The discussion reassures me that EY is not, for anyone here, a cult leader.
I haven’t evaluated SIAI carefully yet, but they do open themselves up to these sort of attacks when they advocate concentrating charitable giving to the marginally most efficient utility generator (up to $1M).
I haven’t evaluated SIAI carefully yet, but they do open themselves up to these sort of attacks when they advocate concentrating charitable giving to the marginally most efficient utility generator (up to $1M).
To not advocate that would seem to set them up for attacks on their understanding of economics.
I suggest “and the SIAI is the marginally most efficient utility generator” is the one that opens them up to attacks. (I’m not saying that they shouldn’t make that claim.)
In a saner world every charity would claim this. Running a charity that you think generates utility less efficiently than some existing charity would be madness.
Running a charity that you think generates utility less efficiently than some existing charity would be madness.
Many charities could have close marginal worth, and rational allocation of resources would keep them that way. A charity that is less efficient could still perform a useful function, merely needing a decrease in funding, and not disbanding.
And you can’t have statically super-efficient charities either, because marginal worth decreases with more funding. For example, a baseline of hundred million dollars SIAI yearly budget might drive marginal efficiency of a dollar donation lower than of other causes.
In a sane world where everyone had the same altruistic component of their values, the marginal EU of all utilities would roughly balance up to the cost of discriminating them more closely. I’d have to think about what would happen if everyone had different altruistic components of their values; but if large groups of people had the same values, then there would exist some class of charities that was marginally balanced with respect to those values, and people from that group would expend the cost to pick out a member of that class but then not look too much harder. If everyone who works for a charity is optimistic and claims that their charity alone is the most marginally efficient in the group, that raises the cost of discriminating among them and they will become more marginally unbalanced.
This more detailed analysis doesn’t I think detract from my main point: in broad terms, it’s not weird that SIAI claim to be the most efficient way to spend altruistically, it’s weird that all charities don’t claim this.
If they/we didn’t think SIAI was the most efficient utility generator and didn’t dispand & work for Givewell or whatever, they’d be guilty of failing to act as utility maximisers.
The belief that SIAI is the best utility generator may be incorrect, but you can’t criticise someone from SIAI for making it beyond criticising them for being at SIAI, a criticism that no-one seems to make.
If they/we didn’t think SIAI was the most efficient utility generator and didn’t dispand & work for Givewell or whatever, they’d be guilty of failing to act as utility maximisers.
Technically not true.SIAI could actually be the optimal way for them specifically to generate utility while at the same time being not the optimal place for people to donate. For example, they could use their efforts to divert charitable donations from even worse sources to themselves and then pass it on to Givewell.
I think that would be illegal, though I’m not as familiar with US rules with regard to this as UK ones. More importantly, that argument seems to rely on an unfairly expansive interpritation of what it is to work for SIAI: diverting money away from SIAI doesn’t count.
Sure; that’s more or less what I meant. Even calling attacks these bids by SIAI competitors to in fact offer better marginal-utility efficiency was a little over-dramatic on my part.
I have only one objection to the economic argument: “assume there is already sufficient diversification in improving or maintaining human progress; then you should only give to SIAI” is a simplification that only works if the majority aren’t convinced by that argument. I guess there’s practically speaking no danger of that happening.
In other words, SIAI’s claim can only be plausible if they promise to adjust their allocation of effort to ensure some diversity, in the unlikely event that they end up receiving humongous amounts of money (and I’m sure they’ll say that they will).
By the way, I don’t mean to say that an individual diversifying their charitable spending, or for globally there to be diversity in charitable spending, is an end in itself. I just feel comforted that some of it is the kind that reduces overall risk (because the perceived-most-efficient group turns out to have a blind spot in retrospect due to politics, group-think, laziness, or any number of human weaknesses).
The discussion reassures me that EY is not, for anyone here, a cult leader.
I haven’t evaluated SIAI carefully yet, but they do open themselves up to these sort of attacks when they advocate concentrating charitable giving to the marginally most efficient utility generator (up to $1M).
To not advocate that would seem to set them up for attacks on their understanding of economics.
I suggest “and the SIAI is the marginally most efficient utility generator” is the one that opens them up to attacks. (I’m not saying that they shouldn’t make that claim.)
In a saner world every charity would claim this. Running a charity that you think generates utility less efficiently than some existing charity would be madness.
Many charities could have close marginal worth, and rational allocation of resources would keep them that way. A charity that is less efficient could still perform a useful function, merely needing a decrease in funding, and not disbanding.
And you can’t have statically super-efficient charities either, because marginal worth decreases with more funding. For example, a baseline of hundred million dollars SIAI yearly budget might drive marginal efficiency of a dollar donation lower than of other causes.
In a sane world where everyone had the same altruistic component of their values, the marginal EU of all utilities would roughly balance up to the cost of discriminating them more closely. I’d have to think about what would happen if everyone had different altruistic components of their values; but if large groups of people had the same values, then there would exist some class of charities that was marginally balanced with respect to those values, and people from that group would expend the cost to pick out a member of that class but then not look too much harder. If everyone who works for a charity is optimistic and claims that their charity alone is the most marginally efficient in the group, that raises the cost of discriminating among them and they will become more marginally unbalanced.
This more detailed analysis doesn’t I think detract from my main point: in broad terms, it’s not weird that SIAI claim to be the most efficient way to spend altruistically, it’s weird that all charities don’t claim this.
I agree with your main point and was refining it.
If they/we didn’t think SIAI was the most efficient utility generator and didn’t dispand & work for Givewell or whatever, they’d be guilty of failing to act as utility maximisers.
The belief that SIAI is the best utility generator may be incorrect, but you can’t criticise someone from SIAI for making it beyond criticising them for being at SIAI, a criticism that no-one seems to make.
Technically not true.SIAI could actually be the optimal way for them specifically to generate utility while at the same time being not the optimal place for people to donate. For example, they could use their efforts to divert charitable donations from even worse sources to themselves and then pass it on to Givewell.
I think that would be illegal, though I’m not as familiar with US rules with regard to this as UK ones. More importantly, that argument seems to rely on an unfairly expansive interpritation of what it is to work for SIAI: diverting money away from SIAI doesn’t count.
See my response to Wei_Dai’s comment.
Sure; that’s more or less what I meant. Even calling attacks these bids by SIAI competitors to in fact offer better marginal-utility efficiency was a little over-dramatic on my part.
I have only one objection to the economic argument: “assume there is already sufficient diversification in improving or maintaining human progress; then you should only give to SIAI” is a simplification that only works if the majority aren’t convinced by that argument. I guess there’s practically speaking no danger of that happening.
In other words, SIAI’s claim can only be plausible if they promise to adjust their allocation of effort to ensure some diversity, in the unlikely event that they end up receiving humongous amounts of money (and I’m sure they’ll say that they will).
By the way, I don’t mean to say that an individual diversifying their charitable spending, or for globally there to be diversity in charitable spending, is an end in itself. I just feel comforted that some of it is the kind that reduces overall risk (because the perceived-most-efficient group turns out to have a blind spot in retrospect due to politics, group-think, laziness, or any number of human weaknesses).
EY is not a cult leader, he is a Lolcat herder.
You have not behaved like a troll thus far, some of your contributions have been useful. Please don’t go down that path now.
I am confused: his comment reads like a joke, how is that trollish? I smiled.
That was a useless and stupid thing to say even if I am a troll, my apologies.