To possibly strengthen the argument made, I’ll point out that moving already-effective money to a more effective cause or donation is smaller counterfactually because they are already looking at the question, and could easily come to the conclusion on their own. Moving money in a “Normie” foundation, on the other hand, can have knock-on effects of getting them to think more about impact at all, and change their trajectory.
We’re also more likely to be incorrect and influencing money in the wrong direction if we’re advising people who already take an effectiveness-based approach! I think full-time, specialized impact evaluators are the best resource we have to improve our answers to these questions over time, but they’re fallible people working on complicated questions and certainly they occasionally come to less-optimal decisions than other smart people working from the same principles and premises. By contrast, the “normie” foundation landing on a more cost effective answer than the impact-focused evaluators is probably rare as it would be something of an accident.
This is super interesting and not something I considered—but it seems right that you’re more likely to make a mistake and move money to less impactful things accidentally is you’re trying to move the money between very impactful things, then from relatively low impact to higher impact.
To possibly strengthen the argument made, I’ll point out that moving already-effective money to a more effective cause or donation is smaller counterfactually because they are already looking at the question, and could easily come to the conclusion on their own. Moving money in a “Normie” foundation, on the other hand, can have knock-on effects of getting them to think more about impact at all, and change their trajectory.
We’re also more likely to be incorrect and influencing money in the wrong direction if we’re advising people who already take an effectiveness-based approach! I think full-time, specialized impact evaluators are the best resource we have to improve our answers to these questions over time, but they’re fallible people working on complicated questions and certainly they occasionally come to less-optimal decisions than other smart people working from the same principles and premises. By contrast, the “normie” foundation landing on a more cost effective answer than the impact-focused evaluators is probably rare as it would be something of an accident.
This is super interesting and not something I considered—but it seems right that you’re more likely to make a mistake and move money to less impactful things accidentally is you’re trying to move the money between very impactful things, then from relatively low impact to higher impact.