This comment is mostly about the letter, not the wired article. I don’t think this letter is particularly well argued (see end of article for areas of disagreement), but I’m surprised by the lack of substantive engagement with it.
This is fairly rough, i’m sure i’ve made mistakes in here, but figured it’s better to share than not.
Here’s some stuff i think is reasonable (but would love for folks to chime in if i’m missing something)
Questioning GiveWell’s $4500 estimate—seems worth questioning! I am no expert in developmental economics, but it seems like Leif made some reasonable points regarding how to measure counterfactuals, Shapley values, the other non-AMF actors who helped get the bednets from conception to creation. Maybe all these points have been covered in places, but I’d be really surprised if everyone reading and engaging in his writing knows the answers (at least for myself, I don’t!)
I’d be curious how many of people who donate to GiveWell take this number at face value /​ how many of us have really thought critically about this number
My friend with a background in dev econ says that EAs seem to take the $ estimates a lot more seriously than development economists in general. That seems worth reflecting on and learning more about.
He suggested GiveWell ask external developmental economists to evaluate their research /​ impact
this sounds great! +1 to this.
I think his red flags were all reasonable and things I’d be on the lookout for (the red flags were: seeking confirmation from within the group, attacking credibility of outsiders, distorting criticisms/​vilifying critics, ‘Am I afraid that I’ll lose friends if I question certain things about EA?’)
I don’t think all of those things are all as big risks as Leif perhaps does—but I do think that these things are present to some degree, and we should take them seriously.
I think, on average, we should be encouraging people to form independent beliefs and testing their theories on the world (and getting it wrong! and learning from the mistakes! and not worrying so much about maximizing at all costs!) much more than we currently do.
I am sympathetic to his claim that there is a lot of focus on intermediate steps for LT & meta impact, but that’s not really the claim he’s making.
However, GH&D and animal orgs do often communicate actual impact. You can always argue that they calculated the impact incorrectly—but I don’t think they look at intermediate steps.
i think the nerd scouts suggestion is understandable given that that the Atlas fellowship was a very prominent high school outreach program, and a very large % of CB resources go to uni outreach, and Leif is a Stanford professor where there has been a lot of EA activity for many years.
I think this section could have been written with a bit less attitude
I am actually pretty bullish on getting younger people (college/​ late high school) to really focus more on scout mindset /​ general decision-making tools & solid career advice. IDK if Leif is suggesting exactly that, but I do think that’s pretty important
Otherwise, I think I mostly disagree with him on his higher level strategy. It would be hard to know from the outside, but a number of projects have been started doing mid- and late-career outreach that are pretty exciting, and I hope more will be started in the coming years.
I read GiveWell’s response to the wired article, and I do think overall it’s not as direct as it could be.
both he and GW are weirdly not addressing the fishing thing directly—GW did not directly link their 2016 response in their notes (it’s linked from the info page on bednets, but you have to search for it), and Leif didn’t in either of his posts. am slightly confused on both parties’ actions here.
Things I’m not very sympathetic to in his argument:
overall, there are a lot of points, and not all of them are made equally well
I think if any of the points i mention above were the focus and written with a tiny bit more rigor, they would be valuable additions to discourse
little quibbles
Comparing EA to scientology. Feels like there were better and more fair analogies. I think overall this is a theme with his writing, which is unfortunate because it upsets people.
some of the narrative about lots of money /​ EA funding lots of prizes and competitions would have been more relevant pre-FTX collapse)
The effective vs altruism section feels a bit too abstract to be useful to me, and similar arguments have been made within the community numerous times, especially post FTX. But, fair critique given FTX. (Maybe there’s a lesson to be learnt here about how these ideas are perceived externally, clearly there’s a lot of comms work we need to do)
the tone (of the article more so than the letter) is a bit aggressive—Leif is aware of this but i disagree with his reasons. I think he could have made a much stronger and more convincing argument without being that aggressive. In fact, if such an article existed I would share it widely and want to engage in discussions on it !
didn’t feel like a very balanced view of the impact EA has had—he does mention that farmed animal welfare + lead projects, but i think he could have done a little more digging, especially when making some really deep critiques. I would be curious as to what he thinks when looking across the board at what has happened (another comms improvement note, perhaps)
This comment is mostly about the letter, not the wired article. I don’t think this letter is particularly well argued (see end of article for areas of disagreement), but I’m surprised by the lack of substantive engagement with it.
