Hi Everyone,

I've been on this list for about a year and a half, but I haven't made
any posts.  So let me introduce myself: I'm a Ph.D. student in the
philosophy department at Rutgers University.  My academic area of
specialization is ethics.  I care a lot about effective giving.  I'm
very excited about GiveWell's research.

I'd like to get some input from some of you on the question of whether
it would be best to give now, invest and give in the medium term, or
invest and give much later.  GiveWell hasn't been researching this
kind of thing, but this question is important to me and I find it very
difficult to answer.  I suspect that some of you may care about this
question as well, and that some of you have thought about it more
carefully than I have.  I think the best way to inform me about this
will be for me to tell you what my hunches are and have people tell me
what's wrong with them.  So let me say a bit about how I'm approaching
this issue and then describe my hunches.

Suppose your goal is to maximize the expected benefit of your lifetime
donations.  These questions seem to be very relevant to determining
the timing of an optimal giving strategy: (1) Will you be weak-willed
and not do it later if you wait? (2) How large are the expected
returns on social investment? (3) How large would the expected real
gain be if you invested the money? (4) Will we be able to provide help
more efficiently in the future? By how much? (5) Will giving now or
giving later better encourage others to help more/more effectively? By
how much? (6) Should you use some kind of future discounting rate?
What rate?

I doubt anyone has anything useful to say about (1).  (6) is a
question about which a fair amount of ink has already been spilled.
I'm most interested in information on (4) and on how (2) and (3)
compare.

Here are my hunches, I'd like to know what some of you think of them.
First hunch: for the foreseeable future, expected benefits accruing
from financial return on investment leading to greater donations will
significantly exceed expected benefits accruing from social return on
investment.  Reasoning: likely benefits related to social return on
investment will not be directed to priority interventions; the rate of
social return on investment would have to be implausibly high in order
to be equally as great as expected benefits accruing from real
interest being added to future donations to the best organizations.

Second hunch: in the long run, priority programs will not be as
effective as the are now, but the expected benefits of giving to the
best organizations we'll know of in 2-5 years will be greater than the
expected benefits of giving to the best organizations we know of now.
Reasoning: the more developed a country is, the worse the best
interventions are.  In the long run, poorer areas will be more
developed, so the best interventions in those countries will not be
very good.  For the 2-5 year range, we've gotten a lot of good
information about effective giving over the last few years, in large
part thanks to GiveWell (at least as far as the information I know of
goes).  This kind of analysis is new, and it wouldn't too surprising
if we found an organization that was, say, 20% more effective than the
best one identified so far over the next 2-5 years.  This could be in
the form of finding a more effective cause, or finding a more
effective organization focusing on health aid for the international
poor.  (A conversation with Elie makes me worry that I've
overestimated the probability of this happening).  It's less likely
that giving opportunities will become substantially worse during that
time period.

Third hunch: compared to the factors discussed above, the positive
effects from my particular donations re: (5) will be small.
Reasoning: this is such a complete hunch that I have nothing at all to
back it up.

If these hunches are right, it would suggest that it makes sense to
wait 2-5 years to start giving big.  Does it make sense to wait
longer? I have no idea.  Predictions about this seem a lot like
predictions about how the copper market will be doing in 10 years.

Those are the questions I'm asking and those are my hunches.  So I
want to be corrected by someone who knows more about this.  Here are
some ways my hunches could go wrong that I'm especially worried about.
 First, it could be that (i) VillageReach/Stop TB is still the best
organization in 2-5 years and (ii) the funding situation for
VillageReach/Stop TB makes it optimal to give now rather than 2-5
years from now.  Second, it could be that health interventions in
developing countries are the best cause, and GiveWell has so
thoroughly investigated this cause that we are unlikely to discover a
significantly more effective organization in the next 2-5 years.
Third, it could be that I've significantly underestimated the
importance of giving now for making others give more and give more
effectively.  Fourth, it could be that I've significantly
underestimated the rate of social return for giving to priority
organizations.

So what do you think about comparing (4) and comparing (2) and (3)?
What do you think about my hunches?  How worried should I be about the
ways in which my hunches might be wrong?  Any other thoughts on giving
now vs giving kinda later vs. giving a lot later?  I'd be especially
interested if you can refer me to relevant literature on these issues.

Best,

Nick

Nick, I appreciate this very thoughtful email.  I am guessing that the
silence has a lot to do with the fact that there doesn't seem to be much
public literature on these questions.  A few thoughts:

1. I don't agree with the argument that social returns on helping people are
likely to be below financial rates of return.  Nick says that "returns will
not be directed to priority interventions," but I disagree.  If you help
people in the poorest parts of the world, you are hopefully empowering them
to help others, by e.g. contributing to economic output in their area.  I
think it's very possible that doing so has a *higher* return than aid
financed by overseas donors, which has so many more degrees of separation
from the people you're trying to help.

2. I mentioned this to Nick offline, but to me one of the key reasons to
expect giving opportunities to worsen over time is not just that Africa may
become more developed, but that donors may capitalize on existing
opportunities.  E.g., if and when a very wealthy person finds out about
VillageReach and decides to fund it, you no longer have the same
"opportunity" to help it.

3. I think it's fairly unlikely that in the next 2-5 years, we'll find much
better options than Stop TB and VillageReach within international aid.  I
also think there's a good chance that they need the funds more now than they
will then.

4. However, I think there is a good chance that we will find a more
promising option for donors in another area, particularly disease research.

Bottom line - I think there are good arguments for "giving big" now or for
waiting a few years for GiveWell's research to broaden/gel.  I don't think
there are good arguments for waiting more than a few years.

-Holden

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Nick Beckstead <
nbeckstead@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I've been on this list for about a year and a half, but I haven't made
> any posts. So let me introduce myself: I'm a Ph.D. student in the
> philosophy department at Rutgers University. My academic area of
> specialization is ethics. I care a lot about effective giving. I'm
> very excited about GiveWell's research.
>
> I'd like to get some input from some of you on the question of whether
> it would be best to give now, invest and give in the medium term, or
> invest and give much later. GiveWell hasn't been researching this
> kind of thing, but this question is important to me and I find it very
> difficult to answer. I suspect that some of you may care about this
> question as well, and that some of you have thought about it more
> carefully than I have. I think the best way to inform me about this
> will be for me to tell you what my hunches are and have people tell me
> what's wrong with them. So let me say a bit about how I'm approaching
> this issue and then describe my hunches.
>
> Suppose your goal is to maximize the expected benefit of your lifetime
> donations. These questions seem to be very relevant to determining
> the timing of an optimal giving strategy: (1) Will you be weak-willed
> and not do it later if you wait? (2) How large are the expected
> returns on social investment? (3) How large would the expected real
> gain be if you invested the money? (4) Will we be able to provide help
> more efficiently in the future? By how much? (5) Will giving now or
> giving later better encourage others to help more/more effectively? By
> how much? (6) Should you use some kind of future discounting rate?
> What rate?
>
> I doubt anyone has anything useful to say about (1). (6) is a
> question about which a fair amount of ink has already been spilled.
> I'm most interested in information on (4) and on how (2) and (3)
> compare.
>
> Here are my hunches, I'd like to know what some of you think of them.
> First hunch: for the foreseeable future, expected benefits accruing
> from financial return on investment leading to greater donations will
> significantly exceed expected benefits accruing from social return on
> investment. Reasoning: likely benefits related to social return on
> investment will not be directed to priority interventions; the rate of
> social return on investment would have to be implausibly high in order
> to be equally as great as expected benefits accruing from real
> interest being added to future donations to the best organizations.
>
> Second hunch: in the long run, priority programs will not be as
> effective as the are now, but the expected benefits of giving to the
> best organizations we'll know of in 2-5 years will be greater than the
> expected benefits of giving to the best organizations we know of now.
> Reasoning: the more developed a country is, the worse the best
> interventions are. In the long run, poorer areas will be more
> developed, so the best interventions in those countries will not be
> very good. For the 2-5 year range, we've gotten a lot of good
> information about effective giving over the last few years, in large
> part thanks to GiveWell (at least as far as the information I know of
> goes). This kind of analysis is new, and it wouldn't too surprising
> if we found an organization that was, say, 20% more effective than the
> best one identified so far over the next 2-5 years. This could be in
> the form of finding a more effective cause, or finding a more
> effective organization focusing on health aid for the international
> poor. (A conversation with Elie makes me worry that I've
> overestimated the probability of this happening). It's less likely
> that giving opportunities will become substantially worse during that
> time period.
>
> Third hunch: compared to the factors discussed above, the positive
> effects from my particular donations re: (5) will be small.
> Reasoning: this is such a complete hunch that I have nothing at all to
> back it up.
>
> If these hunches are right, it would suggest that it makes sense to
> wait 2-5 years to start giving big. Does it make sense to wait
> longer? I have no idea. Predictions about this seem a lot like
> predictions about how the copper market will be doing in 10 years.
>
> Those are the questions I'm asking and those are my hunches. So I
> want to be corrected by someone who knows more about this. Here are
> some ways my hunches could go wrong that I'm especially worried about.
> First, it could be that (i) VillageReach/Stop TB is still the best
> organization in 2-5 years and (ii) the funding situation for
> VillageReach/Stop TB makes it optimal to give now rather than 2-5
> years from now. Second, it could be that health interventions in
> developing countries are the best cause, and GiveWell has so
> thoroughly investigated this cause that we are unlikely to discover a
> significantly more effective organization in the next 2-5 years.
> Third, it could be that I've significantly underestimated the
> importance of giving now for making others give more and give more
> effectively. Fourth, it could be that I've significantly
> underestimated the rate of social return for giving to priority
> organizations.
>
> So what do you think about comparing (4) and comparing (2) and (3)?
> What do you think about my hunches? How worried should I be about the
> ways in which my hunches might be wrong? Any other thoughts on giving
> now vs giving kinda later vs. giving a lot later? I'd be especially
> interested if you can refer me to relevant literature on these issues.
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>  
>

