Itās hard to see how the writeup could have had a negative effect.
It seems plausible that people who gave to ALLFED, volunteered for ALLFED, worked for ALLFED, etc. due in part to Gleaveās report would otherwise have done better things with their resources.
The report may also have led to EAs/āglobal catastrophic risk researchers/ālongtermists talking about ALLFED more often and more positively, which could perhaps negative effect on perceptions of those communities, e.g. because:
Papers associated with them often present explicit quantitative models and estimates about very uncertain things (which some people are just averse to in general)
ALLFED and those models sometimes make claims that can seem intuitively fairly unlikely
Thatās a comment from Denkenberger rather than ALLFED as an insitutition, but ALLFED-related papers make similar claims
Those models do seem to have some noticeable issues
Though Iād personally say that this is to be expected with any models, and a great thing about models is that they often make it easier to identify and correct specific issues, and I personally still basically agree with the qualitative conclusions drawn from the models)
A big part of ALLFEDās focus is making a catastrophe less bad if it does happen, which could seem callous to some people
I think itās unlikely that the donor lottery report would have those downsides to a substantial extent.
Iām just disagreeing with the claim āItās hard to see how the writeup could have had a negative effect.ā I basically think most longtermism-related things could plausibly have negative effects, since they operate on variables that we think might be important for the long-term future and weāre really bad at predicting precisely how the effects play out. (But this doesnāt mean we just try to ādo nothingā, of course! Something with some downside risk can still be very positive in expectation.)
Iām not sure how often my 80% confidence interval would include negative effects, nor whether itād include them in the ALLFED case. So maybe this is just a nit-pick about your specific phrasing, and weād agree on the substance of your model/āestimate.
When I made my comment, I think I kind-of had in mind ānegative total effectā, rather than āat least one negative effect, whether or not itās offsetā. But I donāt think Iād explicitly thought about the distinction (which is a bit silly), and my comment doesnāt make it totally clear what I meant, so itās a good question.
I think my 80% confidence interval probably wouldnāt include an overall negative impact of the writeup. But I think my 95% confidence interval would.
Reasons why my 80% confidence interval probably wouldnāt include an overall negative impact of the writeup, despite what I said in my previous comment:
I think we should have some degree of confidence that, if thereās more public discussion by people with fairly good epistemics and good epistemic and discussion norms, thatāll tend to update people towards more accurate beliefs.
(Not every time, but more often than it does the opposite.)
As such, I think we should start off skeptical of claims like āAn EA Forum post that influenced peopleās beliefs and behaviours substantially influenced those things in a bad way, even though in theory someone else couldāve pointed that out convincingly and thus prevented that influence.ā
And then thereās also the fact that Gleave later got a role on the LTFF, suggesting heās probably good at reasoning about these things.
And thereās also my object-level positive impressions of ALLFED.
It seems plausible that people who gave to ALLFED, volunteered for ALLFED, worked for ALLFED, etc. due in part to Gleaveās report would otherwise have done better things with their resources.
The report may also have led to EAs/āglobal catastrophic risk researchers/ālongtermists talking about ALLFED more often and more positively, which could perhaps negative effect on perceptions of those communities, e.g. because:
Papers associated with them often present explicit quantitative models and estimates about very uncertain things (which some people are just averse to in general)
ALLFED and those models sometimes make claims that can seem intuitively fairly unlikely
E.g., āAGI safety, alternative foods, and interventions for losing electricity/āindustry (and probably other interventions) likely save lives in the present generation more cost-effectively than GiveWell top charities.ā
Thatās a comment from Denkenberger rather than ALLFED as an insitutition, but ALLFED-related papers make similar claims
Those models do seem to have some noticeable issues
Though Iād personally say that this is to be expected with any models, and a great thing about models is that they often make it easier to identify and correct specific issues, and I personally still basically agree with the qualitative conclusions drawn from the models)
A big part of ALLFEDās focus is making a catastrophe less bad if it does happen, which could seem callous to some people
I think itās unlikely that the donor lottery report would have those downsides to a substantial extent.
And Iām personally quite positive about ALLFED, David Denkenberger, and their work, and ALLFED is one of the three places Iāve donated the most to (along with GCRI and the Long-Term Future Fund).
Iām just disagreeing with the claim āItās hard to see how the writeup could have had a negative effect.ā I basically think most longtermism-related things could plausibly have negative effects, since they operate on variables that we think might be important for the long-term future and weāre really bad at predicting precisely how the effects play out. (But this doesnāt mean we just try to ādo nothingā, of course! Something with some downside risk can still be very positive in expectation.)
Iām not sure how often my 80% confidence interval would include negative effects, nor whether itād include them in the ALLFED case. So maybe this is just a nit-pick about your specific phrasing, and weād agree on the substance of your model/āestimate.
Yeah, I see what youāre saying. Do you think that it is hard for the writeup to have a negative total effect?
When I made my comment, I think I kind-of had in mind ānegative total effectā, rather than āat least one negative effect, whether or not itās offsetā. But I donāt think Iād explicitly thought about the distinction (which is a bit silly), and my comment doesnāt make it totally clear what I meant, so itās a good question.
I think my 80% confidence interval probably wouldnāt include an overall negative impact of the writeup. But I think my 95% confidence interval would.
Reasons why my 80% confidence interval probably wouldnāt include an overall negative impact of the writeup, despite what I said in my previous comment:
I think we should have some degree of confidence that, if thereās more public discussion by people with fairly good epistemics and good epistemic and discussion norms, thatāll tend to update people towards more accurate beliefs.
(Not every time, but more often than it does the opposite.)
As such, I think we should start off skeptical of claims like āAn EA Forum post that influenced peopleās beliefs and behaviours substantially influenced those things in a bad way, even though in theory someone else couldāve pointed that out convincingly and thus prevented that influence.ā
And then thereās also the fact that Gleave later got a role on the LTFF, suggesting heās probably good at reasoning about these things.
And thereās also my object-level positive impressions of ALLFED.
I have nothing to disagree about here :)