I also thought this claim by HLI was misleading. I clicked several of the links and don’t think James is the only person being misrepresented. I also don’t think this is all the “major actors in EA’s GHW space”—TLYCS, for example, meet reasonable definitions of “major” but their methodology makes no mention of wellbys
Reading back on the sentence, it would have been better to put ‘many’ rather than ‘all’. I’ve updated it accordingly. TLYCS don’t mention WELLBYs, but they did make the comment “we will continue to rely heavily on the research done by other terrific organizations in this space, such as GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Giving Green, Happier Lives Institute [...]”.
It’s worth restating the positives. A number of organisations have said that they’ve found our research useful. Notably, see the comments by Matt Lerner (Research Director, Founders Pledge) below and also those from Elie Hassenfield (CEO, GiveWell), which we included in footnote 3 above. If it wasn’t for HLI’s work pioneering the subjective wellbeing approach and the WELLBY, I doubt these would be on the agenda in effective altruism.
My comment wasn’t about whether there are any positives in using WELLBYs (I think there are), it was about whether I thought that sentence and set of links gave an accurate impression. It sounds like you agree that it didn’t, given you’ve changed the wording and removed one of the links. Thanks for updating it.
I think there’s room to include a little more context around the quote from TLYCs.
In short, we do not seek to duplicate the excellent work of other charity evaluators. Our approach is meant to complement that work, in order to expand the list of giving opportunities for donors with strong preferences for particular causes, geographies, or theories of change. Indeed, we will continue to rely heavily on the research done by other terrific organizations in this space, such as GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Giving Green, Happier Lives Institute, Charity Navigator, and others to identify candidates for our recommendations, even as we also assess them using our own evaluation framework.
We also fully expect to continue recommending nonprofits that have been held to the highest evidentiary standards, such as GiveWell’s top charities. For our current nonprofit recommendations that have not been evaluated at that level of rigor, we have already begun to conduct in-depth reviews of their impact. Where needed, we will work with candidate nonprofits to identify effective interventions and strengthen their impact evaluation approaches and metrics. We will also review our charity list periodically and make sure our recommendations remain relevant and up to date.
Hello James. Apologies, I’ve removed your name from the list.
To explain why we included it, although the thrust of your post was to critically engage with our research, the paragraph was about the use of the SWB approach for evaluating impact, which I believed you were on board with. In this sense, I put you in the same category as GiveWell: not disagreeing about the general approach, but disagreeing about the numbers you get when you use it.
Thanks for editing Michael. Fwiw I am broadly on board with swb being a useful framework to answer some questions. But I don’t think I’ve shifted my opinion on that much so “coming round to it” didn’t resonate
>Since then, all the major actors in effective altruism’s global health and wellbeing space seem to have come around to it (e.g., see these comments by GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Charity Entrepreneurship, GWWC, James Snowden).
I don’t think this is an accurate representation of the post linked to under my name, which was largely critical.
[Speaking for myself here]
I also thought this claim by HLI was misleading. I clicked several of the links and don’t think James is the only person being misrepresented. I also don’t think this is all the “major actors in EA’s GHW space”—TLYCS, for example, meet reasonable definitions of “major” but their methodology makes no mention of wellbys
Hello Alex,
Reading back on the sentence, it would have been better to put ‘many’ rather than ‘all’. I’ve updated it accordingly. TLYCS don’t mention WELLBYs, but they did make the comment “we will continue to rely heavily on the research done by other terrific organizations in this space, such as GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Giving Green, Happier Lives Institute [...]”.
It’s worth restating the positives. A number of organisations have said that they’ve found our research useful. Notably, see the comments by Matt Lerner (Research Director, Founders Pledge) below and also those from Elie Hassenfield (CEO, GiveWell), which we included in footnote 3 above. If it wasn’t for HLI’s work pioneering the subjective wellbeing approach and the WELLBY, I doubt these would be on the agenda in effective altruism.
My comment wasn’t about whether there are any positives in using WELLBYs (I think there are), it was about whether I thought that sentence and set of links gave an accurate impression. It sounds like you agree that it didn’t, given you’ve changed the wording and removed one of the links. Thanks for updating it.
I think there’s room to include a little more context around the quote from TLYCs.
Hello James. Apologies, I’ve removed your name from the list.
To explain why we included it, although the thrust of your post was to critically engage with our research, the paragraph was about the use of the SWB approach for evaluating impact, which I believed you were on board with. In this sense, I put you in the same category as GiveWell: not disagreeing about the general approach, but disagreeing about the numbers you get when you use it.
Thanks for editing Michael. Fwiw I am broadly on board with swb being a useful framework to answer some questions. But I don’t think I’ve shifted my opinion on that much so “coming round to it” didn’t resonate