But if people were better educated and had more resources, surely they’d be better at handling those problems, whatever they may be. Therefore we should focus on speeding up economic development, right?
followed by this
These three examples are very common appeals to commonsense. But commonsense hasn’t worked very well in the domain of finding optimal causes.
followed by your main points, imply an argument that we shouldn’t focus on speeding up economic development. It’s this connotation that I found unjust, and responded to in the ancestor comment.
I think focusing on speeding up economic development is important. But I disagree that we know of ways to speed up economic development that create more impact than AMF.
(Note: this is not saying AMF is optimal for speeding up economic development; it’s that we don’t know enough about economic development to say.)
I disagree that we know of ways to speed up economic development that create more impact than AMF
Potential candidates:
Public education
Foreign aid
this is not saying that AMF is optimal … it’s that we don’t know enough
So adjust the expected utility of public education and foreign aid downwards in proportion to their risk.
If you want to save the most people with your money then you need to purchase units of the most cost effective charity (after risk adjustment). We already do a lot of economic development (that’s what public education and foreign aid are for).
You must believe one of the following:
a) Risk adjusted economic stimulus (in the form of public education / foreign aid) is more cost effective than AMF
b) Risk adjusted stimulus is less cost effective than AMF
c) Risk adjusted stimulus is precisely as cost effective as AMF
Your comment implies you reject a). If b) is the case, then you should want to transfer funds from education to AMF until they equalize. c) implies indifference between them, and is implausible.
Do you believe public education should be defunded to support AMF? It seems to me that you must. That is a fine argument to make, but it is a much less obvious point, and I don’t think your casual dismissal of economic stimulus did it justice.
I disagree with your conclusion because there’s a difference between...
(1) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and marginal risk-adjusted stimulus beating marginal contributions to AMF
(2) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and risk-adjusted stimulus being done by those who know what they’re doing beating AMF
(3) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and $1B in risk-adjusted stimulus beating $1B to AMF
I do think it’s quite plausible that public education spending in the developed world is not as cost-effective at producing well-being than spending on AMF (until AMF runs out of room for more funding). But I also think there are far less controversial and less useful places we could get money for AMF from.
Along the same lines as what you’ve asked me, if you think economic stimulus is important, do you think AMF should be defunded in order to donate to the US government or to developed world education?
do you think AMF should be defunded in order to donate to US government or to developed world education?
No. To developing-world education, probably (given sufficient evidence of effectiveness).
On a mildly related note, I see AMF as an organization that treats the symptom of malaria instead of the cause. I’d rather donate money to an organization that makes measurable progress towards eliminating malaria entirely.
Treating symptoms is important. Immediate feedback is a powerful tool. However, I think it’s possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Supporting provably-effective short term charities could lead to risk aversion that costs lives in the long run.
None of your post contradicts these statements directly, but I found it uncomfortably dismissive of certain long-term goals. My current feeling is that GiveWell is too risk averse. I haven’t inspected that feeling lately as my conclusion w.r.t. MIRI short-circuited further inquiry into GiveWell.
To rephrase my original concern, I feel like it is possible to accept all the arguments in your post and use them to argue in favor of donating to charities that improve third-world education, despite the fact that the connotation of your post implies you disagree. Specifically, the economic-development snipe felt somewhat dishonest.
I think there’s an interesting and decently evidenced argument to be made that fighting disease is actually the best way to boost developing-world education, better than direct interventions in education (see here and here, plus GiveWell’s concerns about education).
~
I’d rather donate money to an organization that makes measurable progress towards eliminating malaria entirely.
With 100% bednet coverage, the amount of attack vectors for malaria would be substantially lower, and malaria could be eliminated, so I think AMF is a plausible candidate for malaria elimination as well as malaria reduction.
But what other opportunities are there? I suppose you could try to aim to fund vaccine research, but there aren’t any organizations pursuing a malaria vaccine with room for more funding (I’ve looked, documentation forthcoming on Giving What We Can).
~
Treating symptoms is important. Immediate feedback is a powerful tool. However, I think it’s possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Supporting provably-effective short term charities could lead to risk aversion that costs lives in the long run.
As much as I’ve seemingly argued against this, I think the sentiment is important. The problem is, however, there are significant barriers right now to implementing these long-run approaches—we simply just don’t know enough yet. Thus, I prefer a value of information approach.
~
Specifically, the economic-development snipe felt somewhat dishonest.
Dishonesty, to me, implies malevolence; an intention to deceive or mislead. Do you think I’m being misleading?
Thanks for all of the resources. I’ve updated considerably in favor of AMF as a means to improving third-world conditions.
We simply don’t know enough yet. Thus, I prefer a value of information approach.
Conceded. Really I’m just lamenting that we aren’t non-deterministic problem solvers. I still think that there are better options out there, but I don’t know what they are and I don’t have a way to differentiate the better from the worse. This is frustrating, but it’s not an argument. My desire to donate to AMF is increased, and I’ve decreased my probability that GiveWell is too risk adverse.
