That’s a good point, it’s not a connection I’ve heard people make before but it does make sense.
I’m a bit concerned that the message “you can do 80% of the good with only 20% of the donation” could be misinterpreted:
I associate the Pareto principle with saving time and money. EA isn’t really a movement about getting people to decrease the amount of time and money they spend on charity though, if anything probably the opposite.
To put it another way, the top opportunities identified by EA still have room for more funding. So the mental motion I want to instill is not about shaving away your low-impact charitable efforts, it’s more about doubling down on high-impact charitable efforts that are underfunded (or discovering new high-impact charitable efforts).
We wouldn’t want to imply that the remaining 20% of the good is somehow less valuable—it is more costly to access, but in principle if all of the low-hanging altruistic fruit is picked, there’s no reason not to move on to the higher-hanging fruit. The message “concentrate your altruism on the 80% and don’t bother with the 20%” could come across as callous. I would rather make a positive statement that you can do a lot of good surprisingly cheaply than a negative statement that you shouldn’t ever do good inefficiently.
Nevertheless I think the 80⁄20 principle could be a good intuition pump for the idea that results are often disproportionate with effort and I appreciate your brainstorming :)
Hey, thanks for your reply. By the Pareto Principle, I meant something like “80% of the good is achieved by solving 20% of the problem areas”. If this is easy to misinterpret (like you did), then it might not be a great idea :P The idea of fat-tailed distribution of impact of interventions might be a better alternative to this maybe?
That’s a good point, it’s not a connection I’ve heard people make before but it does make sense.
I’m a bit concerned that the message “you can do 80% of the good with only 20% of the donation” could be misinterpreted:
I associate the Pareto principle with saving time and money. EA isn’t really a movement about getting people to decrease the amount of time and money they spend on charity though, if anything probably the opposite.
To put it another way, the top opportunities identified by EA still have room for more funding. So the mental motion I want to instill is not about shaving away your low-impact charitable efforts, it’s more about doubling down on high-impact charitable efforts that are underfunded (or discovering new high-impact charitable efforts).
We wouldn’t want to imply that the remaining 20% of the good is somehow less valuable—it is more costly to access, but in principle if all of the low-hanging altruistic fruit is picked, there’s no reason not to move on to the higher-hanging fruit. The message “concentrate your altruism on the 80% and don’t bother with the 20%” could come across as callous. I would rather make a positive statement that you can do a lot of good surprisingly cheaply than a negative statement that you shouldn’t ever do good inefficiently.
Nevertheless I think the 80⁄20 principle could be a good intuition pump for the idea that results are often disproportionate with effort and I appreciate your brainstorming :)
Hey, thanks for your reply. By the Pareto Principle, I meant something like “80% of the good is achieved by solving 20% of the problem areas”. If this is easy to misinterpret (like you did), then it might not be a great idea :P The idea of fat-tailed distribution of impact of interventions might be a better alternative to this maybe?
That sounds harder to misinterpret, yeah.