For about 3 years now I’ve been giving to a number of charities through a monthly standing order. Initially setting it up was very satisfying and choosing the charities was a little like purchasing a new gadget, assuming a hands on experience is not available, and there are no trusted reviewers, I look at the various options and go with the ones whose advertising most closely reflected my personality and who looked the least like charlatans. With gadget purchases I find these indirect signals much more informative of the experience with the product than any enumeration of features, while individual statistics can convey value (and certainly attract attention) they often obscure the interaction experience or final quality.
So it is with charities, I cannot easily experience for myself whether they convey benefit, nor have I found a trusted source of recommendations. Charities don’t tend to focus on the statistics of their work often preferring to focus on the emotions of the problem, perhaps reflecting the reality that naive, emotional people are the most likely to give to charity. Even when statistics are used they are like the feature lists for the gadgets, I feel no confidence that they reflect the whole picture.
While I have received some satisfaction from my donations, I do feel uncomfortable with the lack of confidence I have that my donations are actually causing an improvement, or whether they are directed towards genuine priorities. From my experiences in work I am familiar with the enormous waste within many organisations and how small steps of progress can be eradicated by later poor decision making.
What I really want is a kind of economics of suffering, a measurement of the various problems that I can apply my own weights and hypotheses to. I would like to see a comparison of the expected loss of life, and loss of quality of life, due to temperature rises, famines, AIDs, cancer etc. as well as the expected rate of return on my investment: have any of the charities I can give money to achieved progress or do they just maintain a status quo. How many charities have done the equivalent of eradicating small pox (i.e. solved a problem). Does anyone know of anything like this? I think it would be a much more valuable step than using rationality to empower the emotional arms race between charities.
For about 3 years now I’ve been giving to a number of charities through a monthly standing order. Initially setting it up was very satisfying and choosing the charities was a little like purchasing a new gadget, assuming a hands on experience is not available, and there are no trusted reviewers, I look at the various options and go with the ones whose advertising most closely reflected my personality and who looked the least like charlatans. With gadget purchases I find these indirect signals much more informative of the experience with the product than any enumeration of features, while individual statistics can convey value (and certainly attract attention) they often obscure the interaction experience or final quality.
So it is with charities, I cannot easily experience for myself whether they convey benefit, nor have I found a trusted source of recommendations. Charities don’t tend to focus on the statistics of their work often preferring to focus on the emotions of the problem, perhaps reflecting the reality that naive, emotional people are the most likely to give to charity. Even when statistics are used they are like the feature lists for the gadgets, I feel no confidence that they reflect the whole picture.
While I have received some satisfaction from my donations, I do feel uncomfortable with the lack of confidence I have that my donations are actually causing an improvement, or whether they are directed towards genuine priorities. From my experiences in work I am familiar with the enormous waste within many organisations and how small steps of progress can be eradicated by later poor decision making.
What I really want is a kind of economics of suffering, a measurement of the various problems that I can apply my own weights and hypotheses to. I would like to see a comparison of the expected loss of life, and loss of quality of life, due to temperature rises, famines, AIDs, cancer etc. as well as the expected rate of return on my investment: have any of the charities I can give money to achieved progress or do they just maintain a status quo. How many charities have done the equivalent of eradicating small pox (i.e. solved a problem). Does anyone know of anything like this? I think it would be a much more valuable step than using rationality to empower the emotional arms race between charities.
Have you seen GiveWell before? If not, it’s well worth looking into.
If you have seen GiveWell before and don’t trust its recommendations, why? They’re always looking to improve and would welcome suggestions.
Thank you! That’s a great link I’ll look into it.