~All of the EV from the donation election probably comes from nudging OpenPhil toward the realization that they’re pretty dramatically out of line with “consensus EA” in continuing to give most marginal dollars to global health. If this was explicitly thought through, brilliant.
(See this comment for sourcing and context on the table, which was my attempt to categorize all OP grants not too long ago)
hmm not sure it’s fair to make claims about what “consensus EA” believes based on the donation election honestly
“consensus EA” seems like it is likely to be something other than “people who are on the Forum between Nov 18 and Dec 3″
I only pay attention to climate, but as a cause area it tends to be more prominent in “EA-wide” surveys/giving than it is among the most highly-engaged EAs (Forum readers)[1]
people are literally voting based on what OP is not funding
people are literally voting based on what OP is not funding
Given that Aaron’s point was about “marginal dollars,” this doesn’t strike me as a major reason against it. RP is currently #1. EA Animal Welfare Fund is currently #2, and I don’t think it the kinds of work it funds are necessarily things OP won’t fund.
I didn’t even vote for GG bc I know it won’t win, but it does warm my cold dead heart that four whole people did
You should vote for your honest preference for data-gathering purposes (and because it’s epistemically good for your cold dead heart!). Under the IRV system, your vote will be transferred to your next-highest-ranked charity once GG is eliminated, so it is not a “wasted vote” by any means.
RP is currently #1. EA Animal Welfare Fund is currently #2, and I don’t think it the kinds of work it funds are necessarily things OP won’t fund.
I think this is only partially true. Since RP gets significant funding from OP, my understanding based on their communications is that they tend to often use unrestricted funding specifically in areas that can’t get funding for from OP. And similarly, AWF has specifically highlighted funding areas that OP won’t as one of their top areas.
hahaha no I know, more seriously I just don’t want to vote for a marginal funding post that I wrote! feels like it’s not the point of the endeavor, I’d rather support other orgs in the community in a small way~
I think those are both good points. In my experience, different subsets of EA can vary a lot in terms of cause prioritization. Though I’m guessing that Aaron means something slightly different than you do when he says “consensus EA”.
hi sarah! yeah i think that’s true as well. i think in my head it was already obvious and therefore not realization-worthy that engaged EAs believe AW is underfunded, but i also probably talk to people with this belief disproportionately often due to the climate/AW funding overlap bc i am learning elsewhere on the internet that people think this is weird
I’d update significantly more in that direction if the final outcomes for the subset of voters with over X karma (1000? 2000? I dunno) were similar to the current all-voter data.
I say that not because I think only medium-plus karma voters have value, but because it’s the cleanest way I can think of to mitigate the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing. Those efforts have been blessed by the mods within certain bounds, but the effects of superior get-out-the-vote efforts are noise insofar as determining what the “consensus EA” is, and the resulting electorate may be rather unrepresentative. In contrast, the set of medium-plus karma voters seems more like to be representative of the broader community’s thinking regarding cause areas. (If there are other voter characteristics that could be analyzed and would be expected to be broadly representative, those would be worth looking at too.)
For example, it seemed fairly clear to me that animal-advocacy folks were significantly more on the ball in claiming funds during Manifund’s EA Community Choice event than other folks. This makes sense given how funding constrained animal advocacy is. So the possibility that something similar could be going on here caps how much I’d be willing to update on the current data.
the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing
I’m not sure if this addresses your concern, but just want to clarify that accounts can only vote if they were created before Oct 22, 2024. I think that having to have created an account prior to the announcement of the donation election is a medium bar (at least I think it’s higher than Manifund’s event was) — it’s quite easy to use the Forum without creating an account, so people who create an account tend not to be casual readers.
I do think it would be interesting to compare the overall results with those of the subset of users who have earned at least some karma.
Not really—I think the creation-date rule mostly addresses a somewhat different concern, that of ringers (people who are not really part of the Forum community but join for the primary purpose of voting). This would be—to use an analogy from where I grew up—the rough equivalent of people who didn’t go to a particular church showing up to play for that church’s softball team (this happened, by the way).
My concern here is more that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts may make the population that voted significantly unrepresentative of the Forum population as a whole. In contrast to ringers, those voters are not illegitimate or shady. However, the results would be slanted in favor of the organizations and cause areas that spent energy on GOTV efforts. So in a sense, I worry that if I defer too much to the results, I am in a sense deferring to organizational decisions on whether to conduct GOTV efforts rather than a representative / unbiased read of the broader community’s opinion.
