Update 2021-10-06: I believe I was overconfident in my original interpretations of these Metaculus questions. Some commenters pointed out alternative interpretations of people's answers that could allow us to draw orthogonal or opposite conclusions. For example, on question 1, Metaculus users might predict GiveWell's top charities to drop off the list by 2031 not because better charities are discovered, but because current charities run out of room for more funding.
In the giving now vs. later debate, a conventional argument in favor of giving now is that people become better off over time, so money spent later will do less good. But some have argued the opposite: as time passes, we learn more about how to do good, and therefore we should give later. (Or, alternatively, we should use our money now to try to accelerate the learning rate.)
Metaculus provides some evidence that the second argument is the correct one: money spent later will do more good than money spent now.
This evidence comes from two Metaculus questions:
- Will one of GiveWell's 2019 top charities be estimated as the most cost-effective charity in 2031?
- How much will GiveWell guess it will cost to get an outcome as good as saving a life, at the end of 2031?
A brief explanation for each of these and why they matter:
On question 1: As of July 2021, Metaculus gives a 30% probability that one of GiveWell's 2019 top charities will be ranked as the most cost-effective charity in 2031. That means a 70% chance that the 2031 charity will not* be one of the 2019 recommendations. This could happen for two reasons: either the 2019 recommended charities run out of room for more funding, or GiveWell finds a charity that's better than any of the 2019 recommendations. This at least weakly suggests that Metaculus users expect GiveWell to improve its recommendations over time.
On question 2: Metaculus estimates that GiveWell's top charity in 2031 will need to spend $430 per life saved equivalent (according to GiveWell's own analysis). For comparison, in 2019, GiveWell estimated that its most cost-effective charity spends $592 per life saved equivalent. (These figures are adjusted for inflation.)
As with question 1, this does not unambiguously show that GiveWell top charities are expected to improve over time. Perhaps instead Metaculus expects GiveWell's estimate is currently too pessimistic, and it will converge on the true answer by 2031. But the cost reduction could also happen because GiveWell top charities truly get more effective over time.
Some caveats:
- These Metaculus answers only represent the opinions of forecasters, not any formal analysis. (Some forecasters may have incorporated formal analyses into their predictions.)
- Neither question directly asks whether money spent in 2031 will do more good than money spent now. (I don't know how to operationalize a direct question like that. Please tell me if you have any ideas.)
- These questions only ask about GiveWell top charities. Even if GiveWell recommendations become more effective over time, the same might not be true for other cause areas.
For the first question, I was one of the forecasters who gave close to the current Metaculus median answer (~30%). I can't remember my exact reasoning, but roughly:
1. Outside view on how frequently things have changed + some estimates on how likely things are to change in the future, from an entirely curve fitting perspective.
2. Decent probability that the current top charities will go down in effectiveness as the problems become less neglected/we've had stronger partial solutions for them/we discover new evidence about them. Concretely:
Malaria: CRISPR or vaccines. But also I place decent probability on bednet production and distribution being fully solved by states/international actors/large NGOs.
Deworming: Possibilities include a) we uncover new evidence that suggests deworming is less effective than we previously thought, especially at 2021/2030 worm loads* or b) mass deworming decreases the total amount of worms, decreasing marginal value, or c) both.
Cash: At GiveWell scale, I don't think direct cash transfers is ever competitive with your current best guess for top health/development interventions under naive cost-effectiveness unless you apply a strong robustness penalty to everything else.
Vitamin A: haven't thought much about it tbqh, so retreat to priors.
*The evidentiary base for deworming was always shaky to begin with, I think (within the randomista paradigm) it's reasonable to model deworming as a relatively high-risk high-reward economic intervention, and we may eventually discover evidence that conclusively demonstrates that deworming isn't economically that effective.