This is fairly rough, i’m sure i’ve made mistakes in here, but figured it’s better to share than not.
Here’s some stuff i think is reasonable (but would love for folks to chime in if i’m missing something)
Questioning GiveWell’s $4500 estimate—seems worth questioning! I am no expert in developmental economics, but it seems like Leif made some reasonable points regarding how to measure counterfactuals, Shapley values, the other non-AMF actors who helped get the bednets from conception to creation. Maybe all these points have been covered in places, but I’d be really surprised if everyone reading and engaging in his writing knows the answers (at least for myself, I don’t!)
I’d be curious how many of people who donate to GiveWell take this number at face value /​ how many of us have really thought critically about this number
My friend with a background in dev econ says that EAs seem to take the $ estimates a lot more seriously than development economists in general. That seems worth reflecting on and learning more about.
He suggested GiveWell ask external developmental economists to evaluate their research /​ impact
this sounds great! +1 to this.
I think his red flags were all reasonable and things I’d be on the lookout for (the red flags were: seeking confirmation from within the group, attacking credibility of outsiders, distorting criticisms/​vilifying critics, ‘Am I afraid that I’ll lose friends if I question certain things about EA?’)
I don’t think all of those things are all as big risks as Leif perhaps does—but I do think that these things are present to some degree, and we should take them seriously.
I think, on average, we should be encouraging people to form independent beliefs and testing their theories on the world (and getting it wrong! and learning from the mistakes! and not worrying so much about maximizing at all costs!) much more than we currently do.
Also, others have written with similar perspectives (e.g. On Living Without Idols and It’s ok to leave EA )
I am sympathetic to his claim that there is a lot of focus on intermediate steps for LT & meta impact, but that’s not really the claim he’s making.
However, GH&D and animal orgs do often communicate actual impact. You can always argue that they calculated the impact incorrectly—but I don’t think they look at intermediate steps.
i think the nerd scouts suggestion is understandable given that that the Atlas fellowship was a very prominent high school outreach program, and a very large % of CB resources go to uni outreach, and Leif is a Stanford professor where there has been a lot of EA activity for many years.
I think this section could have been written with a bit less attitude
I am actually pretty bullish on getting younger people (college/​ late high school) to really focus more on scout mindset /​ general decision-making tools & solid career advice. IDK if Leif is suggesting exactly that, but I do think that’s pretty important
Otherwise, I think I mostly disagree with him on his higher level strategy. It would be hard to know from the outside, but a number of projects have been started doing mid- and late-career outreach that are pretty exciting, and I hope more will be started in the coming years.
I read GiveWell’s response to the wired article, and I do think overall it’s not as direct as it could be.
both he and GW are weirdly not addressing the fishing thing directly—GW did not directly link their 2016 response in their notes (it’s linked from the info page on bednets, but you have to search for it), and Leif didn’t in either of his posts. am slightly confused on both parties’ actions here.
Things I’m not very sympathetic to in his argument:
overall, there are a lot of points, and not all of them are made equally well
I think if any of the points i mention above were the focus and written with a tiny bit more rigor, they would be valuable additions to discourse
little quibbles
Comparing EA to scientology. Feels like there were better and more fair analogies. I think overall this is a theme with his writing, which is unfortunate because it upsets people.
some of the narrative about lots of money /​ EA funding lots of prizes and competitions would have been more relevant pre-FTX collapse)
The effective vs altruism section feels a bit too abstract to be useful to me, and similar arguments have been made within the community numerous times, especially post FTX. But, fair critique given FTX. (Maybe there’s a lesson to be learnt here about how these ideas are perceived externally, clearly there’s a lot of comms work we need to do)
the tone (of the article more so than the letter) is a bit aggressive—Leif is aware of this but i disagree with his reasons. I think he could have made a much stronger and more convincing argument without being that aggressive. In fact, if such an article existed I would share it widely and want to engage in discussions on it !
didn’t feel like a very balanced view of the impact EA has had—he does mention that farmed animal welfare + lead projects, but i think he could have done a little more digging, especially when making some really deep critiques. I would be curious as to what he thinks when looking across the board at what has happened (another comms improvement note, perhaps)