stevenhuyn🔸
Posts 3
Comments21
Fortunately, GiveWell has agreed for me to post their response to my post on Independent Evaluation for Reputation; you can find it at the end of the post.
Reaping the benefits of AGI later is pretty insignificant in my opinion. If we get aligned AGI utopia, we will have utopia for millions of years. Acceleration by a few years if negligible if it increase p(doom) by >1%.
This is not true depending on what you think AGI utopia will look like. There's some math outlined in What We Owe the Future about this dilemma i.e. area under the curve of these hypothetical AGI utility functions.
Getting utopia 1 year faster creates a 2x better universe. (hypothetically)
GiveWell's Carley Moor from their philantrophic outreach team contacted me and we had a conversation a few weeks ago which prompted this post.
Among other things I asked about independent verification there. The short answer seems to be no independent verification with the caveat that they adjust. The spreadsheets I linked were sourced from her.
They do fund at least one meta charity that help improve monitoring & evaluation at these charities.
I asked her to either post her response email here or let me post it verbatim and am awaiting to hear from her next week. Being cautious lest I misrepresent them.
Transparency is only a means for reputation. The world is built on trust and faith in the systems and EA is no different.
I believe more people would be alarmed by the lack of independent vetting than the nominal cost effective numbers being inaccurate themself. It feels like there are perverse incentives at play.
Reputation Hardening
Prompted largely by the fall in EA credibility in recent years. And also being unsatisfied with GiveWell's lack of independent verification of the charities they recommend.
Here is a lightly edited AI generated slop version:
Reputation Hardening: Should GiveWell Verify Charity Data Independently?
"Reputation hardening" involves creating more resilient reputations.
Recent events have shown how reputation damage to one EA entity can affect the entire movement's credibility and therefore funding and influence. While GiveWell's evaluation process is thorough, it largely relies on charity-provided data. I propose they consider implementing independent verification methods.
Applying to GiveWell/GHD
- Mystery evaluators conducting unannounced site visits
- Independent surveyors (potentially hiring former charity employees) collecting impact data
- Creating funding opportunities for third-party monitoring organizations GiveWell have already been involved in market shaping
These measures could help detect potential issues early and strengthen confidence in effectiveness estimates.
This is a preliminary idea to start discussion. What other verification methods or implementation challenges should we consider?
Cool topic.
This is the key one to meditate on.
For me at least signing the giving pledge was a year of internalising that I have these values and I must eat them. Otherwise these aren't my values after all. Likewise for the standards of being a good friend, father, flutist etc.