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.
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.