Thanks a lot for the thorough post! I found it really helpful how you put rough numbers on everything, and made things concrete, and I feel like I have clearer intuitions for these questions now.
My understanding is that these considerations only apply to longtermists, and that for people who prioritise global health and well-being or animal welfare this is all much less clear, would you agree with that? My read is that those cause areas have much more high quality work by non EAs and high quality, shovel ready interventions.
I think that nuance can often get lost in discussions like this, and I imagine a good chunk of 80K readers are not longtermists, so if this only applies to longtermists I think that would be good to make clear in a prominent place.
And do you have any idea how the numbers for total funding break down into different cause areas? That seems important for reasoning about this.
Hey, I agree the situation is more unclear outside of longtermism and meta (I flag that a couple of times). It’s also pretty complicated, so I didn’t want to put it in the post and hold up publication.
Here are some quick thoughts:
The money available to global health and animal welfare has grown a lot as well (perhaps 2-3x) - e.g. see the comment below about Moskovitz, but it’s not just that—so a similar dynamic could apply.
Focusing on global health, there is a funding gap for GiveWell-recommended charities more effective than GiveDirectly, though this gap seems more filled than in the past. If you look at the RFMF estimates, additional donations now mostly go towards operations in ~3 years time rather than the next 1-2 years. And you’d want to think about things like Vitalik’s recent$54m donation.
My guess is that for interventions more cost-effective than current GiveWell-recommended charities (excluding GiveDirectly), there is a big funding overhang (in the sense that GiveWell/OP would happily fund a lot more of this stuff asap if it existed).
For interventions similar to the GiveWell top charities, it’s fairly balanced.
And then if you’re OK to drop cost-effectiveness by 10-20x, GiveDirectly could ultimately absorb billions, so there’s still a funding gap there.
I also still think that many people working on global health could have more impact via jobs in research, policy, nonprofit entrepreneurship etc. than through earning to give.
Turning to animal welfare, Lewis Bollard said in our 2017 podcast that animal welfare seemed to have more of a funding overhang / be more talent constrained, and this wasn’t only driven by OP entering the space.
If the growth in funding has kept pace with the growth of people working on animal welfare, then the size of the overhang should be even bigger today in absolute terms.
Moreover, many animal welfare people are now focused on clean meat, which often doesn’t need philanthropic funding in the first place.
On the other hand, many animal welfare non-profits still seem more likely to say that if they had more funding, they’d hire a bunch more people, and salaries also seem fairly low. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on there.
(For context I work in an org where currently >50% of researchers do subcause prioritization within animal welfare, though I’m not an animal welfare researcher myself. Speaking only for myself, just one person’s take, etc, etc)
Some quick personal thoughts on animal welfare funding vs talent constraints:
Naively I would guess that the median research hire in animal welfare for RP would contribute >$1 million/year of counterfactual value solely in terms of improving the quality and quantity of grantmaker decisions within animal welfare. For example, I would naively ascribe somewhat higher numbers for Neil’s EU work, or if quality of the moral weights work is improved by the equivalent of additional thinking of a median researcher-year.
(Note that this is fairly BOTEC and there are obvious biases for someone to think that their work and that of their coworkers is especially important).
Moreover, many animal welfare people are now focused on clean meat, which often doesn’t need philanthropic funding in the first place.
I think this is wrong or at least may be easy to misinterpret for the typical reader. The biggest bottleneck I see for clean meat is strategic clarity along the lines of “can we honestly and accurately have a coherent roadmap, enough to persuade funders and others that the research we’re currently doing is on the pathway to eventually making cost-competitive clean meat that will have widespread regulatory and consumer adoption” (A coherent and technically sound response to Humbird 2020 is necessary but not sufficient here).
But if you’re convinced that current work in clean meat is on the path to producing clean meat with the relevant desiderata, then in those worlds clean meat is much more bottlenecked by funding than by technical talent (compared to say research of malaria vaccines or universal viral sequencing). As a sanity check, all the cultured meat research in academia probably looks like <$10million/year(?), and maybe another !1.5 orders of magnitude more in industry, well over an order of magnitude less than the valuation of a single plant-based startup alone.
So I’d expect in worlds where clean meat research is tractable, I’d expect philanthropic funding to be significant in improving the field, eg by drawing people away from plant-based meats, biopharma, yeast germline manufacture, etc. I suspect (though I don’t have direct evidence) that many people in the latter two categories would take 30% pay cuts to work in something that’s technically interesting and with high potential altruistic value like clean meat, but not >75% pay cuts.
Moreover, many animal welfare people are now focused on clean meat, which often doesn’t need philanthropic funding in the first place.
I think this is wrong or at least may be easy to misinterpret for the typical reader.
It is confusing but my guess is that Benjamin Todd meant plant based meat, for the reasons you indicate (size of the recently popular PBM industry, where recent valuations of a single company is many times all funding in FAW, as opposed to in vitro lab grown meat, which is much farther away from commercialization).
