I appreciate the feedback and I think it's helpful to think about what reference point we're using. I stand by what I'm saying, though, for a few reasons:
1) No cause has any prior claim to the funds, but they're zero-sum, and I think the counterfactual probably is more GH&D funding. Maybe there are funders who are willing to donate only to longtermist causes, but I think the model of a pool of money being split between GH&D/animal welfare and longtermism/x-risk is somewhat fair: e.g., OpenPhil splits its money between these two buckets, and a lot of EAs defer to the "party line." So "watching money get redirected from the Global South to AI researchers" is a true description of much of what's happening. (More indirectly, I also think EA's weirdness and futurism is turns off many people who might otherwise donate to GiveWell. This excellent post provides more detail. I think it's worth thinking about whether packaging global health with futurism and movement-building expenses justified by post hoc Pascalian “BOTECs" really does more good than harm.)
2) Even if you don't buy this, I believe making GH&D the baseline is (at least as I see it—Duncan Sabien says this is true of the drowning child thought experiment too), to some extent, the point of EA. It says "don't pay an extra $5,000/year for rent to get a marginally nicer apartment because the opportunity cost could be saving a life." At least, this ishow Peter Singer frames it in The Life You Can Save, the book that originally got me into EA.
Also, this is basically what GiveWell does by using GiveDirectly as a lower bound that their top charities have to beat. They realize that if the alternative is giving to GD, giving to Malaria Consortium or New Incentives does in practice "redirect money from the wallets of world's poorest villagers." I agree with their framing that this is an appropriate bar to expect their top charities to clear.
I appreciate the feedback and I think it's helpful to think about what reference point we're using. I stand by what I'm saying, though, for a few reasons:
1) No cause has any prior claim to the funds, but they're zero-sum, and I think the counterfactual probably is more GH&D funding. Maybe there are funders who are willing to donate only to longtermist causes, but I think the model of a pool of money being split between GH&D/animal welfare and longtermism/x-risk is somewhat fair: e.g., OpenPhil splits its money between these two buckets, and a lot of EAs defer to the "party line." So "watching money get redirected from the Global South to AI researchers" is a true description of much of what's happening. (More indirectly, I also think EA's weirdness and futurism is turns off many people who might otherwise donate to GiveWell. This excellent post provides more detail. I think it's worth thinking about whether packaging global health with futurism and movement-building expenses justified by post hoc Pascalian “BOTECs" really does more good than harm.)
2) Even if you don't buy this, I believe making GH&D the baseline is (at least as I see it—Duncan Sabien says this is true of the drowning child thought experiment too), to some extent, the point of EA. It says "don't pay an extra $5,000/year for rent to get a marginally nicer apartment because the opportunity cost could be saving a life." At least, this is how Peter Singer frames it in The Life You Can Save, the book that originally got me into EA.
Also, this is basically what GiveWell does by using GiveDirectly as a lower bound that their top charities have to beat. They realize that if the alternative is giving to GD, giving to Malaria Consortium or New Incentives does in practice "redirect money from the wallets of world's poorest villagers." I agree with their framing that this is an appropriate bar to expect their top charities to clear.