I think the strongest high-level argument for Givewell charities vs. most developed-world charity is the 100x multiplier.
Thatās a strong reason to suspect the best opportunities to improve the lives of current humanity lie in the developing world, but not decisive, and so usually analyses have been done, particularly of āfan-favouriteā causes like the ones you mention.
Iād also note that both the examples you gave are not what I would consider āMainstream charityā; both have prima facie plausible paths for high leverage (even if 100x feels a stretch), and if I had to guess right now my gut instinct is that both are in the top 25% for effectiveness. āMainstream charityā in my mind looks more like āyour local churchā, āthe artsā, or āyour local homeless shelterā. Some quantified insight into what people in the UK actually give to here.
At any rate, climate-change has had a few of these analyses over the years, off the top of my head hereās a recent one on the forum looking at the area in general, thereās also an old and more specific analysis of Cool Earth by GWWC, which after running through a bunch of numbers concludes:
Even with the most generous assumptions possible, this is still at least one order of magnitude greater than the cost of saving a life through donations to highly effective health charities such as the Against Malaria Foundation (at $3,461).
As for other areas, Givewell, (in?)famously, used to recommend charities in US education, but stopped after deciding their estimated effectiveness didnāt stack up to what they could achieve in the Global Health/āPoverty space.
I donāt have anything to hand for the US Democratic party, but lots of people talked in various places about donations directed at helping the Clinton campaign in 2016 and then the Biden campaign in 2020, so Iād start there. 80kās thoughts on the value of a vote would be a starting point.
If the case hasnāt been made
On a different note, Iām somewhere between bemused and disappointed that you could think this is a possibility, especially for causes which many EAs were very positively disposed to prior to their involvement with EA (and in the case of climate change, a large number remain so!). To be clear, Iām mostly disappointed in the movementās ability to propagate information forward and in the fact that such analysis has apparently become so rare that you might think such common questions have never been looked at. Also to be clear, it could well be that the cases made are wrong, and Iād be happy to see refutations, but suggesting they havenāt been made is quite a bit stronger; suggests a wilful blind spot, and Iām reminded of this SSC post.
Itās plausible to me that thereās something near-term we simply havenāt done an analysis of, and should have done, and if we did it would look very strong, but if so Iād strongly expect to be in an area that does not naturally occur to EAās core demographic, rather than in areas and ideas that naturally occur to that group.
Hey Alex, thanks for the response! To clarify, I didnāt mean to ask whether no case has been made, or imply that theyāve ānever been looked atā, but rather ask whether a compelling case has been madeāwhich I interpret as arguments which seem strong enough to justify the claims made about Givewell charities, as understood by the donors influenced by EA.
I think that the 100x multiplier is a powerful intuition, but that thereās a similarly powerful intuition going the other way: that wealthy countries are many times more influential than developing countries (e.g. as measured in technological progress), which is reason to think that interventions in wealthy countries can do comparable amounts of good overall.
Previously titled āClimate change interventions are generally more effective than global development interventionsā. Because of an error the conclusions have significantly changed. I have extended the analysis and now provide a more detailed spreadsheet model below. In the comments below, Benjamin_Todd uses a different guesstimate model and found the climate change came out ~80x better than global health (even though the point estimate found that global health is better).
I havenāt read the full thing, but based on this, it seems like thereās still a lot of uncertainty about the overall conclusion reached, even when the model is focused on direct quantifiable effects, rather than broader effects like movement-building, etc. Meanwhile the 80k article says that āwhen political campaigns are the best use of someoneās charitable giving is beyond the scope of this articleā. I appreciate that theseās more work on these questions which might make the case much more strongly. But given that Givewell is moving over $100M a year from a wide range of people, and that one of the most common criticisms EA receives is that it doesnāt account enough for systemic change, my overall expectation is still that EAās case against donating to mainstream systemic-change interventions is not strong enough to justify the set of claims that people understand us to be making.
I suspect that our disagreement might be less about what research exists, and more about what standard to apply for justification. Some reasons I think that we should have a pretty high threshold for thinking that claims about Givewell top charities doing the most good are justified:
If we think of EA as an ethical claim (you should care about doing a lot of good) and an empirical claim (if you care about that, then listening to us increases your ability to do so) then the empirical claim should be evaluated against the donations made by people who want to do a lot of good, but arenāt familiar with EA. My guess is that climate change and politics are fairly central examples of such donations.
