(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 didn’t fund anything that wasn’t getting funding from major funders, I just didn’t defer totally to the funders and so overweighted some things and struck out others.
I think I had little trust in funders/​evaluators in EAA early on, and part of the reason I donated to RP was because I thought there wasn’t enough good research in EAA, even supporting existing EAA priorities, and I was impressed with RP’s. I trust Open Phil and the EA Funds much more now, though, since
together, I think they’ve funded all the things I would, fund a lot of things I wouldn’t have thought of that look good, and don’t fund a lot of things I think look unpromising, and
as I’ve become more informed, I’ve 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/​decision-theoretic disagreement about what to do under deep uncertainty/​with complex cluelessness, though, not a disagreement about what would actually happen.
I agree the investigations seem really good /​ 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 /​ fund individuals to do this—yourself! Not via funds.
Yes, but I expect funders/​evaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I won’t 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 others’ research if they’re published and come to my own conclusions on its basis. Knowing that one opportunity is really good doesn’t mean there aren’t 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 I’d prefer to top up orgs that are already getting funded or recommended, since they seem more marginally cost-effective in expectation.
Generally, if there’s a bar for cost-effectiveness, some things aren’t 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 there’s an opportunity you’re 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 it’s 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 doesn’t get funded by major funders, then they didn’t 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/​intervention description; I don’t know). Then,
If you think it was way above their bar, and they think it’s below their bar, then you should be pretty concerned that you’ve misjudged and/​or are missing important information, since you’d 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, I’d 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 you’d like to go ahead anyway, then I think you’d want a good explanation for why they’re wrong.
If you think it’s 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, you’d 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 grantmakers’ judgements.
There may be exceptions to this, but I think this is the guide most EAs (or at least most EAAs) should follow unless they’re grantmakers themselves, are confident they’d be selected as grantmakers if they applied, or have major normative disagreements with the grantmakers.
Yes, but I expect funders/​evaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I won’t 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 doesn’t mean there aren’t far better ones doing similar work.
I think it is not that hard to keep up with what last year’s 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, sapphire’s 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/​or making forum posts. I will not do this in a deferrential manner and to me it seems harmful to do so—I think people should feel discouraged if you explicitly discard what you personally know about their competence etc.
(This is a long comment, but hopefully pretty informative.)
I didn’t fund anything that wasn’t getting funding from major funders, I just didn’t defer totally to the funders and so overweighted some things and struck out others.
I think I had little trust in funders/​evaluators in EAA early on, and part of the reason I donated to RP was because I thought there wasn’t enough good research in EAA, even supporting existing EAA priorities, and I was impressed with RP’s. I trust Open Phil and the EA Funds much more now, though, since
together, I think they’ve funded all the things I would, fund a lot of things I wouldn’t have thought of that look good, and don’t fund a lot of things I think look unpromising, and
as I’ve become more informed, I’ve 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/​decision-theoretic disagreement about what to do under deep uncertainty/​with complex cluelessness, though, not a disagreement about what would actually happen.
Yes, but I expect funders/​evaluators to be more informed about which undercover investigators would be best to fund, since I won’t 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 others’ research if they’re published and come to my own conclusions on its basis. Knowing that one opportunity is really good doesn’t mean there aren’t 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 I’d prefer to top up orgs that are already getting funded or recommended, since they seem more marginally cost-effective in expectation.
Generally, if there’s a bar for cost-effectiveness, some things aren’t 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 there’s an opportunity you’re 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 it’s 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 doesn’t get funded by major funders, then they didn’t 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/​intervention description; I don’t know). Then,
If you think it was way above their bar, and they think it’s below their bar, then you should be pretty concerned that you’ve misjudged and/​or are missing important information, since you’d 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, I’d 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 you’d like to go ahead anyway, then I think you’d want a good explanation for why they’re wrong.
If you think it’s 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, you’d 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 grantmakers’ judgements.
There may be exceptions to this, but I think this is the guide most EAs (or at least most EAAs) should follow unless they’re grantmakers themselves, are confident they’d 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 year’s 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, sapphire’s 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/​or making forum posts. I will not do this in a deferrential manner and to me it seems harmful to do so—I think people should feel discouraged if you explicitly discard what you personally know about their competence etc.