I've had conversations with many donors about the question of "Will
vaccinating children/fighting TB/etc. lead to population growth?"  I've
usually responded that the conventional wisdom among scholars seems to be
that improving health is likely to reduce population growth, not increase
it.  However, this TED talk reduces my confidence in that view:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/

He is arguing for the conventional wisdom and showing that healthier
countries have slower population growth both across-time and
across-countries, but he keeps explaining exceptions to the pattern with
things like "Strong health but poor women's rights" or "Strong health but
didn't yet get into the family planning revolution."  Implies to me that
external interventions directed at vaccination could create quite different
patterns from the observed patterns of organic economic development.

We are going to have to look into this more at some point - not sure when.
 I still think a lot of other dots need to be connected before I'd be ready
to count population growth as a "harm" of vaccination campaigns, even if it
is an effect of them.  But I thought I'd share this.  The video is fun, by
the way.

Hi, I'm an MSc student in economics and have volunteered for GiveWell
sporadically. I've hesitated to write because my point is simple and I
thought Holden or Elie would bring it up (and they know more about it than
me), but they haven't yet and it was one of my main reasons for giving
through GiveWell already in 2008 so here goes.

My point is about Nick's question (5): "Will giving now or giving later
better encourage others to help more/more effectively?" Nick writes "Third
hunch: compared to the factors discussed above, the positive effects from my
particular donations re: (5) will be small."

My point is an argument for giving soon through GiveWell because it
plausibly makes others donate more and more effectively:

Giving through GiveWell makes GiveWell more able to show that its research
has impact (i.e. that more money is given based on GiveWell's advice). This
probably has at least two effects: (i) It makes it easier for GiveWell to
get money for running costs and thus able to get a better website, market
itself, produce better research, etc. (ii) It makes media and others talk
more about GiveWell since it becomes a bigger player.

(i) and (ii) should make people help more and more effectively and make
charities sooner see that they get money by providing evidence of impact.

I don't know how secure funding GiveWell has for its running costs but if
its existence depends on being able to show that people donate a lot based
on its advice, we have stronger reasons to donate soon. Especially
considering that GiveWell closing down because it doesn't have enough for
running costs may teach others that it's more difficult to get funding for
work like GiveWell's and thus discourage others from doing this type of
work.

Best, Simon Knutsson


On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...>wrote:

>
>
> Nick, I appreciate this very thoughtful email.  I am guessing that the
> silence has a lot to do with the fact that there doesn't seem to be much
> public literature on these questions.  A few thoughts:
>
> 1. I don't agree with the argument that social returns on helping people
> are likely to be below financial rates of return.  Nick says that "returns
> will not be directed to priority interventions," but I disagree.  If you
> help people in the poorest parts of the world, you are hopefully empowering
> them to help others, by e.g. contributing to economic output in their area.
>  I think it's very possible that doing so has a *higher* return than aid
> financed by overseas donors, which has so many more degrees of separation
> from the people you're trying to help.
>
> 2. I mentioned this to Nick offline, but to me one of the key reasons to
> expect giving opportunities to worsen over time is not just that Africa may
> become more developed, but that donors may capitalize on existing
> opportunities.  E.g., if and when a very wealthy person finds out about
> VillageReach and decides to fund it, you no longer have the same
> "opportunity" to help it.
>
> 3. I think it's fairly unlikely that in the next 2-5 years, we'll find much
> better options than Stop TB and VillageReach within international aid.  I
> also think there's a good chance that they need the funds more now than they
> will then.
>
> 4. However, I think there is a good chance that we will find a more
> promising option for donors in another area, particularly disease research.
>
> Bottom line - I think there are good arguments for "giving big" now or for
> waiting a few years for GiveWell's research to broaden/gel.  I don't think
> there are good arguments for waiting more than a few years.
>
> -Holden
>
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Nick Beckstead <
> nbeckstead@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> I've been on this list for about a year and a half, but I haven't made
>> any posts. So let me introduce myself: I'm a Ph.D. student in the
>> philosophy department at Rutgers University. My academic area of
>> specialization is ethics. I care a lot about effective giving. I'm
>> very excited about GiveWell's research.
>>
>> I'd like to get some input from some of you on the question of whether
>> it would be best to give now, invest and give in the medium term, or
>> invest and give much later. GiveWell hasn't been researching this
>> kind of thing, but this question is important to me and I find it very
>> difficult to answer. I suspect that some of you may care about this
>> question as well, and that some of you have thought about it more
>> carefully than I have. I think the best way to inform me about this
>> will be for me to tell you what my hunches are and have people tell me
>> what's wrong with them. So let me say a bit about how I'm approaching
>> this issue and then describe my hunches.
>>
>> Suppose your goal is to maximize the expected benefit of your lifetime
>> donations. These questions seem to be very relevant to determining
>> the timing of an optimal giving strategy: (1) Will you be weak-willed
>> and not do it later if you wait? (2) How large are the expected
>> returns on social investment? (3) How large would the expected real
>> gain be if you invested the money? (4) Will we be able to provide help
>> more efficiently in the future? By how much? (5) Will giving now or
>> giving later better encourage others to help more/more effectively? By
>> how much? (6) Should you use some kind of future discounting rate?
>> What rate?
>>
>> I doubt anyone has anything useful to say about (1). (6) is a
>> question about which a fair amount of ink has already been spilled.
>> I'm most interested in information on (4) and on how (2) and (3)
>> compare.
>>
>> Here are my hunches, I'd like to know what some of you think of them.
>> First hunch: for the foreseeable future, expected benefits accruing
>> from financial return on investment leading to greater donations will
>> significantly exceed expected benefits accruing from social return on
>> investment. Reasoning: likely benefits related to social return on
>> investment will not be directed to priority interventions; the rate of
>> social return on investment would have to be implausibly high in order
>> to be equally as great as expected benefits accruing from real
>> interest being added to future donations to the best organizations.
>>
>> Second hunch: in the long run, priority programs will not be as
>> effective as the are now, but the expected benefits of giving to the
>> best organizations we'll know of in 2-5 years will be greater than the
>> expected benefits of giving to the best organizations we know of now.
>> Reasoning: the more developed a country is, the worse the best
>> interventions are. In the long run, poorer areas will be more
>> developed, so the best interventions in those countries will not be
>> very good. For the 2-5 year range, we've gotten a lot of good
>> information about effective giving over the last few years, in large
>> part thanks to GiveWell (at least as far as the information I know of
>> goes). This kind of analysis is new, and it wouldn't too surprising
>> if we found an organization that was, say, 20% more effective than the
>> best one identified so far over the next 2-5 years. This could be in
>> the form of finding a more effective cause, or finding a more
>> effective organization focusing on health aid for the international
>> poor. (A conversation with Elie makes me worry that I've
>> overestimated the probability of this happening). It's less likely
>> that giving opportunities will become substantially worse during that
>> time period.
>>
>> Third hunch: compared to the factors discussed above, the positive
>> effects from my particular donations re: (5) will be small.
>> Reasoning: this is such a complete hunch that I have nothing at all to
>> back it up.
>>
>> If these hunches are right, it would suggest that it makes sense to
>> wait 2-5 years to start giving big. Does it make sense to wait
>> longer? I have no idea. Predictions about this seem a lot like
>> predictions about how the copper market will be doing in 10 years.
>>
>> Those are the questions I'm asking and those are my hunches. So I
>> want to be corrected by someone who knows more about this. Here are
>> some ways my hunches could go wrong that I'm especially worried about.
>> First, it could be that (i) VillageReach/Stop TB is still the best
>> organization in 2-5 years and (ii) the funding situation for
>> VillageReach/Stop TB makes it optimal to give now rather than 2-5
>> years from now. Second, it could be that health interventions in
>> developing countries are the best cause, and GiveWell has so
>> thoroughly investigated this cause that we are unlikely to discover a
>> significantly more effective organization in the next 2-5 years.
>> Third, it could be that I've significantly underestimated the
>> importance of giving now for making others give more and give more
>> effectively. Fourth, it could be that I've significantly
>> underestimated the rate of social return for giving to priority
>> organizations.
>>
>> So what do you think about comparing (4) and comparing (2) and (3)?
>> What do you think about my hunches? How worried should I be about the
>> ways in which my hunches might be wrong? Any other thoughts on giving
>> now vs giving kinda later vs. giving a lot later? I'd be especially
>> interested if you can refer me to relevant literature on these issues.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nick
>>
>
>  
>