(As mentioned in a reply to Denise): āDoing the most good per dollarā and ādoing the most good that can be verified using a certain class of methodologiesā can be very different claims. And the more different that class is methodologies is from most peopleās intuitive conception of how to evaluate things, the more important it is to clarify that point. Yet it seems like types of evidence that we have for these charities are very different from the types of evidence that most people rely on to form judgements about e.g. how good it would be if a given political party got elected, which often rely on effects that are much harder to quantify.
Givewell charities are still (I think) the main way that most outsiders perceive EA. Weāre now a sizeable movement with many full-time researchers. So I expect that outsiders overestimate how much research backs up the claims they hear about doing the most good per dollar, especially with respect to the comparisons I mentioned. I expect they also underestimate the level of internal disagreement within EA about how much good these charities do.
EA funds a lot of internal movement-building that is hard to quantify. So when our evaluations of other causes exclude factors that we consider important when funding ourselves, we should be very careful.
I didnāt mean to ask whether no case has been made, or imply that theyāve ānever been looked atā, but rather ask whether a compelling case has been made
Iām not quite sure what youāre trying to get at here. In some trivial sense we can see that many people were compelled, hence I didnāt bother to distinguish between ācaseā and ācompelling caseā. I wonder whether by ācompelling caseā you really mean ācase I would find convincingā? In which case, I donāt know whether that case was ever made. Iād be happy to chat more offline and try to compel you :)
thereās a similarly powerful intuition going the other way: that wealthy countries are many times more influential than developing countries
I donāt think this intuition is similarly powerful at all, but more importantly I donāt think it āgoes the other wayā, or perhaps donāt understand what you mean by that phrase. Concretely, if we treat GDP-per-capita as a proxy for influentialness-per-person (not perfect, but seems like right ballpark), and how much we can influence people with $x also scales linearly with GDP-per-capita (i.e. it takes Y monthsā wages to influence people Z amount), that would suggest that interventions aimed at influencing worldwide events have comparable impact anywhere, rather than actively favouring developed countries by anything like the 100x margin.
I suspect that our disagreement might be less about what research exists, and more about what standard to apply for justification.
I agree. I think the appropriate standard is basically the ādo you buy your own bullshitā standard. I.e. if I am donating to Givewell charities over climate change (CC) charities, that is very likely revealing that I truly think those opportunities are better all things considered, not just better according to some narrow criteria. At that point, I could be just plain wrong in expressing that opinion to others, but Iām not being dishonest. By contrast, if I give to CC charities over Givewell charities, I largely donāt think I should evangelise on behalf of Givewell charities, regardless of whether they score better on some specific criteria, unless I am very confident that the person I am talking to cares about those specific criteria (even then Iād want to add āI donāt support this personallyā caveats).
My impression is that EA broadly meets this standard, and I would be disappointed to hear of a case where an individual or group had pushed Givewell charities while having no interest in them for their personal or group-influenced donations.
the empirical claim should be evaluated against the donations made by people who want to do a lot of good, but arenāt familiar with EA. My guess is that climate change and politics are fairly central examples of such donations.
Iām happy to evaluate against these examples regardless, but (a) I doubt these are central, but not with high confidence, would be happy to see data and (b) Iām not sure evaluating against typical-for-that-group donations makes a whole lot of sense when for most people donations are a sideshow in their altruistic endeavours. The counterfactual where I donāt get involved with EA doesnāt look like me donating to climate change instead, it looks like me becoming a teacher rather than a trader and simply earning far less, or becoming a trader and retiring at 30 followed by doing volunteer work. On a quick scan of my relatively-altruistic non-EA friends (who skew economically-privileged and very highly educated, so YMMV) doing good in this kind of direct-but-local way looks like a far more typical approach than making large (say >5% of income) donations to favoured non-EA areas.
Givewell charities are still (I think) the main way that most outsiders perceive EA.
Communicating the fact that many core EA organisations have a firmly longtermist focus is something I am strongly in favour of. 80k has been doing a ton of work here to try and shift perceptions of what EA is about.
