I worry EGIs’ cause prioritisation is ultimately restricted by Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna. These are the major funders of Open Philanthropy (OP), which in turn is the major funder of EGIs, and therefore sets their incentives. I encourage people at OP to be deliberate about differences in cost-effectiveness between cause areas instead of incentivising EGIs to simply increase donations to top interventions regardless of their areas.
While I generally share concerns about OP et al. having too much influence over the ecosystem, that doesn’t sound like what you’re describing here. Rather, it seems that you think OP et al. are implicitly deferring to judgments made of the end users of EGIs? It seems to me that would be the main practical effect of using donations to effective causes as a metric without scoring differently by cause area. And I think there are some pretty powerful structural reasons we would want OP et al. to broadly defer to EGI customers rather than attempt to use its influence over EGIs to shape the ecosystem in furtherance of any particular non-consensus cause prio.
More substantively: What is your model of potential EGI end users? My assumption is that most people are coming in with a cause area they are interested in, and need to feel that the EGI aligns fairly closely with their values in order to trust it. I am guessing the number of prospects who wish to offload their cause prio and moral judgment to an EGI is much lower. To the extent that an EGI was heavily promoting AW opportunities over others, I submit that it needs to be upfront about being an AW EGI. Anything else is going to come off as a bait-and-switch to most potential end users. The downside is that the catchment area (as it were) for AW EGIs may be much smaller than for multi-cause EGIs that take all comers and don’t clearly prefer some of their cause areas over others.
Rather, it seems that you think OP et al. are implicitly deferring to judgments made of the end users of EGIs?
Yes, I would agree OP and EGIs are effectively deferring too much to donors at the level of cause prioritisation. EGIs could have recommendations in many areas, but still present their views about which are more cost-effective, as 80,000 Hours does with respect to areas and careers.
And I think there are some pretty powerful structural reasons we would want OP et al. to broadly defer to EGI customers rather than attempt to use its influence over EGIs to shape the ecosystem in furtherance of any particular non-consensus cause prio.
There is significant agreement among people who have worked on cause prioritisation that the most cost-effective animal welfare organisations are more cost-effective at the margin than the most cost-effective human welfare organisations. I undersand this is far from consensual among the whole population, but the same applies to other considerations, although possibly less significantly. It is common for people to value local organisations way more than what would be justified to increase impact by tax benefits, because they value human welfare in their home country way more than in others. However, EGIs in high income countries mostly do not recommend organisations helping people there outside global catastrophic risk mitigation.
More substantively: What is your model of potential EGI end users? My assumption is that most people are coming in with a cause area they are interested in, and need to feel that the EGI aligns fairly closely with their values in order to trust it.
I agree that is a fair description of most people influenced by EGIs.
I am guessing the number of prospects who wish to offload their cause prio and moral judgment to an EGI is much lower.
I agree, but I still think influencing that small fraction is relevant.
If the best animal welfare interventions are over 100 times as cost-effective as the best in human welfare, moving 1 $ to the former is more impactful than moving 100 $ to the latter, and therefore an EGI only has to increase donations to the former 1 % (= 1⁄100) as much as to the latter for animal welfare to be responsible for most of their impact.
To the extent that an EGI was heavily promoting AW opportunities over others, I submit that it needs to be upfront about being an AW EGI. Anything else is going to come off as a bait-and-switch to most potential end users.
I agree EGIs should specialise more, and mostly across areas instead of countries. However, I would still like to see EGIs experimenting with ranking their areas, as 80,000 Hours does. As far as I know, none has tried, so there is high value of information. To minimise the risk of losing current donors, they could simply run surveys of potential future donors, or the general population, or just change the website for a small number of random visitors. Have you considered this, @David_Moss and @Luke Moore 🔸?
Anything else is going to come off as a bait-and-switch to most potential end users.
Animal welfare could be highlighted in subbtle ways. For example, GWWC lists recommendations in global health and development before ones in animal welfare, but these could appear 1st, which would be in agreement with ordering areas alphabetically.
To clarify the structural reasons to which I alluded—it’s already problematic for the community that OP et al. control so much of the available funding. Having mostly independent funding streams available is important, so having OP et al. putting a thumb on the scale to influence allocation of those independent streams poses significant costs in my book.
