Epicureanism is discussed in almost every philosophy course on the badness of death. It’s taken seriously, rather than treated as an absurd position, a non-starter, and whilst not that many philosophers end up as Epicureans, I’ve met some that are very sympathetic. I find critics dismiss the view too quickly and I’ve not seen anything that’s convinced me the view has no merit. I don’t think we should have zero credence in it, and it seems reasonable to point out that it is one of the options. Again, I’m inclined to let donors make up their own minds.
On what HLI actually believes
HLI is currently trying not to have a view on these issues, but point out to donors how having different views would change the priorities so they can form their own view. We may have to develop a ‘house view’ but none of the options for doing this seem particularly appealing (they include: we use my view, we use a staff aggregate, we poll donors, we poll the public, some combo of the previous options).
You bring up this quote
We’re now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we know of to help other people with your money.
I regret this sentence, which is insufficiently nuanced and I wouldn’t use it again (you and I have discussed this privately). That said, I think we’re quite well-caveated elsewhere. You quote this bullet point:
We conclude that the Against Malaria Foundation is less cost-effective than StrongMinds under almost all assumptions. We expect this conclusion will similarly apply to the other life-extending charities recommended by GiveWell.
But you didn’t quote the bullet point directly before it (emphasis added):
In our new report, The Elephant in the Bednet, we show that the relative value of life-extending and life-improving interventions depends very heavily on the philosophical assumptions you make. This issue is usually glossed over and there is no simple answer.
The backstory to the “we confidently recommend StrongMinds” bit is that, when we did the analysis, StrongMinds looked better under almost all assumptions and, even where AMF was better, it was only slightly better (1.3x). We thought donors would want an overall recommendation, and hence StrongMinds seemed like the safe choice (given some intuitions about donors’ intuitions and moral uncertainty). You’re right that we’ll have to rethink what our overall recommendations are, and how to frame them, once the dust has settled on this debate.
Finally, whilst you say
But you have to actually defend the range of assumptions you’ve defined as reasonable. And in my view, they’re not.
This feels uneasily like a double standard. As I’ve pointed out before, neither GiveWell nor Open Philanthropy really defends their views in general (asserting a view isn’t the same as defending it). In this report, GiveWell doesn’t defend its assumptions, point out what other assumptions one might (reasonably) take, or say how this would change the result. Part of what we have tried to highlight in our work is that these issues have been mostly ignored and can really matter.
Our aim was more to cover the range of views we think some reasonable people would believe, not to restrict it to what we think they should believe. We motivated our choices in the original report and will restate that briefly here. For the badness of death, we give the three standard views in the literature. At one end, deprivationism gives ‘full value’ to saving lives. On the other, Epicurianism gives no weight to saving lives. TRIA offers something in between. For the neutral point, we used a range that included what we saw as the minimum and maximum possible values. Including a range of values is not equivalent to saying they are all equally probable. We encourage donors and decision-makers to use values they think are most plausible (for example, by using this interactive chart).
In our new report, The Elephant in the Bednet, we show that the relative value of life-extending and life-improving interventions depends very heavily on the philosophical assumptions you make. This issue is usually glossed over and there is no simple answer.
We conclude that the Against Malaria Foundation is less cost-effective than StrongMinds under almost all assumptions. We expect this conclusion will similarly apply to the other life-extending charities recommended by GiveWell.
In suggesting James quote these together, it sounds like you’re saying something like “this is a clear caveat to the strength of recommendation behind StrongMinds, HLI doesn’t recommend StrongMinds as strongly as the individual bullet implies, it’s misleading for you to not include this”.
As a result of this framing, despite the caveat that HLI “[does] not advocate for any particular view”, I think it’s reasonable to interpret this as being strongly supportive of StrongMinds, which can be true even if HLI does not have a formed view on the exact philosophical view to take.[2]
If you did mean the former (that the bullet about philosophical assumptions is primarily included as a caveat to the strength of recommendation behind StrongMinds), then there is probably some tension here between (emphasis added):
-”the relative value of life-extending and life-improving interventions depends very heavily on the philosophical assumptions you make...there is no simple answer”, and
-”We conclude StrongMinds > AMF under almost all assumptions”
Additionally I think some weak evidence to suggest that HLI is not as well-caveated as it could be is that many people (mistakenly) viewed HLI as an advocacy organisation for mental health interventions. I do think this is a reasonable outside interpretation based on HLI’s communications, even though this is not HLI’s stated intent. For example, I don’t think it would be unreasonable for an outsider to read your current pinned thread and come away with conclusions like:
“StrongMinds is the best place to donate”,
“StrongMinds is better than AMF”,
“Mental health is a very good place to donate if you want to do the most good”,
“Happiness is what ultimately matters for wellbeing and what should be measured”.
If these are not what you want people to take away, then I think pointing to this bullet point caveat doesn’t really meaningfully address this concern—the response kind of feels something like “you should have read the fine print”. While I don’t think it’s not necessary for HLI to take a stance on specific philosophical views, I do think it becomes an issue if people are (mis)interpreting HLI’s stance based on its published statements.
