As we say in the post, on this and most problem areas 80,000 Hours defers charity recommendations to experts on that particular cause (see: What resources did we draw on?). In this case our suggestion is based entirely on the suggestion of Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform at the Open Philanthropy Project, who works full time making grants on this particular problem area and knows much more than any of us about what is likely to work.
To questions like “does 80,000 Hours have view X that would make sense of this” or “is 80,000 Hours intending to do X”—the answer is that we don’t really have independent views or goals on any of these things. We’re just syndicating content from someone we perceive to be an authority (just as we do when we include GiveWell’s recommended charities without having independently investigated them). I thought the article was very clear about this, but perhaps we needed to make it even more so in case people skipped down to a particular section without going through the preamble.
If you want to get these charities taken off of our article during next year’s giving season, then you’d need to speak with Chloe. If she changes her suggestions—or another similar authority on this topic arises and offers a contrary view—then that would change what we include.
Regarding why we didn’t recommend the Center for Criminal Justice Reform: again, that is entirely because it wasn’t on the Open Philanthropy Project’s list of suggestions for individual donors. Presumably that is because they felt their own grant—which you approve of—had filled their current funding needs.
If you want to get these charities taken off of our article during next year’s giving season, then you’d need to speak with Chloe.
In general the EA movement has an admirable history of public cost-benefit analysis of different groups, which 80k has supported and should continue to do so. But in this instance 80k is instead deferring to the opinion of a single expert who has provided only the most cursory of justification. It’s true that 80k isn’t responsible for what Chloe says, but 80k is responsible for the choice to defer to her on the subject. And the responsibility is even greater if you present her work as representing the views of the effective altruism movement.
Our post is just a summary of where trustworthy EAs recommend donating in the Dec giving season, which seems like a useful exercise that no-one else had done. It’s clearly flagged that that’s all it is—we list all the sources we drew on, and note that some recommendations had more support than others. Chloe is as an Open Phil grant officer who does full-time research into where to give and is in charge of tens of millions of dollars of funding per year, so clearly earns a place as a trustworthy EA, and probably has a better claim than many of the other people we included.
Our process here involves deferring to the project officers of the Open Philanthropy Project in their area of expertise (unless we can find an equivalent authority in the area who disagrees). OpenPhil seems to have a good record for making grants in line with EA values, and we trust the people involved in that institution, so this seems like a good process.
It’s true, we could carve out an exception in this one case based on our own opinions. But I’d rather stick with a sound survey process that is i) generally reliable (and avoids errors based on our ignorance), and ii) scales well as the number of authorities and problem areas being reviewed increases.
The superior solution here is just for those who disagree with one of OpenPhil’s ideas to speak with the relevant staff and convince them to change their minds. OpenPhil directs far more in grants than that blog post will move in donations, so making sure they get it right is much more valuable. If the arguments are convincing to Chloe or another relevant staff member, then I’ll edit the blog post to reflect their latest thinking. I don’t really have a dog in this fight.
Thanks for your interest in our work.
As we say in the post, on this and most problem areas 80,000 Hours defers charity recommendations to experts on that particular cause (see: What resources did we draw on?). In this case our suggestion is based entirely on the suggestion of Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform at the Open Philanthropy Project, who works full time making grants on this particular problem area and knows much more than any of us about what is likely to work.
To questions like “does 80,000 Hours have view X that would make sense of this” or “is 80,000 Hours intending to do X”—the answer is that we don’t really have independent views or goals on any of these things. We’re just syndicating content from someone we perceive to be an authority (just as we do when we include GiveWell’s recommended charities without having independently investigated them). I thought the article was very clear about this, but perhaps we needed to make it even more so in case people skipped down to a particular section without going through the preamble.
If you want to get these charities taken off of our article during next year’s giving season, then you’d need to speak with Chloe. If she changes her suggestions—or another similar authority on this topic arises and offers a contrary view—then that would change what we include.
Regarding why we didn’t recommend the Center for Criminal Justice Reform: again, that is entirely because it wasn’t on the Open Philanthropy Project’s list of suggestions for individual donors. Presumably that is because they felt their own grant—which you approve of—had filled their current funding needs.
All the best,
Rob
In general the EA movement has an admirable history of public cost-benefit analysis of different groups, which 80k has supported and should continue to do so. But in this instance 80k is instead deferring to the opinion of a single expert who has provided only the most cursory of justification. It’s true that 80k isn’t responsible for what Chloe says, but 80k is responsible for the choice to defer to her on the subject. And the responsibility is even greater if you present her work as representing the views of the effective altruism movement.
Our post is just a summary of where trustworthy EAs recommend donating in the Dec giving season, which seems like a useful exercise that no-one else had done. It’s clearly flagged that that’s all it is—we list all the sources we drew on, and note that some recommendations had more support than others. Chloe is as an Open Phil grant officer who does full-time research into where to give and is in charge of tens of millions of dollars of funding per year, so clearly earns a place as a trustworthy EA, and probably has a better claim than many of the other people we included.
Our process here involves deferring to the project officers of the Open Philanthropy Project in their area of expertise (unless we can find an equivalent authority in the area who disagrees). OpenPhil seems to have a good record for making grants in line with EA values, and we trust the people involved in that institution, so this seems like a good process.
It’s true, we could carve out an exception in this one case based on our own opinions. But I’d rather stick with a sound survey process that is i) generally reliable (and avoids errors based on our ignorance), and ii) scales well as the number of authorities and problem areas being reviewed increases.
The superior solution here is just for those who disagree with one of OpenPhil’s ideas to speak with the relevant staff and convince them to change their minds. OpenPhil directs far more in grants than that blog post will move in donations, so making sure they get it right is much more valuable. If the arguments are convincing to Chloe or another relevant staff member, then I’ll edit the blog post to reflect their latest thinking. I don’t really have a dog in this fight.
Comments from anyone involved in Open Philanthropy are welcome here.
On what basis was this expertise assessed?