Adding a +1 to Nathanās reaction here, this seems to have been some of the harshest discussion on the EA Forum Iāve seen for a while (especially on an object-level case).
Of course, making sure charitable funds are doing the good that the claim is something that deserves attention, research, and sometimes a critical eye. From my perspective of wanting more pluralism in EA, it seems[1] to me that HLI is a worthwhile endeavour to follow (even if its programme ends with it being ~the same or worse than cash transfers). Of all the charitable spending in the world, is HLIās really worth this much anger?
It just feels like thereās inside baseball that Iām missing here.
This is speculative, and I donāt want this to be read as an endorsement of peopleās critical comments; rather, itās a hypothesis about whatās driving the āharsh discussionā:
It seems like one theme in peopleās critical comments is misrepresentation. Specifically, multiple people have accused HLI of making claims that are more confident and/āor more positive than are warranted (see, e.g., some of the commentsbelow, which say things like: āI donāt think this is an accurate representation,ā āit was about whether I thought that sentence and set of links gave an accurate impression,ā and āHLIās institutional agenda corrupts its ability to conduct fair-minded and even-handed assessmentsā).
I wonder if people are particularly sensitive to this, because EA partly grew out of a desire to make charitable giving more objective and unbiased, and so the perception that HLI is misrepresenting information feels antithetical to EA in a very fundamental way.
Adding a +1 to Nathanās reaction here, this seems to have been some of the harshest discussion on the EA Forum Iāve seen for a while (especially on an object-level case).
Of course, making sure charitable funds are doing the good that the claim is something that deserves attention, research, and sometimes a critical eye. From my perspective of wanting more pluralism in EA, it seems[1] to me that HLI is a worthwhile endeavour to follow (even if its programme ends with it being ~the same or worse than cash transfers). Of all the charitable spending in the world, is HLIās really worth this much anger?
It just feels like thereās inside baseball that Iām missing here.
weakly of course, I claim no expertise or special ability in charity evaluation
This is speculative, and I donāt want this to be read as an endorsement of peopleās critical comments; rather, itās a hypothesis about whatās driving the āharsh discussionā:
It seems like one theme in peopleās critical comments is misrepresentation. Specifically, multiple people have accused HLI of making claims that are more confident and/āor more positive than are warranted (see, e.g., some of the comments below, which say things like: āI donāt think this is an accurate representation,ā āit was about whether I thought that sentence and set of links gave an accurate impression,ā and āHLIās institutional agenda corrupts its ability to conduct fair-minded and even-handed assessmentsā).
I wonder if people are particularly sensitive to this, because EA partly grew out of a desire to make charitable giving more objective and unbiased, and so the perception that HLI is misrepresenting information feels antithetical to EA in a very fundamental way.