that seems like it would be the single most important consideration to mention in the 2015 post explaining splitting, and I am baffled as to why it was left out.
Ben, you have advocated just giving to the best thing at the margin, simply. Doing that while taking room for more funding into account automatically results in what you are calling ‘defecting’ here in this post (which I object to, since the game theoretic analogy is dubious, and you’re using it in a highly morally charged way to criticize a general practice with respect to a single actor). That’s a normal way of assessing donations in effective altruism, and common among strategic philanthropists.
The ‘driving away donors’ bit was repeatedly discussed, as was the routine occurrence of such issues in large-scale philanthropy (where foundations bargain with each other over shares of funding in areas of common interest).
I don’t actually think it’s defecting to take into account room for more funding. I do think it’s defecting to try to control the behavior of other donors, who have more info about their opportunity cost than you do. Defecting is not always unjustified, but it’s nice when we can find and maintain cooperate-cooperate equilibria.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to describe major foundations as engaged in an iterated game where they display a combination of cooperative and uncooperative behavior to test each other’s boundaries and guard their own in a moderately low-trust equilibrium. If you think there’s something especially good about the EA way, it shouldn’t be that surprising that large established charities sometimes engage in uncooperative behavior. I’m holding the Open Philanthropy Project and Good Ventures to a higher standard because they say they want to do better and I believe them.
My understanding is that GiveWell has mostly counted “leveraged” donations as costs towards their cost per life saved figures, rather than counting them as free money, and I think it’s been right to do so. This seems like basically the same thing.
The prospect of driving away donors was discussed. Direct evidence of a reduction in donations wasn’t, unless I missed something big. My impression is that donations from other sources were growing at the time and have continued to grow substantially from year to year.
Given that, I could maybe see the case for committing not to give more than the anticipated remainder assuming growth in other donations continued apace, as a credible threat against shirking, but 50-50 “splitting” massively undershoots that mark.
Ben, you have advocated just giving to the best thing at the margin, simply. Doing that while taking room for more funding into account automatically results in what you are calling ‘defecting’ here in this post (which I object to, since the game theoretic analogy is dubious, and you’re using it in a highly morally charged way to criticize a general practice with respect to a single actor). That’s a normal way of assessing donations in effective altruism, and common among strategic philanthropists.
The ‘driving away donors’ bit was repeatedly discussed, as was the routine occurrence of such issues in large-scale philanthropy (where foundations bargain with each other over shares of funding in areas of common interest).
I don’t actually think it’s defecting to take into account room for more funding. I do think it’s defecting to try to control the behavior of other donors, who have more info about their opportunity cost than you do. Defecting is not always unjustified, but it’s nice when we can find and maintain cooperate-cooperate equilibria.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to describe major foundations as engaged in an iterated game where they display a combination of cooperative and uncooperative behavior to test each other’s boundaries and guard their own in a moderately low-trust equilibrium. If you think there’s something especially good about the EA way, it shouldn’t be that surprising that large established charities sometimes engage in uncooperative behavior. I’m holding the Open Philanthropy Project and Good Ventures to a higher standard because they say they want to do better and I believe them.
My understanding is that GiveWell has mostly counted “leveraged” donations as costs towards their cost per life saved figures, rather than counting them as free money, and I think it’s been right to do so. This seems like basically the same thing.
The prospect of driving away donors was discussed. Direct evidence of a reduction in donations wasn’t, unless I missed something big. My impression is that donations from other sources were growing at the time and have continued to grow substantially from year to year.
Given that, I could maybe see the case for committing not to give more than the anticipated remainder assuming growth in other donations continued apace, as a credible threat against shirking, but 50-50 “splitting” massively undershoots that mark.