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Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

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Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#41

Post by willmacaskill »

Analemma_ wrote: post #31
matthewmarkus wrote: post #16

Oh 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…

> Let me add that this issue, to me, is the biggest problem with Effective Altruism (EA). It says, "You're 'smart,' go out and become a wealthy hedge fund manager. That's the best use of your time, and then donate the proceeds to things that matter." I think there's kind of a spectrum in EA, where you can choose your preferred intensity level. There's "soft EA", which is the basic "I'm going to evaluate these differe…

I'm glad to hear this! We want to encourage people to incorporate EA into their life as much as they feel comfortable with, and everyone's circumstances are different.

And note you can be a 'hard EA' without earning to give. Research, policy/politics, founding or working for a valuable organisation - these are all great career paths, depending on your particular circumstances and skills. See https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ for more!

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#42

Post by tmacaulay »

ArneBab wrote: post #35
tmacaulay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, we completely agree! Right now, the incentives in the charity sector are totally screwed. The charities which get the biggest are the ones with the best marketing, not the ones which have the most impact. That means that big charities often hide their mistakes and focus on maintaining a wholesome image. In contrast, many of the organizations we work with regularly publish their mistakes and lessons. By sharin…

So New Incentives changed what they wanted to do because they would get paid more that way? I know this sounds harsh. This is the incentive you create: Pushing people who initially wanted to help where they see need to instead focus on helping where they get more money for do so. And a sufficient amount of free money is mostly available to a very small group of people. This does not mean it’s necessarily bad. It just…

Thanks for your feedback, the dynamic you're talking about is exactly the problem we're trying to solve. We want the best charities, which target the biggest needs, in a cost-effective way, to get the most funding.

New Incentives changed what they were focusing on because their initial program was proven to be less effective. They got some initial results from their study, and it showed that because they could only reach a smaller number of people, their program didn't hit the threshold they were targeting for cost-effectiveness.

Right now charities are incentivised to skew their programs towards areas in which they can get the most funding. We're trying to fund programs based on effectiveness, and build a community of donors who will donate to whatever programs are proven to be the most effective. If people founding non-profits know that there is a community of donors who will fund programs that work, we fix these incentives, and we hope to see many more effective programs launched. This should make it easier for effective charities to get the funding they need to grow.

We don't focus on special interest groups, and we don't fund whatever our largest donors are most interested in, we only fund programs that are highly effective.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#43

Post by deontologizt »

colophonemes wrote: post #36
deontologizt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-al…

While there are people who identify as effective altruist who hold views that are controversial, I think it's important to not paint with such a broad brush. As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the c…

Thank you for the response and I'm sorry for the tone of my earlier comment.

> As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the community.

There is disagreement within the EA community on ethics. However, almost all the disagreements are between different 'denominations' within the church of consequentialism -- questions like population ethics (total vs. person-affecting vs. negative), theories of well-being (hedonistic vs. preference), and distributional justice (utilitarian vs. prioritarian). The fundamental theory of consequentialism is taken for granted by most EAs. As my linked article says, "ultimately, only people who have a good majority of utilitarians in their moral parliaments are going to be able to get on-board with EA." I think this is true to some extent. While there are non-consequentialist EAs, it's hard to deny that the culture of EA is extremely consequentialist.

Even though I like the abstract idea of effective altruism, my value disagreements make me hesitant to trust certain EA organizations. I'm personally a deontological vegan and very concerned about animals, but if I donate to ACE (see section 7 of https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/the-actual-number-is-almo...) or the CEA Animal Welfare fund, how do I know the money won't go to something I ethically oppose (like pro-habitat destruction advocacy)?

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#44

Post by tmacaulay »

jefftk wrote: post #39
colophonemes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4) GiveWell offers this as well: https://secure.givewell.org/ You can donate to GiveWell for distribution to their to charities, and you can either choose the breakdown or ask them to allocate it as they think best.

That's true. You can donate to GiveWell's top charities directly through GiveWell. For many donors, especially those who only want to donate to proven charities with a good track record, this is a great choice.

With our Global Health and Development Fund, we hope to also make small, seed grants to promising new initiatives, to help them build evidence to support their program, or to replicate a promising intervention in a new geographic region, to figure out if the program can scale. Many of these donation opportunities are small, and individual donors won't necessarily hear about them. With Elie managing this fund, we hope to be able to quickly fund promising new projects, so they spend less time on PR and fundraising, and more time doing good work.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#45

Post by colophonemes »

jefftk wrote: post #39
colophonemes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4) GiveWell offers this as well: https://secure.givewell.org/ You can donate to GiveWell for distribution to their to charities, and you can either choose the breakdown or ask them to allocate it as they think best.

Good point — a nice feature but not a point of differentiation from Givewell's donation page... I think the others still stand – in general you gain additional flexibility with the Funds without compromising effectiveness.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#46

Post by deontologizt »

colophonemes wrote: post #36
deontologizt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-al…

While there are people who identify as effective altruist who hold views that are controversial, I think it's important to not paint with such a broad brush. As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the c…

It's not letting me edit my comment, so I'll post this separately.

I can't help but feel that accusing me of "selective quoting" is just a tactic used to deflect a true observation. As far as I can tell, the most well-known EAs who have commented on wild animal suffering have unilaterally come out in support of Tomasik-like conclusions, e.g. CEA's CEO William MacAskill has written an article called "To truly end animal suffering, the most ethical choice is to kill wild predators (especially Cecil the lion)", and 80,000 Hours director Rob Wiblin has written a blog post called "Why improve nature when destroying it is so much easier?" (https://archive.fo/HbE2a). This has also been my experience in online EA communities, such as the EA Facebook group. I can think of dozens of articles written by prominent EAs supporting habitat destruction, but only one opposing it (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/14l/the_unproven_and_unprov...).

Since there's no robust evidence (eg surveys) on EA views of wild animal suffering, this is the best evidence available.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#47

Post by kyleschiller »

andy_ppp wrote: post #3

This 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.

Yeah! Givewell does exactly that

http://www.givewell.org/about/our-mistakes

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#48

Post by cgag »

tmacaulay wrote: post #23
tempestn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there an EA job board somewhere? Maybe people aren't interested due to pay, but I doubt many people are aware the jobs exist in the first place. I was under the impression it was a small pool of applicants but a much smaller pool of job openings.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#49

Post by colophonemes »

deontologizt wrote: post #43
colophonemes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are people who identify as effective altruist who hold views that are controversial, I think it's important to not paint with such a broad brush. As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the c…

Thank you for the response and I'm sorry for the tone of my earlier comment. > As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the community. There is disagreement within the EA community on ethics. However, alm…

Yeah, I agree that it's much easier to get on board with the fundamental proposition of EA if you're of a consequentialist disposition, because the 'most' in 'do the most good' implies a maximising view. I don't think that it's inherently antithetical to other value systems, but agree that because there are more consequentialists, it's more culturally consequentialist.

The reason we publish fund manager grant history/writeups is so that you can have a sense of what their values are, and can make some calls about whether that accords with your views. Without presuming to speak for him or pre-empt any decisions, I strongly suspect that Lewis is unlikely to grant to anything on the more speculative/controversial side of animal welfare (in general I think it's more likely to focus on corporate cage-free programs and meat replacement tech). We think there are a lot of good reasons not to use the Funds[1], and if you're worried that you're going to end up funding something that's harmful, you shouldn't donate to that Fund.

[1] https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/faq?tag=why-use-ea-f...

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