Thanks Austin! I broadly agree with this point—hedge funds or mutual funds are the better analog for CG or GiveWell. I was trying to keep it simple for people who may not be able to immediately identify the difference between a hedge fund and an index fund.
I also agree it’s often under appreciated in EA how much subjectivity and values gets baked in by the moral weighting that is fundamentally necessary to running a fund. I think GW + CG do that moral weighting in a reasonably robust and defensible way, but even then I know there are many places I personally diverge with some of their choices.
I feel torn on your final point—I’m someone who really values diversity of worldview, theory of change, risk tolerance, decision process, etc. So in my perfect world I’d really love it if more people deferred less and came to their own conclusions. That said, I don’t know how reasonable it is to expect that… and it becomes such an easy reason to not give at all.
I suspect that practically there’s a fairly direct trade-off between how easy it is to give (i.e. not having to do a bunch of thinking / work to come to your own conclusions), and how much ends up being given. And the marginal difference between a more thoughtful gift and not giving at all is fairly large. So my instinct that there’s more value in pushing for the simplicity and scale of a well managed and strategic fund like GW, CG, GD or similar than there is in encouraging thoughtful diversification of gifts.
Thanks Austin! I broadly agree with this point—hedge funds or mutual funds are the better analog for CG or GiveWell. I was trying to keep it simple for people who may not be able to immediately identify the difference between a hedge fund and an index fund.
I also agree it’s often under appreciated in EA how much subjectivity and values gets baked in by the moral weighting that is fundamentally necessary to running a fund. I think GW + CG do that moral weighting in a reasonably robust and defensible way, but even then I know there are many places I personally diverge with some of their choices.
I feel torn on your final point—I’m someone who really values diversity of worldview, theory of change, risk tolerance, decision process, etc. So in my perfect world I’d really love it if more people deferred less and came to their own conclusions. That said, I don’t know how reasonable it is to expect that… and it becomes such an easy reason to not give at all.
I suspect that practically there’s a fairly direct trade-off between how easy it is to give (i.e. not having to do a bunch of thinking / work to come to your own conclusions), and how much ends up being given. And the marginal difference between a more thoughtful gift and not giving at all is fairly large. So my instinct that there’s more value in pushing for the simplicity and scale of a well managed and strategic fund like GW, CG, GD or similar than there is in encouraging thoughtful diversification of gifts.