That’s surprising. Have you been exposed to the other aforementioned critique of Givewell? I ask because it falls along very similar lines to yours, but it appears to have been written without reference to yours whatsoever.
I also mostly didn’t mean this as a critique of GiveWell so much as a critique of a specific claim being made by many that sometimes references GiveWell numbers. Unfortunately it seems like making straightforward revealed preferences arguments reliably causes people to come up with ad hoc justifications for GiveWell’s behavior which (I claim) are incoherent, and I can’t respond to those without talking about GiveWell’s motives somewhat.
Based on how you write, it is clear in your writing you understand the mistake may be made more by others referencing Givewell’s numbers rather than Givewell itself. Yet the tones of your post seem to be holding Givewell, and not others, culpable for how others use Givewell’s numbers. To make an ethical appeal to effective altruists drawing unjustified conclusions based on Givewell’s numbers to them directly that what they’re doing is misleading, dishonest, or wrong, may be less savoury than a merely rational appeal of how or why what they’re doing is misleading, dishonest, or wrong, based on the expectation people are not fully cognizant of their own dishonesty. Yet your approach thus far doesn’t appear to be working. You’ve been trying this for a few years now, so I’d suggest trying some new tactics or strategy.
I think at this point it would be fair for you to be somewhat less charitable to those who make wildly exaggerated claims that make Givewell’s numbers, and write as though you are explaining to Givewell and others as your audience that people who use Givewell’s numbers are being dishonest, rather than explaining to people who aren’t acting entirely in good faith that they are being dishonest.
The way you write makes it seems as though you believe in this whole affair Givewell itself is the most dishonest actor, which I think readers find senseless enough they’re less inclined to take the rest of what you’re trying to say seriously. I think you should try talking more about the motives of the actors your’e referring to other than Givewell, in addition to Givewell’s motives.
Either charities like the Gates Foundation and Good Ventures are hoarding money at the price of millions of preventable deaths, or the low cost-per-life-saved numbers are wildly exaggerated.
It seems like what you’re trying to accomplish for rhetorical effect, but not irrationally, is to demonstrate that the only alternative to “wildly exaggerated” cost-effectiveness estimates is that foundations like these are doing something even worse, that they are hoarding money. There are a few problems with this.
You’re not distinguishing who the specific cost-effectiveness estimates you’re talking about are coming from. While it’s a bit of a nitpick to point out it’s Givewell rather than Good Ventures that makes the estimate, when the 2 organizations are so closely connected, and Good Ventures can be held responsible for the grants they make on the basis of the estimates, if not the original analysis that informed them.
At least in the case of Good Ventures, there is a third alternative that they are reserving billions of dollars not at the price of millions of preventable deaths, because, for a variety of reasons, they intend in the present and future to give that money to their diverse portfolio of causes they believe present just as if not more opportunity to prevent millions of deaths, or to otherwise do good. Thus, in the case of Good Ventures, you knew as well as anyone that the idea only one of the two conclusions you’ve posed here is wildly misleading.
So, what might have worked better as something like:
Foundations like Good Ventures apportion a significant amount of their endowment to developing-world interventions. If the low cost-per-life-saved numbers Good Ventures is basing this giving off of are not wildly exaggerated, then Good Ventures is saving millions fewer lives than they could with this money.
The differences in my phrasing are:
it doesn’t imply foundations like Good Ventures or the Gates Foundation are the only ones to be held responsible for the fact the cost-effectiveness estimates are wildly exaggerated.
it doesn’t create the impression Good Ventures and the Gates Foundation, in spite of common knowledge, ever intended exclusively to use their respective endowments to save lives with developing-world interventions, which sets up a false dichotomy that the organizations are necessarily highly deceptive, or doing something even more morally indictable.
You say a couple sentences later:
Either scenario clearly implies that these estimates are severely distorted and have to be interpreted as marketing copy designed to control your behavior, not unbiased estimates designed to improve the quality of your decisionmaking process.
As you’ve covered in discussions elsewhere, the implication of the fact, based on the numbers they’re using these foundations they could be saving more lives they aren’t with the money they’ve intended to use to save lives through developing-world interventions, is the estimates are clearly distorted. You don’t need an “either scenario”, one of which you wrote about in a way that implies something could be true you know is false, to get across that implication is clear.
There aren’t 2 scenario, one which makes Good Ventures look worse than they actually are, and one about the actual quality of their mission that is less than the impression people have of it. There is just 1 scenario where it is the case the ethical quality of these foundations’ progress on their goals is less than the impression much of the public has gotten of it.
As far as I can see, this pretty much destroys the generic utilitarian imperative to live like a monk and give all your excess money to the global poor or something even more urgent. Insofar as there’s a way to fix these problems as a low-info donor, there’s already enough money. Claims to the contrary are either obvious nonsense, or marketing copy by the same people who brought you the obvious nonsense.
Here, you do the same thing of conflating multiple, admittedly related actors. When you say “the same people”, you could be referring to any or all of the following, and it isn’t clear who you are holding responsible for what:
Good Ventures
The Open Philanthropy Project
Givewell
The Gates Foundation
‘effective altruism’ as a movement/community, independent of individual, officially aligned or affiliated non-profit organizations
In treating each of these actors part and parcel with each other, you appear to hold each of them equally culpable for all the mistakes you’ve listed here, which I’ve covered in this, and my other, longer comment, as false in myriad ways. Were you make clear in your conclusion who you are holding responsible for each respective factor in the total outcome of the negative consequences of the exaggerated cost-effectiveness estimates, your injunctions for how people should change their behaviour in the face of how they should respond to these actors differently would have rung more true.
