JonahSinick comments on Robustness of Cost-Effectiveness Estimates and Philanthropy - Less Wrong

37 Post author: JonahSinick 24 May 2013 08:28PM

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Comment author: JonahSinick 24 May 2013 06:33:12PM *  3 points [-]

The nature of the evidence could be either qualitative or quantitative, and the things you mention in "implications" are generally quantitative.

  • Assessing the quality of the people behind a project is qualitative rather than quantitative.
  • Room for more funding is in principle quantitative, but my experience has been that in practice, room for more funding analysis ends up being more qualitative, as you have to make judgments about things such as who would otherwise have funded the project, which hinge heavily on knowledge of the philanthropic landscape in respects that aren't easily quantified.
  • Gauging historical precedent requires many judgment calls, and so can't be quantified.
  • Deciding what giving opportunities one can learn the most from can't be quantified.

In terms of "good done per dollar" - for me that figure is still far greater than I began with (and I take it that that's the question that EAs are concerned with, rather than "lives saved per dollar"). [...] because, in my initial analysis - and in what I'd presume are most people's initial analyses - benefits to the long-term future weren't taken into account, or weren't thought to be morally relevant.

I explicitly address this in the second paragraph of the "The history of GiveWell’s estimates for lives saved per dollar" section of my post as well as the "Donating to AMF has benefits beyond saving lives" section of my post.

Building a movement of people who are aiming to do the most good with their marginal resources, and who are trying to work out how best to do that, strikes me as a good way to achieve both of these things.

I agree with this. I don't think that my post suggests otherwise.

Comment author: wdmacaskill 25 May 2013 11:01:11AM 3 points [-]

I explicitly address this in the second paragraph of the "The history of GiveWell’s estimates for lives saved per dollar" section of my post as well as the "Donating to AMF has benefits beyond saving lives" section of my post.

Not really. You do mention the flow-on benefits. But you don't analyse whether your estimate of "good done per dollar" has increased or decreased. And that's the relevant thing to analyse. If you argued "cost per life saved has had greater regression to your prior than you'd expected; and for that reason I expect my estimates of good done per dollar to regress really substantially" (an argument I think you would endorse), I'd accept that argument, though I'd worry about how much it generalises to cause-areas other than global poverty. (e.g. I expect there to be much less of an 'efficient market' for activities where there are fewer agents with the same goals/values, like benefiting non-human animals, or making sure the far-future turn out well). Optimism bias still holds, of course.

You say that "cost-effectiveness estimates skew so negatively." I was just pointing out that for me that hasn't been the case (for good done per $), because long-run benefits strike me as swamping short-term benefits, a factor that I didn't initially incorporate into my model of doing good. And, though I agree with the conclusion that you want as many different angles as possible (etc), focusing on cost per life saved rather than good done per dollar might lead you to miss important lessons (e.g. "make sure that you've identified all crucial normative and empirical considerations"). I doubt that you personally have missed those lessons. But they aren't in your post. And that's fine, of course, you can't cover everything in one blog post. But it's important for the reader not to overgeneralise.

I agree with this. I don't think that my post suggests otherwise.

I wasn't suggesting it does.

Comment author: JonahSinick 25 May 2013 03:03:49PM 0 points [-]

Ok. Do you have any suggestions for how I could modify my post to make it more clear in these respects?

Comment author: Xodarap 13 June 2013 01:33:37AM *  0 points [-]

I think your points about the limits of quantitative analysis are a good reality check, but I'm not sure I understand the argument for the types of assessment you suggest here.

Why should I (someone who's not remarkably experienced in charity evaluation) expect my intuition about e.g. "historical precedent" to be more valid than the data GiveWell collects?

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