Maybe things are different in animal welfare, which is my focus, because of funding constraints?
All the things I come across in animal welfare are already in scope for Open Phil, Founders Pledge, Farmed Animal Funders, ACE or the EA Animal Welfare Fund, and they fund basically all the things Iâd be inclined to fund, so if they donât fund something Iâd be inclined to fund, I would want to know why before I did, since thereâs a good chance they had a good reason for not funding it. Some large EAA orgs like THL can also apparently absorb more funding.
My main disagreements I might continue to endorse after discussion would be that I suspect some things they fund are net negative or not net positive in expectation. So maybe rather than giving directly to a fund, I would top up some of their grants/ârecommendations. Also, I might give less weight than ACE to some things they view as red flags.
It does seem like the ânot even spending the moneyâ problem doesnât extend to spending on animal welfare as much, at least in the case of EA Funds that I know about.
ACE seems like a great example for the case against deferrence.
Do you also have a low opinion of Rethink? They spent a long time not getting funded.
What about direct action?
I know that in Sapphireâs case, the two projects she is highest afaik on are Rethink and DXE /â direct action generally. Neither have had an easy time with funders, so empirically it seems like she shouldnât expect so much alignment with funders in future either.
RP was getting funding, including from Open Phil in 2019 and EA Funds in 2018, the year it was founded, just not a lot. I donated to RP in late 2019/âearly 2020 (my biggest donation so far), work there now and think they should continue to scale (at least for animal welfare, I donât see or pay a lot of attention to whatâs going on in the other cause areas, so wonât comment on them).
I think DxE is (and in particular their confrontational/âdisruptive tactics are) plausibly net negative, but Iâm really not sure, and would like to see more research before we try to scale it aggressively, although we might need to fund it in order to collect data. I have also seen some thoughtful EAAs become less optimistic about or leave DxE over the years. I think their undercover investigations are plausibly very good and rescuing clearly injured or sick animals from factory farms (not small farms) is good in expectation, but we can fund those elsewhere without the riskier stuff.
ACE seems like a great example for the case against deferrence.
I wouldnât rely exclusively on them, anyway. There are other funders/âevaluators, too.
âFew people know that we tried to start something pretty similar to Rethink Priorities in 2016 (our actual founding was in 2018). We (Marcus and me, the RP co-founders, plus some others) did some initial work but failed to get sustained funding and traction so we gave up for >1 year before trying again. Given that RP â2018 seems to have turned out to be quite successful, I think RP-2016 could be an example of a failed project?â
I think EA Funds, Founders Pledge and Farmed Animal Funders didnât exist back then, and this would have been out of scope for ACE (too small, too little room for more funding, no track record) and GiveWell (they donât grant to research) at the time, so among major funders/âevaluators, it pretty much would have been on Open Phil. But Open Phil didnât get into farm animal welfare until late 2015/âearly 2016:
The story is more complicated but I canât really get into it in public. Since you work at Rethink you can maybe get the story from Peter. Iâve maybe suggested too simplistic a narrative before. But you should chat Peter or Marcus about what happened with Rethink and EA funding.
Thanks for the stuff about RP, that is not as bad as I had thought.
I donated to RP in late 2019/âearly 2020 (my biggest donation so far), work there now and think they should continue to scale (at least for animal welfare, I donât see or pay a lot of attention to whatâs going on in the other cause areas, so wonât comment on them)
If you are aware of a major instance where your judgement differed from that of funds, why advocate such strong priors about the efficacy of funds?
I think their undercover investigations are plausibly very good and rescuing clearly injured or sick animals from factory farms (not small farms) is good in expectation, but we can fund those elsewhere without the riskier stuff.
I agree the investigations seem really good /â plausibly highest impact (and should be important even just to EAs who want to assess priorities, much less for the sake of public awareness). And you can fund them elsewhere /â fund individuals to do thisâyourself! Not via funds.
(This is a long comment, but hopefully pretty informative.)
If you are aware of a major instance where your judgement differed from that of funds, why advocate such strong priors about the efficacy of funds?
I didnât fund anything that wasnât getting funding from major funders, I just didnât defer totally to the funders and so overweighted some things and struck out others.
