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.
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.