FormallyknownasRoko comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong

31 Post author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 10:27AM

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Comment author: jsalvatier 05 December 2010 12:43:02AM *  4 points [-]

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.
Comment author: FormallyknownasRoko 05 December 2010 12:48:26AM 6 points [-]

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).

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