Do you think the neutral point and basic philosophical perspective (e.g., deprivationism vs. epicureanism) are empirical questions, or are they matters on which the donor has to exercise their own moral and philosophical judgment (after considering what the somewhat limited survey data have to say on the topic)?
I would graph the neutral point from 0 to 3. I think very few donors would set the neutral point above 3, and I’d start with the presumption that the most balanced way to present the chart is probably to center it fairly near the best guess from the survey data. On the other hand, if you have most of the surveys reporting “about 2,” then it’s hard to characterize 3 as an outlier view—presumably, a good fraction of the respondents picked a value near, at, or even over 3.
Although I don’t think HLI puts it this way, it doesn’t strike me as implausible to view human suffering as a more severe problem than lost human happiness. As I noted in a different comment, I think of that chart as a starting point from which a donor can apply various discounts and bonuses on a number of potentially relevant factors. But another way to account for this would be to give partial weight to strong epicureanism as a means of discounting the value of lost human happiness vis-a-vis suffering.
Given that your critique was published after HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation, I think it’s fair to ask HLI whether it would reaffirm those characterizations today. I would agree that the appropriate conclusion, on HLI’s current state of analysis, is that the recommendation is either SM or GiveWell’s top charities depending on the donor’s philosophical assumptions. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to make a recommendation based on the charity evaluator’s own philosophical judgment, but unless HLI has changed its stance it has taken no position. I don’t think it is appropriate to merely assume equal credence for each of the philosophical views and neutral points under consideration.
One could also defensibly make a summary recommendation on stated assumptions about donor values or on receipient values. But the best information I’ve seen on those points—the donor and beneficiary surveys as reflected in GiveWell’s moral weights—seemingly points to a predominately deprivationist approach with a pretty low neutral point (otherwise the extremely high value on saving the lives of young children wouldn’t compute).
Thanks Jason, mostly agree with paras 4-5, and think para 2 is a good point as well.
Do you think the neutral point and basic philosophical perspective (e.g., deprivationism vs. epicureanism) are empirical questions, or are they matters on which the donor has to exercise their own moral and philosophical judgment (after considering what the somewhat limited survey data have to say on the topic)?
I think the basic philosophical perspective is a moral/philosophical judgement. But the neutral point combines that moral judgement with empirical models of what peoples’ lives are actually like, and empirical beliefs about how people respond to surveys.
I wonder if, insofar as we do have different perspectives on this (and I don’t think we’re particularly far apart, particularly on the object level question), the crux is around how much weight to put in individual donor judgement? Or even how much individual donors have those judgements?
My experience of even EA-minded (or at least GiveWell) donors is that ~none of them have a position on these kinds of questions, and they actively want to defer. My (less confident but based on quite a few conversations) model of EA-minded StrongMinds donors is they want to give to mental health and see an EA-approved charity so give there, rather than because of a quantitative belief on foundational questions like the neutral point. As an aside, I believe that was how StrongMinds first got on EA’s radar—as a recommendation for Founders Pledge donors who specifically wanted to give to mental health in an evidence-based way.
It does seem plausible to me that donors who follow HLI recommendations (who I expect are particularly philosophically minded) would be more willing to change their decisions based on these kinds of questions than donors I’ve talked to.
I’d be interested if someone wanted to stick up for a neutral point of 3 as something they actually believe and a crux for where they give, rather than something someone could believe, or is plausible. I could be wrong, but I’m starting out skeptical that belief would survive contact with “But that implies the world would be better if everyone in Afghanistan died” and “a representative survey of people whose deaths you’d be preventing think their lives are more valuable than that”
From HLI’s perspective, it makes sense to describe how the moral/philosophical views one assumes affect the relative effectiveness of charities. They are, after all, a charity recommender, and donors are their “clients” in a sense. GiveWell doesn’t really do this, which makes sense—GiveWell’s moral weights are so weighted toward saving lives that it doesn’t really make sense for them to investigate charities with other modes of action. I think it’s fine to provide a bottom-line recommendation on whatever moral/philosophical view a recommender feels is best-supported, but it’s hardly obligatory.
We recognize donor preferences in that we don’t create a grand theory of effectiveness and push everyone to donate to longtermist organizations, or animal-welfare organizations, or global health organizations depending on the grand theory’s output. Donors choose among these for their own idiosyncratic reasons, but moral/philosophical views are certainly among the critical criteria for many donors. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case for interventions within a cause area that produce different kinds of outputs as well.
Here, I doubt most global-health donors—either those who take advice from GiveWell or from HLI—have finely-tuned views on deprivationism, neutral points, and so on. However, I think many donors do have preferences that indirectly track on some of those issues. For instance, you describe a class of donors who “want to give to mental health.” While there could be various reasons for that, it’s plausible to me that these donors place more of an emphasis on improving experience for those who are alive (e.g., they give partial credence to epicureanism) and/or on alleviating suffering. If they did assess and chart their views on neutral point and philosophical view, I would expect them to end up more often at points where SM is ranked relatively higher than the average global-health donor would. But that is just conjecture on my part.
One interesting aspect of thinking from the donor perspective is the possibility that survey results could be significantly affected by religious beliefs. If many respondents chose a 0 neutral point because their religious tradition led them to that conclusion, and you are quite convinced that the religious tradition is just wrong in general, do you adjust for that? Does not adjusting allow the religious tradition to indirectly influence where you spend your charitable dollar?
To me, the most important thing a charity evaluator/recommender does is clearly communicate what the donation accomplishes (on average) if given to various organizations they identify—X lives saved (and smaller benefits), or Y number of people’s well-being improved by Z amount. That’s the part the donor can’t do themselves (without investing a ton of time and resources).
