I disagree with just maximizing QALYs as the main measure of effective altruism. See my post:
Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
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Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#22Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback. I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning: "Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the e…
Thanks for the comment — we welcome feedback, even if it's harsh, so no worries!
That said, I think some of this hinges on a naïve interpretation of what effective altruism is about. The idea of 'earning to give' is counterintuitive ('do more good by working in finance - whut?'), and so has been one that the media has run with. Accordingly, I think it's considerably overrepresented in many people's minds compared to how most people in the EA community actually think about things[1]. We're always looking for talented people to do direct work, and we see one of our missions as finding and attracting people to work on important issues — whether that be in animal welfare, global development, politics, research etc. etc. Indeed, nearly everyone working on this project left significantly higher-paying jobs to come work at CEA because we think it offers the best chance for us to have a positive impact.
Agree that donating to large non-profits does have the problem of the money displacing unrestricted funds (in effect, subsidising other projects within the org). That's part of the reason most of the non-profits we end up supporting are fairly small and tightly focused on a specific, well-validated intervention. We're putting previous grant history up is so that donors can make an informed decision about whether or not they think a fund manager will represent their values, but it's not necessarily an indication of where grants will be made in future.
[1] E.g. see https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-...
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#23Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback. I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning: "Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the e…
Do you think that rather than considering smartness as a linear scale, it might make more sense to consider different people as having aptitudes in different areas? I could see one person being an excellent and effective animal welfare activist and another being a top performing hedge fund manager; it's unlikely the two could switch roles and perform equally well. Regarding HSUS, I'm not sufficiently well versed to h…
We do need many more talented people to found and work for effective non-profits. At CEA, we've found it hard to hire extremely talented people, as many of the people we want to hire want to continue donating instead! Non-profits often find it hard to attract top talent, in part because they tend to pay lower salaries, working at a non-profit is less prestigious, and because talented people tend to want to work with other talented people. We have been impressed with Y Combinator's approach here, they're trying to incentivize talented people to found really effective non-profits, and then help them scale. We're hoping that if donors are willing to fund these new promising projects, many more people will be drawn to the non-profit world.
On the other hand, just like founding a company is not for everyone, neither is working at a non-profit. We should each consider our comparative advantage. As tempestn mentioned, some people might be extremely good at their day-job and be well compensated for it, but might not necessarily make excellent activists. In that case, that person might be able to help the causes they care about most by donating to effective charities.
We need all kinds of people!
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#24This is really interesting and a great idea; however, I'd almost trust charities more if they listed how they had failed each year and where delivery and services went wrong and what mitigation has been put in place. It would be good to have a system where charities were allowed to fail like bad companies as well, but it's difficult to be this honest.
The charities themselves rarely do that directly (unfortunately, as the OP said, the incentives are really messed-up so they would never do so), but GiveWell does it "by proxy" every year, so if you donate to GiveWell's "general fund" you can be sure that they're iterating and correcting for failures. In terms of other feedback, I have to say I really like the clean separation of "ends" and how you can pick which one…
I agree with you about X-risk, but I'm not sure the separation is so clean. For example looking at the EA Community fund page it isn't at all clear to me whether or not some of the money will end up in the hands of the AI Safety people. To be fair this is openly disclosed as a risk, which is great transparency.
Second, donors may choose not to support the Movement Building Fund if they do not wish to indirectly support all of the problem areas that the EA community is likely to support. This includes areas like Global Health and Development, Animal Welfare, Long-Term Future, and any future problem areas that the community deems effective to address. For example, Dylan Matthews criticized the EA community in 2015 for being overly self-promoting and overly concerned about risks from advanced artificial intelligence (one response to this criticism here). Those with strong views about which problem areas they do not wish to support might avoid movement building as a result.
However, admirable transparency or not, the only fund I'd really be interested in allocating money to would be the Global Health and Development Fund. Given that, for me personally, the paragraphs about differentiating vs GiveWell are critical.
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#25Since Givewell has come up a number of times here, the obvious question to me, as someone completely unversed in how these things work, is how does contributing to your fund compare to contributing to Givewell? It seems like your goals are similar. Is your claim that dollars contributed to your fund will ultimately be more effective? Or are you differentiating yourselves in a different way (different priorities, impr…
Our baseline for effectiveness (specifically with regard to the Global Health and Development Fund, which is managed by GiveWell founder Elie Hassenfeld) is Givewell's top charities. So, it's entirely possible that Elie will choose to grant to these, in which case your donation will be exactly as effective as donating to Givewell, but you'll get the advantage of using the EA Funds platform — e.g. single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4), easy recurring donations, the ability to change your donation preferences later, allocating to causes outside of global health, donation tracking etc. etc.
