[Iāll put some thoughts on the ALLFED section here to keep discussion organised, but this is responding to Nunoās section rather than Davidās comment.]
I feel that that 50% is still pretty good, but the contrast between it and the modelās initial 95% is pretty noticeable to me, and makes me feel that the 95% is uncalibrated/āuntrustworthy. On the other hand, my probabilities above can also be seen as a sort of sensitivity analysis, which shows that the case for an organization working on ALLFEDās cause area is somewhat more robust than one might have thought.
[...]
In conclusion, I disagree strongly with ALLFEDās estimates (probability of cost overruns, impact of ALLFEDās work if deployed, etc.), however, I feel that the case for an organization working in this area is relatively solid. My remaining uncertainty is about ALLFEDās ability to execute competently and cost-effectively; independent expert evaluation might resolve most of it.
I think this mostly sounds similar to my independent impression, as expressed here, though I didnāt specifically worry particularly about their ability to execute competently and cost-effectively. (Iām not saying I felt highly confident about that; it just didnāt necessarily stand out much to me as a key uncertainty, for whatever reason.)
E.g., I wrote in the linked comment:
Their cost-effectiveness estimates seem remarkably promising (see here and here).
But it does seem quite hard to believe that the cost-effectiveness is really that good. And many of the quantities are based on a survey of GCR researchers, with somewhat unclear methodology (e.g., how were the researchers chosen?)
I also havenāt analysed the models very closely
But, other than perhaps the reliance on that survey, I canāt obviously see major flaws, and havenāt seen comments that seem to convincingly point out major flaws. So maybe the estimates are in the right ballpark?
One thing Iād add is that most of your (Nunoās) section on ALLFED sounds like itās seeing ALLFEDās impact as mostly being about their research & advocacy itself. But I think itās worth also giving a fair amount of emphasis to this question of yours: āGiven that ALLFED has a large team, is it a positive influence on its team members? How would we expect employees and volunteers to rate their experience with the organization?ā
Iād see a substantial fraction of the value of ALLFED as coming from how it might work as a useful talent pipeline. And I think that this could also be a source of nontrivial downside risk from ALLFED, e.g. if their training is low-quality for some reason, or if people implicitly learn bad habits of thinking/āresearch/āmodelling, or if their focuses arenāt good focuses and they make their volunteers more likely to stay focused on that long-term.
(Iām not saying that these things are the case. Iād currently guess that ALLFED produces notable impact as a talent pipeline. But I havenāt looked closely and think itād be worth doing so if one wanted to do a āthoroughā evaluation of ALLFED.)
[Iāll put some thoughts on the ALLFED section here to keep discussion organised, but this is responding to Nunoās section rather than Davidās comment.]
I think this mostly sounds similar to my independent impression, as expressed here, though I didnāt specifically worry particularly about their ability to execute competently and cost-effectively. (Iām not saying I felt highly confident about that; it just didnāt necessarily stand out much to me as a key uncertainty, for whatever reason.)
E.g., I wrote in the linked comment:
One thing Iād add is that most of your (Nunoās) section on ALLFED sounds like itās seeing ALLFEDās impact as mostly being about their research & advocacy itself. But I think itās worth also giving a fair amount of emphasis to this question of yours: āGiven that ALLFED has a large team, is it a positive influence on its team members? How would we expect employees and volunteers to rate their experience with the organization?ā
Iād see a substantial fraction of the value of ALLFED as coming from how it might work as a useful talent pipeline. And I think that this could also be a source of nontrivial downside risk from ALLFED, e.g. if their training is low-quality for some reason, or if people implicitly learn bad habits of thinking/āresearch/āmodelling, or if their focuses arenāt good focuses and they make their volunteers more likely to stay focused on that long-term.
(Iām not saying that these things are the case. Iād currently guess that ALLFED produces notable impact as a talent pipeline. But I havenāt looked closely and think itād be worth doing so if one wanted to do a āthoroughā evaluation of ALLFED.)