the situation as being quite straightforward (based largely on the one argument about how the winner(s) will be in a better position to make decisions than those particular individuals would have been if they didn’t win. That said I’m sure you’ve thought about these questions more than me so your intuitions about them likely better tutored than mine.