I agree with the omission bias point, but the second half of the paragraph seems unfair.
Leif never discourages people from doing philanthropy (or, aid as he calls it). Perhaps he might make people unduly skeptical of bednets in particularāwhich I think is reasonable to critique him on.
But overall, he seems to just be advocating for people to be more critical of possible side effects from aid. From the article (bold mine)
Making responsible choices, I came to realize, means accepting well-known risks of harm.Which absolutely does not mean that āaid doesnāt work.ā There are many good people in aid working hard on the ground, often making tough calls as they weigh benefits and costs. Giving money to aid can be admirable tooādoctors, after all, still prescribe drugs with known side effects. Yet what no one in aid should say, I came to think, is that all theyāre doing is improving poor peopleās lives.
Did you read my linked article on moral misdirection? Disavowing full-blown aid skepticism is compatible with discouraging life-saving aid, in the same way that someone who disavows xenophobia but then spends all their time writing sensationalist screeds about immigrant crime and other āharmsā caused by immigrants is very obviously discouraging immigration whatever else they might have said.
ETA: I just re-read the WIRED article. Heās clearly discouraging people from donating to GiveWellās recommendations. This will predictably result in more people dying. I donāt see how you can deny this. Do you really think that general audiences reading his WIRED article will be no less likely to donate to effective charities as a result?
I didnāt read the article you linked, I think itās plausible. (see more in my last para)
Iād like to address your second paragraph in more depth though:
Heās clearly discouraging people from donating to GiveWellās recommendations. This will predictably result in more people dying. I donāt see how you can deny this.
I donāt think GW recommendations are the only effective charities out there, so I donāt think this is an open-and-shut case.
GWās selection criteria for charities includes, amongst other things, room for more funding. So if an org has only $1M RFMF, regardless of how cost effective the org was, GW wouldnāt recommend them because they are looking to recommend charities with some bar (I believe at least 10s of millions, possibly more) of funding.
A number of CE orgs estimate their impact could be as cost-effective, or more (with higher uncertainty of course!) than GW top recommended charities. They could also just donate to non-EA affiliated charities that are more /ā as cost effective as GW charities.
GW also has itās own limited scope, which I think plausible result in them missing out on some impactful opportunities e.g. relating to policy interventions and orgs working on growth (ala Growth and the case against randomista development).
FWIW if helpful what my own views here areāI think Iām a lot more risk neutral than GW, and much more keen to expand beyond GWās scope of GH&D interventions. GW is ultimately 1 org with itās own priorities, perspectives and, biases. Iād love to see more work in this space taking different perspectives (e.g. The case of the missing cause prioritisation research).
Do you really think that general audiences reading his WIRED article will be no less likely to donate to effective charities as a result?
Iām sympathetic to this point (where i interpret effective charities as a superset of GW charities). I think itās plausible heās contributed to a new āoverhead mythā re negative impacts of aid (although, keep in mind that this is a pre-existing narrative). I would have liked Wenar to talk more about what kinds of trade offs he would endorse making, examples of good trade-offs in practice, examples of actually bad trade-offs (rather than potentially bad ones), and, if heās very skeptical of aid, what he sees as other effective ways to help people in LMICs. Itās possible he covers some of this in his other article.
Iām happy for people to argue that there are even better options than GW out there. (Iād agree!) But thatās very emphatically not what Wenar was doing in that article.
I agree heās not offering alternatives, as I mentioned previously. It would be good if Leif gave examples of better tradeoffs.
I still think your claim is too strongly stated. I donāt think Leif criticizing GW orgs means he is discouraging life saving aid as a whole, or that people will predictably die as a result. The counterfactual is not clear (and itās very difficult to measure).
More defensible claims would be :
People are less likely to donate to GW recommended orgs
People will be more skeptical of bednets /ā (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
People will be less likely to donate to AMF /ā New Incentives /ā (any other org he specifically discussed or critiqued)
People may be more skeptical of LMIC philanthropy more generally because they feel overwhelmed by the possible risks, and donate less to it (this statement is closest to your original claim. For what itās worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so Iād be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)
My claim is not ātoo strongly statedā: it accurately states my view, which you havenāt even shown to be incorrect(let alone āunfairā or not ādefensibleāāboth significantly higher bars to establish than merely being incorrect!)