Dear GiveWell, 

I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good?   M ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I want to do the most good, what career should I pursue?   

Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go into and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any career, as well as the average person in that career.   If I want to do the most good, should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the developing world, helping those who need it most?   Or, at one remove, should I secure a stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of my income to such charities?   Or, at one more remove, should I become a teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my students to pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a) directly help those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they can donate a lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence others to pursue such careers? 

            I’ve been thinking about these questions on and off for several years now, but have not gotten very far.   Perhaps you could shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions:   What resources are out there that are pertinent to these questions?   Who would have useful advice to give?   Should I be speaking to economists?   International development and charity folks?   Ethicists?   Groups like GiveWell?   All, some, or none of the above?   Has anything been written on these issues?   I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature from Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that directly addresses these questions. 

Thanks, 

Mark 

Mark,

I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with utilitarianism
and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.  The first
step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to measure
utility.  The best measure of utility that have been widely applied are the two
essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and the
disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).

After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do involve
uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful might allow you
to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
probabilities of success.  Likewise with how influential you'd be as a teacher,
etc.

As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't know of anyone
who's tried to perform them and published.  But an introduction to QALYS I'd
recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine, and for
expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend Jon Baron's
Thinking and Deciding.

Ron

Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...>:

>
>
> Dear GiveWell,
>
> I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good?   M
> ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I want to do
> the most good, what career should I pursue?  
>
> Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go into
> and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any career, as
> well as the average person in that career.   If I want to do the most good,
> should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the developing world,
> helping those who need it most?   Or, at one remove, should I secure a
> stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of my income to
> such charities?   Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my students to
> pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a) directly help
> those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they can donate a
> lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence others to
> pursue such careers?
>
>             I’ve been thinking about these questions on and off
> for several years now, but have not gotten very far.   Perhaps you could
> shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions:   What resources
> are out there that are pertinent to these questions?   Who would have useful
> advice to give?   Should I be speaking to economists?   International
> development and charity folks?   Ethicists?   Groups like GiveWell?   All,
> some, or none of the above?   Has anything been written on these issues?  
> I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature from Peter Singer, Thomas
> Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and
> Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that
> directly addresses these questions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>


Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
University of Pennsylvania

Mark, 
As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and simplistic throughout your life.
Jareb Price

To: givewell@yahoogroups.com; marklee@...
CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com
From: rnoble@...
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)


















 



  


    
      
      
      



Mark,



I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with utilitarianism

and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.  The first

step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to measure

utility.  The best measure of utility that have been widely applied are the two

essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and the

disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).



After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do involve

uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful might allow you

to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the

probabilities of success.  Likewise with how influential you'd be as a teacher,

etc.



As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't know of anyone

who's tried to perform them and published.  But an introduction to QALYS I'd

recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine, and for

expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend Jon Baron's

Thinking and Deciding.



Ron



Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...>:



>

>

> Dear GiveWell,

>

> I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good? �  M

> ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I want to do

> the most good, what career should I pursue? � 

>

> Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go into

> and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any career, as

> well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do the most good,

> should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the developing world,

> helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I secure a

> stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of my income to

> such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a

> teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my students to

> pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a) directly help

> those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they can donate a

> lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence others to

> pursue such careers?

>

> � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these questions on and off

> for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps you could

> shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �  What resources

> are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who would have useful

> advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �  International

> development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like GiveWell? �  All,

> some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on these issues? � 

> I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter Singer, Thomas

> Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and

> Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that

> directly addresses these questions.

>

> Thanks,

>

> Mark

>



Ronald Noble, Ph. D.

University of Pennsylvania




    
     

    
    






   		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/

Mark,

Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically addresses
it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.

I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your first
assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do as well in
*any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd also wager that
you could do better than average in some careers. It seems worthwhile to
make a list of careers that could do good, and then ask yourself which of
those careers you would be best at. I've heard that Peter Unger says that
anyone with philosophical talent like yours should go to law school, get a
lucrative job, and give as much as he or she can to poverty relief. On the
other hand, since you're already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't
know, is one of the best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot
at getting a job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who
will go on to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
sufficiently inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should
narrow your list significantly.

We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose that
depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of the
following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs' ability to do
good: More money? More human resources (in general or of a particular kind)?
More information? Changes to public policy (here or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell
can help answer that question. Maybe you could contact people at some NGOs
of interest and ask them. Once you know where the bottlenecks are, you can
narrow your search even further by asking what you could do that would help
alleviate those problems.

I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell readers
have to say.

David

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...>wrote:

>
>
> Mark,
>
> As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to clarify
> your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the action you wish to
> engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture person, or a detail person,
> and what is your time frame in seeing your success. These answers will help
> to clarify where you would be most successful in your own measure, if you
> are successful as an individual, the wish to give back will be that much
> more powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to day
> struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out before you can
> have the effect that you wish. Giving is an intensely personal process, so
> give it the intense personal analysis it deserves in order to keep it
> strong, effective and simplistic throughout your life.
>
> Jareb Price
>
> ------------------------------
> To: givewell@yahoogroups.com; marklee@...
> CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com
> From: rnoble@...
> Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
> Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>
>
>
>
> Mark,
>
> I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
> utilitarianism
> and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian. The
> first
> step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to measure
> utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied are the
> two
> essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and
> the
> disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>
> After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do involve
> uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful might allow
> you
> to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
> probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be as a
> teacher,
> etc.
>
> As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't know of
> anyone
> who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to QALYS I'd
> recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine, and for
> expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend Jon
> Baron's
> Thinking and Deciding.
>
> Ron
>
> Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...>:
>
> >
> >
> > Dear GiveWell,
> >
> > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good?
> �  M
> > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I want to
> do
> > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
> >
> > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go
> into
> > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any career,
> as
> > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do the most
> good,
> > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the developing
> world,
> > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I secure a
> > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of my
> income to
> > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my students to
> > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a) directly help
> > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they can
> donate a
> > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence others to
> > pursue such careers?
> >
> > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these questions on and
> off
> > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps you could
> > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �  What
> resources
> > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who would have
> useful
> > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �  International
> > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like GiveWell? �
> All,
> > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on these issues?
> �
> > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter Singer,
> Thomas
> > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and
> > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that
> > directly addresses these questions.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> University of Pennsylvania
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.<http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>
>  
>

Thanks for the responses.

Ron, I am indeed sympathetic to utilitarianism, and am willing to adopt the QALY as a rough measure of utility.  I'll look into the books you recommend.

Jareb, I wish to engage in actions with largest scope, over the course of my life.  I think I'd be slightly more able to stomach careers I dislike than the average person, but significantly more able to find careers likeable if I know I'd be producing more good thereby.

