Interesting post. Thank you for writing it. Attractive graphs.
I wonder if there could be a kind of “trip advisor” type badge to recommend how well charities/interventions are doing in such a way as to encourage them to improve.
You mention it, but a key strength and issue is that EA is exclusive. It only wants to the the most good, so it only recommends the best charities, but it therefore doesn’t encourage middling charities/interventions to be better.
There is a hard question here which is, does EA want those charities to get better or does it want them to end? Do we look down on individuals and organisations backing or using inefficient approaches, have we becomes something akin to a purity cult? To do so might be unreasonable since refusing to engage with successful middle-efficiency highly-backed approaches could be a failure to improve them and do more good.
The real kicker then, I think is, do you get more good per $ by increasing the high end or shifting the graph to the right? Has anyone done any research on this? However, it seems relatively useful to not become sneery/superior towards middle-efficiency approaches and it doesn’t cost much (I think, though perhaps I’m wrong) to be gracious to those we think are doing some good but not as much as they could be.
I think EA shouldn’t want inefficient charities to end simply because it has no ability to actually make this happen. There will always be people who donate with pathos before logos, and this is something that I think EA could be better at knowing how to harness to its advantage.
Yeah I think what I’m advocating for in this post is that you might be able to do more good per dollar by shifting graph to right (if this is in fact possible) because the graph is not actually a nice even bell curve but heavily bunched in the middle, if not to the left.
“I wonder if there could be a kind of “trip advisor” type badge to recommend how well charities/interventions are doing in such a way as to encourage them to improve.”
Interesting post. Thank you for writing it. Attractive graphs.
I wonder if there could be a kind of “trip advisor” type badge to recommend how well charities/interventions are doing in such a way as to encourage them to improve.
You mention it, but a key strength and issue is that EA is exclusive. It only wants to the the most good, so it only recommends the best charities, but it therefore doesn’t encourage middling charities/interventions to be better.
There is a hard question here which is, does EA want those charities to get better or does it want them to end? Do we look down on individuals and organisations backing or using inefficient approaches, have we becomes something akin to a purity cult? To do so might be unreasonable since refusing to engage with successful middle-efficiency highly-backed approaches could be a failure to improve them and do more good.
The real kicker then, I think is, do you get more good per $ by increasing the high end or shifting the graph to the right? Has anyone done any research on this? However, it seems relatively useful to not become sneery/superior towards middle-efficiency approaches and it doesn’t cost much (I think, though perhaps I’m wrong) to be gracious to those we think are doing some good but not as much as they could be.
Thanks for the reply, Nathan.
I think EA shouldn’t want inefficient charities to end simply because it has no ability to actually make this happen. There will always be people who donate with pathos before logos, and this is something that I think EA could be better at knowing how to harness to its advantage.
Yeah I think what I’m advocating for in this post is that you might be able to do more good per dollar by shifting graph to right (if this is in fact possible) because the graph is not actually a nice even bell curve but heavily bunched in the middle, if not to the left.
I’d like someone to research and plot the graph fully and do some tests. Let’s see, I guess.
“I wonder if there could be a kind of “trip advisor” type badge to recommend how well charities/interventions are doing in such a way as to encourage them to improve.”
Not quite the same, but you might be interested in https://sogive.org/