-We show how much cost-effectiveness changes by shifting from one extreme of (reasonable) opinion to the other. At one end, AMF is 1.3x better than StrongMinds. At the other, StrongMinds is 12x better than AMF.
-StrongMinds and GiveDirectly are represented with flat, dashed lines because their cost-effectiveness does not change under the different assumptions.
-As you can see, AMF’s cost-effectiveness changes a lot. It is only more cost-effective than StrongMinds if you adopt deprivationism and place the neutral point below 1.
As you’ve acknowledged, comments like “We’re now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we know of to help other people with your money.” perhaps add to the confusion.
On 3. Epicureanism being a defensible position
Epicureanism is discussed in almost every philosophy course on the badness of death. It’s taken seriously, rather than treated as an absurd position, a non-starter, and whilst not that many philosophers end up as Epicureans, I’ve met some that are very sympathetic. I find critics dismiss the view too quickly and I’ve not seen anything that’s convinced me the view has no merit. I don’t think we should have zero credence in it, and it seems reasonable to point out that it is one of the options. Again, I’m inclined to let donors make up their own minds.
On what HLI actually believes
HLI is currently trying not to have a view on these issues, but point out to donors how having different views would change the priorities so they can form their own view. We may have to develop a ‘house view’ but none of the options for doing this seem particularly appealing (they include: we use my view, we use a staff aggregate, we poll donors, we poll the public, some combo of the previous options).
You bring up this quote
I regret this sentence, which is insufficiently nuanced and I wouldn’t use it again (you and I have discussed this privately). That said, I think we’re quite well-caveated elsewhere. You quote this bullet point:
But you didn’t quote the bullet point directly before it (emphasis added):
The backstory to the “we confidently recommend StrongMinds” bit is that, when we did the analysis, StrongMinds looked better under almost all assumptions and, even where AMF was better, it was only slightly better (1.3x). We thought donors would want an overall recommendation, and hence StrongMinds seemed like the safe choice (given some intuitions about donors’ intuitions and moral uncertainty). You’re right that we’ll have to rethink what our overall recommendations are, and how to frame them, once the dust has settled on this debate.
Finally, whilst you say
This feels uneasily like a double standard. As I’ve pointed out before, neither GiveWell nor Open Philanthropy really defends their views in general (asserting a view isn’t the same as defending it). In this report, GiveWell doesn’t defend its assumptions, point out what other assumptions one might (reasonably) take, or say how this would change the result. Part of what we have tried to highlight in our work is that these issues have been mostly ignored and can really matter.
Our aim was more to cover the range of views we think some reasonable people would believe, not to restrict it to what we think they should believe. We motivated our choices in the original report and will restate that briefly here. For the badness of death, we give the three standard views in the literature. At one end, deprivationism gives ‘full value’ to saving lives. On the other, Epicurianism gives no weight to saving lives. TRIA offers something in between. For the neutral point, we used a range that included what we saw as the minimum and maximum possible values. Including a range of values is not equivalent to saying they are all equally probable. We encourage donors and decision-makers to use values they think are most plausible (for example, by using this interactive chart).
In suggesting James quote these together, it sounds like you’re saying something like “this is a clear caveat to the strength of recommendation behind StrongMinds, HLI doesn’t recommend StrongMinds as strongly as the individual bullet implies, it’s misleading for you to not include this”.
But in other places HLI’s communication around this takes on a framing of something closer to “The cost effectiveness of AMF, (but not StrongMinds) varies greatly under these assumptions. But the vast majority of this large range falls below the cost effectiveness of StrongMinds”. (extracted quotes in footnote)[1]
As a result of this framing, despite the caveat that HLI “[does] not advocate for any particular view”, I think it’s reasonable to interpret this as being strongly supportive of StrongMinds, which can be true even if HLI does not have a formed view on the exact philosophical view to take.[2]
If you did mean the former (that the bullet about philosophical assumptions is primarily included as a caveat to the strength of recommendation behind StrongMinds), then there is probably some tension here between (emphasis added):
-”the relative value of life-extending and life-improving interventions depends very heavily on the philosophical assumptions you make...there is no simple answer”, and
-”We conclude StrongMinds > AMF under almost all assumptions”
Additionally I think some weak evidence to suggest that HLI is not as well-caveated as it could be is that many people (mistakenly) viewed HLI as an advocacy organisation for mental health interventions. I do think this is a reasonable outside interpretation based on HLI’s communications, even though this is not HLI’s stated intent. For example, I don’t think it would be unreasonable for an outsider to read your current pinned thread and come away with conclusions like:
“StrongMinds is the best place to donate”,
“StrongMinds is better than AMF”,
“Mental health is a very good place to donate if you want to do the most good”,
“Happiness is what ultimately matters for wellbeing and what should be measured”.
If these are not what you want people to take away, then I think pointing to this bullet point caveat doesn’t really meaningfully address this concern—the response kind of feels something like “you should have read the fine print”. While I don’t think it’s not necessary for HLI to take a stance on specific philosophical views, I do think it becomes an issue if people are (mis)interpreting HLI’s stance based on its published statements.
(commenting in personal capacity etc)
As you’ve acknowledged, comments like “We’re now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we know of to help other people with your money.” perhaps add to the confusion.