In EA, people use the word "counterfactual" in a non-standard way, but I've never heard this discussed or pointed out. E.g. Jeff writes,
Say I offer to make a counterfactual donation of $50 to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) if you do a thing; which of the following are ok for me to do if you don't?
But outside of the community, "counterfactual" means "didn't happen". I think the word "causal" is closest in meaning to how we use "counterfactual," though it doesn't work in this case.
(In this case, I think the standard English way of communicating the idea is "Say I offer to make a donation of $50 to AMF only if you do a thing...")
My hunch is that the animals involved in anything GiveWell would support would live vastly better lives than factory farmed animals in high-income countries. There are of course factory farms in low-income countries, but animals raised by smallholder farmers do not live in those conditions, from what I remember of a couple years in rural Kenya.
There is actually very rigorous evidence for the effectiveness of "animal-based support" in the form of "graduation programs", though I'm not sure whether these are likely to hit the new GiveWell livelihoods bar. These programs typically involve a gift of some livestock.
To me, the core EA principles that I refer to when talking about the community and its ideas (and the terms I use for them) are:
Cosmopolitanism: The same thing that CEA means by "impartiality." Beings that I have no connection to are no less ethically important than my friends, family, or countrymen.
Evidence orientation: I think this is basically what CEA calls "Scout mindset."
Attention to costs and cost-effectiveness: The same thing that CEA calls "Recognition of tradeoffs"
Commensurability of different outcomes: GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, and others make explicit judgments of how many income doublings for a family (for example) are equivalent to one under-5 life saved, or similar. This enables you to do "cause prioritization" - without it, you get into an "apples to oranges" problem in a lot of resource allocation questions.
I like CEA's explicit highlighting of "Scope sensitivity" - I will embrace that in future conversations. But I'm writing this post to highlight outcome commensurability too. I think it is the one principle that most differentiates EA-aligned international development practitioners from other international development practitioners who have a firm grounding in economics.
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.
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.
I would also like to share my experience negotiating my salary with Kat when I first joined Charity Science Health, i.e., before we were friends. It was extremely positive. She was very committed to frugality, and she initially offered me the position of Associate Director at a salary of $25K/year, the bottom end of the advertised salary range. We exchanged several long emails discussing the tradeoffs in a higher or lower salary (team morale, risk of value drift, resources available for the core work, counterfactual use of funds, etc.). The correspondence felt like a genuine, collaborative search for the truth. I had concluded that I needed to make at least $45K/year to feel confident I was saving the minimum I would need in retirement, and in the end we agreed on $45K. Subsequently Kat sent me a contract for $50K, which I perceived as a goodwill gesture. My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
In EA, people use the word "counterfactual" in a non-standard way, but I've never heard this discussed or pointed out. E.g. Jeff writes,
But outside of the community, "counterfactual" means "didn't happen". I think the word "causal" is closest in meaning to how we use "counterfactual," though it doesn't work in this case.
(In this case, I think the standard English way of communicating the idea is "Say I offer to make a donation of $50 to AMF only if you do a thing...")
My hunch is that the animals involved in anything GiveWell would support would live vastly better lives than factory farmed animals in high-income countries. There are of course factory farms in low-income countries, but animals raised by smallholder farmers do not live in those conditions, from what I remember of a couple years in rural Kenya.
There is actually very rigorous evidence for the effectiveness of "animal-based support" in the form of "graduation programs", though I'm not sure whether these are likely to hit the new GiveWell livelihoods bar. These programs typically involve a gift of some livestock.
To me, the core EA principles that I refer to when talking about the community and its ideas (and the terms I use for them) are:
I like CEA's explicit highlighting of "Scope sensitivity" - I will embrace that in future conversations. But I'm writing this post to highlight outcome commensurability too. I think it is the one principle that most differentiates EA-aligned international development practitioners from other international development practitioners who have a firm grounding in economics.
I added an addendum with a later update
My perception is that LaMP is leading that work now after being incubated at CGD
Do you know if other CGIAR centers contributed significantly to the Green Revolution or if it was only CIMMYT? I do not.
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 would also like to share my experience negotiating my salary with Kat when I first joined Charity Science Health, i.e., before we were friends. It was extremely positive. She was very committed to frugality, and she initially offered me the position of Associate Director at a salary of $25K/year, the bottom end of the advertised salary range. We exchanged several long emails discussing the tradeoffs in a higher or lower salary (team morale, risk of value drift, resources available for the core work, counterfactual use of funds, etc.). The correspondence felt like a genuine, collaborative search for the truth. I had concluded that I needed to make at least $45K/year to feel confident I was saving the minimum I would need in retirement, and in the end we agreed on $45K. Subsequently Kat sent me a contract for $50K, which I perceived as a goodwill gesture. My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
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.