Hm, I empathise with your underlying concern, but don’t the sliders help with that?
(Tangentially, “precise maths on top of guesses” is basically how I’d describe all CEAs, including GiveWell’s which move hundreds of millions annually. The guesses get better in all kinds of ways, but at least when I last checked the AMF CEA it wasn’t using field data like you’d like. So in a sense you seem to be asking for more than whole teams of specialists can deliver, let alone one person and a bunch of subscriptions can do in their limited spare time?)
That’s a fair point on how these models work in general and I really don’t want to diminish Max’s efforts here. Building a tool like this takes serious effort. I certainly could not do it and I genuinely appreciate the craft that went into it!
I see where you’re coming from on the sliders, but my worry is more fundamental. Adjusting a slider lets us tweak the numbers, but it doesn’t change what the model is built to look for. When the baseline assumes that hard-to-measure community work has almost no value unless it’s backed by a trial, a slider just lets us pick a different guess. I’ll say it again that it can’t capture how real-world, long-term change actually happens on the ground.
But technical debate aside, the most disheartening part of all this has been seeing how the post is being used online. It’s been really disappointing to watch the wave of harsh backlash and inflammatory comments directed at MacKenzie Scott off the back of this.
She is giving away huge amounts of money with real trust, flexibility, and respect for local leaders doing good, complex work. When that kind of thoughtful giving gets turned into a single headline about “inefficiency,” it opens the door for a lot of unfair criticism directed at someone who is genuinely trying to tackle important issues.
That’s really why those like me on the field push back. Numbers don’t live in a vacuum and when complex human work gets reduced to a simple health calculator, the real-world conversation takes a hit.
I hear you on the mis-aimed backlash. I also interpret what she’s doing as fundamentally capabilitarian, which is underappreciated in these parts.
Thoughts on how the calculator might more fairly represent what MacKenzie Scott’s giving aims to achieve? I can ask Claude to create a mockup based on your bullets :)
Hm, I empathise with your underlying concern, but don’t the sliders help with that?
(Tangentially, “precise maths on top of guesses” is basically how I’d describe all CEAs, including GiveWell’s which move hundreds of millions annually. The guesses get better in all kinds of ways, but at least when I last checked the AMF CEA it wasn’t using field data like you’d like. So in a sense you seem to be asking for more than whole teams of specialists can deliver, let alone one person and a bunch of subscriptions can do in their limited spare time?)
That’s a fair point on how these models work in general and I really don’t want to diminish Max’s efforts here. Building a tool like this takes serious effort. I certainly could not do it and I genuinely appreciate the craft that went into it!
I see where you’re coming from on the sliders, but my worry is more fundamental. Adjusting a slider lets us tweak the numbers, but it doesn’t change what the model is built to look for. When the baseline assumes that hard-to-measure community work has almost no value unless it’s backed by a trial, a slider just lets us pick a different guess. I’ll say it again that it can’t capture how real-world, long-term change actually happens on the ground.
But technical debate aside, the most disheartening part of all this has been seeing how the post is being used online. It’s been really disappointing to watch the wave of harsh backlash and inflammatory comments directed at MacKenzie Scott off the back of this.
She is giving away huge amounts of money with real trust, flexibility, and respect for local leaders doing good, complex work. When that kind of thoughtful giving gets turned into a single headline about “inefficiency,” it opens the door for a lot of unfair criticism directed at someone who is genuinely trying to tackle important issues.
That’s really why those like me on the field push back. Numbers don’t live in a vacuum and when complex human work gets reduced to a simple health calculator, the real-world conversation takes a hit.
I hear you on the mis-aimed backlash. I also interpret what she’s doing as fundamentally capabilitarian, which is underappreciated in these parts.
Thoughts on how the calculator might more fairly represent what MacKenzie Scott’s giving aims to achieve? I can ask Claude to create a mockup based on your bullets :)