One issue is that a lot of these areas have very large individual donors that aren’t captured by these statistics or even in the EA Survey—for example, there is an individual donor who gives about the same annual amount to animal welfare as all of OpenPhil. (But then of course, there is also the question of who counts as “EA”.)
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Do you disagree in general with the strategy of allocating my personal donations on the basis of where I expect to differ the most from the community regarding #1?
I imagine your personal views about the difference in the value of cause areas will dominate this, given that causes might be 10x different whereas these gaps are only 5x at most.
Also I think the choice of what you are funding within each cause also matters a lot.
I think this approach makes sense from a neglectedness standpoint, though I am worried that it wouldn’t account for neglectedness outside of EA and neglectedness within cause. I’m not sure if this makes sense from a donor collaboration/coordination/cooperation standpoint, given that it seems like you are deliberately offsetting other people’s donations.
Thanks for the reply, definitely gives me a lot to consider.
“Cause area” is also a pretty weird/arbitrary unit of analysis
Personally, I quite like the cause area distinction. One alternate definition I might propose is that a cause area is a subset of interventions which are plausibly cross-comparable. Direct comparisons across these cause areas are flimsy at best, and even if I felt strongly that one of them was the most effective, I would still value each of the others receiving non-trivial funding for the purposes of (a) hedging (b) worldview diversification.
Also I think the choice of what you are funding within each cause also matters a lot.
It certainly does, but so long as I donate via EA Funds or GiveWell, that decision is passed along to the very most qualified people I know of.
I’m not sure if this makes sense from a donor collaboration/coordination/cooperation standpoint
I might disagree here. Using base rate funding to inform decisions is no different than ‘neglectedness’ as a pillar of EA—If I had to be truly agnostic I suppose I’d give money to climate change, or purchasing COVID vaccines.
That 80k article is very cool, though they also seem to agree: “If the community is unresponsive to what you do, you can (mostly) take a single-player approach to working out the best action.”
a lot of these areas have very large individual donors that aren’t captured
It would be great to know more about these donors, and specifically which orgs they donate to. It’s starting to feel like a satisfactory measure of ‘fundedness’ would require a lot more future work.
I imagine your personal views about the difference in the value of cause areas will dominate this, given that causes might be 10x different whereas these gaps are only 5x at most.
The size of the gaps are dependent on my personal views, so I think we’re in agreement here.
You might be able to use donation data from the EA Survey, to better capture individual EA giving.
One issue is that a lot of these areas have very large individual donors that aren’t captured by these statistics or even in the EA Survey—for example, there is an individual donor who gives about the same annual amount to animal welfare as all of OpenPhil. (But then of course, there is also the question of who counts as “EA”.)
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I imagine your personal views about the difference in the value of cause areas will dominate this, given that causes might be 10x different whereas these gaps are only 5x at most.
Also I think the choice of what you are funding within each cause also matters a lot.
I think this approach makes sense from a neglectedness standpoint, though I am worried that it wouldn’t account for neglectedness outside of EA and neglectedness within cause. I’m not sure if this makes sense from a donor collaboration/coordination/cooperation standpoint, given that it seems like you are deliberately offsetting other people’s donations.
“Cause area” is also a pretty weird/arbitrary unit of analysis if you think about it.
Thanks for the reply, definitely gives me a lot to consider.
Personally, I quite like the cause area distinction. One alternate definition I might propose is that a cause area is a subset of interventions which are plausibly cross-comparable. Direct comparisons across these cause areas are flimsy at best, and even if I felt strongly that one of them was the most effective, I would still value each of the others receiving non-trivial funding for the purposes of (a) hedging (b) worldview diversification.
It certainly does, but so long as I donate via EA Funds or GiveWell, that decision is passed along to the very most qualified people I know of.
I might disagree here. Using base rate funding to inform decisions is no different than ‘neglectedness’ as a pillar of EA—If I had to be truly agnostic I suppose I’d give money to climate change, or purchasing COVID vaccines.
That 80k article is very cool, though they also seem to agree: “If the community is unresponsive to what you do, you can (mostly) take a single-player approach to working out the best action.”
It would be great to know more about these donors, and specifically which orgs they donate to. It’s starting to feel like a satisfactory measure of ‘fundedness’ would require a lot more future work.
The size of the gaps are dependent on my personal views, so I think we’re in agreement here.