I don’t think the neutral point is as high as 3. But I think it’s fine for HLI to offer recommendations for people who do.
Do you think the neutral point and basic philosophical perspective (e.g., deprivationism vs. epicureanism) are empirical questions, or are they matters on which the donor has to exercise their own moral and philosophical judgment (after considering what the somewhat limited survey data have to say on the topic)?
I would graph the neutral point from 0 to 3. I think very few donors would set the neutral point above 3, and I’d start with the presumption that the most balanced way to present the chart is probably to center it fairly near the best guess from the survey data. On the other hand, if you have most of the surveys reporting “about 2,” then it’s hard to characterize 3 as an outlier view—presumably, a good fraction of the respondents picked a value near, at, or even over 3.
Although I don’t think HLI puts it this way, it doesn’t strike me as implausible to view human suffering as a more severe problem than lost human happiness. As I noted in a different comment, I think of that chart as a starting point from which a donor can apply various discounts and bonuses on a number of potentially relevant factors. But another way to account for this would be to give partial weight to strong epicureanism as a means of discounting the value of lost human happiness vis-a-vis suffering.
Given that your critique was published after HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation, I think it’s fair to ask HLI whether it would reaffirm those characterizations today. I would agree that the appropriate conclusion, on HLI’s current state of analysis, is that the recommendation is either SM or GiveWell’s top charities depending on the donor’s philosophical assumptions. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to make a recommendation based on the charity evaluator’s own philosophical judgment, but unless HLI has changed its stance it has taken no position. I don’t think it is appropriate to merely assume equal credence for each of the philosophical views and neutral points under consideration.
One could also defensibly make a summary recommendation on stated assumptions about donor values or on receipient values. But the best information I’ve seen on those points—the donor and beneficiary surveys as reflected in GiveWell’s moral weights—seemingly points to a predominately deprivationist approach with a pretty low neutral point (otherwise the extremely high value on saving the lives of young children wouldn’t compute).
Thanks Jason, mostly agree with paras 4-5, and think para 2 is a good point as well.
I think the basic philosophical perspective is a moral/philosophical judgement. But the neutral point combines that moral judgement with empirical models of what peoples’ lives are actually like, and empirical beliefs about how people respond to surveys.
I wonder if, insofar as we do have different perspectives on this (and I don’t think we’re particularly far apart, particularly on the object level question), the crux is around how much weight to put in individual donor judgement? Or even how much individual donors have those judgements?
My experience of even EA-minded (or at least GiveWell) donors is that ~none of them have a position on these kinds of questions, and they actively want to defer. My (less confident but based on quite a few conversations) model of EA-minded StrongMinds donors is they want to give to mental health and see an EA-approved charity so give there, rather than because of a quantitative belief on foundational questions like the neutral point. As an aside, I believe that was how StrongMinds first got on EA’s radar—as a recommendation for Founders Pledge donors who specifically wanted to give to mental health in an evidence-based way.
It does seem plausible to me that donors who follow HLI recommendations (who I expect are particularly philosophically minded) would be more willing to change their decisions based on these kinds of questions than donors I’ve talked to.
I’d be interested if someone wanted to stick up for a neutral point of 3 as something they actually believe and a crux for where they give, rather than something someone could believe, or is plausible. I could be wrong, but I’m starting out skeptical that belief would survive contact with “But that implies the world would be better if everyone in Afghanistan died” and “a representative survey of people whose deaths you’d be preventing think their lives are more valuable than that”
What do you think?
From HLI’s perspective, it makes sense to describe how the moral/philosophical views one assumes affect the relative effectiveness of charities. They are, after all, a charity recommender, and donors are their “clients” in a sense. GiveWell doesn’t really do this, which makes sense—GiveWell’s moral weights are so weighted toward saving lives that it doesn’t really make sense for them to investigate charities with other modes of action. I think it’s fine to provide a bottom-line recommendation on whatever moral/philosophical view a recommender feels is best-supported, but it’s hardly obligatory.
We recognize donor preferences in that we don’t create a grand theory of effectiveness and push everyone to donate to longtermist organizations, or animal-welfare organizations, or global health organizations depending on the grand theory’s output. Donors choose among these for their own idiosyncratic reasons, but moral/philosophical views are certainly among the critical criteria for many donors. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case for interventions within a cause area that produce different kinds of outputs as well.
Here, I doubt most global-health donors—either those who take advice from GiveWell or from HLI—have finely-tuned views on deprivationism, neutral points, and so on. However, I think many donors do have preferences that indirectly track on some of those issues. For instance, you describe a class of donors who “want to give to mental health.” While there could be various reasons for that, it’s plausible to me that these donors place more of an emphasis on improving experience for those who are alive (e.g., they give partial credence to epicureanism) and/or on alleviating suffering. If they did assess and chart their views on neutral point and philosophical view, I would expect them to end up more often at points where SM is ranked relatively higher than the average global-health donor would. But that is just conjecture on my part.
One interesting aspect of thinking from the donor perspective is the possibility that survey results could be significantly affected by religious beliefs. If many respondents chose a 0 neutral point because their religious tradition led them to that conclusion, and you are quite convinced that the religious tradition is just wrong in general, do you adjust for that? Does not adjusting allow the religious tradition to indirectly influence where you spend your charitable dollar?
To me, the most important thing a charity evaluator/recommender does is clearly communicate what the donation accomplishes (on average) if given to various organizations they identify—X lives saved (and smaller benefits), or Y number of people’s well-being improved by Z amount. That’s the part the donor can’t do themselves (without investing a ton of time and resources).
I don’t think the neutral point is as high as 3. But I think it’s fine for HLI to offer recommendations for people who do.