A necessary prerequisite for your proposal is that OP et al. move toward the cause prio you advocate. But such a movement would presumably cause OP’s own funding decisions to shift in a significant manner. OP et al. changing allocations of its own funds doesn’t pose the same problems to funding independence, and doesn’t require confronting the likelihood that EGI fundraising from outside sources is less cost-effective on a dollar basis in AW than in GHD.
It’s not clear to me whether the majority view that AW is currently underfunded would survive a significant reallocation in OP et al.’s allocation of its own funds. Even if it did, there would still be significant support in the community for the view that the marginal independent-funding dollar should go to GHD or GCR work (because there already is), and we’d still be facing the question of whether it was appropriate for OP et al. to be exercising pressure on this question.
While I generally share concerns about OP et al. having too much influence over the ecosystem, that doesn’t sound like what you’re describing here. Rather, it seems that you think OP et al. are implicitly deferring to judgments made of the end users of EGIs? It seems to me that would be the main practical effect of using donations to effective causes as a metric without scoring differently by cause area. And I think there are some pretty powerful structural reasons we would want OP et al. to broadly defer to EGI customers rather than attempt to use its influence over EGIs to shape the ecosystem in furtherance of any particular non-consensus cause prio.
More substantively: What is your model of potential EGI end users? My assumption is that most people are coming in with a cause area they are interested in, and need to feel that the EGI aligns fairly closely with their values in order to trust it. I am guessing the number of prospects who wish to offload their cause prio and moral judgment to an EGI is much lower. To the extent that an EGI was heavily promoting AW opportunities over others, I submit that it needs to be upfront about being an AW EGI. Anything else is going to come off as a bait-and-switch to most potential end users. The downside is that the catchment area (as it were) for AW EGIs may be much smaller than for multi-cause EGIs that take all comers and don’t clearly prefer some of their cause areas over others.
Thanks for the substantive answer, Jason.
Yes, I would agree OP and EGIs are effectively deferring too much to donors at the level of cause prioritisation. EGIs could have recommendations in many areas, but still present their views about which are more cost-effective, as 80,000 Hours does with respect to areas and careers.
There is significant agreement among people who have worked on cause prioritisation that the most cost-effective animal welfare organisations are more cost-effective at the margin than the most cost-effective human welfare organisations. I undersand this is far from consensual among the whole population, but the same applies to other considerations, although possibly less significantly. It is common for people to value local organisations way more than what would be justified to increase impact by tax benefits, because they value human welfare in their home country way more than in others. However, EGIs in high income countries mostly do not recommend organisations helping people there outside global catastrophic risk mitigation.
I agree that is a fair description of most people influenced by EGIs.
I agree, but I still think influencing that small fraction is relevant.
I agree EGIs should specialise more, and mostly across areas instead of countries. However, I would still like to see EGIs experimenting with ranking their areas, as 80,000 Hours does. As far as I know, none has tried, so there is high value of information. To minimise the risk of losing current donors, they could simply run surveys of potential future donors, or the general population, or just change the website for a small number of random visitors. Have you considered this, @David_Moss and @Luke Moore 🔸?
Animal welfare could be highlighted in subbtle ways. For example, GWWC lists recommendations in global health and development before ones in animal welfare, but these could appear 1st, which would be in agreement with ordering areas alphabetically.
To clarify the structural reasons to which I alluded—it’s already problematic for the community that OP et al. control so much of the available funding. Having mostly independent funding streams available is important, so having OP et al. putting a thumb on the scale to influence allocation of those independent streams poses significant costs in my book.
A necessary prerequisite for your proposal is that OP et al. move toward the cause prio you advocate. But such a movement would presumably cause OP’s own funding decisions to shift in a significant manner. OP et al. changing allocations of its own funds doesn’t pose the same problems to funding independence, and doesn’t require confronting the likelihood that EGI fundraising from outside sources is less cost-effective on a dollar basis in AW than in GHD.
It’s not clear to me whether the majority view that AW is currently underfunded would survive a significant reallocation in OP et al.’s allocation of its own funds. Even if it did, there would still be significant support in the community for the view that the marginal independent-funding dollar should go to GHD or GCR work (because there already is), and we’d still be facing the question of whether it was appropriate for OP et al. to be exercising pressure on this question.
Thanks Vasco! We’d be happy to run a survey or experiment on this topic if orgs think it would be useful to them.