Hi Elizabethâit would be great if you could explain why?
If you encourage a friend who wasnât otherwise giving effectively or significantly to pledgeâand they doâthis seems like a potential doubling of donations going to high impact charities. Maybe more or less if their salary is higher or lower but as a rule of thumb I think it seems like generally a fine thing to say.
Maybe you were thinking that donations might be less counterfactual if these people are already in the effective altruism community(?), but many people GWWC reaches are outside the community who might be less likely to be giving effectively or significantly and we try to tailor our content for the broadest audience we reach, especially our blog content. Iâll get Alana to update that this is a link post of our blog post: https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââen/ââblog/ââ5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge
Assigns 100% of their future impact to you, not counting their own contribution and the other sources that caused this change. Itâs the same kind of simplification as âevery blood donation saves 3 livesâ, when what they mean is âyour blood will probably go to three people, each of whom will receive donations from many people.â
Assumes perfect follow up. This isnât realistic for a median pledger, but we might expect people who were tipped into pledging by a single act by a single person to have worse follow-up than people who find it on their own. You could argue it isnât actually one action, there were lots of causes and that makes it stickier, but then you run into #1 even harder.
Reifies signing the pledge as the moment everything changes, while vibing that this is a small deal you can stop when you feel like it.
Assumes every pledger you recruit makes exactly the same amount. Part of me thinks this is a nit pick. You could assume people recruit people who on average earn similar salaries, or think itâs just not worth doing the math on likely income of secondary recruitment. Another part thinks itâs downstream of the same root cause as the other issues, and any real fix to those will fix this as well.
The word âeffectiveâ is doing a lot of work. What if they have different tastes than I do? What if they think PlayPumps are a great idea? .
Treating the counterfactual as 0.
As I write this out Iâm realizing my objection isnât just the bad math. Itâs closer to treating pledge-takiers as the unit of measurement, with all pledges or at least all dollars donated being interchangeable. People who are recruited/âinspired by a single person are likely to have different follow through and charitable targets than people inspired by many people over time, who are different than people driven to do this themselves. ?
I donât think it does assume perfect follow-up, it just assumes roughly the same follow-up from them as you. I hear you that maybe people you tip into taking the pledge are systematically different in a way that makes you doubt that as well, but Iâm not actually convinced this difference is that substantial.
Similarly, I donât think different amounts of income feels like a big problem with this sentiment to me, as long as their income isnât systematically less (or more!) than yours. It feels like an imprecision, but if itâs true on average itâs not one I particularly resent.
(I think the rest of your points seem fine so overall I still agree with your bottom line.)
My model is that at least one of the following must be true: youâre one factor among many that caused the change, the change is not actually that big, or attrition will be much higher than standard pledge takers.
Which is fine. Accepting the framing around influencing others[1]: you will be one of many factors, but your influence will extend past one person. But I think itâs good to acknowledge the complexity.
I separately question whether the pledge is the best way to achieve this goal. Why lock in a decision for your entire life instead of, say, taking a lesson in how to talk about your donations in ways that make people feel energized instead of judged?
I canât speak for Elizabeth, but I also find that that paragraph feels off, for reasons something like:
Conflation of âcounterfactual money to high-impact charitiesâ with âyour impactâ
Maybe even if itâs counterfactually moved, you donât get to count all the impact from it as your impact, since to avoid double-counting and impact ponzi schemes itâs maybe important to take a âshare-of-the-pieâ approach to thinking about your impact (hereâs my take on that general question), and presumably they get a lot of the credit for their giving
Plus, maybe you do things which are importantly valuable that arenât about your pledge! Itâs at least a plausible reading (though itâs ambiguous) that âdouble your impactâ would be taken as âdouble your lifetime impactâ
As well as sharing credit for their donations with them, you maybe need to share credit for having nudged them to make the pledge with other folks (including but not limited to GWWC)
As you say, their donations may not be counterfactual even in the short-term
Even if a good fraction of them are maybe from outside the community, thatâs still a fraction by which it reduces expected impact
Although on average I think itâs likely very good, Iâm sure in some cases the EA push towards a few charities that have been verified as highly effective actually does harm by pulling people to give to those over some other charities which were in fact even more effective (but illegibly so)
Man, long-term counterfactuals are hard
Maybe GWWC/âEA ends up growing a lot further, so that it reaches effective saturation among ~all relevant audiences
In that world, if someone was open to taking the GWWC pledge, theyâd likely do it eventually, even if they are currently not at all connected to the community
Now, none of these points are blatant errors, or make me want to say âwhat were you thinking?!?â. But I feel taken together the picture is that in fact thereâs a lot of complexity to the question of how impact should be counted in that case, and the text doesnât help the reader to understand that thereâs a lot of complexity or how to navigate thinking about it, but instead cheerfully presents the most favourable possible interpretation. It just has a bit of a vibe of slightly-underhand sales tactics, or something?
