IIRC a lot of people liked this post at the time, but I don’t think the critiques stood up well. Looking back 7 years later, I think the critique that Jacob Steinhardt wrote in response (which is not on the EA forum for some reason?) did a much better job of identifying more real and persistent problems:
Over-focus on “tried and true” and “default” options, which may both reduce actual impact and decrease exploration of new potentially high-value opportunities.
Over-confident claims coupled with insufficient background research.
Over-reliance on a small set of tools for assessing opportunities, which lead many to underestimate the value of things such as “flow-through” effects.
I’m glad I wrote this because it played a part in inspiring Jacob to write up his better version, and I think it was a useful exercise for me and an interesting historical artifact from the early days of EA, but I don’t think the ideas in it ultimately mattered that much.
IIRC a lot of people liked this post at the time, but I don’t think the critiques stood up well. Looking back 7 years later, I think the critique that Jacob Steinhardt wrote in response (which is not on the EA forum for some reason?) did a much better job of identifying more real and persistent problems:
I’m glad I wrote this because it played a part in inspiring Jacob to write up his better version, and I think it was a useful exercise for me and an interesting historical artifact from the early days of EA, but I don’t think the ideas in it ultimately mattered that much.