Thanks for this! Broadly agree on the importance of sustainability. I also want to push back on generally framing this movement as just “doing good better.” If we agree with Tessa that “some good things you can do matter 100x or 1000x more than others,” then I’d worry that just “doing good better” makes it too easy for people to have just 1/100th or 1/1000th of the positive impact they could have (since they can easily be satisfied with doing the less important things better, or with doing the important things just somewhat better). And that seems like a major waste of potential.
(Even in the context of donations, it seems very suggestive that ~85% of this movement’s funding comes from two sources that are very big on optimizing. I’d hate to have missed out on them.)
(More broadly, if most impact comes from hitting small targets, then it seems like we’ll have a hard time getting this impact without optimizing. So I’m much more optimistic about “optimize with self-care heuristics” than about “satisfice.”)
Broadly agree, just making the distinction between individuals optimising for personal impact across the different parts of their lives is different to organisations optimising for impact specifically by evaluating philanthropic opportunities.
That being said, they both benefit from thinking about sustainability (don’t pull funding instantly when an exit grant would be more impactful; don’t spend all your philanthropic capital on the first best option; don’t run your employees into the ground to get more hours of evaluation out of them until they quit from burnout).
Thanks for this! Broadly agree on the importance of sustainability. I also want to push back on generally framing this movement as just “doing good better.” If we agree with Tessa that “some good things you can do matter 100x or 1000x more than others,” then I’d worry that just “doing good better” makes it too easy for people to have just 1/100th or 1/1000th of the positive impact they could have (since they can easily be satisfied with doing the less important things better, or with doing the important things just somewhat better). And that seems like a major waste of potential.
(Even in the context of donations, it seems very suggestive that ~85% of this movement’s funding comes from two sources that are very big on optimizing. I’d hate to have missed out on them.)
(More broadly, if most impact comes from hitting small targets, then it seems like we’ll have a hard time getting this impact without optimizing. So I’m much more optimistic about “optimize with self-care heuristics” than about “satisfice.”)
Broadly agree, just making the distinction between individuals optimising for personal impact across the different parts of their lives is different to organisations optimising for impact specifically by evaluating philanthropic opportunities.
That being said, they both benefit from thinking about sustainability (don’t pull funding instantly when an exit grant would be more impactful; don’t spend all your philanthropic capital on the first best option; don’t run your employees into the ground to get more hours of evaluation out of them until they quit from burnout).