I still believe that there are under-funded charities with long-term goals that provide more utiilty for my dollar (as per my other top-level comment), but this is due to viewing the problem space as different in some areas. I am now much closer to agreement with your points in the third-world assistance space.
Do you think I’m being misleading?
Yes, a bit. No offense intended. The general article was not misleading, and the intent was well-received. However, I still feel that the tone of this:
But if people were better educated and had more resources, surely they’d be better at handling those problems, whatever they may be. Therefore we should focus on speeding up economic development, right?
These three examples are very common appeals to commonsense. But commonsense hasn’t worked very well in the domain of finding optimal causes.
was somewhat misleading. It felt like an attack on a position which you disagree with without sufficient evidence. To me, it felt like you were providing evidence against X, and then you slipped in a jab against Y, which is related to X but was not covered by the evidence provided. I’m not sure the name for this logical fallacy, but yeah, it felt like you were (perhaps unconsciously) trying to garner support against Y via arguments against related X.
The evidence and reasoning you provided above go a fair way towards arguing your point, and I’ve updated accordingly, but the above quote still seems like somewhat naked and misleading in the original article.
Really I’m just lamenting that we aren’t non-deterministic problem solvers. I still think that there are better options out there, but I don’t know what they are and I don’t have a way to differentiate the better from the worse. This is frustrating, but it’s not an argument. My desire to donate to AMF is increased, and I’ve decreased my probability that GiveWell is too risk adverse.
I am very sympathetic to that sentiment. And I’m glad to see someone updating quickly and properly.
~
No offense intended.
I’m not offended. I just want to make sure to correct the article, because I don’t want to be misleading.
~
To me, it felt like you were providing evidence against X, and then you slipped in a jab against Y, which is related to X but was not covered by the evidence provided.
That’s certainly possible. What would you say X and Y are?
I think X is the position that “economic development will reliably and predictably reduce existential risk” or a weaker claim like “economic development has enough of a chance of reducing existential risk that we should donate to it instead of something else”.
Is Y something like “economic development in the developing world is a reasonable target area for donations”?
X was roughly “we should donate to speculative projects with long term goals” and Y was “we should focus on developing the economy and improving education”.
Arguments supporting “some things are too good to be true” / “I’m very skeptical of speculative projects” were against X. The statement deriding Y (quoted above) seemed out of place, because you did not successfully link economic development and education improvement with the class of speculative long-term charities that you argue against supporting.
For what it’s worth, I still don’t think that public education / economic development fall into that class. They are long term, but their impact is well supported. The arguments that caused me to update were:
1) Reducing disease goes a long way towards stimulating the economy and improving education levels
2) Simply reducing attack vectors goes a long way towards eliminating diseases
3) It is difficult to find other means of economic/educational stimulus that are more effective (after adjusting for risk)
So while I agree more with your conclusions now, I still think that the jab at promoting economic development / education is out of place.
In other words, the current connotation of the article (with respect to economic stimulus) is “you think you should fund education/economic growth, but you should actually fund AMF instead”, whereas I think the correct connotation is more like “even if you want to fund education/economic growth, AMF is the best way to do it”.
Sure. This
followed by this
followed by your main points, imply an argument that we shouldn’t focus on speeding up economic development. It’s this connotation that I found unjust, and responded to in the ancestor comment.
I think focusing on speeding up economic development is important. But I disagree that we know of ways to speed up economic development that create more impact than AMF.
(Note: this is not saying AMF is optimal for speeding up economic development; it’s that we don’t know enough about economic development to say.)
Potential candidates:
Public education
Foreign aid
So adjust the expected utility of public education and foreign aid downwards in proportion to their risk.
If you want to save the most people with your money then you need to purchase units of the most cost effective charity (after risk adjustment). We already do a lot of economic development (that’s what public education and foreign aid are for).
You must believe one of the following:
a) Risk adjusted economic stimulus (in the form of public education / foreign aid) is more cost effective than AMF
b) Risk adjusted stimulus is less cost effective than AMF
c) Risk adjusted stimulus is precisely as cost effective as AMF
Your comment implies you reject a). If b) is the case, then you should want to transfer funds from education to AMF until they equalize. c) implies indifference between them, and is implausible.
Do you believe public education should be defunded to support AMF? It seems to me that you must. That is a fine argument to make, but it is a much less obvious point, and I don’t think your casual dismissal of economic stimulus did it justice.
I disagree with your conclusion because there’s a difference between...
(1) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and marginal risk-adjusted stimulus beating marginal contributions to AMF
(2) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and risk-adjusted stimulus being done by those who know what they’re doing beating AMF
(3) risk-adjusted stimulus beating AMF and $1B in risk-adjusted stimulus beating $1B to AMF
I do think it’s quite plausible that public education spending in the developed world is not as cost-effective at producing well-being than spending on AMF (until AMF runs out of room for more funding). But I also think there are far less controversial and less useful places we could get money for AMF from.