However, we do think there's a good chance of getting higher returns. Givewell recommendations skew towards what makes sense for an average, individual donor with a particular risk profile. By having access to a larger pool of funds, you could seed new high-expected-value charities that wouldn't necessarily make it onto Givewell's recommendation list, but are nonetheless potentially high impact (examples of recent things in this space — New Incentives, Charity Science Health etc).
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#26Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback. I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning: "Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the e…
Do you think that rather than considering smartness as a linear scale, it might make more sense to consider different people as having aptitudes in different areas? I could see one person being an excellent and effective animal welfare activist and another being a top performing hedge fund manager; it's unlikely the two could switch roles and perform equally well. Regarding HSUS, I'm not sufficiently well versed to h…
I'm not going to deny the existence of comparative advantage. At the same time, I'm not going to claim we live in a passionless universe either. If a hedge fund manager desires to beat the market, she is going to study the financials, etc. If she is also passionate about boiler chickens, why would she outsource that to someone else? Unless, of course, her passion for the market is greater than her love for boiler chickens. And, if that's the case, can you say she cares for boiler chickens or only wishes to care for boiler chickens. There is a huge difference. As they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
As far as HSUS is concerned, I'm viewing the issue from my context. EAF wanted feedback, and I gave it. More than likely I'm wrong and perhaps the greater good is being served; although, it would help if that were being measured in some way.
Finally, from what I've seen, I do believe many non-profits could use a hand from people with quantitative backgrounds. If those people ascribe to EA, they'll never join a non-profit.
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#27+ 1000 For the animals welfare. The animals that can't blog, tweet, or complain. Wildlife preservation and care for animals is as important as other common non-profit and foundations goals, but often neglected
Actually, most "effective altruists" support habitat destruction because it reduces the number of animals, and therefore also the amount of suffering.
I find this very disturbing. If you want details, see my other comment on this item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886954
Of course, EAs won't tell you this up front, as they know it would be bad PR. (cf. https://medium.com/@jacobfunnell/a-year-in-effective-altruis...: "Some effective altruists hold views that would be strongly controversial to most people outside of EA. EA does a pretty good job of either not mentioning (or actively avoiding) these conclusions in its public-facing literature. Examples include the moral imperative to destroy habitat in order to reduce wild animal suffering, the need to divert funds away from causes like poverty relief and towards artificial intelligence safety research, or the extreme triviality of aesthetic value.")
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#28Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback. I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning: "Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the e…
Thanks for the comment — we welcome feedback, even if it's harsh, so no worries! That said, I think some of this hinges on a naïve interpretation of what effective altruism is about. The idea of 'earning to give' is counterintuitive ('do more good by working in finance - whut?'), and so has been one that the media has run with. Accordingly, I think it's considerably overrepresented in many people's minds compared to…
Thanks for the reply. It does sound like you're thinking these things through. Good luck!
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#29I disagree with just maximizing QALYs as the main measure of effective altruism. See my post: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=216
Hi, thanks for your post.
I think that many EAs would agree with you here. Effective Altruism is not just about maximizing QALYs. It's about figuring out what doing good even means, figuring out how to improve the world, and then actually doing it. We're not just about educating people on one narrow conception of what doing good means, we know that doing good is hard and complex, so we're trying to build a community of people focused on figuring that out. Our community debates what it means to do the most good endlessly, and there is a lot of nuance, that's what we love about it!
You mentioned some interesting issues in population ethics in your post, it appears you take the person-affecting view. Many EAs who take this view prefer to support global health, or animal welfare charities, as they do not think it is beneficial to maximise the number of happy people in the world. Other people in our community think that a world with more people is better, provided that adding more people does not reduce the overall total happiness. In our summary of the Long-Term future Fund, you can read Nick's take on the person-affecting view[0] and see some more links to discussion of this issue. We love getting into these debates and seeing lots of different perspectives.
[0] https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future
Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
#30Why does CEA openly support the Foundational Research Institute even though their fringe negative utilitarian value system is dangerous?