I think I had little trust in funders/âevaluators in EAA early on, and part of the reason I donated to RP was because I thought there wasnât enough good research in EAA, even supporting existing EAA priorities, and I was impressed with RPâs. I trust Open Phil and the EA Funds much more now, though, since
together, I think theyâve funded all the things I would, fund a lot of things I wouldnât have thought of that look good, and donât fund a lot of things I think look unpromising, and
as Iâve become more informed, Iâve come to agree with most of their judgement calls, including some I doubted before, because later research supported them.
My main remaining disagreement is that I think we should be researching the wild animal effects of farmed animal interventions and thinking about how to incorporate them in our decisions, since they can plausibly shift priorities substantially. This largely comes down to a normative/âdecision-theoretic disagreement about what to do under deep uncertainty/âwith complex cluelessness, though, not a disagreement about what would actually happen.
I agree the investigations seem really good /â plausibly highest impact (and should be important even just to EAs who want to assess priorities, much less for the sake of public awareness). And you can fund them elsewhere /â fund individuals to do thisâyourself! Not via funds.
Yes, but I expect funders/âevaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I wonât personally have the time or interest to look into their particular average cost-effectiveness, room for more funding, track record, etc., on my own, although I can read othersâ research if theyâre published and come to my own conclusions on its basis. Knowing that one opportunity is really good doesnât mean there arenât far better ones doing similar work. I might give directly to charities doing undercover investigations (or whatever other intervention) rather than through a fund, but Iâd prefer to top up orgs that are already getting funded or recommended, since they seem more marginally cost-effective in expectation.
Generally, if thereâs a bar for cost-effectiveness, some things arenât meeting the bar, and there are things above the bar (e.g. being funded by major funders or recommended by evaluators) with room for more funding, I think you should just top up things above the bar with room for more funding, but you can select among them. If thereâs an opportunity youâre excited about, but not being funded by major funders, I think you should recommend they apply to EA Funds or others (and maybe post about them on the EA Forum), because
If major funders agree that itâs a good opportunity and fund it, then it can get even more funding than just yours (or the same amount, if the opportunity is exhausted).
Conversely, if it doesnât get funded by major funders, then they didnât think it was a good enough opportunity (or they thought it was too risky for them to fund themselves, although EA Fund grant recipients can remain anonymous. They may need to publish an anonymized grantee/âintervention description; I donât know). Then,
If you think it was way above their bar, and they think itâs below their bar, then you should be pretty concerned that youâve misjudged and/âor are missing important information, since youâd be disagreeing with several grantmakers who are probably much better informed about the opportunities out there. If the disagreement comes down to a normative or decision-theoretic one, then, as an antirealist, Iâd be more supportive of going ahead anyway than if it comes down to differences in weighing evidence. In the case of differences in weighing evidence, and youâd like to go ahead anyway, then I think youâd want a good explanation for why theyâre wrong.
If you think itâs only a bit above their bar, and you can identify an opportunity they funded that you agree is above their bar and has room for more funding, youâd do just about as much good or more to fund that alternative opportunity anyway, and probably better in expectation if you give even a little weight to the grantmakersâ judgements.
There may be exceptions to this, but I think this is the guide most EAs (or at least most EAAs) should follow unless theyâre grantmakers themselves, are confident theyâd be selected as grantmakers if they applied, or have major normative disagreements with the grantmakers.
Yes, but I expect funders/âevaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I wonât personally have the time or interest to look into their particular average cost-effectiveness, room for more funding, track record, etc., on my own,
Since we are talking about funding people within your network that you personally know, not randos, the idea is that you already know this stuff about some set of people. Like, explicitly, the case for self-funding norms is the case for utilizing informational capital that already exists rather than discarding it.
Knowing that one opportunity is really good doesnât mean there arenât far better ones doing similar work.
I think it is not that hard to keep up with what last yearâs best opportunities looked like and get a good sense of where the bar will be this year. Compiling the top 5 opportunities or whatever is a lot more labor intensive than reviewing the top 5 and you already state being informed enough to know about and agree with the decisions of funders. So I disagree with level at which we should think we are flying blind.
If the disagreement comes down to a normative or decision-theoretic one
Yes I think this will be the most common source of disagreement at least in your case, my case, sapphireâs case. With respect to the things I know about being rejected this was the case.
