ACE’s recommendations may well be much better than Givewell if the general case for animal welfare >> global poverty in terms of cause area. Yet this may be less helpful (a hypothetical far future metacharity I set up now and recommend FHI or whatever might be far better than either by a similar sort of argument).
I think for overall quality of work, Givewell has done much better than ACE, if only by virtue of having far more resources to throw at the issue. In terms of rigour, Givewell probably do much better than anyone.
Perhaps an appropriate metric would be something like quality per full-time equivalent or similar. Then things are pretty murky: GWWC’s track record of recommendations seems about on par with Givewell (I’m doing some work on this at the moment), which is surprising given GWWC has had far fewer research staff and money over this period. This may imply GWWC has been more effective, or that diminishing returns kick in quite early, or something else. The same story may apply to ACE, but ‘track records’ in diverse cause areas are hard.
‘Betterness’ is challenging here.
ACE’s recommendations may well be much better than Givewell if the general case for animal welfare >> global poverty in terms of cause area. Yet this may be less helpful (a hypothetical far future metacharity I set up now and recommend FHI or whatever might be far better than either by a similar sort of argument).
I think for overall quality of work, Givewell has done much better than ACE, if only by virtue of having far more resources to throw at the issue. In terms of rigour, Givewell probably do much better than anyone.
Perhaps an appropriate metric would be something like quality per full-time equivalent or similar. Then things are pretty murky: GWWC’s track record of recommendations seems about on par with Givewell (I’m doing some work on this at the moment), which is surprising given GWWC has had far fewer research staff and money over this period. This may imply GWWC has been more effective, or that diminishing returns kick in quite early, or something else. The same story may apply to ACE, but ‘track records’ in diverse cause areas are hard.