Re (a), that would be a sufficient justification, I agree: you suggest the option that is less cost-effective in the expectation more people will do it and therefore its expectation value is higher nonetheless. My point was that, if you have a fixed total of resources then, as an investor, the lower-risk, lower ROI option can be better (due to diminishing marginal utility) but, as a donor, you just want to put the fixed total to the thing with higher ROI.
That said, this is possibly worse than creating some kind of psychedelics fund that can combine many small donations into grants of a size that make sense for universities to process
I am not aware of this, but I have had a bit of discussion with Jonas Vollmer about setting up a new EA fund that could do this. This hypothetical ‘human well-being fund’ would be an alternative to the global health and development fund. While the latter would (continue to) basically back ‘tried-and-tested’ GiveWell recommendations (which are in global health and development), the former could, inter alia, engage in hits-based giving and take a wider view.
Hello Aaron,
Re (a), that would be a sufficient justification, I agree: you suggest the option that is less cost-effective in the expectation more people will do it and therefore its expectation value is higher nonetheless. My point was that, if you have a fixed total of resources then, as an investor, the lower-risk, lower ROI option can be better (due to diminishing marginal utility) but, as a donor, you just want to put the fixed total to the thing with higher ROI.
I am not aware of this, but I have had a bit of discussion with Jonas Vollmer about setting up a new EA fund that could do this. This hypothetical ‘human well-being fund’ would be an alternative to the global health and development fund. While the latter would (continue to) basically back ‘tried-and-tested’ GiveWell recommendations (which are in global health and development), the former could, inter alia, engage in hits-based giving and take a wider view.