Thank you for contributing towards this! Some hopefully constructive criticism:
The idea of comparing two charities together to see how different the good done by them is a good one.
Your Comparison … section seems a bit long and I think it could be condensed substantially. The description of MakeAWish seems a bit lengthy. The Nurse Family Partnership comparison doesn’t seem that compelling. Your citation of a paper that there’s a 1000:1 effectiveness difference between many charities is dramatic; put that near the beginning!
I think you can move many sentences describing where your data came from to footnotes. Short articles are good! Wordy articles scare people away.
I’d say that picking out a good charity is substantially more difficult than picking a good investment. In finance, there’s good reason to believe that an arbitrary asset will not be a terrible investment (efficient markets) while in charity there is currently no corresponding reason to think that an arbitrary charity will not be terrible.
The lack of the efficient market assumption is very important.
Another implication of “no efficient markets in charity” is that you should look for absolute advantage rather than comparative advantage. E.g. even if you have a lot of experience with, say, looking after children, you should not get involved with childrens’ charities, you should go make money and give it to the most efficient charity (probably existential risks).
Your Comparison … section seems a bit long and I think it could be condensed substantially. The description of MakeAWish seems a bit lengthy.
What in particular would you suggest cutting out?
The Nurse Family Partnership comparison doesn’t seem that compelling
Well, it was added to address Roko’s suggestion. I personally think that it should be compelling; the tradeoff is between a single good experience and something of potentially lifelong value. In any case, I don’t have a better U.S. example :-).
Your citation of a paper that there’s a 1000:1 effectiveness difference between many charities is dramatic; put that near the beginning!
I thought about this and couldn’t think of how to do it without disrupting the flow of the essay.
I think you can move many sentences describing where your data came from to footnotes.
Did some of this above in response to your suggestion.
Short articles are good! Wordy articles scare people away.
Yes, this is my impression as well. My natural style pushes in the direction of lengthy articles; there are people who are better suited than I am to writing shorter articles.
One way to shorten the present article would be to delete the section about volunteering and nonprofit work which is independent of the rest of the article and makes it more complex/less digestable. I included it to meet the guidelines that Roko had set but for a short article maybe it’s best to focus on charitable giving proper.
I’d say that picking out a good charity is substantially more difficult than picking a good investment. In finance, there’s good reason to believe that an arbitrary asset will not be a terrible investment (efficient markets) while in charity there is currently no corresponding reason to think that an arbitrary charity will not be terrible.
Agree, but in view of the fact that the audience may be unfamiliar with economics could not think of how to address this explicitly with enough context so that the audience finds the point compelling without further lengthening the article and diluting the main intended messages.
If you send me a word document of this post I could edit it how I would edit it (to some extent) or if you are familiar with a text diff program, I can send you an original /edited file
I agree, I had the same thought as I was writing but decided against going into this point because of space constraints (and since readers may be unfamiliar with economics). But maybe it would be worthwhile to say a little bit about this; I may make a small revision accordingly.
Thank you for contributing towards this! Some hopefully constructive criticism:
The idea of comparing two charities together to see how different the good done by them is a good one.
Your Comparison … section seems a bit long and I think it could be condensed substantially. The description of MakeAWish seems a bit lengthy. The Nurse Family Partnership comparison doesn’t seem that compelling. Your citation of a paper that there’s a 1000:1 effectiveness difference between many charities is dramatic; put that near the beginning!
I think you can move many sentences describing where your data came from to footnotes. Short articles are good! Wordy articles scare people away.
I’d say that picking out a good charity is substantially more difficult than picking a good investment. In finance, there’s good reason to believe that an arbitrary asset will not be a terrible investment (efficient markets) while in charity there is currently no corresponding reason to think that an arbitrary charity will not be terrible.
The lack of the efficient market assumption is very important.
Another implication of “no efficient markets in charity” is that you should look for absolute advantage rather than comparative advantage. E.g. even if you have a lot of experience with, say, looking after children, you should not get involved with childrens’ charities, you should go make money and give it to the most efficient charity (probably existential risks).
What in particular would you suggest cutting out?
Well, it was added to address Roko’s suggestion. I personally think that it should be compelling; the tradeoff is between a single good experience and something of potentially lifelong value. In any case, I don’t have a better U.S. example :-).
I thought about this and couldn’t think of how to do it without disrupting the flow of the essay.
Did some of this above in response to your suggestion.
Yes, this is my impression as well. My natural style pushes in the direction of lengthy articles; there are people who are better suited than I am to writing shorter articles.
One way to shorten the present article would be to delete the section about volunteering and nonprofit work which is independent of the rest of the article and makes it more complex/less digestable. I included it to meet the guidelines that Roko had set but for a short article maybe it’s best to focus on charitable giving proper.
Agree, but in view of the fact that the audience may be unfamiliar with economics could not think of how to address this explicitly with enough context so that the audience finds the point compelling without further lengthening the article and diluting the main intended messages.
If you send me a word document of this post I could edit it how I would edit it (to some extent) or if you are familiar with a text diff program, I can send you an original /edited file
Sent a .odt file to your email. More detail feedback welcome but feel no obligation.
Thanks; I will consider these and revise accordingly.
I agree, I had the same thought as I was writing but decided against going into this point because of space constraints (and since readers may be unfamiliar with economics). But maybe it would be worthwhile to say a little bit about this; I may make a small revision accordingly.