David, I initially found Unger's view quite plausible.  However, I now wonder whether it would be better for good and moderately engaging professors to teach large ethics classes at prestigious schools, as some notable consequentialists seem to be doing.  This will depend on how effective professors are at influencing their students, and I have no idea what the data are on this score.  I'll ask some of them.  

You raise the interesting question of where the bottlenecks are.  I'm also eager to see if GiveWell can help answer that question.

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, David Morrow <dmorrow1@...> wrote:
>
> Mark,
> 
> Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically addresses
> it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.
> 
> I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your first
> assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do as well in
> *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd also wager that
> you could do better than average in some careers. It seems worthwhile to
> make a list of careers that could do good, and then ask yourself which of
> those careers you would be best at. I've heard that Peter Unger says that
> anyone with philosophical talent like yours should go to law school, get a
> lucrative job, and give as much as he or she can to poverty relief. On the
> other hand, since you're already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't
> know, is one of the best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot
> at getting a job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who
> will go on to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
> sufficiently inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should
> narrow your list significantly.
> 
> We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose that
> depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of the
> following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs' ability to do
> good: More money? More human resources (in general or of a particular kind)?
> More information? Changes to public policy (here or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell
> can help answer that question. Maybe you could contact people at some NGOs
> of interest and ask them. Once you know where the bottlenecks are, you can
> narrow your search even further by asking what you could do that would help
> alleviate those problems.
> 
> I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell readers
> have to say.
> 
> David
> 
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...>wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > Mark,
> >
> > As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to clarify
> > your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the action you wish to
> > engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture person, or a detail person,
> > and what is your time frame in seeing your success. These answers will help
> > to clarify where you would be most successful in your own measure, if you
> > are successful as an individual, the wish to give back will be that much
> > more powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to day
> > struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out before you can
> > have the effect that you wish. Giving is an intensely personal process, so
> > give it the intense personal analysis it deserves in order to keep it
> > strong, effective and simplistic throughout your life.
> >
> > Jareb Price
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > To: givewell@yahoogroups.com; marklee@...
> > CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com
> > From: rnoble@...
> > Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
> > Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Mark,
> >
> > I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
> > utilitarianism
> > and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian. The
> > first
> > step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to measure
> > utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied are the
> > two
> > essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and
> > the
> > disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
> >
> > After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do involve
> > uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful might allow
> > you
> > to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
> > probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be as a
> > teacher,
> > etc.
> >
> > As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't know of
> > anyone
> > who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to QALYS I'd
> > recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine, and for
> > expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend Jon
> > Baron's
> > Thinking and Deciding.
> >
> > Ron
> >
> > Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...>:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Dear GiveWell,
> > >
> > > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good?
> > �  M
> > > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I want to
> > do
> > > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
> > >
> > > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go
> > into
> > > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any career,
> > as
> > > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do the most
> > good,
> > > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the developing
> > world,
> > > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I secure a
> > > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of my
> > income to
> > > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> > > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my students to
> > > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a) directly help
> > > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they can
> > donate a
> > > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence others to
> > > pursue such careers?
> > >
> > > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these questions on and
> > off
> > > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps you could
> > > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �  What
> > resources
> > > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who would have
> > useful
> > > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �  International
> > > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like GiveWell? �
> > All,
> > > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on these issues?
> > �
> > > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter Singer,
> > Thomas
> > > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and
> > > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that
> > > directly addresses these questions.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> >
> > Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> > University of Pennsylvania
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.<http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
> >
> >  
> >
>

Mark et al,

I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is 
extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the 
personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is 
immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that 
many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very 
small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of 
the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is 
politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president 
has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence 
than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.  
A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a 
local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a 
few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands 
of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average 
business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern 
is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key 
innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to 
what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them), 
while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is 
�inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon 
anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and 
nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.

A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do 
may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising 
in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly 
successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it 
is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.  
Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and 
then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.  
There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard 
and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.

All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do 
the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and 
important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for 
various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b) 
an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously 
there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it 
would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a 
career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone 
choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.

To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in 
a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance, 
which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I 
think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that 
the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the 
economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of 
the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance 
industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring 
one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.

I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even 
whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside 
GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could 
naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if 
GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific 
research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of 
the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine 
that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data 
and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a 
sidenote to the first.

Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would 
others on this list find such analyses valuable?

Dario

David Morrow wrote:
>  
>
> Mark,
>
>
> Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically 
> addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.
>
> I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your 
> first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do 
> as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd 
> also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It 
> seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and 
> then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've 
> heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like 
> yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much 
> as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're 
> already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the 
> best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a 
> job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on 
> to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently 
> inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow 
> your list significantly.
>
> We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose 
> that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of 
> the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs' 
> ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of 
> a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here 
> or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you 
> could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you 
> know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even 
> further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those 
> problems.
>
> I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell 
> readers have to say.
>
> David
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@... 
> <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
>
>      
>
>     Mark, 
>
>
>     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>     simplistic throughout your life.
>
>     Jareb Price
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>     marklee@... <mailto:marklee@...>
>     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@...>
>     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>
>      
>
>
>     Mark,
>
>     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>     utilitarianism
>     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>     The first
>     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>     measure
>     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>     are the two
>     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>     (QALY) and the
>     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>
>     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>     involve
>     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>     might allow you
>     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
>     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>     as a teacher,
>     etc.
>
>     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>     know of anyone
>     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>     QALYS I'd
>     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>     and for
>     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>     Jon Baron's
>     Thinking and Deciding.
>
>     Ron
>
>     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
>     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
>
>     >
>     >
>     > Dear GiveWell,
>     >
>     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>     most good? �  M
>     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>     want to do
>     > the most good, what career should I pursue? � 
>     >
>     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>     ability to go into
>     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>     career, as
>     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>     the most good,
>     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>     developing world,
>     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>     secure a
>     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>     my income to
>     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>     students to
>     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>     directly help
>     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>     can donate a
>     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>     others to
>     > pursue such careers?
>     >
>     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>     questions on and off
>     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>     you could
>     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: � 
>     What resources
>     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>     would have useful
>     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? � 
>     International
>     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>     GiveWell? �  All,
>     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>     these issues? � 
>     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>     Singer, Thomas
>     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>     GiveWell and
>     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>     anything that
>     > directly addresses these questions.
>     >
>     > Thanks,
>     >
>     > Mark
>     >
>
>     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>     University of Pennsylvania
>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>
>
> 

Mark,

Allow me to start on the premises that we are made by God, "�the
LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are
his people �(Psalm 100:3)" God has a plan for each of our lives
"... For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD,
thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."
Jeremiah 29:11 and therefore if one can know God one can find that
purpose (God's purpose) and it follows that he/she stands a chance
to know and fulfill his destiny and do the most good.

I believe the most good is to live according to the plan and best wishes
of the manufacturer/ owner.

My analogy is this: My Jeep does the most good by performing the tasks I
assign it and by abiding to Chrysler's best wishes of remaining
intact for at least X years or until we dispose of it. God is both maker
and owner of us.

Speaking from experience, I would say knowing God is not too hard
because the road map is provided in the Scriptures. With His help many
find Him.

Following on the same pattern of thought: we have gifts and talents;
these are abilities to do some things very well for the benefit of
others. Someone might be gifted as a carpenter, another teacher and
still another counselor. There is more: some are given wealth while
others are not. Some are destined to be leaders while others followers.

Although success is more easily measured by indicators we create
ourselves, the measure of true success or what the Bible calls good
success is in doing what God has purposed for our lives. I believe good
success is that which is accompanied with peace; the peace of God which
surpasses all understanding.

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy
way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." (Joshua 1:8)

Which career yields the most good? I would venture to say, its the one
which is in God's perfect plan for you.

In summary I believe this is a great question, especially upon launching
on a career path. The easy answer would be: �to use every
opportunity and maximize the benefit, if necessary gamble, trade, and
get rich and give the most to the poor; feel good and thereby, by
ordinary measures do "the most good." In truth however one is
well advised to seek the way of true, good success, only found in
one's maker.

