Hi Richard, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you asking these questions! Based on the number of upvotes you have received, other people might be wondering the same, and it’s always useful to propagate knowledge like Alex has written up further.
I would have appreciated it even more if you had not directly jumped to accusing EA of being misleading (without any references) before waiting for any answers to your question.
This seems reasonable. On the other hand, it’s hard to give references to a broad pattern of discourse.
Maybe the key contention I’m making here is that “doing the most good per dollar” and “doing the most good that can be verified using a certain class of methodologies” are very different claims. And the more different that class is methodologies is from most people’s intuitive conception of how to evaluate things, the more important it is to clarify that point.
Or, to be more concrete, I believe (with relatively low confidence, though) that:
Most of the people whose donations have been influenced by EA would, if they were trying to donate to do as much good as possible without any knowledge of EA, give money to mainstream systemic change (e.g. political activism, climate change charities).
Most of those people believe that there’s a consensus within EA that donations to Givewell’s top charities do more good than these systemic change donations, to a greater degree than there actually is.
Most of those people would then be surprised to learn how little analysis EA has done on this question, e.g. they’d be surprised at how limited the scope of charities Givewell considers actually is.
A significant part of these confusions is due to EA simplifying its message in order to attract more people—for example, by claiming to have identified the charities that “do the most good per dollar”, or by comparing our top charities to typical mainstream charities instead of the mainstream charities that people in EA’s target audience previously believed did the most good per dollar (before hearing about EA).
Most of those people believe that there’s a consensus within EA that donations to Givewell’s top charities do more good than these systemic change donations, to a greater degree than there actually is.
Related to my other comment, but what would you guess is the split of donations from EAs to Givewell’s top charities versus ‘these systemic change donations’?
I ask because if it’s highly skewed, I would be strongly against pretending that we’re highly conflicted on this question while the reality of where we give says something very different; this question of how to represent ourselves accurately cuts both ways, and it is very tempting to try and be ‘all things to all people’.
All things considered, the limited data I have combined with anecdata from a large number of EAs suggests to me that it is in fact highly skewed.
A significant part of these confusions is due to EA simplifying its message in order to attract more people
I think this is backwards. The ‘systemic change’ objection, broadly defined, is by far the most common criticism of EA. Correspondingly, I think the movement would be much larger were it better-disposed to such interventions, largely neutralising this complaint and so appealing to a (much?) wider group of people.
Hi Richard, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you asking these questions! Based on the number of upvotes you have received, other people might be wondering the same, and it’s always useful to propagate knowledge like Alex has written up further.
I would have appreciated it even more if you had not directly jumped to accusing EA of being misleading (without any references) before waiting for any answers to your question.
This seems reasonable. On the other hand, it’s hard to give references to a broad pattern of discourse.
Maybe the key contention I’m making here is that “doing the most good per dollar” and “doing the most good that can be verified using a certain class of methodologies” are very different claims. And the more different that class is methodologies is from most people’s intuitive conception of how to evaluate things, the more important it is to clarify that point.
Or, to be more concrete, I believe (with relatively low confidence, though) that:
Most of the people whose donations have been influenced by EA would, if they were trying to donate to do as much good as possible without any knowledge of EA, give money to mainstream systemic change (e.g. political activism, climate change charities).
Most of those people believe that there’s a consensus within EA that donations to Givewell’s top charities do more good than these systemic change donations, to a greater degree than there actually is.
Most of those people would then be surprised to learn how little analysis EA has done on this question, e.g. they’d be surprised at how limited the scope of charities Givewell considers actually is.
A significant part of these confusions is due to EA simplifying its message in order to attract more people—for example, by claiming to have identified the charities that “do the most good per dollar”, or by comparing our top charities to typical mainstream charities instead of the mainstream charities that people in EA’s target audience previously believed did the most good per dollar (before hearing about EA).
Related to my other comment, but what would you guess is the split of donations from EAs to Givewell’s top charities versus ‘these systemic change donations’?
I ask because if it’s highly skewed, I would be strongly against pretending that we’re highly conflicted on this question while the reality of where we give says something very different; this question of how to represent ourselves accurately cuts both ways, and it is very tempting to try and be ‘all things to all people’.
All things considered, the limited data I have combined with anecdata from a large number of EAs suggests to me that it is in fact highly skewed.
I think this is backwards. The ‘systemic change’ objection, broadly defined, is by far the most common criticism of EA. Correspondingly, I think the movement would be much larger were it better-disposed to such interventions, largely neutralising this complaint and so appealing to a (much?) wider group of people.