I’m confused about the argument you’re trying to make here (I also disagree with some things, but I want to understand the post properly before engaging with that). The main claims seem to be
There are simply not enough excess deaths for these claims to be plausible.
and, after telling us how many preventable deaths there could be,
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.
But I don’t understand how these claims interconnect. If there were more people dying from preventable diseases, how would that dissolve the dilemma that the second claim poses?
Also, you say that $125 billion is well within the reach of the GF, but their website says that their present endowment is only $50.7 billion. Is this a mistake, or do you mean something else with “within reach”?
I still have no idea of how the total amount of dying people is relevant, but my best reading of your argument is:
If givewells cost effectiveness estimates were correct, foundations would spend their money on them.
Since the foundations have money that they aren’t spending on them, the estimates must be incorrect.
According to this post, OpenPhil intends to spend rougly 10% of their money on “straightforward charity” (rather than their other cause areas). That would be about $1B (though I can’t find the exact numbers right now), which is a lot, but hardly unlimited. Their worries about displacing other donors, coupled with the possibility of learning about better opportunities in the future, seems sufficient to justify partial funding to me.
That leaves the Gates Foundation (at least among the foundations that you mentioned, of course there’s a lot more). I don’t have a good model of when really big foundations does and doesn’t grant money, but I think Carl Shulman makes some interesting points in this old thread.
Right now a major excuse for not checking outcomes is that effect sizes are too small relative to noise. This is plainly incompatible with the belief that there’s a large funding gap at cost-per-life-saved numbers close to the current GiveWell estimates, because if you believe the latter, it should be possible to bring excess deaths down to literally zero.
I don’t think anyone has claimed that “there’s a large funding gap at cost-per-life-saved numbers close to the current GiveWell estimates”, if “large” means $50B. GiveWell seem to think that their present top charities’ funding gaps are in the tens of millions.
Gates has stated intent to give more $ away (he still has $100B) and Warren Buffett also promised to give away his fortune (some tens of billions) via GF.
I’m confused about the argument you’re trying to make here (I also disagree with some things, but I want to understand the post properly before engaging with that). The main claims seem to be
and, after telling us how many preventable deaths there could be,
But I don’t understand how these claims interconnect. If there were more people dying from preventable diseases, how would that dissolve the dilemma that the second claim poses?
Also, you say that $125 billion is well within the reach of the GF, but their website says that their present endowment is only $50.7 billion. Is this a mistake, or do you mean something else with “within reach”?
I still have no idea of how the total amount of dying people is relevant, but my best reading of your argument is:
If givewells cost effectiveness estimates were correct, foundations would spend their money on them.
Since the foundations have money that they aren’t spending on them, the estimates must be incorrect.
According to this post, OpenPhil intends to spend rougly 10% of their money on “straightforward charity” (rather than their other cause areas). That would be about $1B (though I can’t find the exact numbers right now), which is a lot, but hardly unlimited. Their worries about displacing other donors, coupled with the possibility of learning about better opportunities in the future, seems sufficient to justify partial funding to me.
That leaves the Gates Foundation (at least among the foundations that you mentioned, of course there’s a lot more). I don’t have a good model of when really big foundations does and doesn’t grant money, but I think Carl Shulman makes some interesting points in this old thread.
Right now a major excuse for not checking outcomes is that effect sizes are too small relative to noise. This is plainly incompatible with the belief that there’s a large funding gap at cost-per-life-saved numbers close to the current GiveWell estimates, because if you believe the latter, it should be possible to bring excess deaths down to literally zero.
Gates and Buffett have stated intent to give a lot more via the Gates Foundation.
I don’t think anyone has claimed that “there’s a large funding gap at cost-per-life-saved numbers close to the current GiveWell estimates”, if “large” means $50B. GiveWell seem to think that their present top charities’ funding gaps are in the tens of millions.
Gates has stated intent to give more $ away (he still has $100B) and Warren Buffett also promised to give away his fortune (some tens of billions) via GF.