All of that said I think I have updated from your posts to be more encouraging of applying for EA funding and/âor making forum posts. I will not do this in a deferrential manner and to me it seems harmful to do soâI think people should feel discouraged if you explicitly discard what you personally know about their competence etc.
Maybe things are different in animal welfare, which is my focus, because of funding constraints?
All the things I come across in animal welfare are already in scope for Open Phil, Founders Pledge, Farmed Animal Funders, ACE or the EA Animal Welfare Fund, and they fund basically all the things Iâd be inclined to fund, so if they donât fund something Iâd be inclined to fund, I would want to know why before I did, since thereâs a good chance they had a good reason for not funding it. Some large EAA orgs like THL can also apparently absorb more funding.
My main disagreements I might continue to endorse after discussion would be that I suspect some things they fund are net negative or not net positive in expectation. So maybe rather than giving directly to a fund, I would top up some of their grants/ârecommendations. Also, I might give less weight than ACE to some things they view as red flags.
It does seem like the ânot even spending the moneyâ problem doesnât extend to spending on animal welfare as much, at least in the case of EA Funds that I know about.
ACE seems like a great example for the case against deferrence.
Do you also have a low opinion of Rethink? They spent a long time not getting funded.
What about direct action?
I know that in Sapphireâs case, the two projects she is highest afaik on are Rethink and DXE /â direct action generally. Neither have had an easy time with funders, so empirically it seems like she shouldnât expect so much alignment with funders in future either.
RP was getting funding, including from Open Phil in 2019 and EA Funds in 2018, the year it was founded, just not a lot. I donated to RP in late 2019/âearly 2020 (my biggest donation so far), work there now and think they should continue to scale (at least for animal welfare, I donât see or pay a lot of attention to whatâs going on in the other cause areas, so wonât comment on them).
I think DxE is (and in particular their confrontational/âdisruptive tactics are) plausibly net negative, but Iâm really not sure, and would like to see more research before we try to scale it aggressively, although we might need to fund it in order to collect data. I have also seen some thoughtful EAAs become less optimistic about or leave DxE over the years. I think their undercover investigations are plausibly very good and rescuing clearly injured or sick animals from factory farms (not small farms) is good in expectation, but we can fund those elsewhere without the riskier stuff.
I wouldnât rely exclusively on them, anyway. There are other funders/âevaluators, too.
https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââ3c8dLtNyMzS9WkfgA/ââwhat-are-some-high-ev-but-failed-ea-projects?commentId=7htva3Xc9snLSvAkB
âFew people know that we tried to start something pretty similar to Rethink Priorities in 2016 (our actual founding was in 2018). We (Marcus and me, the RP co-founders, plus some others) did some initial work but failed to get sustained funding and traction so we gave up for >1 year before trying again. Given that RP â2018 seems to have turned out to be quite successful, I think RP-2016 could be an example of a failed project?â
Seems somewhat misleading to leave this out.
Interesting. I hadnât heard about this.
I think EA Funds, Founders Pledge and Farmed Animal Funders didnât exist back then, and this would have been out of scope for ACE (too small, too little room for more funding, no track record) and GiveWell (they donât grant to research) at the time, so among major funders/âevaluators, it pretty much would have been on Open Phil. But Open Phil didnât get into farm animal welfare until late 2015/âearly 2016:
https://ââwww.openphilanthropy.org/ââresearch/ââincoming-program-officer-lewis-bollard/ââ
https://ââwww.openphilanthropy.org/ââgrants/ââpage/ââ12/ââ?q&focus-area=farm-animal-welfare&view-list=false
So seeing and catching RP this early on for a new farm animal welfare team at Open Phil was plausibly a lot to ask then.
The story is more complicated but I canât really get into it in public. Since you work at Rethink you can maybe get the story from Peter. Iâve maybe suggested too simplistic a narrative before. But you should chat Peter or Marcus about what happened with Rethink and EA funding.
Thanks for the stuff about RP, that is not as bad as I had thought.
If you are aware of a major instance where your judgement differed from that of funds, why advocate such strong priors about the efficacy of funds?
I agree the investigations seem really good /â plausibly highest impact (and should be important even just to EAs who want to assess priorities, much less for the sake of public awareness). And you can fund them elsewhere /â fund individuals to do thisâyourself! Not via funds.
