One potential weakness is that Iâm curious if it promotes the more well-known charities due to the voting system. Iâd assume that these are somewhat inversely correlated with the most neglected charities.
I guess this isnât necessarily a weakness if the more well-known charities are more effective? I can see the case that: a) they might not be neglected in EA circles, but may be very neglected globally compared to their impact and that b) there is often an inverse relationship between tractability/âneglectedness and importance/âimpact of a cause area and charity. Not saying youâre wrong, but itâs not necessarily a problem.
Furthermore, my anecdotal take from the voting patterns as well as the comments on the discussion thread seem to indicate that neglectedness is often high on the mind of votersâthough I admit that commenters on that thread are a biased sample of all those voting in the election.
It can be a bit underwhelming if an experiment to try to get the crowdâs takes on charities winds up determining to, âjust let the current few experts figure it out.â
Is it underwhelming? I guess if you want the donation election to be about spurring lots of donations to small, spunky EA-startups working in weird-er cause areas, it might be, but I donât think thatâs what I understand the intention of the experiment to be (though I could be wrong).
My take is that the election is an experiment with EA democratisation, where we get to see what the community values when we do a roughly 1-person-1-ballot system instead of those-with-the-moeny decide system which is how things work right now. Those takeaways seem to be:
The broad EA community values Animal Welfare a lot more than the current major funders
The broad EA community sees value in all 3 of the âbig cause areasâ with high-scoring charities in Animal Welfare, AI Safety, and Global Health & Development.
I guess this isnât necessarily a weakness if the more well-known charities are more effective? I can see the case that: a) they might not be neglected in EA circles, but may be very neglected globally compared to their impact and that b) there is often an inverse relationship between tractability/âneglectedness and importance/âimpact of a cause area and charity. Not saying youâre wrong, but itâs not necessarily a problem.
Furthermore, my anecdotal take from the voting patterns as well as the comments on the discussion thread seem to indicate that neglectedness is often high on the mind of votersâthough I admit that commenters on that thread are a biased sample of all those voting in the election.
Is it underwhelming? I guess if you want the donation election to be about spurring lots of donations to small, spunky EA-startups working in weird-er cause areas, it might be, but I donât think thatâs what I understand the intention of the experiment to be (though I could be wrong).
My take is that the election is an experiment with EA democratisation, where we get to see what the community values when we do a roughly 1-person-1-ballot system instead of those-with-the-moeny decide system which is how things work right now. Those takeaways seem to be:
The broad EA community values Animal Welfare a lot more than the current major funders
The broad EA community sees value in all 3 of the âbig cause areasâ with high-scoring charities in Animal Welfare, AI Safety, and Global Health & Development.