On the other hand, the soon-to-be-spawned Applied Rationality org will have to be evaluated on its own merits, and is likely to have easier time of meeting GiveWell's requirements, mostly because the relevant metrics (of "raising the sanity waterline") can be made so much more concrete and near-term.
I disagree. As far as I can tell, there has been very little progress on the rationality verification problem (see this thread). I don't think anyone at CFAR or GiveWell knows what the relevant metrics really are and how they can be compared with, say, QALYs or other approximations of utility.
As far as I can tell, there has been very little progress on the rationality verification problem
First, this seems like a necessary stepping stone toward any kind of FAI-related work, and so cannot be skipped. Indeed, if you cannot tell which of two entities in front of you is more rational that the other, what hope do you have of solving a much larger problem of proven friendliness, of which proven rationality is only a tiny part.
Anyway, this limited-scope project (consistently ordering people by rationality level in a specific setting) should be something rather uncontroversial and achievable.
I was wondering - what fraction of people here agree with Holden's advice regarding donations, and his arguments? What fraction assumes there is a good chance he is essentially correct? What fraction finds it necessary to determine whenever Holden is essentially correct in his assessment, before working on counter argumentation, acknowledging that such investigation should be able to result in dissolution or suspension of SI?
It would seem to me, from the response, that the chosen course of action is to try to improve the presentation of the argument, rather than to try to verify truth values of the assertions (with the non-negligible likelihood of assertions being found false instead). This strikes me as very odd stance.
Ultimately: why SI seems certain that it has badly presented some valid reasoning, rather than tried to present some invalid reasoning?
edit: I am interested in knowing why people agree/disagree with Holden, and what likehood they give to him being essentially correct, rather than a number or a ratio (that would be subject to selection bias).