Along the same lines as what you’ve asked me, if you think economic stimulus is important, do you think AMF should be defunded in order to donate to the US government or to developed world education?
No. To developing-world education, probably (given sufficient evidence of effectiveness).
On a mildly related note, I see AMF as an organization that treats the symptom of malaria instead of the cause. I’d rather donate money to an organization that makes measurable progress towards eliminating malaria entirely.
Treating symptoms is important. Immediate feedback is a powerful tool. However, I think it’s possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Supporting provably-effective short term charities could lead to risk aversion that costs lives in the long run.
None of your post contradicts these statements directly, but I found it uncomfortably dismissive of certain long-term goals. My current feeling is that GiveWell is too risk averse. I haven’t inspected that feeling lately as my conclusion w.r.t. MIRI short-circuited further inquiry into GiveWell.
To rephrase my original concern, I feel like it is possible to accept all the arguments in your post and use them to argue in favor of donating to charities that improve third-world education, despite the fact that the connotation of your post implies you disagree. Specifically, the economic-development snipe felt somewhat dishonest.
I think there’s an interesting and decently evidenced argument to be made that fighting disease is actually the best way to boost developing-world education, better than direct interventions in education (see here and here, plus GiveWell’s concerns about education).
~
With 100% bednet coverage, the amount of attack vectors for malaria would be substantially lower, and malaria could be eliminated, so I think AMF is a plausible candidate for malaria elimination as well as malaria reduction.
But what other opportunities are there? I suppose you could try to aim to fund vaccine research, but there aren’t any organizations pursuing a malaria vaccine with room for more funding (I’ve looked, documentation forthcoming on Giving What We Can).
~
As much as I’ve seemingly argued against this, I think the sentiment is important. The problem is, however, there are significant barriers right now to implementing these long-run approaches—we simply just don’t know enough yet. Thus, I prefer a value of information approach.
~
Dishonesty, to me, implies malevolence; an intention to deceive or mislead. Do you think I’m being misleading?
Thanks for all of the resources. I’ve updated considerably in favor of AMF as a means to improving third-world conditions.
Conceded. Really I’m just lamenting that we aren’t non-deterministic problem solvers. I still think that there are better options out there, but I don’t know what they are and I don’t have a way to differentiate the better from the worse. This is frustrating, but it’s not an argument. My desire to donate to AMF is increased, and I’ve decreased my probability that GiveWell is too risk adverse.
I still believe that there are under-funded charities with long-term goals that provide more utiilty for my dollar (as per my other top-level comment), but this is due to viewing the problem space as different in some areas. I am now much closer to agreement with your points in the third-world assistance space.
Yes, a bit. No offense intended. The general article was not misleading, and the intent was well-received. However, I still feel that the tone of this:
was somewhat misleading. It felt like an attack on a position which you disagree with without sufficient evidence. To me, it felt like you were providing evidence against X, and then you slipped in a jab against Y, which is related to X but was not covered by the evidence provided. I’m not sure the name for this logical fallacy, but yeah, it felt like you were (perhaps unconsciously) trying to garner support against Y via arguments against related X.
The evidence and reasoning you provided above go a fair way towards arguing your point, and I’ve updated accordingly, but the above quote still seems like somewhat naked and misleading in the original article.
I am very sympathetic to that sentiment. And I’m glad to see someone updating quickly and properly.
~
I’m not offended. I just want to make sure to correct the article, because I don’t want to be misleading.
~
That’s certainly possible. What would you say X and Y are?
I think X is the position that “economic development will reliably and predictably reduce existential risk” or a weaker claim like “economic development has enough of a chance of reducing existential risk that we should donate to it instead of something else”.
Is Y something like “economic development in the developing world is a reasonable target area for donations”?
X was roughly “we should donate to speculative projects with long term goals” and Y was “we should focus on developing the economy and improving education”.
Arguments supporting “some things are too good to be true” / “I’m very skeptical of speculative projects” were against X. The statement deriding Y (quoted above) seemed out of place, because you did not successfully link economic development and education improvement with the class of speculative long-term charities that you argue against supporting.
For what it’s worth, I still don’t think that public education / economic development fall into that class. They are long term, but their impact is well supported. The arguments that caused me to update were:
1) Reducing disease goes a long way towards stimulating the economy and improving education levels
2) Simply reducing attack vectors goes a long way towards eliminating diseases
3) It is difficult to find other means of economic/educational stimulus that are more effective (after adjusting for risk)
So while I agree more with your conclusions now, I still think that the jab at promoting economic development / education is out of place.
In other words, the current connotation of the article (with respect to economic stimulus) is “you think you should fund education/economic growth, but you should actually fund AMF instead”, whereas I think the correct connotation is more like “even if you want to fund education/economic growth, AMF is the best way to do it”.