There is something wonderful about this conversation, and about what it says about effective altruism and our aim to do the most good possible.
Cash-transfers as done by Give Directly are a phenomenal initiative. So obvious in retrospect, but only when you remove your preconceived bias about poor people being partly responsible for their own predicament.
So it would be great, and laudable, for any organisation to look for ways to scale and expand programs like this. (And by supporting Give Directly, we can all help to enable this).
But the effective altruists (in this case, GiveWell) go a step further. How can we make this even better?
[I’ve spend many years working in one of the best corporate R&D organisations in the world, and this was a big part of what made us successful—to be always asking “how could we make this even better?”]
Once you start asking this, the ideas arrive: who are the most effective people to give the money to? when is the most effective time to give money? how to coordinate cash-transfers with other initiatives to maximise impact? Etc.
Of course there’s still a lot of research needed to answer these. But the value of asking these questions is enormous, and unfortunately I get the impression that this is where many charities fail—they find a model that’s good enough, and stick to it—doing a lot of good, but also not helping as many people as they might, as much as they might.
I realise this entire comment falls under what Basil Fawlty would describe as “the bleedin’ obvious” for this EA audience—but to me it is a beautiful example we can use to explain how and why EA’s can always create more impact. I will write about this in the Effective Giving Ireland journal and maybe convince one or two extra donors to support effective charities …
There is something wonderful about this conversation, and about what it says about effective altruism and our aim to do the most good possible.
Cash-transfers as done by Give Directly are a phenomenal initiative. So obvious in retrospect, but only when you remove your preconceived bias about poor people being partly responsible for their own predicament.
So it would be great, and laudable, for any organisation to look for ways to scale and expand programs like this. (And by supporting Give Directly, we can all help to enable this).
But the effective altruists (in this case, GiveWell) go a step further. How can we make this even better?
[I’ve spend many years working in one of the best corporate R&D organisations in the world, and this was a big part of what made us successful—to be always asking “how could we make this even better?”]
Once you start asking this, the ideas arrive: who are the most effective people to give the money to? when is the most effective time to give money? how to coordinate cash-transfers with other initiatives to maximise impact? Etc.
Of course there’s still a lot of research needed to answer these. But the value of asking these questions is enormous, and unfortunately I get the impression that this is where many charities fail—they find a model that’s good enough, and stick to it—doing a lot of good, but also not helping as many people as they might, as much as they might.
I realise this entire comment falls under what Basil Fawlty would describe as “the bleedin’ obvious” for this EA audience—but to me it is a beautiful example we can use to explain how and why EA’s can always create more impact. I will write about this in the Effective Giving Ireland journal and maybe convince one or two extra donors to support effective charities …