Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸

Karma: 7,382

I lead Product at Momentum, and care about making funding for high impact causes more robust & diversified. I live in the Bay Area, advise Asia-based community builders and run Pineapple Ops. I previously worked in consulting, recruiting and marketing, with a BA in Sociology and focused on social movements. (A little on my journey to EA)

I’m always keen to hear feedback through any means. Here’s an anonymous way to share: admonymous.co/vaidehiagarwalla

Unless otherwise stated, I always write in a personal capacity.

/’vɛðehi/ or VEH-the-hee

Some posts I’ve written and particuarly like:

Advice I frequently give:

When in doubt, apply*
What Ops in EA is like
If you’re running a retreat, nail the vibes and venue
Add randomness to your conferences

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 19 Dec 2024 13:35 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: There is No EA Sorting Hat
Yes! The overview/title captures what I’ve seen as well, esp from newer community members. I spend a lot of my time telling people that they know their situation better than I do (and have probably infuriated people by not answering questions directly :)).

One point I’d highlight: I find that people often lack confidence in the plans they make, and that makes them more uncertain, less likely to act, and maybe have less motivation or drive.

This is often caused by imposter syndrome, or chasing a unrealistic sense of certainty or assurance that doesn’t exist. (More speculative) I think people also may not want to come off as overconfident/arrogant/uncalibrated, and the norm is to trend too much in the opposite direction.

(Even writing this, I feel like confidence is a loaded term in this community and I feel the urge to qualify it, but I won’t give in!)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 8 Nov 2024 6:26 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Expectations Scale with Scale – We Should Be More Scope-Sensitive in Our Funding
What groups of people do you see this most commonly with?

On priors, I would expect most ea aligned donors (or researchers / evaluators) to take things like this into account because they seem pretty fundamental.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 5 Nov 2024 20:44 UTC
8 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joey🔸’s comment on: Funding Diversification is a Tradeoff
Oh interesting. I want to dig into this more now, but my impression is that an individual’s giving portfolio—both major donors & retail donors, but more so people who aren’t serious philanthropists and/or haven’t reflected a lot on their giving—is that they are malleable and not as zero-sum.
i think with donors likely to give to ea causes, a lot of them haven’t really been stewarded & cultivated and there probably is a lot of room for them to increase their giving.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 5 Nov 2024 16:59 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joey🔸’s comment on: Funding Diversification is a Tradeoff
The total funding pie is pretty fixed; I expect it to be quite rare to grow it.
Could you say more on how you came to this conclusion?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 28 Oct 2024 15:13 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sebastian Schienle’s comment on: Introducing the Effektiv Spenden “Defending Democracy” fund
Hey Sebastian! Very curious how you calculated that amount?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 28 Oct 2024 3:48 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno🔸’s comment on: Gemma Paterson’s Quick takes
Ah sorry I should have just said “3 main / larger scale funders” (op, eaif + meta funding circle). Funders from those groups include individuals.

But I was also unclear in my comment—I’ll clarify this soon.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 27 Oct 2024 15:01 UTC
10 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Joseph Lemien’s comment on: Gemma Paterson’s Quick takes
There actually is a lot stopping people from doing this independently—if you would ever want to scale and get funding you basically have 3 sources of funders, and if they don’t approve what you are doing you won’t get to become a serious competitor

