Firstly, I’d like to add to the chorus saying that this is an incredible post; as a supporter of SI, it warms my heart to see it. I disagree with the conclusion—I would still encourage people to donate to SI—but if SI gets a critique this good twice a decade it should count itself lucky.
I don’t think GiveWell making SI its top rated charity would be in SI’s interests. In the long term, SI benefits hugely when people are turned on to the idea of efficient charity, and asking them to swallow all of the ideas behind SI’s mission at the same time will put them off. If I ran GiveWell and wanted to give an endorsement to SI, I might break the rankings into multiple lists: the most prominent being VillageReach-like charities which directly do good in the near future, then perhaps a list for charities that mitigate broadly accepted and well understood existential risks (if this can be done without problems with politics), and finally a list of charities which mitigate more speculative risks.
I don’t think GiveWell making SI its top rated charity would be in SI’s interests.
This seems like a good point and perhaps would have been a good reason for SI to not have approached GiveWell in the first place. At this point though, GiveWell is not only refusing to make SI a top rated charity, but actively recommending people to “withhold” funds from SI, which as far as I can tell, it almost never does. It’d be a win for SI to just convince GiveWell to put it back on the “neutral” list.
Yes. Hmm, reading that discussion shows that they were already thinking about having GiveWell create a separate existential risk category (and you may have gotten the idea there yourself and then forgot the source).
Firstly, I’d like to add to the chorus saying that this is an incredible post; as a supporter of SI, it warms my heart to see it. I disagree with the conclusion—I would still encourage people to donate to SI—but if SI gets a critique this good twice a decade it should count itself lucky.
I don’t think GiveWell making SI its top rated charity would be in SI’s interests. In the long term, SI benefits hugely when people are turned on to the idea of efficient charity, and asking them to swallow all of the ideas behind SI’s mission at the same time will put them off. If I ran GiveWell and wanted to give an endorsement to SI, I might break the rankings into multiple lists: the most prominent being VillageReach-like charities which directly do good in the near future, then perhaps a list for charities that mitigate broadly accepted and well understood existential risks (if this can be done without problems with politics), and finally a list of charities which mitigate more speculative risks.
This seems like a good point and perhaps would have been a good reason for SI to not have approached GiveWell in the first place. At this point though, GiveWell is not only refusing to make SI a top rated charity, but actively recommending people to “withhold” funds from SI, which as far as I can tell, it almost never does. It’d be a win for SI to just convince GiveWell to put it back on the “neutral” list.
Agreed. Did SI approach GiveWell?
Yes. Hmm, reading that discussion shows that they were already thinking about having GiveWell create a separate existential risk category (and you may have gotten the idea there yourself and then forgot the source).
Indeed.