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Aimed mostly at stat novices/general audiences, but http://understandinguncertainty.org/blog
If the epidemiological consensus changed, and bednets were held to be an unsustainable solution...then even given the past success of certain bednet charities on all GiveWell's other criteria, GiveWell might still downgrade those charities.
As they should. But the point is that, in so doing, GiveWell would not be adding any new information not already contained in the epidemiological consensus (assuming they don't have privileged information about the latter).
And don't underestimate the size of the gap between "a scientifically plausible mechanism for improving lives" and "good value in lives saved/improved per dollar."
Indeed. The latter is where GiveWell enters the picture; it is their unique niche. The science itself, on the other hand, is not really their purview, as opposed to the experts. If GiveWell downgrades a charity solely because of the epidemiological consensus, and (for some reason) I have good reason to think the epidemiological consensus is wrong, or inadequately informative, then GiveWell hasn't told me anything, and I have no reason to pay attention to them. Their rating is screened off.
Imagine that 60% of epidemiologists think that Method A is not effective against Disease X, while 40% think it is effective. Suppose Holden goes to a big conference of epidemiologists and says "GiveWell recommends against donating to Charity C because it uses Method A, which the majority of epidemiologists say is not effective." Assuming they already knew Charity C uses Method A, should they listen to him?
Of course not. The people at the conference are all epidemiologists themselves, and those in the majority are presumably already foregoing donations to Charity C, while those in the minority already know that the majority of their colleagues disagree with them. Holden hasn't told them anything new. So, if his organization is going to be of any use to such an audience, it should focus on the things they can't already evaluate themselves, like financial transparency, accounting procedures, and the like; unless it can itself engage the scientific details.
This is analogous to the case at hand: if all that GiveWell is going to tell the world is that SI hasn't signaled enough status, well, the world already knows that. Their raison d'être is to tell people info that they can't find (or is costly to find) via other channels: such as info about non-high-status charities that may be worth supporting despite their non-high-status. If it limits its endorsements to high-status charities, then it may as well not even bother -- just as it need not bother telling a conference of epidemiologists that it doesn't endorse a charity because of the epidemiological consensus.
A few points:
"Possesses expert endorsement of its method" does not necessarily equal "high-status charity." A clear example here is de-worming and other parasite control, which epidemiologists all agree works well, but which doesn't get the funding a lot of other developing world charity does because it's not well advertised. GiveWell would like SIAI to be closer to de-worming charities in that outside experts give some credence to the plausibility of the methods by which SIAI proposes to do good.
Moreover, "other high-status charities using one's method" also doesn't equal "high-status charity." Compare the number of Facebook likes for AMF and Nothing But Nets. The reason GiveWell endorses one but not the other is that AMF, unlike NBN, has given compelling evidence that it can scale the additional funding that a GiveWell endorsement promises into more lives saved/improved at a dollar rate comparable to their current lives saved/improved per dollar.
So we should distinguish a charity's method being "high-status" from the charity itself being "high-status." But if you define "high status method" as "there exists compelling consensus among the experts GiveWell has judged to be trustworthy that the proposed method for doing good is even plausible," then I, as a Bayesian, am perfectly comfortable with GiveWell only endorsing "high-status method" charities. They still might buck the prevailing trends on optimal method; perhaps some of the experts are on GiveWell's own staff, or aren't prominent in the world at large. But by demanding that sort of "high-status method" from a charity, GiveWell discourages crankism and is unlikely to miss a truly good cause for too long.
Expert opinion on method plausibility is all the more important with more speculative charity like SIAI because there isn't a corpus of "effectiveness data to date" to evaluate directly.
I would still consider the leading epidemiologist's endorsement to be a standard sort of prestige-indicator. If an anti-disease charity is endorsed by leading epidemiologists, you hardly need GiveWell. (At least for the epidemiological aspects. The financial/accounting part may be another matter.)
I would argue that this is precisely what GiveWell does in evaluating malaria charity. If the epidemiological consensus changed, and bednets were held to be an unsustainable solution (this is less thoroughly implausible than it might sound, though probably still unlikely), then even given the past success of certain bednet charities on all GiveWell's other criteria, GiveWell might still downgrade those charities. And don't underestimate the size of the gap between "a scientifically plausible mechanism for improving lives" and "good value in lives saved/improved per dollar." There are plenty of bednet charities, and there's a reason GiveWell recommends AMF and not, say, Nothing But Nets.
