(a) Note the “Do these considerations argue against donating to AMF?” section of my post.
(b) Those points not withstanding, I believe that it’s probably best to hold out on donating for now (putting money in a donor advised fund if you’re worried about not following through, and precommitting to donating to one of GiveWell’s future recommendations if you’re worried about reducing GiveWell’s money moved) rather than giving to AMF/GiveDirectly now. Quoting from this GiveWell blog post:
… we would guess that the best giving opportunities are likely to lie outside of our traditional work...Our traditional criteria apply only to a very small subset of possible giving opportunities, and it’s a subset that doesn’t seem uniquely difficult to find funders for.… While we do believe that being able to measure something is a major plus holding all else equal – and that it’s particularly important for casual donors – we no longer consider ourselves to be “casual,” and we would guess that opening ourselves up to the full set of things a funder can do will eventually lead to substantially better giving opportunities than the ones we’ve considered so far.
(c) I don’t think that x-risk reduction is the most promising philanthropic cause, even in the astronomical waste framework. More on this point in a future post.
(a) Note the “Do these considerations argue against donating to AMF?” section of my post.
(b) Those points not withstanding, I believe that it’s probably best to hold out on donating for now (putting money in a donor advised fund if you’re worried about not following through, and precommitting to donating to one of GiveWell’s future recommendations if you’re worried about reducing GiveWell’s money moved) rather than giving to AMF/GiveDirectly now. Quoting from this GiveWell blog post:
… we would guess that the best giving opportunities are likely to lie outside of our traditional work...Our traditional criteria apply only to a very small subset of possible giving opportunities, and it’s a subset that doesn’t seem uniquely difficult to find funders for.… While we do believe that being able to measure something is a major plus holding all else equal – and that it’s particularly important for casual donors – we no longer consider ourselves to be “casual,” and we would guess that opening ourselves up to the full set of things a funder can do will eventually lead to substantially better giving opportunities than the ones we’ve considered so far.
(c) I don’t think that x-risk reduction is the most promising philanthropic cause, even in the astronomical waste framework. More on this point in a future post.