Yup. I suppose I wrote down my assessment of the information available about the funds and the sort of things that would cause me to donate to it, not the marketing used to advertise it—which does indeed feel disconnected. It seems that there’s a confusing attempt to make this seem reasonable to everyone whilst in fact not offering the sort of evidence that should make it so.
The evidence about it is not the ‘evidence-backed charities’ that made GiveWell famous/trustworthy, but is “here is a high status person in a related field that has a strong connection to EA”, which seems not that different from the way other communities ask their members to give funding—it’s based on trust in the leaders in the community, not on objectively verifiable metrics to outsiders. So you should ask yourself what causes you to trust CEA and then use that, as opposed to the objective metrics associated with the EA funds (which there are far fewer of than with GiveWell). For example if CEA has generally made good philosophical progress in this area and also made good hiring decisions, that would make you trust the grant managers more.
Yup. I suppose I wrote down my assessment of the information available about the funds and the sort of things that would cause me to donate to it, not the marketing used to advertise it—which does indeed feel disconnected. It seems that there’s a confusing attempt to make this seem reasonable to everyone whilst in fact not offering the sort of evidence that should make it so.
The evidence about it is not the ‘evidence-backed charities’ that made GiveWell famous/trustworthy, but is “here is a high status person in a related field that has a strong connection to EA”, which seems not that different from the way other communities ask their members to give funding—it’s based on trust in the leaders in the community, not on objectively verifiable metrics to outsiders. So you should ask yourself what causes you to trust CEA and then use that, as opposed to the objective metrics associated with the EA funds (which there are far fewer of than with GiveWell). For example if CEA has generally made good philosophical progress in this area and also made good hiring decisions, that would make you trust the grant managers more.