All of SydMartin's Comments + Replies

I would love to know if you decided to go forward with Movember this year. I would also be really torn about this. On one hand making a visual statement about being philanthropic helps destigmatize talking about where you donate and why. This is good if your long term goal is to create a large culture shift more towards EA values. The downside being that it takes a long time and a ton of effort and may mean people donate sub-optimally. I think you are right that this is very unlikely to pull any money from highly effective causes since this strategy is aim... (read more)

I appreciate your advice not to bring divergent opinions "to public discussion [to] see what everyone thought" - your reception may in fact convince me this is an good course of action in the future. I fear this may have fallen into the trap of making EA unwelcoming by coming across as presumptuous or even hostile. I would like to think this wasn't your intention and you were hoping to have a conversation so I'll address some of your concerns or assumptions.

A point of clarity: I'm not a strict consequentialist - so there are many things here wher... (read more)

Yes, that is an accurate summation. I don't think many of these causes are the 'most' effective, but I believe them to be potentially effective but lack measurements. We don't talk very often about other potentially effective benefits of donating outside of core EA charities. I think there is benefit in discussing/exploring exceptions or other donation strategies people may have.

This sounds like a really great idea. I think as a community we tend to make loads of predictions; it seems likely we do this a lot more than other demographics. We do this for fun, as thought experiments and often as a key area of focus such as x-risk etc. It seems like a good idea to track our individual abilities on doing this sort of predicting for many reasons. Identifying who is particularly good at this, for improvement etc. It does make me concerned that we would become hyper-focused on predictions and lead us to potentially neglect current causes;... (read more)

Thank you for sharing! I think a/b testing this seems like a really good idea. Even just testing the way you are phrasing the question opposed to testing other questions. A static online survey would definitely cut down on the time investment since it will collect all the data for you, however it will definitely cut into your response rate (more clicks = more work).

It seems like continuing to gather this information over the course of all the EA Global meetings and the launch of Will's book would be valuable due to the likelihood of continued rapid growth.... (read more)

I'm inclined to agree with Holden for a number of reasons. First and foremost being that this isn't really what GiveWell does. They are very good at what they do, which is evaluate existing charities; while I see the tie-in with knowing how a good charity is run, it is a far cry from making organizational changes. Which is the other reason I agree with him, doing this is hard. Like really, really, substantially hard.

However I think hard and 'not worth doing' are very different things. I also agree that CEA or EA Ventures would be more appropriate venues to... (read more)

Thank you for posting this! I think these are really great counter arguments, as well as a succinct description of many criticisms of EA. As we are rapidly gaining press, we are also gaining critiques and almost all of the ones I've seen are exactly this rationale.

What I keep waiting for someone to say, but haven't seen quite yet, is the response 'That's OK. You don't have to work on X to still identify as an Effective Altruist.' For example I know quite a few people in EA that care deeply about existential risk, but aren't particularly moved by the global... (read more)

I think that governmental orgs would be a great way to do this!

I do worry that doing this as an individual has it's draw backs. I think getting to this sort of position requires ingraining yourself into a dysfunctional culture and I worry about getting sucked into the dysfunction, or succumbing to the multiple pressures and restraints within such an organization. Whereas an independent organization could remain more objective & focused on effectiveness.

I agree that trying to branch out to, or add an EA cause to a current charities is unlikely to succeed. My experience is that you are right - there are lots of services and advice out there for charities that want to improve implementation or strategy (mainly focused around cultivating donors).

I would be interested to know if there are many resources out there aimed at getting organizations to collect more data. To asses their success rates more scientifically. It is also my understanding that the advice out there for creating more effective implementation... (read more)

Yes this is indeed my hypothesis; thank you for stating it so plainly. I think you've summed up my initial idea quite well.

My assumption is that trying to improve a very effective charity is potentially a lot of work and research, while trying to improve an ineffective but well funded charity, even a little, could require less intense research and have a very large pay-off. Particularly given that there are very few highly effective charities but LOTS of semi-effective, or ineffective ones, meaning there is a larger opportunity. Even if only 10% of non EA ... (read more)

I agree that making charities more effective is a difficult uphill battle. It is definitely easier and more beneficial in the short term to evaluate existing charities. It would be really great to see some sort of cost/benefit break down comparing the time and energy it would take to create a new charity vs retrofitting an existing one.

This seems like a very complex question but I think it may be valuable as a long-term strategy for EAs to look at. Ultimately the goal is to divert enough energy and attention to highly effective charities, which would ultim... (read more)

Thanks Tom. I think I will pose this question in it's own article, but wanted to get some initial feedback from people beforehand. So thanks :)

Like Owen all I can offer is anecdata. I've worked in nonprofits or public sector jobs during my career and there is a serious brain drain problem. Again I don't have specific numbers but it is talked about frequently, and definitely felt. I know several talented, thoughtful, hard working people who left nonprofit work because there was no money, and no expectation of this changing through their career.

In my experience there is actually the established norm that if you are asking for money on-par with what your position would earn in for-profit you are vi... (read more)

Has there been much thought or discussion put into the idea of making existing charities more effective? Sure there are lots of organizations out there that focus on making marketing more effective or getting more donors; but there seems to be a big whole in the market for people or organizations that work to turn current charities into ones we would consider effective. I've thought about this myself quite frequently and would be stoked to see something like this. Has this already been discussed elsewhere?