That’s a totally understandable position, and yet it starts looking like “paralysis by analysis.” Given all the uncertainties, do you honestly think that in 10 years’ time the choice of which charity(ies) to fund will be significantly clearer than it is today? I have my doubts. There will always be the possibility that there’s some as-yet undiscovered opportunity that’s better than the ones available. You could almost turn this sentence from your post: “It’s very easy to do things and not learn about them and end up spinning in circles, especially with theoretical work.” into this sentence: “It’s very easy to learn about things and not do anything, and end up spinning in circles, especially with theoretical work.”
There are parallels here with other fields where evidence is incomplete, contradictory, and difficult to obtain. For example, in the field of human diet there are strong factions arguing that the optimal diet is a paleo diet, a low-carbohydrate diet, a high-carb/low fat diet, and a few dozen other varieties of diets. Each diet has evidence to back it up, and each diet has been shown to be effective, at least in the short term, for promoting health and avoiding obesity. But none of the evidence is conclusive, and there is a lot of contradictory evidence for each diet. In a case like this, you can’t say “I don’t know what the best diet is, therefore I won’t eat anything until the picture is clearer,” because you’d die of starvation several decades before the answers become clear. Instead, you pick a diet that to you seems to have the strongest weight of evidence (or the strongest intuitive arguments in favour of it), and follow it, recognising that you’re taking a risk and that time could end up proving you wrong.
I think the cost of not donating now is that real people whose lives could be helped by your donations are not getting that aid. Yes, you might be able to help even more people in the future if you wait to donate to a more optimal charity, but the optimal charity can never be chosen with 100% certainty and you could spend the rest of your life waiting for the right moment when you feel confident enough that your’re doing the most possible good.
I’m probably painting this much more extremely than you’re viewing it, but I’m sceptical that there will ever be universal agreement on the “best” causes or the “best” charities, and at some point you may want to embrace imperfection and perhaps settle for not literally doing the most good but the most good given the information currently available.
> Given all the uncertainties, do you honestly think that in 10 years’
time the choice of which charity(ies) to fund will be significantly
clearer than it is today?
I think it will be significantly clearer in 2-3 years. GiveWell only started fairly recently; for charities outside of GiveWell’s field of vision, especially those that focus on non-human animals, serious charity evaluation (i.e. Effective Animal Activism) has existed for less than two years IIRC.
We’re learning rapidly, and we still have a lot to learn. In all likelihood, there exist opportunities much better than the ones we currently know about.
> the optimal charity can never be chosen with 100% certainty
True, but I may have 20% confidence in my current favorite charity and believe that by next year I will have 40% confidence in my favorite charity. That’s an expected-value return of 100% in one year, which is worth waiting for. (I just made up those numbers, but I expect reality to look something like that.)
That’s a totally understandable position, and yet it starts looking like “paralysis by analysis.” Given all the uncertainties, do you honestly think that in 10 years’ time the choice of which charity(ies) to fund will be significantly clearer than it is today? I have my doubts. There will always be the possibility that there’s some as-yet undiscovered opportunity that’s better than the ones available. You could almost turn this sentence from your post: “It’s very easy to do things and not learn about them and end up spinning in circles, especially with theoretical work.” into this sentence: “It’s very easy to learn about things and not do anything, and end up spinning in circles, especially with theoretical work.”
There are parallels here with other fields where evidence is incomplete, contradictory, and difficult to obtain. For example, in the field of human diet there are strong factions arguing that the optimal diet is a paleo diet, a low-carbohydrate diet, a high-carb/low fat diet, and a few dozen other varieties of diets. Each diet has evidence to back it up, and each diet has been shown to be effective, at least in the short term, for promoting health and avoiding obesity. But none of the evidence is conclusive, and there is a lot of contradictory evidence for each diet. In a case like this, you can’t say “I don’t know what the best diet is, therefore I won’t eat anything until the picture is clearer,” because you’d die of starvation several decades before the answers become clear. Instead, you pick a diet that to you seems to have the strongest weight of evidence (or the strongest intuitive arguments in favour of it), and follow it, recognising that you’re taking a risk and that time could end up proving you wrong.
I think the cost of not donating now is that real people whose lives could be helped by your donations are not getting that aid. Yes, you might be able to help even more people in the future if you wait to donate to a more optimal charity, but the optimal charity can never be chosen with 100% certainty and you could spend the rest of your life waiting for the right moment when you feel confident enough that your’re doing the most possible good.
I’m probably painting this much more extremely than you’re viewing it, but I’m sceptical that there will ever be universal agreement on the “best” causes or the “best” charities, and at some point you may want to embrace imperfection and perhaps settle for not literally doing the most good but the most good given the information currently available.
> Given all the uncertainties, do you honestly think that in 10 years’ time the choice of which charity(ies) to fund will be significantly clearer than it is today?
I think it will be significantly clearer in 2-3 years. GiveWell only started fairly recently; for charities outside of GiveWell’s field of vision, especially those that focus on non-human animals, serious charity evaluation (i.e. Effective Animal Activism) has existed for less than two years IIRC.
We’re learning rapidly, and we still have a lot to learn. In all likelihood, there exist opportunities much better than the ones we currently know about.
> the optimal charity can never be chosen with 100% certainty
True, but I may have 20% confidence in my current favorite charity and believe that by next year I will have 40% confidence in my favorite charity. That’s an expected-value return of 100% in one year, which is worth waiting for. (I just made up those numbers, but I expect reality to look something like that.)
I endorse the response that Michael Dickens gave. I also just wrote an essay “When Do I Expect Good Giving Opportunities to Improve?”—http://www.everydayutilitarian.com/essays/when-do-i-expect-good-giving-opportunities-to-improve—that is a more lengthy and thorough reply to your comment.