On (1) I agree that GiveWell’s done a huge public service by making many parts of decisionmaking process public, letting us track down what their sources are, etc. But making it really easy for an outsider to audit GiveWell’s work, while an admirable behavior, does not imply that GiveWell has done a satisfactory audit of its own work. It seems to me like a lot of people are inferring the latter from the former, and I hope by now it’s clear what reasons there are to be skeptical of this.
On (3), here’s why I’m worried about increasing overt reliance on the argument from “believe me”:
The difference between making a direct argument for X, and arguing for “trust me” and then doing X, is that in the direct case, you’re making it easy for people to evaluate your assumptions about X and disagree with you on the object level. In the “trust me” case, you’re making it about who you are rather than what is to be done. I can seriously consider someone’s arguments without trusting them so much that I’d like to give them my money with no strings attached.
“Most effective way to donate” is vanishingly unlikely to be generically true for all donors, and the aggressive pitching of these funds turns the supposed test of whether there’s underlying demand for EA Funds into a test of whether people believe CEA’s assurances that EA Funds is the right way to give.
The point I was trying to make is that while GiveWell may not have acted “satisfactorily”, they are still well ahead of many of us. I hadn’t “inferred” that GiveWell had audited themselves thoroughly—it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask, which is a sign of just how bad my own epistemics are. And I don’t think I’m unusual in that respect. So GiveWell gets a lot of credit from me for doing “quite well” at their epistemics, even if they could do better (and it’s good to hold them to a high standard!).
I think that making the final decision on where to donate yourself often offers only an illusion of control. If you’re getting all your information from one source you might as well just be giving them your money. But it does at least keep more things out in the open, which is good.
Re-reading your post, I think I may have been misinterpreting you—am I right in thinking that you mainly object to the marketing of the EA Funds as the “default choice”, rather than to their existence for people who want that kind of instrument? I agree that the marketing is perhaps over-selling at the moment.
Yep! I think it’s fine for them to exist in principle, but the aggressive marketing of them is problematic. I’ve seen attempts to correct specific problems that are pointed out e.g. exaggerated claims, but there are so many things pointing in the same direction that it really seems like a mindset problem.
I tried to write more directly about the mindset problem here:
On (1) I agree that GiveWell’s done a huge public service by making many parts of decisionmaking process public, letting us track down what their sources are, etc. But making it really easy for an outsider to audit GiveWell’s work, while an admirable behavior, does not imply that GiveWell has done a satisfactory audit of its own work. It seems to me like a lot of people are inferring the latter from the former, and I hope by now it’s clear what reasons there are to be skeptical of this.
On (3), here’s why I’m worried about increasing overt reliance on the argument from “believe me”:
The difference between making a direct argument for X, and arguing for “trust me” and then doing X, is that in the direct case, you’re making it easy for people to evaluate your assumptions about X and disagree with you on the object level. In the “trust me” case, you’re making it about who you are rather than what is to be done. I can seriously consider someone’s arguments without trusting them so much that I’d like to give them my money with no strings attached.
“Most effective way to donate” is vanishingly unlikely to be generically true for all donors, and the aggressive pitching of these funds turns the supposed test of whether there’s underlying demand for EA Funds into a test of whether people believe CEA’s assurances that EA Funds is the right way to give.
The point I was trying to make is that while GiveWell may not have acted “satisfactorily”, they are still well ahead of many of us. I hadn’t “inferred” that GiveWell had audited themselves thoroughly—it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask, which is a sign of just how bad my own epistemics are. And I don’t think I’m unusual in that respect. So GiveWell gets a lot of credit from me for doing “quite well” at their epistemics, even if they could do better (and it’s good to hold them to a high standard!).
I think that making the final decision on where to donate yourself often offers only an illusion of control. If you’re getting all your information from one source you might as well just be giving them your money. But it does at least keep more things out in the open, which is good.
Re-reading your post, I think I may have been misinterpreting you—am I right in thinking that you mainly object to the marketing of the EA Funds as the “default choice”, rather than to their existence for people who want that kind of instrument? I agree that the marketing is perhaps over-selling at the moment.
Yep! I think it’s fine for them to exist in principle, but the aggressive marketing of them is problematic. I’ve seen attempts to correct specific problems that are pointed out e.g. exaggerated claims, but there are so many things pointing in the same direction that it really seems like a mindset problem.
I tried to write more directly about the mindset problem here:
http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/humility-argument-honesty/
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/13w/matchingdonation_fundraisers_can_be_harmfully/
http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/against-responsibility/
Do you think “trust me” arguments are inherently invalid, or that in this case sufficient evidence hasn’t been presented?
I think sufficient evidence hasn’t been presented, in large part because the argument has been tacit rather than overt.