Yes I think we agree, but I also think that it's not a crux of the argument.

As Neel Nanda noted, whatever vaguely reasonable method you use to calculate impact will result in attributing a lot of impact to life-saving interventions.

I think there is a valuable concern about Triple counting impact in EA and I agree that there is a case for Shapley values being better than counterfactuals^[1].

What I really don't agree with is that we should let someone choke and die, just because otherwise Henry Heimlich would get the credit anyway. The goal is not to get the most credit or Shapley values, but to help others, I don't see what prof. Wenar proposes as a better alternative to GiveWell.

1. ^{^}

   I disagree that Shapley values are better than counterfactual in most cases, but I think it's a reasonable stance to have.

I don't see how asking for higher standards for criticism makes EA defenseless against "bullshit."

I actually would argue the opposite: if we keep encouraging and incentivizing any kind of criticism, and tolerate needlessly acrimonious personal attacks, we end up in an environment where nobody proposes anything besides the status quo, and the status quo becomes increasingly less transparent.

Three recent examples that come to mind:

• User @Omega stopped writing their criticism of AI Safety organizations partly because of how the criticism of their criticism assumed bad faith
• @Happier Lives Institute stopped writing their criticism of/alternatives to GiveWell in part because some criticism they got was largely personal attacks
• @Dustin Moskovitz claims that they^[1] write less on this forum because of attacks from EAs. He also wrote the attitude in EA communities is "give an inch, fight a mile". So I'll choose to be less legible instead.

I think Holly_Elmore herself is another example: she used to write posts like "We are in triage every second of every day", which I think are very useful to make EA less "bullshit", but now mostly doesn't post on this forum, partly because of the bad quality costly criticism she receives.

I largely agree with the last section of this comment from Aaron Gertler written one year ago:

The Forum has a hard balance to strike:

• I think the average comment is just a bit less argumentative / critical than would be ideal.
• I think the average critical comment is less kind than would be ideal.
• I want criticism to be kind, but I also want it to exist, and pushing people to be kinder might also reduce the overall quantity of criticism. I'm not sure what the best realistic outcome is.

I personally fear that the current discussion environment on this forum errs too much in the "unkind criticism" direction, and I see at least two large downsides:

• It encourages some form of "enlightened immobilism", where anyone proposing doing anything differently from the status quo gets instantly shut down.
• It strongly discourages transparency from most projects, especially (but not exclusively) less established or more speculative ones.

I used to think that accepting callousness was required to have technical excellence, e.g. reading how people like famous software engineer Linus Torvalds used to communicate. After seeing many extremely competent people communicate criticism in a professional and constructive manner, I have completely changed my mind. Torvalds also apologised and changed communication style years ago.

I believe that a culture of more constructive and higher-quality criticism would encourage more discussion overall, not less, especially from experienced professionals who have different perspectives from mainline EA thinking.

See also this paragraph from the Charity Entrepreneurship handbook:

Writing as myself, not as a moderator

1. ^{^}

   I'm not sure if he meant Good Ventures, Open Philanthropy, or some other group

I would also be curious to hear more about why/if you are >~95% confident that pigs are not entities that experience suffering, while most humans are.^[1]

Is it about the ability to have second-order beliefs, the ability to have complex language and certain kinds of social structures, or something else entirely?

1. ^{^}

   I think pigs are much more similar to humans than broiler chickens, so are a better species to examine the difference

Thanks! Here's what the full distribution looks like right now:

Reminds me of xkcd.com/1162

I'm really surprised by the distribution. I think many voters might be too optimistic about the actual impact of marginal funding to animal welfare projects.

If I remember correctly, we decided not to list them in both groups because people already need to scroll a lot (especially on mobile) to see all the 15 programs, if we added the 6 recommended ones it would become 21

I agree that not seeing the top programs in the various categories is also confusing though, especially if you want to link to them directly

What kinds of open questions do you have in mind (perhaps some examples would help)? 

Random example: I just wanted to ask today if anyone knew of a good review of "The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does" written by a non-male, given that I think one of the key criticisms of EA in the feminist-vegetarian community is that its leaders are mostly white males, but I didn't know where to ask.

I haven't looked at this model, but in GWWC's 2020–2022 Impact evaluation, you can change the annual discount rate here or here (and other key parameters in cells nearby)

If I understand correctly, a ~10% yearly discount rate ~halves the expected value of a pledge and changes the best guess non-marginal multiplier from 30x to 23x

I think the equivalent in this model is here and a ~10% discount rate changes the marginal multiplier from 14x to 8x

Thank you for raising this!

After your email last week, we agreed to edit that section and copy EV's terms on Feedback. I've just changed the text on the website.

We only removed the part about "all Feedback we request from you will be collected on an anonymous basis", as we might want to collect non-anonymous feedback in the future.

If anyone else has any feedback, make sure to also send us an email (like Eevee did) as we might miss things on the EA Forum.

(Disclaimer: I work at Giving What We Can but I was not involved in this program, and this is just my personal take)

Hi Daniela, could you clarify what you mean by "most of the EA funds are being given to only 2 organizations? (At least for Animal welfare)"

There is no consensus on what counts as "EA funds", but people usually include Open Philanthropy, which is by far the largest funder and funds many organizations. Are you referring to the EA Animal Welfare Fund? They also support many organizations.

Many national effective giving orgs currently only show The Humane League and Good Food Institute on their website, but that does not imply "most of the EA funds" are being given to them. Also, Giving What We Can allows donors to support several other projects in animal welfare, I imagine that as other effective giving organizations grow, they might also add more projects if there's enough interest from donors (but I'm just speculating.)

On "evaluating the evaluators" you might be interested in this page from Giving What We Can and the evaluation of ACE and the EA Animal Welfare Fund