That said, in this venue I think itās easy to overestimate the disconnect. 80k/āCEA/āEA forum/āetc. are only one part of the movement, and heavily skew longtermist relative to the whole. Put plainly, in the event that outsiders perceive EA heavily through the lens of Givewell charities because most self-identified EAs are donating and their donations mostly go to Givewell charities, that seems fine, in the sense that perceptions match reality, regardless of what us oddballs are doing. In the event that outsiders perceive this because this used to be the case but is no longer, and thereās a lag, then Iām in favour of doing things to try and reduce the lag, example in previous paragraph.
I think the strongest high-level argument for Givewell charities vs. most developed-world charity is the 100x multiplier.
Thatās a strong reason to suspect the best opportunities to improve the lives of current humanity lie in the developing world, but not decisive, and so usually analyses have been done, particularly of āfan-favouriteā causes like the ones you mention.
Iād also note that both the examples you gave are not what I would consider āMainstream charityā; both have prima facie plausible paths for high leverage (even if 100x feels a stretch), and if I had to guess right now my gut instinct is that both are in the top 25% for effectiveness. āMainstream charityā in my mind looks more like āyour local churchā, āthe artsā, or āyour local homeless shelterā. Some quantified insight into what people in the UK actually give to here.
At any rate, climate-change has had a few of these analyses over the years, off the top of my head hereās a recent one on the forum looking at the area in general, thereās also an old and more specific analysis of Cool Earth by GWWC, which after running through a bunch of numbers concludes:
As for other areas, Givewell, (in?)famously, used to recommend charities in US education, but stopped after deciding their estimated effectiveness didnāt stack up to what they could achieve in the Global Health/āPoverty space.
I donāt have anything to hand for the US Democratic party, but lots of people talked in various places about donations directed at helping the Clinton campaign in 2016 and then the Biden campaign in 2020, so Iād start there. 80kās thoughts on the value of a vote would be a starting point.
On a different note, Iām somewhere between bemused and disappointed that you could think this is a possibility, especially for causes which many EAs were very positively disposed to prior to their involvement with EA (and in the case of climate change, a large number remain so!). To be clear, Iām mostly disappointed in the movementās ability to propagate information forward and in the fact that such analysis has apparently become so rare that you might think such common questions have never been looked at. Also to be clear, it could well be that the cases made are wrong, and Iād be happy to see refutations, but suggesting they havenāt been made is quite a bit stronger; suggests a wilful blind spot, and Iām reminded of this SSC post.
Itās plausible to me that thereās something near-term we simply havenāt done an analysis of, and should have done, and if we did it would look very strong, but if so Iād strongly expect to be in an area that does not naturally occur to EAās core demographic, rather than in areas and ideas that naturally occur to that group.
Hey Alex, thanks for the response! To clarify, I didnāt mean to ask whether no case has been made, or imply that theyāve ānever been looked atā, but rather ask whether a compelling case has been madeāwhich I interpret as arguments which seem strong enough to justify the claims made about Givewell charities, as understood by the donors influenced by EA.
I think that the 100x multiplier is a powerful intuition, but that thereās a similarly powerful intuition going the other way: that wealthy countries are many times more influential than developing countries (e.g. as measured in technological progress), which is reason to think that interventions in wealthy countries can do comparable amounts of good overall.
On the specific links you gave: the one on climate change (Global development interventions are generally more effective than climate change interventions) starts as follows:
I havenāt read the full thing, but based on this, it seems like thereās still a lot of uncertainty about the overall conclusion reached, even when the model is focused on direct quantifiable effects, rather than broader effects like movement-building, etc. Meanwhile the 80k article says that āwhen political campaigns are the best use of someoneās charitable giving is beyond the scope of this articleā. I appreciate that theseās more work on these questions which might make the case much more strongly. But given that Givewell is moving over $100M a year from a wide range of people, and that one of the most common criticisms EA receives is that it doesnāt account enough for systemic change, my overall expectation is still that EAās case against donating to mainstream systemic-change interventions is not strong enough to justify the set of claims that people understand us to be making.
I suspect that our disagreement might be less about what research exists, and more about what standard to apply for justification. Some reasons I think that we should have a pretty high threshold for thinking that claims about Givewell top charities doing the most good are justified:
If we think of EA as an ethical claim (you should care about doing a lot of good) and an empirical claim (if you care about that, then listening to us increases your ability to do so) then the empirical claim should be evaluated against the donations made by people who want to do a lot of good, but arenāt familiar with EA. My guess is that climate change and politics are fairly central examples of such donations.