All quotations are from the KJV version of the Bible

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Mark Lee <marklee@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Dear GiveWell,
>
> I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most
good? �  M ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the
question: if I want to do the most good, what career should I pursue?
�
>
> Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to
go into and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
career, as well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to
do the most good, should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in
the developing world, helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one
remove, should I secure a stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a
high percentage of my income to such charities? �  Or, at one more
remove, should I become a teacher/professor/other person of influence,
and influence my students to pursue careers that promote the good, e.g.
careers that (a) directly help those who need it most, or (b) are highly
lucrative so that they can donate a lot, or (c) are influential so that
they can in turn influence others to pursue such careers?
>
> � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve
been thinking about these questions on and off for several years now,
but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps you could shed some light on
them, and/or on the following questions: �  What resources are out
there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who would have useful
advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? � 
International development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? � 
Groups like GiveWell? �  All, some, or none of the above? �  Has
anything been written on these issues? �  I’m aware of some
indirectly relevant literature� from Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, and
Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and Giving What
We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered anything that
directly addresses these questions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>

Dear Mark and GiveWell,

It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.

I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and question
as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology (EEB) and
minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the theory and
implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic approach would be
too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to do development
work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only native English
speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large funding bodies
and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was administrative,
and working with the government of a developing country presented enormous
challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the projects we were
funding and especially how long it would take to see changes. I was also not
in a position to have substantive influence over what was happening.

Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as an
expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and persistent
intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and apply to PhD
programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus on infectious
disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than what I was
doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That said, the
probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting discoveries
is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are helpful. The
burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
better than a more lucrative and stable job would.

Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields
where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by
my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a
great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
of your preferences now and save some time.

Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
philosophers' approaches to this problem.

Sarah


On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...> wrote:

> Mark et al,
>
> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>
> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>
> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>
> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>
> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
> sidenote to the first.
>
> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>
> Dario
>
> David Morrow wrote:
> >
> >
> > Mark,
> >
> >
> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.
> >
> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
> > your list significantly.
> >
> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
> > problems.
> >
> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
> > readers have to say.
> >
> > David
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@alumni.iu.edu
> > <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >     Mark,
> >
> >
> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
> >     simplistic throughout your life.
> >
> >     Jareb Price
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
> >     marklee@...s.edu <mailto:
> marklee@...>
> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
> >     From: rnoble@....edu <mailto:rnoble@...>
> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     Mark,
> >
> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
> >     utilitarianism
> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
> >     The first
> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
> >     measure
> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
> >     are the two
> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
> >     (QALY) and the
> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
> >
> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
> >     involve
> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
> >     might allow you
> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
> >     as a teacher,
> >     etc.
> >
> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
> >     know of anyone
> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
> >     QALYS I'd
> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
> >     and for
> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
> >     Jon Baron's
> >     Thinking and Deciding.
> >
> >     Ron
> >
> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
> >
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > Dear GiveWell,
> >     >
> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
> >     most good? �  M
> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
> >     want to do
> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
> >     >
> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
> >     ability to go into
> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
> >     career, as
> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
> >     the most good,
> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
> >     developing world,
> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
> >     secure a
> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
> >     my income to
> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
> >     students to
> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
> >     directly help
> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
> >     can donate a
> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
> >     others to
> >     > pursue such careers?
> >     >
> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
> >     questions on and off
> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
> >     you could
> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
> >     What resources
> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
> >     would have useful
> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
> >     International
> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
> >     GiveWell? �  All,
> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
> >     these issues? �
> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
> >     Singer, Thomas
> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
> >     GiveWell and
> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
> >     anything that
> >     > directly addresses these questions.
> >     >
> >     > Thanks,
> >     >
> >     > Mark
> >     >
> >
> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> >     University of Pennsylvania
> >
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

I don't have any data for you, but as generic newspaper-column-style advice,
there are many paths to success but you have to find the one that works for
you. So I think it mostly depends on your interests and talents, rather than
what you can merely tolerate. High-impact achievements tend to require
enthusiasm and determination to succeed in the face of setbacks. If you
choose work you don't enjoy or don't consider important in itself, you'll
have a harder time sticking with it long enough to really succeed.

That said, it's worth trying things that are most easily tried when you're
younger, even if you discover that it's not right for you. Do you want to
travel to third-world countries? Etc.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Mark Lee <marklee@...>wrote:

>
>
> Dear GiveWell,
>
> I�m interested in answering the question: how can I do the most good?  More
> manageably, I�m interested in answering the question: if I want to do the
> most good, what career should I pursue?
>
> Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the ability to go
> into and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
> career, as well as the average person in that career.  If I want to do the
> most good, should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
> developing world, helping those who need it most?  Or, at one remove,
> should I secure a stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high
> percentage of my income to such charities?  Or, at one more remove, should
> I become a teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
> students to pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
> directly help those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that
> they can donate a lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn
> influence others to pursue such careers?
>
>             I�ve been thinking about these questions on and off for
> several years now, but have not gotten very far.  Perhaps you could shed
> some light on them, and/or on the following questions:  What resources are
> out there that are pertinent to these questions?  Who would have useful
> advice to give?  Should I be speaking to economists?  International
> development and charity folks?  Ethicists?  Groups like GiveWell?  All,
> some, or none of the above?  Has anything been written on these issues?  I�m
> aware of some indirectly relevant literature from Peter Singer, Thomas
> Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the GiveWell and
> Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I�ve not encountered anything that
> directly addresses these questions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> 
>

GiveWell's analysis of which charities are doing the most good seems
to assume a slowly-changing landscape where analysis done now is
likely to still be mostly valid for a few years. But at the moment,
lots of people are donating to charities that work in Haiti. It seems
like what other people are doing should be taken into account.

It's possible that there's a bandwagon or critical-mass effect, that a
large number of donations concentrated in one country could have a
major impact. There might be a lot of waste or misdirected donations
due to problems with coordination, but the impact of well-targeted
donations might be improved because other people are donating to
related causes, resulting in increasing returns for everyone. A
well-prepared organization such as Partners in Health might take
advantage of the opportunity to have a higher impact.

On the other hand, if you think there are diminishing returns, a
better strategy is to look for overlooked charities in other countries
that might be getting less money than usual because of the attention
on Haiti - or perhaps look for opportunities to continue the work
started after a previous crisis.

Any thoughts on this?

- Brian

Oops, after sending this I see that there's a new blog post about Haiti:

http://blog.givewell.net/2010/01/29/haiti-earthquake-relief-seems-less-cost-effective-than-everyday-international-aid/

Calculating the overall funding per person is useful for getting an
overall picture but not entirely convincing. Suppose there are two
organizations working in a region and one is very cost-effective while
the other one spends a lot of money without much impact. If we average
them then we wouldn't see the opportunity for funding the
more-effective organization.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Brian Slesinsky <brian@...> wrote:
> GiveWell's analysis of which charities are doing the most good seems
> to assume a slowly-changing landscape where analysis done now is
> likely to still be mostly valid for a few years. But at the moment,
> lots of people are donating to charities that work in Haiti. It seems
> like what other people are doing should be taken into account.
>
> It's possible that there's a bandwagon or critical-mass effect, that a
> large number of donations concentrated in one country could have a
> major impact. There might be a lot of waste or misdirected donations
> due to problems with coordination, but the impact of well-targeted
> donations might be improved because other people are donating to
> related causes, resulting in increasing returns for everyone. A
> well-prepared organization such as Partners in Health might take
> advantage of the opportunity to have a higher impact.
>
> On the other hand, if you think there are diminishing returns, a
> better strategy is to look for overlooked charities in other countries
> that might be getting less money than usual because of the attention
> on Haiti - or perhaps look for opportunities to continue the work
> started after a previous crisis.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> - Brian
>

I think it is very important to think about Mark's question.  If you want to
do as much good as possible for humanity, here are some paths of life that
I'd take seriously.  I'd break the kinds of jobs into three categories: get
rich and give jobs, influence jobs, and research jobs. (The distinction
between 2 and 3 might be a bit arbitrary, but let's imagine researchers
aren't trying to convince people to be researchers or givers.) Anyway, here
are examples in each category.



   1.

   Get rich and give
   1.

      Finance jobs, specifically hedge funds or private equity
      2.

      Some lucrative area of law
      3.

      entrepreneurship
       2.

   Influence jobs
   1.

      Philosophy professor preaching about duties to the poor
      2.

      Public health (advise a large organization, like WHO)
      3.

      Work for some big international aid organization, and try to get to
      the top
       3.

   Research jobs
   1.

      Medical research (neglected tropical diseases maybe)
      2.