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 14 Oct 2024 6:04 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Open Letter to Young EAs
I agree he’s not offering alternatives, as I mentioned previously. It would be good if Leif gave examples of better tradeoffs.
I still think your claim is too strongly stated. I don’t think Leif criticizing GW orgs means he is discouraging life saving aid as a whole, or that people will predictably die as a result. The counterfactual is not clear (and it’s very difficult to measure).
More defensible claims would be :
- People are less likely to donate to GW recommended orgs
- People will be more skeptical of bednets / (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
- People will be less likely to donate to AMF / New Incentives / (any other org he specifically discussed or critiqued)
- People may be more skeptical of LMIC philanthropy more generally because they feel overwhelmed by the possible risks, and donate less to it (this statement is closest to your original claim. For what it’s worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so I’d be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 13 Oct 2024 19:41 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Open Letter to Young EAs
I didn’t read the article you linked, I think it’s plausible. (see more in my last para)
I’d like to address your second paragraph in more depth though:
He’s clearly discouraging people from donating to GiveWell’s recommendations. This will predictably result in more people dying. I don’t see how you can deny this.
I don’t think GW recommendations are the only effective charities out there, so I don’t think this is an open-and-shut case.
- GW’s selection criteria for charities includes, amongst other things, room for more funding. So if an org has only $1M RFMF, regardless of how cost effective the org was, GW wouldn’t recommend them because they are looking to recommend charities with some bar (I believe at least 10s of millions, possibly more) of funding.
- A number of CE orgs estimate their impact could be as cost-effective, or more (with higher uncertainty of course!) than GW top recommended charities. They could also just donate to non-EA affiliated charities that are more / as cost effective as GW charities.
- GW also has it’s own limited scope, which I think plausible result in them missing out on some impactful opportunities e.g. relating to policy interventions and orgs working on growth (ala Growth and the case against randomista development).
FWIW if helpful what my own views here are—I think I’m a lot more risk neutral than GW, and much more keen to expand beyond GW’s scope of GH&D interventions. GW is ultimately 1 org with it’s own priorities, perspectives and, biases. I’d love to see more work in this space taking different perspectives (e.g. The case of the missing cause prioritisation research).
Do you really think that general audiences reading his WIRED article will be no less likely to donate to effective charities as a result?
I’m sympathetic to this point (where i interpret effective charities as a superset of GW charities). I think it’s plausible he’s contributed to a new “overhead myth” re negative impacts of aid (although, keep in mind that this is a pre-existing narrative). I would have liked Wenar to talk more about what kinds of trade offs he would endorse making, examples of good trade-offs in practice, examples of actually bad trade-offs (rather than potentially bad ones), and, if he’s very skeptical of aid, what he sees as other effective ways to help people in LMICs. It’s possible he covers some of this in his other article.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 13 Oct 2024 16:08 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 3
in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Open Letter to Young EAs
I agree with the omission bias point, but the second half of the paragraph seems unfair.
Leif never discourages people from doing philanthropy (or, aid as he calls it). Perhaps he might make people unduly skeptical of bednets in particular—which I think is reasonable to critique him on.
But overall, he seems to just be advocating for people to be more critical of possible side effects from aid. From the article (bold mine)
Making responsible choices, I came to realize, means accepting well-known risks of harm. Which absolutely does not mean that “aid doesn’t work.” There are many good people in aid working hard on the ground, often making tough calls as they weigh benefits and costs. Giving money to aid can be admirable too—doctors, after all, still prescribe drugs with known side effects. Yet what no one in aid should say, I came to think, is that all they’re doing is improving poor people’s lives.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 13 Oct 2024 3:16 UTC
10 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Open Letter to Young EAs
This comment is mostly about the letter, not the wired article. I don’t think this letter is particularly well argued (see end of article for areas of disagreement), but I’m surprised by the lack of substantive engagement with it.
This is fairly rough, i’m sure i’ve made mistakes in here, but figured it’s better to share than not.
Here’s some stuff i think is reasonable (but would love for folks to chime in if i’m missing something)
- Questioning GiveWell’s $4500 estimate—seems worth questioning! I am no expert in developmental economics, but it seems like Leif made some reasonable points regarding how to measure counterfactuals, Shapley values, the other non-AMF actors who helped get the bednets from conception to creation. Maybe all these points have been covered in places, but I’d be really surprised if everyone reading and engaging in his writing knows the answers (at least for myself, I don’t!)
  - I’d be curious how many of people who donate to GiveWell take this number at face value / how many of us have really thought critically about this number
  - My friend with a background in dev econ says that EAs seem to take the $ estimates a lot more seriously than development economists in general. That seems worth reflecting on and learning more about.
- He suggested GiveWell ask external developmental economists to evaluate their research / impact
  - this sounds great! +1 to this.
- I think his red flags were all reasonable and things I’d be on the lookout for (the red flags were: seeking confirmation from within the group, attacking credibility of outsiders, distorting criticisms/vilifying critics, ‘Am I afraid that I’ll lose friends if I question certain things about EA?’)
  - I don’t think all of those things are all as big risks as Leif perhaps does—but I do think that these things are present to some degree, and we should take them seriously.
  - I think, on average, we should be encouraging people to form independent beliefs and testing their theories on the world (and getting it wrong! and learning from the mistakes! and not worrying so much about maximizing at all costs!) much more than we currently do.
  - Also, others have written with similar perspectives (e.g. On Living Without Idols and It’s ok to leave EA )
- I am sympathetic to his claim that there is a lot of focus on intermediate steps for LT & meta impact, but that’s not really the claim he’s making.
  - However, GH&D and animal orgs do often communicate actual impact. You can always argue that they calculated the impact incorrectly—but I don’t think they look at intermediate steps.
- i think the nerd scouts suggestion is understandable given that that the Atlas fellowship was a very prominent high school outreach program, and a very large % of CB resources go to uni outreach, and Leif is a Stanford professor where there has been a lot of EA activity for many years.
  - I think this section could have been written with a bit less attitude
  - I am actually pretty bullish on getting younger people (college/ late high school) to really focus more on scout mindset / general decision-making tools & solid career advice. IDK if Leif is suggesting exactly that, but I do think that’s pretty important
  - Otherwise, I think I mostly disagree with him on his higher level strategy. It would be hard to know from the outside, but a number of projects have been started doing mid- and late-career outreach that are pretty exciting, and I hope more will be started in the coming years.
- I read GiveWell’s response to the wired article, and I do think overall it’s not as direct as it could be.
  - both he and GW are weirdly not addressing the fishing thing directly—GW did not directly link their 2016 response in their notes (it’s linked from the info page on bednets, but you have to search for it), and Leif didn’t in either of his posts. am slightly confused on both parties’ actions here.
Things I’m not very sympathetic to in his argument:
- overall, there are a lot of points, and not all of them are made equally well
  - I think if any of the points i mention above were the focus and written with a tiny bit more rigor, they would be valuable additions to discourse
- little quibbles
  - Comparing EA to scientology. Feels like there were better and more fair analogies. I think overall this is a theme with his writing, which is unfortunate because it upsets people.
  - some of the narrative about lots of money / EA funding lots of prizes and competitions would have been more relevant pre-FTX collapse)
- The effective vs altruism section feels a bit too abstract to be useful to me, and similar arguments have been made within the community numerous times, especially post FTX. But, fair critique given FTX. (Maybe there’s a lesson to be learnt here about how these ideas are perceived externally, clearly there’s a lot of comms work we need to do)
- the tone (of the article more so than the letter) is a bit aggressive—Leif is aware of this but i disagree with his reasons. I think he could have made a much stronger and more convincing argument without being that aggressive. In fact, if such an article existed I would share it widely and want to engage in discussions on it !
- didn’t feel like a very balanced view of the impact EA has had—he does mention that farmed animal welfare + lead projects, but i think he could have done a little more digging, especially when making some really deep critiques. I would be curious as to what he thinks when looking across the board at what has happened (another comms improvement note, perhaps)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 7 Oct 2024 22:23 UTC
4 points
3 ∶ 2
on: Discussion thread: Animal Welfare vs. Global Health Debate Week
It’s much easier to fundraise for GH&D (less “weird” / more legible)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 7 Oct 2024 22:20 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Announcing my departure from CEA (& sharing assorted notes)
Thanks for your time Lizka! As someone who has shared a bunch of feedback on the forum, I appreciated your willingness to always engage and stay curious.