Yes, sorry I was thinking of meat substitutes broadly. I agree clean meat is more funding constrained than plant based meat, because it’s further from commercialisation.
Hmm yeah maybe(?) he just misspoke. I do think “clean meat” usually refers to in vitro lab grown meat rather than “all meat alternatives”, both within EA and more broadly, so if clean meat was a standin for PBM I’d stand by my assertion “may be easy to misinterpret for the typical reader”
FWIW I looked into PBM much less than clean meat but I would guess it would be overconfident to assume that replacing all (or most) slaughter-based meat via scaling up existing systems is inevitable and I would guess progress is at least somewhat amenable to philanthropic funding, though not necessarily on parity with top farmed animal welfare interventions like corporate campaigns.
Btw, I too find myself confused about this point by Benjamin_Todd and also am not sure exactly what’s going on here.
On the other hand, many animal welfare non-profits still seem more likely to say that if they had more funding, they’d hire a bunch more people, and salaries also seem fairly low. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on there.
Btw, I too find myself confused about this point by Benjamin_Todd and also am not sure exactly what’s going on here.
On the other hand, many animal welfare non-profits still seem more likely to say that if they had more funding, they’d hire a bunch more people, and salaries also seem fairly low. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on there.
I think Benjamin_Todd is saying that
There is currently “room for funding” in (farmed) animal welfare, maybe specifically in talent and salaries
There was a reported overhang of funding in farmed animal welfare. Extrapolating from growth in Good Ventures, this overhang could even have increased
1 and 2 seems to be a contradiction
Some quick thoughts of mine that may be low quality:
I know some people in the farmed animal welfare space and funding is being thoughtfully deployed and there is attention to talent and appropriate compensation.
There’s a lot of actual on the ground, operational activity in animal welfare, compared to meta or longtermist cause areas. In my personal bias/perspective/worldview, this activity is inherently less cohesive and produces noise and this is normal. This noise described above can make it a little harder to get signal about funding gaps
Increasing salaries or significantly improving the stream of talent are inherently delicate and slow processes involving changes in culture
I think 2017 is a long time in the EA movement. It seems reasonable to get newer information about funding. Note that clearly 80,000 hours has hosted important leaders in farmed animal welfare since 2017.
I’m more sure that actual on the ground work, operations and implementation, is precious and can be hard to communicate or make visible.
And do you have any idea how the numbers for total funding break down into different cause areas? That seems important for reasoning about this.
+1
I think I often hear longtermists discuss funding in EA and use the 22 Bil number from OpenPhilanthropy. And I think people often make some implicit mental move thinking that’s also the money dedicated to longtermism- even though my understanding is very much that that’s not all available to longtermism.
In the recent podcast with Alexander Berger, he estimates it’ll be split roughly 50:50 longtermism vs. global health and wellbeing.
This means that the funding available to global health and wellbeing has also grown a lot too, since Dustin Moskovitz’s net worth has gone from $8bn to $25bn.
Thanks a lot for the thorough post! I found it really helpful how you put rough numbers on everything, and made things concrete, and I feel like I have clearer intuitions for these questions now.
My understanding is that these considerations only apply to longtermists, and that for people who prioritise global health and well-being or animal welfare this is all much less clear, would you agree with that? My read is that those cause areas have much more high quality work by non EAs and high quality, shovel ready interventions.
I think that nuance can often get lost in discussions like this, and I imagine a good chunk of 80K readers are not longtermists, so if this only applies to longtermists I think that would be good to make clear in a prominent place.
And do you have any idea how the numbers for total funding break down into different cause areas? That seems important for reasoning about this.
Hey, I agree the situation is more unclear outside of longtermism and meta (I flag that a couple of times). It’s also pretty complicated, so I didn’t want to put it in the post and hold up publication.
Here are some quick thoughts:
The money available to global health and animal welfare has grown a lot as well (perhaps 2-3x) - e.g. see the comment below about Moskovitz, but it’s not just that—so a similar dynamic could apply.
Focusing on global health, there is a funding gap for GiveWell-recommended charities more effective than GiveDirectly, though this gap seems more filled than in the past. If you look at the RFMF estimates, additional donations now mostly go towards operations in ~3 years time rather than the next 1-2 years. And you’d want to think about things like Vitalik’s recent$54m donation.
My guess is that for interventions more cost-effective than current GiveWell-recommended charities (excluding GiveDirectly), there is a big funding overhang (in the sense that GiveWell/OP would happily fund a lot more of this stuff asap if it existed).
For interventions similar to the GiveWell top charities, it’s fairly balanced.
And then if you’re OK to drop cost-effectiveness by 10-20x, GiveDirectly could ultimately absorb billions, so there’s still a funding gap there.
I also still think that many people working on global health could have more impact via jobs in research, policy, nonprofit entrepreneurship etc. than through earning to give.
Turning to animal welfare, Lewis Bollard said in our 2017 podcast that animal welfare seemed to have more of a funding overhang / be more talent constrained, and this wasn’t only driven by OP entering the space.
