Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and being transparent about your approach, Michael! Strongly upvoted.
To better reflect how your different recommendations are linked to particular worldviews, I think it would be good to change the name of your area/fund “global health and wellbeing” to “global human health and wellbeing” (I would also drop “health”, as it is included in “wellbeing”). Another reason for this is that Open Phil’s area “global health and wellbeing” encompasses both human and animal welfare.
We did not consider this [GiveWell’s top charities effects on animals], and so do not have a considered answer. I think this would be something we would be interested in considering in our next investigation.
I think it would be great if you looked into this at least a little.
I acknowledge there’s a question-begging element to this response: I take it your point is why is it sufficiently plausible, and who decides this? Unfortunately, we can acknowledge that we don’t have a strong justification here. It’s a subjective judgement formed by the research team, informed by existing cause prioritisation work from other organisations.
I think it makes sense GWWC’s recommendations are informed by the research team. However, I wonder how much of your and Sjir’s views are being driven by path dependence. GWWC’s pledge donations from 2020 to 2022 towards improving human wellbeing were 9.29 (= 0.65/0.07) times those towards improving animal welfare. Given this, I worry you may hesitate to recommend interventions in animal welfare over human welfare even if you found it much more plausible that both areas should be assessed under the same (impartial welfarist) worldview. This might be a common issue across evaluators. Maybe some popular evaluators realised at some point that rating charities by overhead was not a plausible worldview, but meanwhile they had built a reputation for assessing them along that metric, and had influenced significant donations based on such rankings, so they continued to produce them. I hope GWWC remains attentive to this.
To better reflect how your different recommendations are linked to particular worldviews, I think it would be good to change the name of your area/fund “global health and wellbeing” to “global human health and wellbeing”
We considered a wide variety of names, and after some deliberation (and a survey or two), we landed on “global health and wellbeing” because we think it is a good balance of accurate and compelling. I agree with some the limitations you outlined, and like your alternative suggestion, especially from a “Researcher’s” point of view where I’m very focused on. I’ll share this with the team, but I expect that there would be too much cost switch at this point.
However, I wonder how much of your and Sjir’s views are being driven by path dependence. [...] Given this, I worry you may hesitate to recommend interventions in animal welfare over human welfare even if you found it much more plausible that both areas should be assessed under the same (impartial welfarist) worldview.
It’s a bit tricky to respond to this having not (at least yet) done an analysis comparing animal versus human interventions. But for if/when we do, I agree it would be important to be aware of the incentives you mentioned, and to avoid making decisions based on path dependencies rather than high quality research. More generally, a good part of our motivation for this project was to help create better incentives for the effective giving ecosystem. So we’d see coming to difficult decisions on cause-prioritisation, if we thought they were justified, as very much within the scope of our work and a way it could add value.
More generally, a good part of our motivation for this project was to help create better incentives for the effective giving ecosystem. So we’d see coming to difficult decisions on cause-prioritisation, if we thought they were justified, as very much within the scope of our work and a way it could add value.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and being transparent about your approach, Michael! Strongly upvoted.
To better reflect how your different recommendations are linked to particular worldviews, I think it would be good to change the name of your area/fund “global health and wellbeing” to “global human health and wellbeing” (I would also drop “health”, as it is included in “wellbeing”). Another reason for this is that Open Phil’s area “global health and wellbeing” encompasses both human and animal welfare.
I think it would be great if you looked into this at least a little.
I think it makes sense GWWC’s recommendations are informed by the research team. However, I wonder how much of your and Sjir’s views are being driven by path dependence. GWWC’s pledge donations from 2020 to 2022 towards improving human wellbeing were 9.29 (= 0.65/0.07) times those towards improving animal welfare. Given this, I worry you may hesitate to recommend interventions in animal welfare over human welfare even if you found it much more plausible that both areas should be assessed under the same (impartial welfarist) worldview. This might be a common issue across evaluators. Maybe some popular evaluators realised at some point that rating charities by overhead was not a plausible worldview, but meanwhile they had built a reputation for assessing them along that metric, and had influenced significant donations based on such rankings, so they continued to produce them. I hope GWWC remains attentive to this.
Thanks Vasco, this is good feedback.
We considered a wide variety of names, and after some deliberation (and a survey or two), we landed on “global health and wellbeing” because we think it is a good balance of accurate and compelling. I agree with some the limitations you outlined, and like your alternative suggestion, especially from a “Researcher’s” point of view where I’m very focused on. I’ll share this with the team, but I expect that there would be too much cost switch at this point.
It’s a bit tricky to respond to this having not (at least yet) done an analysis comparing animal versus human interventions. But for if/when we do, I agree it would be important to be aware of the incentives you mentioned, and to avoid making decisions based on path dependencies rather than high quality research. More generally, a good part of our motivation for this project was to help create better incentives for the effective giving ecosystem. So we’d see coming to difficult decisions on cause-prioritisation, if we thought they were justified, as very much within the scope of our work and a way it could add value.
Thanks, Michael!
Makes sense!