I didn’t read the article you linked, I think it’s plausible. (see more in my last para)
I’d like to address your second paragraph in more depth though:
He’s clearly discouraging people from donating to GiveWell’s recommendations. This will predictably result in more people dying. I don’t see how you can deny this.
I don’t think GW recommendations are the only effective charities out there, so I don’t think this is an open-and-shut case.
GW’s 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 wouldn’t 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 / as cost effective as GW charities.
GW also has it’s 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 are—I think I’m a lot more risk neutral than GW, and much more keen to expand beyond GW’s scope of GH&D interventions. GW is ultimately 1 org with it’s own priorities, perspectives and, biases. I’d 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?
I’m sympathetic to this point (where i interpret effective charities as a superset of GW charities). I think it’s plausible he’s contributed to a new “overhead myth” 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 he’s very skeptical of aid, what he sees as other effective ways to help people in LMICs. It’s possible he covers some of this in his other article.
I’m happy for people to argue that there are even better options than GW out there. (I’d agree!) But that’s very emphatically not what Wenar was doing in that article.
I agree he’s 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 don’t 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 it’s 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 / (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
People will be less likely to donate to AMF / New Incentives / (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 it’s worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so I’d be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)
My claim is not “too strongly stated”: it accurately states my view, which you haven’t even shown to be incorrect(let alone “unfair” or not “defensible”—both significantly higher bars to establish than merely being incorrect!)
It’s 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 didn’t read the article you linked, I think it’s plausible. (see more in my last para)
I’d like to address your second paragraph in more depth though:
I don’t think GW recommendations are the only effective charities out there, so I don’t think this is an open-and-shut case.
GW’s 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 wouldn’t 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 / as cost effective as GW charities.
GW also has it’s 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 are—I think I’m a lot more risk neutral than GW, and much more keen to expand beyond GW’s scope of GH&D interventions. GW is ultimately 1 org with it’s own priorities, perspectives and, biases. I’d love to see more work in this space taking different perspectives (e.g. The case of the missing cause prioritisation research).
I’m sympathetic to this point (where i interpret effective charities as a superset of GW charities). I think it’s plausible he’s contributed to a new “overhead myth” 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 he’s very skeptical of aid, what he sees as other effective ways to help people in LMICs. It’s possible he covers some of this in his other article.
I’m happy for people to argue that there are even better options than GW out there. (I’d agree!) But that’s very emphatically not what Wenar was doing in that article.
I agree he’s 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 don’t 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 it’s 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 / (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
People will be less likely to donate to AMF / New Incentives / (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 it’s worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so I’d be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)
My claim is not “too strongly stated”: it accurately states my view, which you haven’t even shown to be incorrect (let alone “unfair” or not “defensible”—both significantly higher bars to establish than merely being incorrect!)
It’s 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.