I can’t find the link right now, but I asked others for it. So, hopefully it’ll come back up again. If I come across it again, I’ll respond back here again with it.
Was your posting this inspired by another criticism of Givewell recently published by another former staffer at Givewell?
It was inspired by this comment.
That’s surprising. Have you been exposed to the other aforementioned critique of Givewell? I ask because it falls along very similar lines to yours, but it appears to have been written without reference to yours whatsoever.
I don’t think so. Mind linking to it?
I also mostly didn’t mean this as a critique of GiveWell so much as a critique of a specific claim being made by many that sometimes references GiveWell numbers. Unfortunately it seems like making straightforward revealed preferences arguments reliably causes people to come up with ad hoc justifications for GiveWell’s behavior which (I claim) are incoherent, and I can’t respond to those without talking about GiveWell’s motives somewhat.
Here is the link.
Based on how you write, it is clear in your writing you understand the mistake may be made more by others referencing Givewell’s numbers rather than Givewell itself. Yet the tones of your post seem to be holding Givewell, and not others, culpable for how others use Givewell’s numbers. To make an ethical appeal to effective altruists drawing unjustified conclusions based on Givewell’s numbers to them directly that what they’re doing is misleading, dishonest, or wrong, may be less savoury than a merely rational appeal of how or why what they’re doing is misleading, dishonest, or wrong, based on the expectation people are not fully cognizant of their own dishonesty. Yet your approach thus far doesn’t appear to be working. You’ve been trying this for a few years now, so I’d suggest trying some new tactics or strategy.
I think at this point it would be fair for you to be somewhat less charitable to those who make wildly exaggerated claims that make Givewell’s numbers, and write as though you are explaining to Givewell and others as your audience that people who use Givewell’s numbers are being dishonest, rather than explaining to people who aren’t acting entirely in good faith that they are being dishonest.
The way you write makes it seems as though you believe in this whole affair Givewell itself is the most dishonest actor, which I think readers find senseless enough they’re less inclined to take the rest of what you’re trying to say seriously. I think you should try talking more about the motives of the actors your’e referring to other than Givewell, in addition to Givewell’s motives.
What are a couple examples of how this tone shows up in my writing, and how would you have written them to communicate the proper emphasis?
So, first of all, when you write this:
It seems like what you’re trying to accomplish for rhetorical effect, but not irrationally, is to demonstrate that the only alternative to “wildly exaggerated” cost-effectiveness estimates is that foundations like these are doing something even worse, that they are hoarding money. There are a few problems with this.
You’re not distinguishing who the specific cost-effectiveness estimates you’re talking about are coming from. While it’s a bit of a nitpick to point out it’s Givewell rather than Good Ventures that makes the estimate, when the 2 organizations are so closely connected, and Good Ventures can be held responsible for the grants they make on the basis of the estimates, if not the original analysis that informed them.
At least in the case of Good Ventures, there is a third alternative that they are reserving billions of dollars not at the price of millions of preventable deaths, because, for a variety of reasons, they intend in the present and future to give that money to their diverse portfolio of causes they believe present just as if not more opportunity to prevent millions of deaths, or to otherwise do good. Thus, in the case of Good Ventures, you knew as well as anyone that the idea only one of the two conclusions you’ve posed here is wildly misleading.
So, what might have worked better as something like:
The differences in my phrasing are:
it doesn’t imply foundations like Good Ventures or the Gates Foundation are the only ones to be held responsible for the fact the cost-effectiveness estimates are wildly exaggerated.
it doesn’t create the impression Good Ventures and the Gates Foundation, in spite of common knowledge, ever intended exclusively to use their respective endowments to save lives with developing-world interventions, which sets up a false dichotomy that the organizations are necessarily highly deceptive, or doing something even more morally indictable.
You say a couple sentences later:
As you’ve covered in discussions elsewhere, the implication of the fact, based on the numbers they’re using these foundations they could be saving more lives they aren’t with the money they’ve intended to use to save lives through developing-world interventions, is the estimates are clearly distorted. You don’t need an “either scenario”, one of which you wrote about in a way that implies something could be true you know is false, to get across that implication is clear.
There aren’t 2 scenario, one which makes Good Ventures look worse than they actually are, and one about the actual quality of their mission that is less than the impression people have of it. There is just 1 scenario where it is the case the ethical quality of these foundations’ progress on their goals is less than the impression much of the public has gotten of it.
Here, you do the same thing of conflating multiple, admittedly related actors. When you say “the same people”, you could be referring to any or all of the following, and it isn’t clear who you are holding responsible for what:
Good Ventures
The Open Philanthropy Project
Givewell
The Gates Foundation
‘effective altruism’ as a movement/community, independent of individual, officially aligned or affiliated non-profit organizations
In treating each of these actors part and parcel with each other, you appear to hold each of them equally culpable for all the mistakes you’ve listed here, which I’ve covered in this, and my other, longer comment, as false in myriad ways. Were you make clear in your conclusion who you are holding responsible for each respective factor in the total outcome of the negative consequences of the exaggerated cost-effectiveness estimates, your injunctions for how people should change their behaviour in the face of how they should respond to these actors differently would have rung more true.
I can’t find the link right now, but I asked others for it. So, hopefully it’ll come back up again. If I come across it again, I’ll respond back here again with it.