~All of the EV from the donation election probably comes from nudging OpenPhil toward the realization that they’re pretty dramatically out of line with “consensus EA” in continuing to give most marginal dollars to global health. If this was explicitly thought through, brilliant.
(See this comment for sourcing and context on the table, which was my attempt to categorize all OP grants not too long ago)
hmm not sure it’s fair to make claims about what “consensus EA” believes based on the donation election honestly
“consensus EA” seems like it is likely to be something other than “people who are on the Forum between Nov 18 and Dec 3″
I only pay attention to climate, but as a cause area it tends to be more prominent in “EA-wide” surveys/giving than it is among the most highly-engaged EAs (Forum readers)[1]
people are literally voting based on what OP is not funding
I didn’t even vote for GG bc I know it won’t win, but it does warm my cold dead heart that four whole people did
Given that Aaron’s point was about “marginal dollars,” this doesn’t strike me as a major reason against it. RP is currently #1. EA Animal Welfare Fund is currently #2, and I don’t think it the kinds of work it funds are necessarily things OP won’t fund.
You should vote for your honest preference for data-gathering purposes (and because it’s epistemically good for your cold dead heart!). Under the IRV system, your vote will be transferred to your next-highest-ranked charity once GG is eliminated, so it is not a “wasted vote” by any means.
I think this is only partially true. Since RP gets significant funding from OP, my understanding based on their communications is that they tend to often use unrestricted funding specifically in areas that can’t get funding for from OP. And similarly, AWF has specifically highlighted funding areas that OP won’t as one of their top areas.
hahaha no I know, more seriously I just don’t want to vote for a marginal funding post that I wrote! feels like it’s not the point of the endeavor, I’d rather support other orgs in the community in a small way~
I think those are both good points. In my experience, different subsets of EA can vary a lot in terms of cause prioritization. Though I’m guessing that Aaron means something slightly different than you do when he says “consensus EA”.
hi sarah! yeah i think that’s true as well. i think in my head it was already obvious and therefore not realization-worthy that engaged EAs believe AW is underfunded, but i also probably talk to people with this belief disproportionately often due to the climate/AW funding overlap bc i am learning elsewhere on the internet that people think this is weird
I’d update significantly more in that direction if the final outcomes for the subset of voters with over X karma (1000? 2000? I dunno) were similar to the current all-voter data.
I say that not because I think only medium-plus karma voters have value, but because it’s the cleanest way I can think of to mitigate the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing. Those efforts have been blessed by the mods within certain bounds, but the effects of superior get-out-the-vote efforts are noise insofar as determining what the “consensus EA” is, and the resulting electorate may be rather unrepresentative. In contrast, the set of medium-plus karma voters seems more like to be representative of the broader community’s thinking regarding cause areas. (If there are other voter characteristics that could be analyzed and would be expected to be broadly representative, those would be worth looking at too.)
For example, it seemed fairly clear to me that animal-advocacy folks were significantly more on the ball in claiming funds during Manifund’s EA Community Choice event than other folks. This makes sense given how funding constrained animal advocacy is. So the possibility that something similar could be going on here caps how much I’d be willing to update on the current data.
I’m not sure if this addresses your concern, but just want to clarify that accounts can only vote if they were created before Oct 22, 2024. I think that having to have created an account prior to the announcement of the donation election is a medium bar (at least I think it’s higher than Manifund’s event was) — it’s quite easy to use the Forum without creating an account, so people who create an account tend not to be casual readers.
I do think it would be interesting to compare the overall results with those of the subset of users who have earned at least some karma.
Not really—I think the creation-date rule mostly addresses a somewhat different concern, that of ringers (people who are not really part of the Forum community but join for the primary purpose of voting). This would be—to use an analogy from where I grew up—the rough equivalent of people who didn’t go to a particular church showing up to play for that church’s softball team (this happened, by the way).
My concern here is more that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts may make the population that voted significantly unrepresentative of the Forum population as a whole. In contrast to ringers, those voters are not illegitimate or shady. However, the results would be slanted in favor of the organizations and cause areas that spent energy on GOTV efforts. So in a sense, I worry that if I defer too much to the results, I am in a sense deferring to organizational decisions on whether to conduct GOTV efforts rather than a representative / unbiased read of the broader community’s opinion.