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Transparency

TagLast edit: 14 Jul 2022 17:15 UTC by Leo

Transparency is the extent to which outsiders can obtain information about the activities of government or private entities.

Some organizations in the effective altruism community have a strong commitment to transparency. GiveWell publishes full details of their charity evaluation process, makes available records of all board meetings, and shares information about their operations.[1] GiveWell has also pioneered the practice of publishing a “mistakes” page, which other organizations and individuals—such as the Centre for Effective Altruism[2] and Scott Alexander[3]–have since adopted.

Open Philanthropy has argued that GiveWell’s commitment to transparency makes sense given the charity evaluator’s goal of making donation recommendations to the public: these recommendations are credible in part because the process that produced them is open to public examination. According to Open Philanthropy, other forms and degrees of transparency may be more appropriate to organizations that do not share GiveWell’s mission, especially given the costs and risks of increased transparency. For this reason, Open Philanthropy does not place a high priority on explaining their individual grantmaking decisions to the public. Instead, it prioritizes the sharing of information about their general thinking processes and philosophy[4] and the communication of this information in ways that make it easier for the recipient to determine what updates to make in response to it (known as reasoning transparency).[5]

Further reading

GiveWell (2021) Our approach to transparency, GiveWell, April.

Muehlhauser, Luke (2017) Reasoning transparency, Open Philanthropy, December.

Related entries

corruption | reasoning transparency

  1. ^

    GiveWell (2021) Our approach to transparency, GiveWell, April.

  2. ^

    Centre for Effective Altruism (2021) Our mistakes, Centre for Effective Altruism, May.

  3. ^

    Alexander, Scott (2021) Mistakes, Astral Codex Ten, April 25.

  4. ^

    Karnofsky, Holden (2016) Update on how we’re thinking about openness and information sharing, Open Philanthropy, September.

  5. ^

    Muehlhauser, Luke (2017) Reasoning transparency, Open Philanthropy, December.

Challenges of Transparency

Holden Karnofsky11 Sep 2014 12:46 UTC
8 points
0 comments8 min readEA link
(www.openphilanthropy.org)

The EA Com­mu­nity and Long-Term Fu­ture Funds Lack Trans­parency and Accountability

Evan_Gaensbauer23 Jul 2018 0:39 UTC
73 points
56 comments12 min readEA link

[blog cross-post] On privacy

Holly_Elmore28 Dec 2018 15:41 UTC
53 points
0 comments3 min readEA link

In­tegrity and ac­countabil­ity are core parts of ra­tio­nal­ity [LW-Cross­post]

Habryka23 Jul 2019 0:14 UTC
58 points
2 comments6 min readEA link

Re­quest for Feed­back: Draft of a COI policy for the Long Term Fu­ture Fund

Habryka5 Feb 2020 18:38 UTC
38 points
63 comments4 min readEA link

Up­date on Board meet­ing transparency

GiveWell24 Apr 2021 0:49 UTC
13 points
1 comment2 min readEA link
(blog.givewell.org)

Re­spon­si­ble Trans­parency Consumption

Jeff Kaufman11 Mar 2022 21:34 UTC
33 points
2 comments2 min readEA link

Some benefits and risks of failure transparency

Vaidehi Agarwalla27 Mar 2022 2:09 UTC
52 points
3 comments10 min readEA link

Every­one—show us your numbers

Esben Kran26 Apr 2022 6:10 UTC
52 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] What law­suit re­sulted from EA or­ga­ni­za­tions shar­ing in­for­ma­tion very freely?

ChristianKleineidam3 Jun 2022 17:15 UTC
6 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

Why EAs should nor­mal­ize us­ing Glassdoor

Joey23 Jun 2022 10:56 UTC
87 points
11 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] Do AI com­pa­nies make their safety re­searchers sign a non-dis­par­age­ment clause?

