You are misunderstanding. OP is saying that these people they’ve identified are as valuable to the org as an additional N$/y “earn-to-give”-er. They are not saying that they pay those employees N$/y.
[I don’t like the $5k/life number and it generally seems sus to use a number GiveWell created (and disavows literal use of) to evaluate OpenPhil, but accepting it arguendo for this post...]
I think it’s pretty easy for slightly better decision-making by someone at openphil to save many times 2000 lives/ year. I think your math is off and you mean 20,000 lives per year, which is still not that hard for me to picture. The returns on slightly better spending is easily that high, when that much money is involved.
You could argue OpenPhil grant makers are not, in practice, generating those improvements. But preferring a year of an excellent grant maker to an additional $10m doesn’t seem weird for an org that, at the time, was giving away less money than it wanted to because it couldn’t find enough good projects.
This comment expressed doubt that 10 million/year figure is an accurate estimation of the value of individual people at 80k/ OpenPhil in practice.
An earlier version of this comment expressed this more colorfully. Upon reflection I no longer feel comfortable discussing this in person.
You are misunderstanding. OP is saying that these people they’ve identified are as valuable to the org as an additional N$/y “earn-to-give”-er. They are not saying that they pay those employees N$/y.
I don’t think I am misunderstanding. Unfortunately, upon reflection I don’t feel comfortable discussing this in public. Sorry.
Thank you for your thougths lc.
[I don’t like the $5k/life number and it generally seems sus to use a number GiveWell created (and disavows literal use of) to evaluate OpenPhil, but accepting it arguendo for this post...]
I think it’s pretty easy for slightly better decision-making by someone at openphil to save many times 2000 lives/ year. I think your math is off and you mean 20,000 lives per year, which is still not that hard for me to picture. The returns on slightly better spending is easily that high, when that much money is involved.
You could argue OpenPhil grant makers are not, in practice, generating those improvements. But preferring a year of an excellent grant maker to an additional $10m doesn’t seem weird for an org that, at the time, was giving away less money than it wanted to because it couldn’t find enough good projects.
Sorry, I don’t feel comfortable continuing this conversation in public. Thank you for your thoughts Elizabeth.