Thanks OwenâI think those things are all reasonableâwe might look to update this paragraph on the blog and update our messaging around this! Itâs always a challenge to write in a way thatâs engaging and legible to those outside the community, and also reflects all of the nuance expected in the community. We of course, always try to do our best, but sometimes we might miss the mark and weâre always open to changing our minds!
Pledging may have some combination the effect of (a) actually increasing peopleâs lifetime donations to effective charities and (b) causing people to advertise giving they already were going to do. To the extent that a pledge is b rather than a, getting someone to pledge the same amount as you is not double your impact.
Many of the people who you cause to become pledgers might have become pledgers later, thus you probably just accelerated their pledge, greatly decreasing your actual impact vs if you cause someone to pledge (and this pledge causes them to donate more rather than encompasses donation that would otherwise happen).
Thereâs a possibility that you could anchor someone to donate less. Potentially someone could see your celebrated 10% pledge and view that as adequate, lowering their donations. Here, there is a risk of harm from the pledge.
All that said, I still think the pledge is an awesome way to promote and normalize effective giving.
Thanks BradâI think all of those are reasonable considerations! As mentioned in my response to Owenâweâll review this messaging based on this feedback! Thanks for sharing your reasoning!
Hi Elizabethâit would be great if you could explain why?
If you encourage a friend who wasnât otherwise giving effectively or significantly to pledgeâand they doâthis seems like a potential doubling of donations going to high impact charities. Maybe more or less if their salary is higher or lower but as a rule of thumb I think it seems like generally a fine thing to say.
Maybe you were thinking that donations might be less counterfactual if these people are already in the effective altruism community(?), but many people GWWC reaches are outside the community who might be less likely to be giving effectively or significantly and we try to tailor our content for the broadest audience we reach, especially our blog content. Iâll get Alana to update that this is a link post of our blog post: https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââen/ââblog/ââ5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge
Assigns 100% of their future impact to you, not counting their own contribution and the other sources that caused this change. Itâs the same kind of simplification as âevery blood donation saves 3 livesâ, when what they mean is âyour blood will probably go to three people, each of whom will receive donations from many people.â
Assumes perfect follow up. This isnât realistic for a median pledger, but we might expect people who were tipped into pledging by a single act by a single person to have worse follow-up than people who find it on their own. You could argue it isnât actually one action, there were lots of causes and that makes it stickier, but then you run into #1 even harder.
Reifies signing the pledge as the moment everything changes, while vibing that this is a small deal you can stop when you feel like it.
Assumes every pledger you recruit makes exactly the same amount. Part of me thinks this is a nit pick. You could assume people recruit people who on average earn similar salaries, or think itâs just not worth doing the math on likely income of secondary recruitment. Another part thinks itâs downstream of the same root cause as the other issues, and any real fix to those will fix this as well.
The word âeffectiveâ is doing a lot of work. What if they have different tastes than I do? What if they think PlayPumps are a great idea? .
Treating the counterfactual as 0.
As I write this out Iâm realizing my objection isnât just the bad math. Itâs closer to treating pledge-takiers as the unit of measurement, with all pledges or at least all dollars donated being interchangeable. People who are recruited/âinspired by a single person are likely to have different follow through and charitable targets than people inspired by many people over time, who are different than people driven to do this themselves. ?
