I think it’s fairest to compare HLI’s charity analysis with other charity evaluators like Givewell, ACE, and Giving Green.
Giving Green has been criticised regularly and robustly (just look up any of their posts). Givewell publish their analysis and engage with criticism; HLI themselves have actually criticised them pretty robustly! I don’t know about ACE because I don’t stay up to date on animals but I bet it’s similar there.
The dynamics are quite different for example in charitable foundations where they don’t need to convince anyone to donate differently, or charities that deliver a service who only need to convince their funders to continue donating.
Thanks Kristen for this clear and concise reply. This comparison with the experience of other charity evaluators has shifted my opinion on this somewhat nice one.
It seems a bit of a pity that they should receive significantly more scrutiny than charities or foundations though. In an ideal world everyone should be transparent and heavily scrutinised but it does make sense that the incentives might not be there for other orgs...
I agree that more orgs should get this kind of scrutiny. I agree that we are likely to blindly trust orgs that don’t transparently discuss their inst workings, which is super sad.
Interesting reflection on Mental health providers too, be that’s not a world I know!
This argument I struggle with...
“I don’t think the problem is that HLI got too much hate for fucking up, it’s that everyone else gets too little hate for being opaque”
I realize you are probably beinga bit tongue in cheek, but I think we could criticise and discuss while being more encouraging and positive. We are all human, to and I’m not sure piling on the “hate” will necessarily lead to improvement in epistemics and rigorous analysis.
I think it’s fairest to compare HLI’s charity analysis with other charity evaluators like Givewell, ACE, and Giving Green.
Giving Green has been criticised regularly and robustly (just look up any of their posts). Givewell publish their analysis and engage with criticism; HLI themselves have actually criticised them pretty robustly! I don’t know about ACE because I don’t stay up to date on animals but I bet it’s similar there.
The dynamics are quite different for example in charitable foundations where they don’t need to convince anyone to donate differently, or charities that deliver a service who only need to convince their funders to continue donating.
Thanks Kristen for this clear and concise reply. This comparison with the experience of other charity evaluators has shifted my opinion on this somewhat nice one.
It seems a bit of a pity that they should receive significantly more scrutiny than charities or foundations though. In an ideal world everyone should be transparent and heavily scrutinised but it does make sense that the incentives might not be there for other orgs...
I agree that more orgs should get this kind of scrutiny. I agree that we are likely to blindly trust orgs that don’t transparently discuss their inst workings, which is super sad.
Interesting reflection on Mental health providers too, be that’s not a world I know!
This argument I struggle with...
“I don’t think the problem is that HLI got too much hate for fucking up, it’s that everyone else gets too little hate for being opaque”
I realize you are probably beinga bit tongue in cheek, but I think we could criticise and discuss while being more encouraging and positive. We are all human, to and I’m not sure piling on the “hate” will necessarily lead to improvement in epistemics and rigorous analysis.
I don’t think this was a reply to me?
Sorry accidentally got confused and sister a comment my bad!
I am a bit more familiar with ACE, and my impression is that you are right.