Ofer5 Sep 2022 13:40 UTC
71 points
3 comments1 min readEA link

The Onion Test for Per­sonal and In­sti­tu­tional Honesty

ChanaMessinger27 Sep 2022 15:26 UTC
56 points
7 comments1 min readEA link

Rea­son­ing Transparency

Lizka28 Sep 2022 12:22 UTC
111 points
8 comments16 min readEA link
(www.openphilanthropy.org)

Trans­parency for im­prov­ing weird feel­ings around com­mu­nity building

ChanaMessinger30 Sep 2022 15:09 UTC
70 points
3 comments2 min readEA link

EA Funds has a Public Grants Database

calebp18 Oct 2022 12:55 UTC
63 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

Child ques­tions about core as­pects of philanthropy

Cesar Scapella27 Oct 2022 15:25 UTC
3 points
5 comments3 min readEA link

CEA/​EV + OP + RP should en­gage an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor to de­ter­mine whether key figures in EA knew about the (likely) fraud at FTX

Tyrone-Jay Barugh12 Nov 2022 14:22 UTC
314 points
68 comments2 min readEA link

You *should* have ca­pac­ity for more trans­parency and accountability

freedomandutility13 Nov 2022 11:52 UTC
22 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

The FTX crisis high­lights a deeper cul­tural prob­lem within EA—we don’t suffi­ciently value good governance

Fods1214 Nov 2022 12:43 UTC
452 points
55 comments4 min readEA link

Wikipe­dia is not so great, and what can be done about it.

Rey Bueno12 Dec 2022 20:06 UTC
14 points
1 comment16 min readEA link
(www.reddit.com)

The case for trans­par­ent spending

Jeroen Willems15 Dec 2022 17:42 UTC
18 points
13 comments7 min readEA link

A liber­tar­ian so­cial­ist’s view on how EA can improve

freedomandutility30 Dec 2022 13:07 UTC
143 points
32 comments7 min readEA link

Reflec­tions on Wytham Abbey

nikos10 Jan 2023 18:30 UTC
80 points
51 comments4 min readEA link

Speak the truth, even if your voice trembles

RobertM14 Jan 2023 6:10 UTC
92 points
12 comments5 min readEA link

What coun­tries are worth fund­ing?

Ariel Pontes15 Jan 2023 16:23 UTC
38 points
3 comments2 min readEA link

The EA com­mu­nity does not own its donors’ money

Nick Whitaker18 Jan 2023 18:59 UTC
630 points
116 comments4 min readEA link

Time-stamp­ing: An ur­gent, ne­glected AI safety measure

Axel Svensson30 Jan 2023 11:21 UTC
57 points
27 comments3 min readEA link

Ques­tions about OP grant to Helena

DizzyMarmot2 Feb 2023 6:21 UTC
122 points
73 comments3 min readEA link

Some ini­tial work to eval­u­ate the mer­its of an EA le­gal service

Tyrone-Jay Barugh15 Feb 2023 5:38 UTC
31 points
2 comments26 min readEA link

On miss­ing moods and tradeoffs

Lizka9 May 2023 10:06 UTC
50 points
3 comments2 min readEA link

EA or­ga­ni­za­tions should have a trans­par­ent scope

Joey14 Jun 2023 11:30 UTC
190 points
21 comments3 min readEA link

Ev­i­dence of effec­tive­ness and trans­parency of a few effec­tive giv­ing organisations

Vasco Grilo1 Jul 2023 8:10 UTC
60 points
15 comments7 min readEA link

Long-Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2023 grant recommendations

abergal2 Aug 2023 1:31 UTC
107 points
55 comments43 min readEA link

How we ap­proach char­ity staff pay and benefits at Giv­ing What We Can

Luke Freeman16 Nov 2023 2:21 UTC
108 points
20 comments3 min readEA link
(www.givingwhatwecan.org)

[Question] Should 80,000 Hours be more trans­par­ent about how they rank prob­lems and ca­reers?

Vasco Grilo20 Dec 2023 8:14 UTC
89 points
17 comments3 min readEA link

Say how much, not more or less ver­sus some­one else

Gregory Lewis28 Dec 2023 22:24 UTC
99 points
10 comments5 min readEA link

[Question] How much pres­sure do you feel against ex­ter­nally ex­press­ing views which do not con­form to those of your man­ager or or­gani­sa­tion?

Vasco Grilo10 Feb 2024 9:05 UTC
60 points
16 comments5 min readEA link