      GiveWell
      3.

      Poverty Action Lab


If we compare type 1 and type 2, we should ask: could givers pay/convince
more people to be influencers or could influencers convince more people to
be givers? If the former, 1 beats 2. If the latter, 2 beats 1. Perhaps you
could argue that there aren't enough people willing and able to be
influencers of the appropriate kind, and thus that it would be better for
you to be an influencer.



 But it might be questioned whether the influencers are really better at
influencing. Compare, for instance, a preaching philosophy professor and a
finance professional. As a professor you might interact with more students,
but as a financial professional you might have contact with many individuals
with a lot of wealth.  Although you'd directly contact fewer individuals,
you might be more likely to convince a friend or a colleague to give away
income than a student.  Even if you convince fewer people to become
do-gooders, it might be better to convince a few rich people than it would
be to convince a larger number of students.



 3 can only win if influencers can't influence people to do the research as
well as you could do it yourself and givers can't hire people to do the
research as well as you could do it yourself. If they can't, the question
will be very difficult to answer.



 It is very hard to answer this question.



 Best,

Nick






On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>
> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
>
> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the
> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to
> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only
> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
> what was happening.
>
> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus
> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>
> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields
> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by
> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a
> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
> of your preferences now and save some time.
>
> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...>wrote:
>
>> Mark et al,
>>
>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>
>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>>
>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>
>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>
>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
>> sidenote to the first.
>>
>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>
>> Dario
>>
>> David Morrow wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Mark,
>> >
>> >
>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>> worth.
>> >
>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>> > your list significantly.
>> >
>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
>> > problems.
>> >
>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
>> > readers have to say.
>> >
>> > David
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...
>> > <mailto:j.c.price@....edu>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     Mark,
>> >
>> >
>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
>> >
>> >     Jareb Price
>> >
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>> >     marklee@... <mailto:
>> marklee@...>
>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>> >     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@...>
>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     Mark,
>> >
>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>> >     utilitarianism
>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>> >     The first
>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>> >     measure
>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>> >     are the two
>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>> >     (QALY) and the
>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>> >
>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>> >     involve
>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>> >     might allow you
>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>> >     as a teacher,
>> >     etc.
>> >
>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>> >     know of anyone
>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>> >     QALYS I'd
>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>> >     and for
>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>> >     Jon Baron's
>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
>> >
>> >     Ron
>> >
>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...tgers.edu
>> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
>> >
>> >     >
>> >     >
>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
>> >     >
>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>> >     most good? �  M
>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>> >     want to do
>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>> >     >
>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>> >     ability to go into
>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>> >     career, as
>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>> >     the most good,
>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>> >     developing world,
>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>> >     secure a
>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>> >     my income to
>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>> >     students to
>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>> >     directly help
>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>> >     can donate a
>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>> >     others to
>> >     > pursue such careers?
>> >     >
>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>> >     questions on and off
>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>> >     you could
>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>> >     What resources
>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>> >     would have useful
>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
>> >     International
>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>> >     these issues? �
>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>> >     Singer, Thomas
>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>> >     GiveWell and
>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>> >     anything that
>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
>> >     >
>> >     > Thanks,
>> >     >
>> >     > Mark
>> >     >
>> >
>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>> >     University of Pennsylvania
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
>> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
>> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
>> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

The GiveWell analysis approach holds true in the long run. Today, IRC
blogged about the need to remember and donate on behalf of efforts to
address current "man-made" disasters, e.g. DRC.
We need to mine the results of research and analysis and commentary post
Tsunami relief response. The blog: Good Intentions are Not Enough posted
a collection of different research, commentary on the Tsunami and the
philanthropy-relief nexus, as recommended by ALNAP. Here is the link:
http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/resear\
ch/
<http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/resea\
rch/>
--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>
> GiveWell's analysis of which charities are doing the most good seems
> to assume a slowly-changing landscape where analysis done now is
> likely to still be mostly valid for a few years. But at the moment,
> lots of people are donating to charities that work in Haiti. It seems
> like what other people are doing should be taken into account.
>
> It's possible that there's a bandwagon or critical-mass effect, that a
> large number of donations concentrated in one country could have a
> major impact. There might be a lot of waste or misdirected donations
> due to problems with coordination, but the impact of well-targeted
> donations might be improved because other people are donating to
> related causes, resulting in increasing returns for everyone. A
> well-prepared organization such as Partners in Health might take
> advantage of the opportunity to have a higher impact.
>
> On the other hand, if you think there are diminishing returns, a
> better strategy is to look for overlooked charities in other countries
> that might be getting less money than usual because of the attention
> on Haiti - or perhaps look for opportunities to continue the work
> started after a previous crisis.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> - Brian
>

I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian Slesinsky
and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal talents/interests
are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
general answer.

From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
shedding much light on this decision.

One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of discussions,
people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits of for-profit
activities.  Most scholarly discussions of the enormous improvement in
living standards and drastic declines in poverty over the last few hundred
years give a huge amount of the credit to overall economic growth driven
largely by for-profit activities.

For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus on
outcomes.  It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
about the relationship between profit and social good (including Dario's
worries about finance).  But in a lot of industries, making money means
helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money should be
in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it away.
 This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though finance
has some definite problems as well) where the translation between making
money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible.  I think
the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly critical
of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").

I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated, insufficiently
criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the way
they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this).  But if your main value added
is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather than
challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
framework where  incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
aligned with social good.

So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and have
an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for an
unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job.  In fact,
the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there is a
lot of "room for more labor" in that area.

Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to GiveWell.
 Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the question
of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than the
question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
institution working on this question.  However, I am personally very
interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on it.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>
> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
>
> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the
> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to
> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only
> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
> what was happening.
>
> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus
> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>
> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields
> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by
> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a
> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
> of your preferences now and save some time.
>
> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...>wrote:
>
>> Mark et al,
>>
>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>
>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>>
>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>
>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>
>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
>> sidenote to the first.
>>
>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>
>> Dario
>>
>> David Morrow wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Mark,
>> >
>> >
>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>> worth.
>> >
>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>> > your list significantly.
>> >
>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
>> > problems.
>> >
>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
>> > readers have to say.
>> >
>> > David
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...
>> > <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     Mark,
>> >
>> >
>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
>> >
>> >     Jareb Price
>> >
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>> >     marklee@... <mailto:
>> marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>> >     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@...u>
>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     Mark,
>> >
>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>> >     utilitarianism
>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>> >     The first
>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>> >     measure
>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>> >     are the two
>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>> >     (QALY) and the
>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>> >
>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>> >     involve
>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>> >     might allow you
>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>> >     as a teacher,
>> >     etc.
>> >
>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>> >     know of anyone
>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>> >     QALYS I'd
>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>> >     and for
>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>> >     Jon Baron's
>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
>> >
>> >     Ron
>> >
>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
>> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
>> >
>> >     >
>> >     >
>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
>> >     >
>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>> >     most good? �  M
>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>> >     want to do
>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>> >     >
>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>> >     ability to go into
>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>> >     career, as
>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>> >     the most good,
>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>> >     developing world,
>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>> >     secure a
>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>> >     my income to
>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>> >     students to
>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>> >     directly help
>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>> >     can donate a
>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>> >     others to
>> >     > pursue such careers?
>> >     >
>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>> >     questions on and off
>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>> >     you could
>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>> >     What resources
>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>> >     would have useful
>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
>> >     International
>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>> >     these issues? �
>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>> >     Singer, Thomas
>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>> >     GiveWell and
>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>> >     anything that
>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
>> >     >
>> >     > Thanks,
>> >     >
>> >     > Mark
>> >     >
>> >
>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>> >     University of Pennsylvania
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
>> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
>> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
>> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

I am inspired and encouraged to see the interesting and insightful views from everyone. As a 20-year experienced chemical/environmental engineer who quit my job last year to go back to school to pursue a career in health care, I have thought about this question, among others, for many years and have come to accept a somewhat non-answer: IT DEPENDS, on 
1) who you are, 
2) what you are best at (excellent and most effective), 
3) what you love doing and 
4) where you are in life (age and maturity). 
 
I believe that if one can combine #2 and #3 with the intention and awareness to give well, one will eventually get there. There is not a single job or career that would do it all for most people. Be good to yourself. Be patient. Be willing to change. 
 