If the growth in funding has kept pace with the growth of people working on animal welfare, then the size of the overhang should be even bigger today in absolute terms.
Moreover, many animal welfare people are now focused on clean meat, which often doesn’t need philanthropic funding in the first place.
On the other hand, many animal welfare non-profits still seem more likely to say that if they had more funding, they’d hire a bunch more people, and salaries also seem fairly low. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on there.
(For context I work in an org where currently >50% of researchers do subcause prioritization within animal welfare, though I’m not an animal welfare researcher myself. Speaking only for myself, just one person’s take, etc, etc)
Some quick personal thoughts on animal welfare funding vs talent constraints:
Naively I would guess that the median research hire in animal welfare for RP would contribute >$1 million/year of counterfactual value solely in terms of improving the quality and quantity of grantmaker decisions within animal welfare. For example, I would naively ascribe somewhat higher numbers for Neil’s EU work, or if quality of the moral weights work is improved by the equivalent of additional thinking of a median researcher-year.
(Note that this is fairly BOTEC and there are obvious biases for someone to think that their work and that of their coworkers is especially important).
I think this is wrong or at least may be easy to misinterpret for the typical reader. The biggest bottleneck I see for clean meat is strategic clarity along the lines of “can we honestly and accurately have a coherent roadmap, enough to persuade funders and others that the research we’re currently doing is on the pathway to eventually making cost-competitive clean meat that will have widespread regulatory and consumer adoption” (A coherent and technically sound response to Humbird 2020 is necessary but not sufficient here).
But if you’re convinced that current work in clean meat is on the path to producing clean meat with the relevant desiderata, then in those worlds clean meat is much more bottlenecked by funding than by technical talent (compared to say research of malaria vaccines or universal viral sequencing). As a sanity check, all the cultured meat research in academia probably looks like <$10million/year(?), and maybe another !1.5 orders of magnitude more in industry, well over an order of magnitude less than the valuation of a single plant-based startup alone.
So I’d expect in worlds where clean meat research is tractable, I’d expect philanthropic funding to be significant in improving the field, eg by drawing people away from plant-based meats, biopharma, yeast germline manufacture, etc. I suspect (though I don’t have direct evidence) that many people in the latter two categories would take 30% pay cuts to work in something that’s technically interesting and with high potential altruistic value like clean meat, but not >75% pay cuts.
It is confusing but my guess is that Benjamin Todd meant plant based meat, for the reasons you indicate (size of the recently popular PBM industry, where recent valuations of a single company is many times all funding in FAW, as opposed to in vitro lab grown meat, which is much farther away from commercialization).
Yes, sorry I was thinking of meat substitutes broadly. I agree clean meat is more funding constrained than plant based meat, because it’s further from commercialisation.
Hmm yeah maybe(?) he just misspoke. I do think “clean meat” usually refers to in vitro lab grown meat rather than “all meat alternatives”, both within EA and more broadly, so if clean meat was a standin for PBM I’d stand by my assertion “may be easy to misinterpret for the typical reader”
FWIW I looked into PBM much less than clean meat but I would guess it would be overconfident to assume that replacing all (or most) slaughter-based meat via scaling up existing systems is inevitable and I would guess progress is at least somewhat amenable to philanthropic funding, though not necessarily on parity with top farmed animal welfare interventions like corporate campaigns.
Btw, I too find myself confused about this point by Benjamin_Todd and also am not sure exactly what’s going on here.
I think Benjamin_Todd is saying that
There is currently “room for funding” in (farmed) animal welfare, maybe specifically in talent and salaries
There was a reported overhang of funding in farmed animal welfare. Extrapolating from growth in Good Ventures, this overhang could even have increased
1 and 2 seems to be a contradiction
Some quick thoughts of mine that may be low quality:
I know some people in the farmed animal welfare space and funding is being thoughtfully deployed and there is attention to talent and appropriate compensation.
There’s a lot of actual on the ground, operational activity in animal welfare, compared to meta or longtermist cause areas. In my personal bias/perspective/worldview, this activity is inherently less cohesive and produces noise and this is normal. This noise described above can make it a little harder to get signal about funding gaps
Increasing salaries or significantly improving the stream of talent are inherently delicate and slow processes involving changes in culture
I think 2017 is a long time in the EA movement. It seems reasonable to get newer information about funding. Note that clearly 80,000 hours has hosted important leaders in farmed animal welfare since 2017.
I’m more sure that actual on the ground work, operations and implementation, is precious and can be hard to communicate or make visible.
+1
I think I often hear longtermists discuss funding in EA and use the 22 Bil number from OpenPhilanthropy. And I think people often make some implicit mental move thinking that’s also the money dedicated to longtermism- even though my understanding is very much that that’s not all available to longtermism.
In the recent podcast with Alexander Berger, he estimates it’ll be split roughly 50:50 longtermism vs. global health and wellbeing.
This means that the funding available to global health and wellbeing has also grown a lot too, since Dustin Moskovitz’s net worth has gone from $8bn to $25bn.