Moderation is one of important and invisible jobs where it’s really hard to please everyone. i think you / the team did a really good job in what was probably the hardest period of time to be a mod on this forum.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 5 Oct 2024 18:30 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Appreciating Stable Support Roles at EA Orgs
+1 and I’d go further—I think that “steady hands” are even more critical at the leadership level.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 5 Oct 2024 18:17 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: just_a_dude’s comment on: Thoughts on earning to give (MCF 2024 memo)
+1 to preparing to be in a position to do E2G. I think this is true for many career paths, but it’s easier to justify it when you’re doing a PhD in ML to work in TAIS research, or working in an entry level position in Congress to try to gain career capital and influence policy.

One general hesitation I had with parts of the post’s framing was that it may not look at this as a long term career path (which means e.g. ramping up giving %’s , doing things to psychologically / emotionally feel good + confident about giving away more money).

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 4 Oct 2024 17:03 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: lauren_mee’s comment on: Five Years of Animal Advocacy Careers: Our Journey to impact, Lessons Learned, and What’s Next
well worth the time, and for sure! here are a few thoughts:
- importance of targeted channels / personas, building a funnel, focus on the user
+10000 and advice i’ve given to folks working on any kind of CB / meta work. targeting users is always a good think (and you can always increase the personas you support over time). careers just take time to change, very much a marathon not a sprint (low hanging fruit are limited).

EA overall (EA thinking, funders, some parts of the EA community) have more blindspots / a lot of suspicion around longer impact timelines (this has it’s benefits / it’s good to stay focused and it’s very easy to avoid hard questions when your TOC becomes too long). But I think this has resulted in a lack of infra / longer term thinking especially when it comes to career advising. I want to get a more diverse funding landscape with funders taking slightly different strategies and doing active grantmaking to hopefully foster more of this.
- talent density on a team
I like the “hire slowly fire quickly” framing—although it can be tough in practice. I think it’s really easy to get into scarcity mindset around hires / fear the cost of replacing a team member.
- hiring is hard (yes! especially for meta work!)
- adding more sectors for careers i am very curious on what your research finds re finding more impactful jobs / removing that as a bottleneck for impact—that’s something i’ve been thinking about a bit in the GCBR context (where there are even fewer very explicitly EA/GCBR aligned orgs, and a lot of opportunities for impact are at other places).
(Also i can’t believe it’s already been 5 years—congrats on that!!)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 24 Sep 2024 15:35 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Five Years of Animal Advocacy Careers: Our Journey to impact, Lessons Learned, and What’s Next
Thank you for writing this! Your observations match many of my intuitions about the career advising landscape, it’s really helpful to get the confirmation since your team has been doing this for so many years.

This is one of the most useful posts I’ve read on the forum this year.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 12 Sep 2024 2:23 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: I have stepped aside from my role as Executive Director because I think it will help more animals
Thanks so much for sharing these insights! Over the past few years I’ve seen the inner workings of leadership at many orgs, and come to appreciate how complex and difficult navigating this space can be, so I appreciate your candor (and humor/fun!)

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 11 Sep 2024 0:21 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Midtermist12’s comment on: The EA Hub is retiring
Sebastian addressed this in a comment below. I’ll also add that the Hub is a volunteer-run project, and we have limited time / resources.

The EA Hub is retiring

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸1 Sep 2024 14:37 UTC

96 points

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