(As mentioned in a reply to Denise): āDoing the most good per dollarā and ādoing the most good that can be verified using a certain class of methodologiesā can be very different claims. And the more different that class is methodologies is from most peopleās intuitive conception of how to evaluate things, the more important it is to clarify that point. Yet it seems like types of evidence that we have for these charities are very different from the types of evidence that most people rely on to form judgements about e.g. how good it would be if a given political party got elected, which often rely on effects that are much harder to quantify.
Givewell charities are still (I think) the main way that most outsiders perceive EA. Weāre now a sizeable movement with many full-time researchers. So I expect that outsiders overestimate how much research backs up the claims they hear about doing the most good per dollar, especially with respect to the comparisons I mentioned. I expect they also underestimate the level of internal disagreement within EA about how much good these charities do.
EA funds a lot of internal movement-building that is hard to quantify. So when our evaluations of other causes exclude factors that we consider important when funding ourselves, we should be very careful.
Iām not quite sure what youāre trying to get at here. In some trivial sense we can see that many people were compelled, hence I didnāt bother to distinguish between ācaseā and ācompelling caseā. I wonder whether by ācompelling caseā you really mean ācase I would find convincingā? In which case, I donāt know whether that case was ever made. Iād be happy to chat more offline and try to compel you :)
I donāt think this intuition is similarly powerful at all, but more importantly I donāt think it āgoes the other wayā, or perhaps donāt understand what you mean by that phrase. Concretely, if we treat GDP-per-capita as a proxy for influentialness-per-person (not perfect, but seems like right ballpark), and how much we can influence people with $x also scales linearly with GDP-per-capita (i.e. it takes Y monthsā wages to influence people Z amount), that would suggest that interventions aimed at influencing worldwide events have comparable impact anywhere, rather than actively favouring developed countries by anything like the 100x margin.
I agree. I think the appropriate standard is basically the ādo you buy your own bullshitā standard. I.e. if I am donating to Givewell charities over climate change (CC) charities, that is very likely revealing that I truly think those opportunities are better all things considered, not just better according to some narrow criteria. At that point, I could be just plain wrong in expressing that opinion to others, but Iām not being dishonest. By contrast, if I give to CC charities over Givewell charities, I largely donāt think I should evangelise on behalf of Givewell charities, regardless of whether they score better on some specific criteria, unless I am very confident that the person I am talking to cares about those specific criteria (even then Iād want to add āI donāt support this personallyā caveats).
My impression is that EA broadly meets this standard, and I would be disappointed to hear of a case where an individual or group had pushed Givewell charities while having no interest in them for their personal or group-influenced donations.
Iām happy to evaluate against these examples regardless, but (a) I doubt these are central, but not with high confidence, would be happy to see data and (b) Iām not sure evaluating against typical-for-that-group donations makes a whole lot of sense when for most people donations are a sideshow in their altruistic endeavours. The counterfactual where I donāt get involved with EA doesnāt look like me donating to climate change instead, it looks like me becoming a teacher rather than a trader and simply earning far less, or becoming a trader and retiring at 30 followed by doing volunteer work. On a quick scan of my relatively-altruistic non-EA friends (who skew economically-privileged and very highly educated, so YMMV) doing good in this kind of direct-but-local way looks like a far more typical approach than making large (say >5% of income) donations to favoured non-EA areas.
Communicating the fact that many core EA organisations have a firmly longtermist focus is something I am strongly in favour of. 80k has been doing a ton of work here to try and shift perceptions of what EA is about.
That said, in this venue I think itās easy to overestimate the disconnect. 80k/āCEA/āEA forum/āetc. are only one part of the movement, and heavily skew longtermist relative to the whole. Put plainly, in the event that outsiders perceive EA heavily through the lens of Givewell charities because most self-identified EAs are donating and their donations mostly go to Givewell charities, that seems fine, in the sense that perceptions match reality, regardless of what us oddballs are doing. In the event that outsiders perceive this because this used to be the case but is no longer, and thereās a lag, then Iām in favour of doing things to try and reduce the lag, example in previous paragraph.