This is really great—would love to see more of these in the future. It also made me reconsider the way I currently allocate across EA funds/charities, mostly by shifting funds away from global health.
I do think that what David Manheim mentioned is a strong argument against shifting EA funds away from global health, but I think it makes sense to shift some of my allocation seeing that this issue is not only less neglected by non-EAs but within EA as well.
I think dollars are much more fungible than careers, so for most people, you should move your donations away from global health if and only if you believe that marginal donations to other charities are more cost-effective. “Neglectedness” is just a herustic, and not a very strong one.
Hmm, that’s fair—crowdedness for giving is different from career path, in that I should be thinking about the marginal impact of a dollar for the former rather than overall field neglectedness.
I think this makes me less certain about my reallocation because I believe very strongly in the cost-effectiveness of global health charities, although I’m also wary that that is not solely due to true cost-effectiveness (due to cost-effectiveness being harder to measure across cause areas) and that most people think that way—hence the funding gap.
My impression is that there’s a lot of funding available for stuff other than global health, but not a lot of great places to spend it at the moment. So finding a charity with a robust theory of change for improving the long-term future and donating there can be very valuable—and starting something like that would be even more valuable! - but I’m less sure about the value of taking money you would spend on bednets and donating the the Long-Term Future Fund (or at least I’d recommend reviewing their past grants first).
Disclaimer: I have a much higher bar for funding long-termist charities than many other EAs.
This is a good point! I actually redirected the funding more towards EA Infrastructure instead of the Long-term fund—partly since my giving acts as diversifying my investments (as I’m investing time in building a career oriented towards more longtermist goals), and partly because my existing donations are much smaller relative to what I’m investing to give later on (and hopefully we have more longtermist charities then).
I really appreciate you highlighting the different implications one could draw out from funding disparities.
This is really great—would love to see more of these in the future. It also made me reconsider the way I currently allocate across EA funds/charities, mostly by shifting funds away from global health.
I do think that what David Manheim mentioned is a strong argument against shifting EA funds away from global health, but I think it makes sense to shift some of my allocation seeing that this issue is not only less neglected by non-EAs but within EA as well.
I think dollars are much more fungible than careers, so for most people, you should move your donations away from global health if and only if you believe that marginal donations to other charities are more cost-effective. “Neglectedness” is just a herustic, and not a very strong one.
Hmm, that’s fair—crowdedness for giving is different from career path, in that I should be thinking about the marginal impact of a dollar for the former rather than overall field neglectedness.
I think this makes me less certain about my reallocation because I believe very strongly in the cost-effectiveness of global health charities, although I’m also wary that that is not solely due to true cost-effectiveness (due to cost-effectiveness being harder to measure across cause areas) and that most people think that way—hence the funding gap.
My impression is that there’s a lot of funding available for stuff other than global health, but not a lot of great places to spend it at the moment. So finding a charity with a robust theory of change for improving the long-term future and donating there can be very valuable—and starting something like that would be even more valuable! - but I’m less sure about the value of taking money you would spend on bednets and donating the the Long-Term Future Fund (or at least I’d recommend reviewing their past grants first).
Disclaimer: I have a much higher bar for funding long-termist charities than many other EAs.
This is a good point! I actually redirected the funding more towards EA Infrastructure instead of the Long-term fund—partly since my giving acts as diversifying my investments (as I’m investing time in building a career oriented towards more longtermist goals), and partly because my existing donations are much smaller relative to what I’m investing to give later on (and hopefully we have more longtermist charities then).
I really appreciate you highlighting the different implications one could draw out from funding disparities.