Hmm, I agree that we’re talking past each other. I don’t intend to focus on ex post evaluations over ex ante evaluations. What I intend to focus on is the question: “when an EA make the claim that GiveWell charities are the charities with the strongest case for impact in near-term human-centric terms, how justified are they?” Or, relatedly, “How likely is it that somebody who is motivated to find the best near-term human-centric charities possible, but takes a very different approach than EA does (in particular by focusing much more on hard-to-measure political effects) will do better than EA?”
In my previous comment, I used a lot of phrases which you took to indicate the high uncertainty of political interventions. My main point was that it’s plausible that a bunch of them exist which will wildly outperform GiveWell charities. I agree I don’t know which one, and you don’t know which one, and GiveWell doesn’t know which one. But for the purposes of my questions above, that’s not the relevant factor; the relevant factor is: does someone know, and have they made those arguments publicly, in a way that we could learn from if we were more open to less quantitative analysis? (Alternatively, could someone know if they tried? But let’s go with the former for now.)
In other words, consider two possible worlds. In one world GiveWell charities are in fact the most cost-effective, and all the people doing political advocacy are less cost-effective than GiveWell ex ante (given publicly available information). In the other world there’s a bunch of people doing political advocacy work which EA hasn’t supported even though they have strong, well-justified arguments that their work is very impactful (more impactful than GiveWell’s top charities), because that impact is hard to quantitatively estimate. What evidence do we have that we’re not in the second world? In both worlds GiveWell would be saying roughly the same thing (because they have a high bar for rigour). Would OpenPhil be saying different things in different worlds? Insofar as their arguments in favour of GiveWell are based on back-of-the-envelope calculations like the ones I just saw, then they’d be saying the same thing in both worlds, because those calculations seem insufficient to capture most of the value of the most cost-effective political advocacy. Insofar as their belief that it’s hard to beat GiveWell is based on other evidence which might distinguish between these two worlds, they don’t explain this in their blog post—which means I don’t think the post is strong evidence in favour of GiveWell top charities for people who don’t already trust OpenPhil a lot.
But for the purposes of my questions above, that’s not the relevant factor; the relevant factor is: does someone know, and have they made those arguments [that specific intervention X will wildly outperform] publicly, in a way that we could learn from if we were more open to less quantitative analysis?
I agree with this. I think the best way to settle this question is to link to actual examples of someone making such arguments. Personally, my observation from engaging with non-EA advocates of political advocacy is that they don’t actually make a case; when I cash out people’s claims it usually turns out they are asserting 10x − 100x multipliers, not 100x − 1000x multipliers, let alone higher than that. It appears the divergence in our bottom lines is coming from my cosmopolitan values and low tolerance for act/omission distinctions, and hopefully we at least agree that if even the entrenched advocate doesn’t actually think their cause is best under my values, I should just move on.
As an aside, I know you wrote recently that you think more work is being done by EA’s empirical claims than moral claims. I think this is credible for longtermism but mostly false for Global Health/Poverty. People appear to agree they can save lives in the deveoping world incredibly cheaply, in fact usually giving lower numbers than I think are possible. We aren’t actually that far apart on the empirical state of affairs. They just don’t want to. They aren’t refusing to because they have even better things to do, because most people do very little. Or as Rob put it:
Many people donate a small fraction of their income, despite claiming to believe that lives can be saved for remarkably small amounts. This suggests they don’t believe they have a duty to give even if lives can be saved very cheaply – or that they are not very motivated by such a duty.
I think that last observation would also be my answer to ‘what evidence do we have that we aren’t in the second world?’ Empirically, most people don’t care, and most people who do care are not trying to optimise for the thing I am optimising for (in many cases it’s debateable whether they are trying to optimise at all). So it would be surprising if they hit the target anyway, in much the same way it would be surprising if AMF were the best way to improve animal welfare.
Hmm, I agree that we’re talking past each other. I don’t intend to focus on ex post evaluations over ex ante evaluations. What I intend to focus on is the question: “when an EA make the claim that GiveWell charities are the charities with the strongest case for impact in near-term human-centric terms, how justified are they?” Or, relatedly, “How likely is it that somebody who is motivated to find the best near-term human-centric charities possible, but takes a very different approach than EA does (in particular by focusing much more on hard-to-measure political effects) will do better than EA?”
In my previous comment, I used a lot of phrases which you took to indicate the high uncertainty of political interventions. My main point was that it’s plausible that a bunch of them exist which will wildly outperform GiveWell charities. I agree I don’t know which one, and you don’t know which one, and GiveWell doesn’t know which one. But for the purposes of my questions above, that’s not the relevant factor; the relevant factor is: does someone know, and have they made those arguments publicly, in a way that we could learn from if we were more open to less quantitative analysis? (Alternatively, could someone know if they tried? But let’s go with the former for now.)
In other words, consider two possible worlds. In one world GiveWell charities are in fact the most cost-effective, and all the people doing political advocacy are less cost-effective than GiveWell ex ante (given publicly available information). In the other world there’s a bunch of people doing political advocacy work which EA hasn’t supported even though they have strong, well-justified arguments that their work is very impactful (more impactful than GiveWell’s top charities), because that impact is hard to quantitatively estimate. What evidence do we have that we’re not in the second world? In both worlds GiveWell would be saying roughly the same thing (because they have a high bar for rigour). Would OpenPhil be saying different things in different worlds? Insofar as their arguments in favour of GiveWell are based on back-of-the-envelope calculations like the ones I just saw, then they’d be saying the same thing in both worlds, because those calculations seem insufficient to capture most of the value of the most cost-effective political advocacy. Insofar as their belief that it’s hard to beat GiveWell is based on other evidence which might distinguish between these two worlds, they don’t explain this in their blog post—which means I don’t think the post is strong evidence in favour of GiveWell top charities for people who don’t already trust OpenPhil a lot.
I agree with this. I think the best way to settle this question is to link to actual examples of someone making such arguments. Personally, my observation from engaging with non-EA advocates of political advocacy is that they don’t actually make a case; when I cash out people’s claims it usually turns out they are asserting 10x − 100x multipliers, not 100x − 1000x multipliers, let alone higher than that. It appears the divergence in our bottom lines is coming from my cosmopolitan values and low tolerance for act/omission distinctions, and hopefully we at least agree that if even the entrenched advocate doesn’t actually think their cause is best under my values, I should just move on.
As an aside, I know you wrote recently that you think more work is being done by EA’s empirical claims than moral claims. I think this is credible for longtermism but mostly false for Global Health/Poverty. People appear to agree they can save lives in the deveoping world incredibly cheaply, in fact usually giving lower numbers than I think are possible. We aren’t actually that far apart on the empirical state of affairs. They just don’t want to. They aren’t refusing to because they have even better things to do, because most people do very little. Or as Rob put it:
I think that last observation would also be my answer to ‘what evidence do we have that we aren’t in the second world?’ Empirically, most people don’t care, and most people who do care are not trying to optimise for the thing I am optimising for (in many cases it’s debateable whether they are trying to optimise at all). So it would be surprising if they hit the target anyway, in much the same way it would be surprising if AMF were the best way to improve animal welfare.