The endorsement, in other words, is about the plausibility of the mechanism, which is only one of several things to consider in donating to a charity, but it's the area in which a particular kind of expert endorsement is most meaningful.
In response to
Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI)
Lack of impressive endorsements. [...] I feel that given the enormous implications of SI's claims, if it argued them well it ought to be able to get more impressive endorsements than it has. I have been pointed to Peter Thiel and Ray Kurzweil as examples of impressive SI supporters, but I have not seen any on-record statements from either of these people that show agreement with SI's specific views, and in fact (based on watching them speak at Singularity Summits) my impression is that they disagree.
This is key: they support SI despite not agreeing with SI's specific arguments. Perhaps you should, too, at least if you find folks like Thiel and Kurzweil sufficiently impressive.
In fact, this has always been roughly my own stance. The primary reason I think SI should be supported is not that their arguments for why they should be supported are good (although I think they are, or at least, better than you do). The primary reason I think SI should be supported is that I like what the organization actually does, and wish it to continue. The Less Wrong Sequences, Singularity Summit, rationality training camps, and even HPMoR and Less Wrong itself are all worth paying some amount of money for. Not to mention the general paying-of-attention to systematic rationality training, and to existential risks relating to future technology.
Strangely, the possibility of this kind of view doesn't seem to be discussed much, even though it is apparently the attitude of some of SI's most prominent supporters.
I furthermore have to say that to raise this particular objection seems to me almost to defeat the purpose of GiveWell. After all, if we could rely on standard sorts of prestige-indicators to determine where our money would be best spent, everybody would be spending their money in those places already, and "efficient charity" wouldn't be a problem for some special organization like yours to solve.
I furthermore have to say that to raise this particular objection seems to me almost to defeat the purpose of GiveWell. After all, if we could rely on standard sorts of prestige-indicators to determine where our money would be best spent, everybody would be spending their money in those places already, and "efficient charity" wouldn't be a problem for some special organization like yours to solve.
I think Holden seems to believe that Thiel and Kurzweil endorsing SIAI's UFAI-prevention methods would be more like a leading epidemiologist endorsing the malaria-prevention methods of the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) than it would be like Celebrity X taking a picture with some children for the AMF. There are different kinds of "prestige-indicator," some more valuable to a Bayesian-minded charity evaluator than others.
You have argued that charities can get more donations by focusing on being more impressive, but you seem to be assuming that a charity focusing on being more impressive, with more money, will do more good than a charity focused on doing good, with less money. And that assumption is what rhollerith was questioning.
GiveWell, I think, could be understood as an organization that seeks to narrow the gap for a charity between "seem more impressive to donors" and "show more convincing empirical evidence of effectiveness." That is, they want other donors to be more impressed by better (i.e. more accurate) signals of effectiveness and less by worse (i.e. less accurate) signals.
If GiveWell succeeds in this there are two effects:
1) More donor dollars go to charities that demonstrate themselves to be effective.
2) Charities themselves become more effective, for two major reasons. A) Not all charities rigorously self-evaluate at the moment; the incentive provided by a quorum of empirically-minded donors would help change that. B) Moreover, good donor criticism of charity effectiveness reports can alert a charity to methodological blind-spots in its own work. A negative review from GiveWell can help a charity not merely change its communications for the better (more effective in donor dollars obtained), but also change its actual activities for the better (more effective in goals achieved).
As I understand it, SIAI insiders agree only with Holden's critiques of SIAI's attempts to demonstrate its effectiveness to outside donors, and not with his estimates of SIAI's actual effectiveness (if they concurred in the latter, they'd quit SIAI now!). That said, I think SIAI should be open to the possibility that a donor-critic may have the potential to improve SIAI's actual effectiveness as well. SIAI's being forced to demonstrate its effectiveness to outsiders may lead to more constructive criticism and thus to more effective work. This constructive criticism could happen internally, if SIAI members preparing a report for knowledgeable outsiders like Holden are thereby forced to think like an outsider and thus see problems to which they had previously been blinded. It could also happen externally, if the knowledgeable outsider responds critically to the work presented.
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RE: lobbying as EA, there seem to be serious low-hanging fruit in EA outreach/advocacy:
See http://blog.againstmalaria.com/post/2013/05/30/The-impact-of-Peter-Singers-recent-TED-talk.aspx
Quick caveats: (1) Singer is a big name and is more likely to convince people because of name-recognition. (2) Singer is a much better public speaker than most EA advocates.
But working in EA advocacy need not necessarily mean going on a speaking tour. It could mean, for instance, organizing a Peter Singer speaking tour.