Itās always easier to make weaker claims, but that raises the risk of failing to make an important true claim that was worth making. Cf. epistemic cheems mindset.
I agree with the omission bias point, but the second half of the paragraph seems unfair.
Leif never discourages people from doing philanthropy (or, aid as he calls it). Perhaps he might make people unduly skeptical of bednets in particularāwhich I think is reasonable to critique him on.
But overall, he seems to just be advocating for people to be more critical of possible side effects from aid. From the article (bold mine)
Did you read my linked article on moral misdirection? Disavowing full-blown aid skepticism is compatible with discouraging life-saving aid, in the same way that someone who disavows xenophobia but then spends all their time writing sensationalist screeds about immigrant crime and other āharmsā caused by immigrants is very obviously discouraging immigration whatever else they might have said.
ETA: I just re-read the WIRED article. Heās clearly discouraging people from donating to GiveWellās recommendations. This will predictably result in more people dying. I donāt see how you can deny this. Do you really think that general audiences reading his WIRED article will be no less likely to donate to effective charities as a result?
I didnāt read the article you linked, I think itās plausible. (see more in my last para)
Iād like to address your second paragraph in more depth though:
I donāt think GW recommendations are the only effective charities out there, so I donāt think this is an open-and-shut case.
GWās selection criteria for charities includes, amongst other things, room for more funding. So if an org has only $1M RFMF, regardless of how cost effective the org was, GW wouldnāt recommend them because they are looking to recommend charities with some bar (I believe at least 10s of millions, possibly more) of funding.
A number of CE orgs estimate their impact could be as cost-effective, or more (with higher uncertainty of course!) than GW top recommended charities. They could also just donate to non-EA affiliated charities that are more /ā as cost effective as GW charities.
GW also has itās own limited scope, which I think plausible result in them missing out on some impactful opportunities e.g. relating to policy interventions and orgs working on growth (ala Growth and the case against randomista development).
FWIW if helpful what my own views here areāI think Iām a lot more risk neutral than GW, and much more keen to expand beyond GWās scope of GH&D interventions. GW is ultimately 1 org with itās own priorities, perspectives and, biases. Iād love to see more work in this space taking different perspectives (e.g. The case of the missing cause prioritisation research).
Iām sympathetic to this point (where i interpret effective charities as a superset of GW charities). I think itās plausible heās contributed to a new āoverhead mythā re negative impacts of aid (although, keep in mind that this is a pre-existing narrative). I would have liked Wenar to talk more about what kinds of trade offs he would endorse making, examples of good trade-offs in practice, examples of actually bad trade-offs (rather than potentially bad ones), and, if heās very skeptical of aid, what he sees as other effective ways to help people in LMICs. Itās possible he covers some of this in his other article.
Iām happy for people to argue that there are even better options than GW out there. (Iād agree!) But thatās very emphatically not what Wenar was doing in that article.
I agree heās not offering alternatives, as I mentioned previously. It would be good if Leif gave examples of better tradeoffs.
I still think your claim is too strongly stated. I donāt think Leif criticizing GW orgs means he is discouraging life saving aid as a whole, or that people will predictably die as a result. The counterfactual is not clear (and itās very difficult to measure).
More defensible claims would be :
People are less likely to donate to GW recommended orgs
People will be more skeptical of bednets /ā (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
People will be less likely to donate to AMF /ā New Incentives /ā (any other org he specifically discussed or critiqued)
People may be more skeptical of LMIC philanthropy more generally because they feel overwhelmed by the possible risks, and donate less to it (this statement is closest to your original claim. For what itās worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so Iād be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)
My claim is not ātoo strongly statedā: it accurately states my view, which you havenāt even shown to be incorrect (let alone āunfairā or not ādefensibleāāboth significantly higher bars to establish than merely being incorrect!)
Itās always easier to make weaker claims, but that raises the risk of failing to make an important true claim that was worth making. Cf. epistemic cheems mindset.