Hi Peter, thanks again for your comments on the draft! I think it improved it a lot. And sorry for the late reply here—just got back from vacation.
I agree that the cause variety point includes what you might call “sub-cause variety” (indeed, I changed the title of that bit from “cause area variety” to “cause variety” for that reason). I also agree that it’s a really substantial consideration: one of several that can single-handedly swing the conclusion. I hope you/others find the simple model of Appendix C helpful for starting to quantify just how substantial it is. My own current feeing is that it’s more substantial than I thought when I first started thinking about this question, though not enough to unambiguously outweigh countervailing considerations, like the seemingly unusually high beta of EA-style philanthropic funding.
I also agree that the long-run correlations between asset returns and the consumption of the global poor seems like an important variable to look into more insofar as we’re thinking about the global poverty context, and that it could turn out to be weak enough that using an effective eta<1 is warranted even if we’re operating on a long time horizon.
Hi Peter, thanks again for your comments on the draft! I think it improved it a lot. And sorry for the late reply here—just got back from vacation.
I agree that the cause variety point includes what you might call “sub-cause variety” (indeed, I changed the title of that bit from “cause area variety” to “cause variety” for that reason). I also agree that it’s a really substantial consideration: one of several that can single-handedly swing the conclusion. I hope you/others find the simple model of Appendix C helpful for starting to quantify just how substantial it is. My own current feeing is that it’s more substantial than I thought when I first started thinking about this question, though not enough to unambiguously outweigh countervailing considerations, like the seemingly unusually high beta of EA-style philanthropic funding.
I also agree that the long-run correlations between asset returns and the consumption of the global poor seems like an important variable to look into more insofar as we’re thinking about the global poverty context, and that it could turn out to be weak enough that using an effective eta<1 is warranted even if we’re operating on a long time horizon.