I donât think it does assume perfect follow-up, it just assumes roughly the same follow-up from them as you. I hear you that maybe people you tip into taking the pledge are systematically different in a way that makes you doubt that as well, but Iâm not actually convinced this difference is that substantial.
Similarly, I donât think different amounts of income feels like a big problem with this sentiment to me, as long as their income isnât systematically less (or more!) than yours. It feels like an imprecision, but if itâs true on average itâs not one I particularly resent.
(I think the rest of your points seem fine so overall I still agree with your bottom line.)
My model is that at least one of the following must be true: youâre one factor among many that caused the change, the change is not actually that big, or attrition will be much higher than standard pledge takers.
Which is fine. Accepting the framing around influencing others[1]: you will be one of many factors, but your influence will extend past one person. But I think itâs good to acknowledge the complexity.
I separately question whether the pledge is the best way to achieve this goal. Why lock in a decision for your entire life instead of, say, taking a lesson in how to talk about your donations in ways that make people feel energized instead of judged?
I canât speak for Elizabeth, but I also find that that paragraph feels off, for reasons something like:
Conflation of âcounterfactual money to high-impact charitiesâ with âyour impactâ
Maybe even if itâs counterfactually moved, you donât get to count all the impact from it as your impact, since to avoid double-counting and impact ponzi schemes itâs maybe important to take a âshare-of-the-pieâ approach to thinking about your impact (hereâs my take on that general question), and presumably they get a lot of the credit for their giving
Plus, maybe you do things which are importantly valuable that arenât about your pledge! Itâs at least a plausible reading (though itâs ambiguous) that âdouble your impactâ would be taken as âdouble your lifetime impactâ
As well as sharing credit for their donations with them, you maybe need to share credit for having nudged them to make the pledge with other folks (including but not limited to GWWC)
As you say, their donations may not be counterfactual even in the short-term
Even if a good fraction of them are maybe from outside the community, thatâs still a fraction by which it reduces expected impact
Although on average I think itâs likely very good, Iâm sure in some cases the EA push towards a few charities that have been verified as highly effective actually does harm by pulling people to give to those over some other charities which were in fact even more effective (but illegibly so)
Man, long-term counterfactuals are hard
Maybe GWWC/âEA ends up growing a lot further, so that it reaches effective saturation among ~all relevant audiences
In that world, if someone was open to taking the GWWC pledge, theyâd likely do it eventually, even if they are currently not at all connected to the community
Now, none of these points are blatant errors, or make me want to say âwhat were you thinking?!?â. But I feel taken together the picture is that in fact thereâs a lot of complexity to the question of how impact should be counted in that case, and the text doesnât help the reader to understand that thereâs a lot of complexity or how to navigate thinking about it, but instead cheerfully presents the most favourable possible interpretation. It just has a bit of a vibe of slightly-underhand sales tactics, or something?
Thanks OwenâI think those things are all reasonableâwe might look to update this paragraph on the blog and update our messaging around this! Itâs always a challenge to write in a way thatâs engaging and legible to those outside the community, and also reflects all of the nuance expected in the community. We of course, always try to do our best, but sometimes we might miss the mark and weâre always open to changing our minds!
I could imagine a few things:
Pledging may have some combination the effect of (a) actually increasing peopleâs lifetime donations to effective charities and (b) causing people to advertise giving they already were going to do. To the extent that a pledge is b rather than a, getting someone to pledge the same amount as you is not double your impact.
Many of the people who you cause to become pledgers might have become pledgers later, thus you probably just accelerated their pledge, greatly decreasing your actual impact vs if you cause someone to pledge (and this pledge causes them to donate more rather than encompasses donation that would otherwise happen).
Thereâs a possibility that you could anchor someone to donate less. Potentially someone could see your celebrated 10% pledge and view that as adequate, lowering their donations. Here, there is a risk of harm from the pledge.
All that said, I still think the pledge is an awesome way to promote and normalize effective giving.
Thanks BradâI think all of those are reasonable considerations! As mentioned in my response to Owenâweâll review this messaging based on this feedback! Thanks for sharing your reasoning!