Thanks for this.

Without having the data, it seems the controversy graph could be driven substantially by posts which get exactly zero downvotes.

Almost all posts get at least one vote (magnitude >= 1), and balance>=0, so magnitude^balance >=1. Since the controversy graph goes below 1, I assume you are including the handling which sets controversy to zero if there are zero downvotes, per the Reddit code you linked to.

e.g. if a post has 50 upvotes:
0 downvotes --> controversy 0 (not 1.00)
1 downvote --> controversy 1.08
2 downvotes --> controversy 1.17
10 downvotes --> controversy 2.27
so a lot of the action is in whether a post gets 0 downvotes or at least 1, and we know a lot of posts get 0 downvotes because the graph is often below 1.

If this is a major contributor, the spikes would look different if you run the same calculation without the handling (or, equivalently, with the override being to 1 instead of 0). This discontinuity also makes me suspect that Reddit uses this calculation for ordering only, not as a cardinal measure -- or that zero downvotes is an edge case on Reddit!

People from 80k, Founders Pledge and GWWC have already replied with corrections.

(I downvoted this because a large fraction of the basic facts about what organisations are doing appear to be incorrect. See other comments. Mostly I think it's unfortunate to have incorrect things stated as fact in posts, but going on to draw conclusions from incorrect facts also seems unhelpful.)

I'm totally not a mod, but I thought I'd highlight the "Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" test. I think it's right in general, but especially important here. The Forum team seems to have listed basically this too: "Writing that is accurate, kind, and relevant to the discussion at hand."

I'm also excited to highlight another piece of their guidance "When you disagree with someone, approach it with curiosity: try to work out why they think what they think, and what you can learn from each other." On this:

• Figuring out what someone thinks usually involves talking to them. If posting here is the first someone has heard of your concern, that might not be a very good way of resolving the disagreement.
• Most people running a project in the community are basically trying to do good. It sounds obvious, but having a pretty strong prior on disagreements being in good faith seems wise here.

I think this is the best intro to investing for altruists that I've seen published. The investment concepts it covers are the most important ones, and the application to altruists seems right.

(For context: I used to work as a trader, which is somewhat but not very relevant, and have thought about this kind of thing a bit.)

I would guess that the decision of which GiveDirectly programme to support† is dominated by the principle you noted, of

the dollar going further overseas.

Maybe GiveDirectly will, in this case, be able to serve people in the US who are in comparable need to people in extreme poverty. That seems unlikely to me, but it seems like the main thing to figure out. I think your 'criteria' question is most relevant to checking this.

† Of course, I think the most important decision tends to be deciding which problem you aim to help solve, which would precede the question of whether and which cash transfers to fund.

The donation page and mailing list update loosely suggest that donations are project-specific by default. Likewise, GiveWell says:

GiveDirectly has told us that donations driven by GiveWell's recommendation are used for standard cash transfers (other than some grant funding from Good Ventures and cases where donors have specified a different use of the funds).

(See the donation page for what the alternatives to standard cash transfers are.)

If funding for different GiveDirectly projects are sufficiently separate, your donation would pretty much just increase the budgets of the programmes you wish to support, perhaps especially if you give via GiveWell. If I were considering giving to GiveDirectly, I would want to look into this a bit more.

For the record, I wouldn't describe having children to 'impart positive values and competence to their descendants' as a 'common thought' in effective altruism, at least any time recently.

I've been involved in the community in London for three years and in Berkeley for a year, and don't recall ever having an in-person conversation about having children to promote values etc. I've seen it discussed maybe twice on the internet over those years.

--

Additionally: This seems like an ok state of affairs to me. Having children is a huge commitment (a significant fraction of a life's work). Having children is also a major part of many people's life goals (worth the huge commitment). Compared to those factors, it seems kind of implausible even in the best case that the effects you mention would be decisive.

Then: If one can determine a priori that these effects will rarely affect the decision of whether to have children, the value of information as discussed in this piece is small.

In the '2% RGDP growth' view, the plateau is already here, since exponential RGDP growth is probably subexponential utility growth. (I reckon this is a good example of confusion caused by using 'plateau' to mean 'subexponential' :) )

In the 'accelerating view', it seems that whether there is exponential utility growth in the long term comes down to the same intuitions about whether things keep accelerating forever that are discussed in other threads.