Presumably the people running these charities seek funding from EA sources, despite knowing that counterfactually the bulk of that money would otherwise go to AGF/GHDF/et al.
This presumption isn't always true. In 2019, at CSH we made a deliberate decision not to continue seeking funding from sources that would counterfactually donate to GiveWell top charities.
On an earlier discussion of Nonlinear's practices, I wrote:
I worked closely with Kat for a year or so (2018-2019) when I was working at (and later leading) Charity Science Health. She's now a good friend.
...I considered Kat a good and ethical leader. I personally learned a lot from working with her. In her spending and life choices, she has shown a considerable moral courage: paying herself only $12K/year, dropping out of college because she didn't think it passed an impact cost-benefit test. Obviously that doesn't preclude the possibility that she has
I'm unclear on how this comment speaks to the content of the post, which is compatible with Kat being a courageous, frugal, and dedicated friend and leader.
My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
Are you implying that you don't believe what's reported here, because it's very different, or something else?
At a very quick skim, I am confused about whether this post is arguing that:
(2) seems obvious intuitively. (1) would be surprising to me but it makes sense to point out any gaps in our evidence against it.
FYI, EA Iran had a quite active group of mostly medical students in Tehran a year ago - they might have other things on their mind these days, but could be worth connecting with them.
I worked closely with Kat for a year or so (2018-2019) when I was working at (and later leading) Charity Science Health. She's now a good friend.
I considered Kat a good and ethical leader. I personally learned a lot from working with her. In her spending and life choices, she has shown a considerable moral courage: paying herself only $12K/year, dropping out of college because she didn't think it passed an impact cost-benefit test. Obviously that doesn't preclude the possibility that she has willfully done harmful things, but I think willfully bad behavior by Kat Woods is quite unlikely, a priori.
With limited manpower, GiveWell also has to prioritize which CEA improvements to make--and added complexity can moreover increase the risk of errors.
I have heard the claim that there were no professional ethicists among the authors of the Belmont Report.
Heads up that it's still in the headline version - though I think as an average it's fine and useful to include.
Amazing. Quick comments on "how much is spent" (GDP).
Can someone tell me things about when I should expect the next doubling, i.e. in what year should I expect daily global spending to exceed $526 billion? Feels complicated and important; I’m ignorant about what sensible projections are and how much uncertainty there is.
Will any of the lectures/talks not be recorded? It would be nice if Swapcard could indicate this.
I think that complex cluelessness implies we should be very skeptical of interventions whose claim to cost-effectiveness is through their direct, proximate effects. As has been well argued elsewhere, the long-term effects of these actions probably dominate.
In my reading, the 80,000 Hours article in the link does not fully support this claim. In the section "Can we actually influence the future," it identifies four ways actions today can influence the long-term future. But it doesn't provide a solid case about why most interventions would influe...
Do the expected values of the output probability distributions equal the point estimates that GiveWell gets from their non-probabilistic estimates? If not, how different are they?
More generally, are there any good write-ups about when and how the expected value of a model with multiple random variables differs from the same model filled out with the expected value of each of its random variables?
(I didn't find the answer skimming through, but it might be there already--sorry!)
Do you know if other CGIAR centers contributed significantly to the Green Revolution or if it was only CIMMYT? I do not.