Regrettably, we were not able to choose shortlisted organisations as planned. My original intention was that we would choose organisations in a systematic, principled way, shortlisting those which had highest expected impact given our evidence by the time of the shortlist deadline. This proved too difficult, however, so we resorted to choosing the shortlist based on a mixture of our hunches about expected impact and the intellectual value of finding out more about an organisation and comparing it to the others.
[...]
Later, we realised that understanding the impact of the Good Food Institute was too difficult, so we replaced it with Animal Charity Evaluators on our shortlist. Animal Charity Evaluators finds advocates for highly effective opportunities to improve the lives of animals.
If quantitative models were used for these decisions I’d be interested in seeing them.
That second quote in particular seems to be a good example of what some might call measurability bias. Understandable, of course—it’s hard to give out a prize on the basis of raw hunches—but nevertheless we should work towards finding ways to avoid it.
Kudos to OPP for being so transparent in their thought process though!
[...]
If quantitative models were used for these decisions I’d be interested in seeing them.
That second quote in particular seems to be a good example of what some might call measurability bias. Understandable, of course—it’s hard to give out a prize on the basis of raw hunches—but nevertheless we should work towards finding ways to avoid it.
Kudos to OPP for being so transparent in their thought process though!