(This is a long comment, but hopefully pretty informative.)
I didnât fund anything that wasnât getting funding from major funders, I just didnât defer totally to the funders and so overweighted some things and struck out others.
I think I had little trust in funders/âevaluators in EAA early on, and part of the reason I donated to RP was because I thought there wasnât enough good research in EAA, even supporting existing EAA priorities, and I was impressed with RPâs. I trust Open Phil and the EA Funds much more now, though, since
together, I think theyâve funded all the things I would, fund a lot of things I wouldnât have thought of that look good, and donât fund a lot of things I think look unpromising, and
as Iâve become more informed, Iâve come to agree with most of their judgement calls, including some I doubted before, because later research supported them.
My main remaining disagreement is that I think we should be researching the wild animal effects of farmed animal interventions and thinking about how to incorporate them in our decisions, since they can plausibly shift priorities substantially. This largely comes down to a normative/âdecision-theoretic disagreement about what to do under deep uncertainty/âwith complex cluelessness, though, not a disagreement about what would actually happen.
Yes, but I expect funders/âevaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I wonât personally have the time or interest to look into their particular average cost-effectiveness, room for more funding, track record, etc., on my own, although I can read othersâ research if theyâre published and come to my own conclusions on its basis. Knowing that one opportunity is really good doesnât mean there arenât far better ones doing similar work. I might give directly to charities doing undercover investigations (or whatever other intervention) rather than through a fund, but Iâd prefer to top up orgs that are already getting funded or recommended, since they seem more marginally cost-effective in expectation.
Generally, if thereâs a bar for cost-effectiveness, some things arenât meeting the bar, and there are things above the bar (e.g. being funded by major funders or recommended by evaluators) with room for more funding, I think you should just top up things above the bar with room for more funding, but you can select among them. If thereâs an opportunity youâre excited about, but not being funded by major funders, I think you should recommend they apply to EA Funds or others (and maybe post about them on the EA Forum), because
If major funders agree that itâs a good opportunity and fund it, then it can get even more funding than just yours (or the same amount, if the opportunity is exhausted).
Conversely, if it doesnât get funded by major funders, then they didnât think it was a good enough opportunity (or they thought it was too risky for them to fund themselves, although EA Fund grant recipients can remain anonymous. They may need to publish an anonymized grantee/âintervention description; I donât know). Then,
If you think it was way above their bar, and they think itâs below their bar, then you should be pretty concerned that youâve misjudged and/âor are missing important information, since youâd be disagreeing with several grantmakers who are probably much better informed about the opportunities out there. If the disagreement comes down to a normative or decision-theoretic one, then, as an antirealist, Iâd be more supportive of going ahead anyway than if it comes down to differences in weighing evidence. In the case of differences in weighing evidence, and youâd like to go ahead anyway, then I think youâd want a good explanation for why theyâre wrong.
If you think itâs only a bit above their bar, and you can identify an opportunity they funded that you agree is above their bar and has room for more funding, youâd do just about as much good or more to fund that alternative opportunity anyway, and probably better in expectation if you give even a little weight to the grantmakersâ judgements.
There may be exceptions to this, but I think this is the guide most EAs (or at least most EAAs) should follow unless theyâre grantmakers themselves, are confident theyâd be selected as grantmakers if they applied, or have major normative disagreements with the grantmakers.
Since we are talking about funding people within your network that you personally know, not randos, the idea is that you already know this stuff about some set of people. Like, explicitly, the case for self-funding norms is the case for utilizing informational capital that already exists rather than discarding it.
I think it is not that hard to keep up with what last yearâs best opportunities looked like and get a good sense of where the bar will be this year. Compiling the top 5 opportunities or whatever is a lot more labor intensive than reviewing the top 5 and you already state being informed enough to know about and agree with the decisions of funders. So I disagree with level at which we should think we are flying blind.
Yes I think this will be the most common source of disagreement at least in your case, my case, sapphireâs case. With respect to the things I know about being rejected this was the case.
All of that said I think I have updated from your posts to be more encouraging of applying for EA funding and/âor making forum posts. I will not do this in a deferrential manner and to me it seems harmful to do soâI think people should feel discouraged if you explicitly discard what you personally know about their competence etc.