Thank you for the question and discussions. 
Jan Nguyen   

--- On Sat, 1/30/10, Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...> wrote:


From: Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...>
Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
To: givewell@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 1:40 PM


  




I think it is very important to think about Mark's question.  If you want to do as much good as possible for humanity, here are some paths of life that I'd take seriously.  I'd break the kinds of jobs into three categories: get rich and give jobs, influence jobs, and research jobs. (The distinction between 2 and 3 might be a bit arbitrary, but let's imagine researchers aren't trying to convince people to be researchers or givers.) Anyway, here are examples in each category.




Get rich and give


Finance jobs, specifically hedge funds or private equity

Some lucrative area of law

entrepreneurship

Influence jobs


Philosophy professor preaching about duties to the poor

Public health (advise a large organization, like WHO)

Work for some big international aid organization, and try to get to the top

Research jobs


Medical research (neglected tropical diseases maybe)

GiveWell

Poverty Action Lab

If we compare type 1 and type 2, we should ask: could givers pay/convince more people to be influencers or could influencers convince more people to be givers? If the former, 1 beats 2. If the latter, 2 beats 1. Perhaps you could argue that there aren't enough people willing and able to be influencers of the appropriate kind, and thus that it would be better for you to be an influencer.



But it might be questioned whether the influencers are really better at influencing. Compare, for instance, a preaching philosophy professor and a finance professional. As a professor you might interact with more students, but as a financial professional you might have contact with many individuals with a lot of wealth.  Although you'd directly contact fewer individuals, you might be more likely to convince a friend or a colleague to give away income than a student.  Even if you convince fewer people to become do-gooders, it might be better to convince a few rich people than it would be to convince a larger number of students.



3 can only win if influencers can't influence people to do the research as well as you could do it yourself and givers can't hire people to do the research as well as you could do it yourself. If they can't, the question will be very difficult to answer.



It is very hard to answer this question.




Best,
Nick






On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@gmail. com> wrote:


  



Dear Mark and GiveWell,

It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.

I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was administrative, and working with the government of a developing country presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over what was happening.

Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate better than
 a more lucrative and stable job would. 

Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some of your preferences now and save some time.

Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read philosophers' approaches to this problem. 

Sarah






On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@princeton. edu> wrote:

Mark et al,

I’ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I’ve noticed is that
many careers seem to have a winner-take- all dynamic: that is, a very
small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
than a typical elected official one level down – say a state governor.
A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship – a
few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
business.  As a grad student it’s been my impression that this pattern
is also present in science -– a relatively small number of key
innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
what would have happened if their inventors hadn’t thought of them),
while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
“inevitable” in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
anyway.  It’s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.

A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
is to be average in the “most” efficacious possible career choice.
Thus, David’s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.

All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.

To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I’m concerned that
the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
industry – particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.

I don’t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
GiveWell’s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell’s future work could
naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
sidenote to the first.

Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
others on this list find such analyses valuable?

Dario




David Morrow wrote:
>
>
> Mark,
>
>
> Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
> addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're worth.
>
> I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
> first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
> as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
> also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
> seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
> then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
> heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
> yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
> as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
> already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
> best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
> job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
> to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
> inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
> your list significantly.
>
> We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
> that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
> the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
> ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
> a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
> or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
> could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
> know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
> further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
> problems.
>
> I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
> readers have to say.
>
> David
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@alumni. iu.edu

> <mailto:j.c.price@alumni. iu.edu>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     Mark,
>
>
>     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>     simplistic throughout your life.
>
>     Jareb Price
>
>     ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ------
>     To: givewell@yahoogroup s.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroup s.com>;
>     marklee@philosophy. rutgers.edu <mailto:marklee@philosophy. rutgers.edu>
>     CC: givewell@yahoogroup s.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroup s.com>
>     From: rnoble@.... edu <mailto:rnoble@.... edu>



>     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>
>
>
>
>     Mark,
>
>     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>     utilitarianism
>     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>     The first
>     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>     measure
>     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>     are the two
>     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>     (QALY) and the
>     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>
>     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>     involve
>     uncertainty- -your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>     might allow you
>     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are the
>     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>     as a teacher,
>     etc.
>
>     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>     know of anyone
>     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>     QALYS I'd
>     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>     and for
>     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>     Jon Baron's
>     Thinking and Deciding.
>
>     Ron
>
>     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@philosophy. rutgers.edu
>     <mailto:marklee@philosophy. rutgers.edu>>:



>
>     >
>     >
>     > Dear GiveWell,
>     >
>     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>     most good? Â  M
>     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>     want to do
>     > the most good, what career should I pursue? Â
>     >
>     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>     ability to go into
>     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>     career, as
>     > well as the average person in that career. Â  If I want to do
>     the most good,
>     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>     developing world,
>     > helping those who need it most? Â  Or, at one remove, should I
>     secure a
>     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>     my income to
>     > such charities? Â  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>     > teacher/professor/ other person of influence, and influence my
>     students to
>     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>     directly help
>     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>     can donate a
>     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>     others to
>     > pursue such careers?
>     >
>     >             I’ve been thinking about these
>     questions on and off
>     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. Â  Perhaps
>     you could
>     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: Â
>     What resources
>     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? Â  Who
>     would have useful
>     > advice to give? Â  Should I be speaking to economists? Â
>     International
>     > development and charity folks? Â  Ethicists? Â  Groups like
>     GiveWell? Â  All,
>     > some, or none of the above? Â  Has anything been written on
>     these issues? Â
>     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature from Peter
>     Singer, Thomas
>     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>     GiveWell and
>     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>     anything that
>     > directly addresses these questions.
>     >
>     > Thanks,
>     >
>     > Mark
>     >
>
>     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>     University of Pennsylvania
>
>
>     ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ------
>     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.

>     <http://clk.atdmt. com/GBL/go/ 196390707/ direct/01/>
>
>
>



------------ --------- --------- ------

This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell. net).  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links














      

I want to second Holden's point about for-profit activity. For-profit
enterprise can do a tremendous amount of good. People on this list might be
particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, which blends the aims of
traditional NGO work with the methods of for-profit work.

One other career path that hasn't been mentioned yet is religious work
(e.g., becoming a member of the clergy or a lay worker for a religious
organization). That requires a particular kind of interest, belief, and
dedication, of course, but it offers an important way to influence people's
behavior. In some ways, it may be a better platform for moral influence than
some of the other positions we've been discussing.

David

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...> wrote:

>
>
> I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian Slesinsky
> and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal talents/interests
> are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
> general answer.
>
> From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
> using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
> shedding much light on this decision.
>
> One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
> discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits of
> for-profit activities.  Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
> improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over the
> last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall economic
> growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>
> For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus on
> outcomes.  It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
> about the relationship between profit and social good (including Dario's
> worries about finance).  But in a lot of industries, making money means
> helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money should be
> in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it away.
>  This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though finance
> has some definite problems as well) where the translation between making
> money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible.  I think
> the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
> charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly critical
> of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>
> I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated, insufficiently
> criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the way
> they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this).  But if your main value added
> is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather than
> challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
> framework where  incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
> aligned with social good.
>
> So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and have
> an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
> activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for an
> unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job.  In fact,
> the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there is a
> lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>
> Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to GiveWell.
>  Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the question
> of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than the
> question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
> institution working on this question.  However, I am personally very
> interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on it.
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>>
>> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
>> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
>>
>> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
>> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the
>> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
>> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to
>> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only
>> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
>> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
>> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
>> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
>> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
>> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
>> what was happening.
>>
>> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
>> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
>> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
>> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus
>> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
>> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
>> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
>> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
>> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
>> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
>> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
>> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
>> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
>> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>>
>> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
>> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
>> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
>> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields
>> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
>> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by
>> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
>> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
>> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a
>> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
>> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
>> of your preferences now and save some time.
>>
>> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
>> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
>> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>>
>> Sarah
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...>wrote:
>>
>>> Mark et al,
>>>
>>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
>>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
>>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
>>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
>>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
>>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
>>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
>>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
>>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
>>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
>>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
>>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
>>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>>
>>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
>>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
>>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
>>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
>>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
>>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
>>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>>>
>>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
>>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
>>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
>>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
>>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>>
>>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
>>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
>>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
>>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
>>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
>>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
>>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>>
>>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
>>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
>>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
>>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
>>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
>>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
>>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
>>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
>>> sidenote to the first.
>>>
>>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
>>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>>
>>> Dario
>>>
>>> David Morrow wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Mark,
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>>> worth.
>>> >
>>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
>>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
>>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
>>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
>>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
>>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
>>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
>>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
>>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
>>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
>>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
>>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>>> > your list significantly.
>>> >
>>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
>>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
>>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
>>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
>>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
>>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
>>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
>>> > problems.
>>> >
>>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
>>> > readers have to say.
>>> >
>>> > David
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...
>>> > <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     Mark,
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
>>> >
>>> >     Jareb Price
>>> >
>>> >
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>>> >     marklee@...gers.edu <mailto:
>>> marklee@...>
>>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>>> >     From: rnoble@sas.upenn.edu <mailto:rnoble@...>
>>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     Mark,
>>> >
>>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>>> >     utilitarianism
>>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>>> >     The first
>>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>>> >     measure
>>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>>> >     are the two
>>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>>> >     (QALY) and the
>>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>>> >
>>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>>> >     involve
>>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>>> >     might allow you
>>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>>> the
>>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>>> >     as a teacher,
>>> >     etc.
>>> >
>>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>>> >     know of anyone
>>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>>> >     QALYS I'd
>>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>>> >     and for
>>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>>> >     Jon Baron's
>>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
>>> >
>>> >     Ron
>>> >
>>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
>>> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
>>> >
>>> >     >
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
>>> >     >
>>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>>> >     most good? �  M
>>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>>> >     want to do
>>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>>> >     ability to go into
>>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>>> >     career, as
>>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>>> >     the most good,
>>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>>> >     developing world,
>>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>>> >     secure a
>>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>>> >     my income to
>>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>>> >     students to
>>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>>> >     directly help
>>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>>> >     can donate a
>>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>>> >     others to
>>> >     > pursue such careers?
>>> >     >
>>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>>> >     questions on and off
>>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>>> >     you could
>>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>>> >     What resources
>>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>>> >     would have useful
>>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
>>> >     International
>>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
>>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>>> >     these issues? �
>>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>>> >     Singer, Thomas
>>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>>> >     GiveWell and
>>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>>> >     anything that
>>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Thanks,
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Mark
>>> >     >
>>> >
>>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>> >     University of Pennsylvania
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>>
>>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

A major caveat about for-profit work is that potentially the most important
areas in which help is urgently needed are those whose benefits are not
currently captured by markets. Climate change and disease management spring
to mind. There are for-profit, partial solutions for both problems, but
their scope is currently limited.

Sarah



On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:21 AM, David Morrow <dmorrow1@...> wrote:

>
>
> I want to second Holden's point about for-profit activity. For-profit
> enterprise can do a tremendous amount of good. People on this list might be
> particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, which blends the aims of
> traditional NGO work with the methods of for-profit work.
>
> One other career path that hasn't been mentioned yet is religious work
> (e.g., becoming a member of the clergy or a lay worker for a religious
> organization). That requires a particular kind of interest, belief, and
> dedication, of course, but it offers an important way to influence people's
> behavior. In some ways, it may be a better platform for moral influence than
> some of the other positions we've been discussing.
>
> David
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian Slesinsky
>> and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal talents/interests
>> are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
>> general answer.
>>
>> From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
>> using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
>> shedding much light on this decision.
>>
>> One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
>> discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits of
>> for-profit activities.  Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
>> improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over the
>> last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall economic
>> growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>>
>> For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus on
>> outcomes.  It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
>> about the relationship between profit and social good (including Dario's
>> worries about finance).  But in a lot of industries, making money means
>> helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money should be
>> in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it away.
>>  This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though finance
>> has some definite problems as well) where the translation between making
>> money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible.  I think
>> the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
>> charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly critical
>> of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>>
>> I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated, insufficiently
>> criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the way
>> they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this).  But if your main value added
>> is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather than
>> challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
>> framework where  incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
>> aligned with social good.
>>
>> So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and
>> have an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
>> activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for an
>> unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job.  In fact,
>> the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there is a
>> lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>>
>> Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to
>> GiveWell.  Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the
>> question of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on
>> than the question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
>> institution working on this question.  However, I am personally very
>> interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on it.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>>>
>>> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add
>>> my personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
>>>
>>> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>>> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
>>> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the
>>> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
>>> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to
>>> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only
>>> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
>>> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
>>> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
>>> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
>>> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
>>> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
>>> what was happening.
>>>
>>> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
>>> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
>>> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
>>> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus
>>> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
>>> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
>>> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
>>> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
>>> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
>>> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
>>> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
>>> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
>>> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
>>> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>>>
>>> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a
>>> field where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I
>>> think it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you
>>> might be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the
>>> fields where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider
>>> the psychological components that contribute to your success. I was
>>> surprised by my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of
>>> obvious importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have
>>> to live in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will
>>> trade a great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me
>>> direct experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate
>>> some of your preferences now and save some time.
>>>
>>> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
>>> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
>>> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>>> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>>>
>>> Sarah
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mark et al,
>>>>
>>>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
>>>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>>>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
>>>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>>>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>>>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
>>>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
>>>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
>>>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
>>>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
>>>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>>>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>>>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
>>>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>>>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
>>>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>>>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
>>>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>>>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
>>>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>>>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
>>>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>>>
>>>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
>>>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
>>>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
>>>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
>>>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>>>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
>>>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>>>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
>>>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>>>>
>>>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
>>>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>>>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>>>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
>>>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
>>>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
>>>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>>>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>>>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>>>
>>>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
>>>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
>>>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
>>>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
>>>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>>>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
>>>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>>>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
>>>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>>>
>>>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
>>>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
>>>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
>>>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
>>>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>>>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
>>>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
>>>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
>>>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
>>>> sidenote to the first.
>>>>
>>>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
>>>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>>>
>>>> Dario
>>>>
>>>> David Morrow wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Mark,
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>>>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>>>> worth.
>>>> >
>>>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
>>>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
>>>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
>>>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
>>>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>>>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
>>>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
>>>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
>>>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
>>>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>>>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
>>>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
>>>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
>>>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>>>> > your list significantly.
>>>> >
>>>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
>>>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
>>>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>>>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
>>>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
>>>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
>>>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
>>>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>>>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
>>>> > problems.
>>>> >
>>>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
>>>> > readers have to say.
>>>> >
>>>> > David
>>>> >
>>>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <
>>>> j.c.price@...
>>>> > <mailto:j.c.price@....edu>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >     Mark,
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>>>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>>>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>>>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>>>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>>>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>>>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>>>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>>>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>>>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>>>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>>>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>>>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
>>>> >
>>>> >     Jareb Price
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>>>> >     marklee@... <mailto:
>>>> marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>>>> >     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@....edu>
>>>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>>>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >     Mark,
>>>> >
>>>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>>>> >     utilitarianism
>>>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>>>> >     The first
>>>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>>>> >     measure
>>>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>>>> >     are the two
>>>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>>>> >     (QALY) and the
>>>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>>>> >
>>>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>>>> >     involve
>>>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>>>> >     might allow you
>>>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>>>> the
>>>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>>>> >     as a teacher,
>>>> >     etc.
>>>> >
>>>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>>>> >     know of anyone
>>>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>>>> >     QALYS I'd
>>>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>>>> >     and for
>>>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>>>> >     Jon Baron's
>>>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
>>>> >
>>>> >     Ron
>>>> >
>>>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...s.edu
>>>> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
>>>> >
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>>>> >     most good? �  M
>>>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>>>> >     want to do
>>>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>>>> >     ability to go into
>>>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>>>> >     career, as
>>>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>>>> >     the most good,
>>>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>>>> >     developing world,
>>>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>>>> >     secure a
>>>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>>>> >     my income to
>>>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>>>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>>>> >     students to
>>>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>>>> >     directly help
>>>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>>>> >     can donate a
>>>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>>>> >     others to
>>>> >     > pursue such careers?
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>>>> >     questions on and off
>>>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>>>> >     you could
>>>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>>>> >     What resources
>>>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>>>> >     would have useful
>>>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
>>>> >     International
>>>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>>>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
>>>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>>>> >     these issues? �
>>>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>>>> >     Singer, Thomas
>>>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>>>> >     GiveWell and
>>>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>>>> >     anything that
>>>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > Thanks,
>>>> >     >
>>>> >     > Mark
>>>> >     >
>>>> >
>>>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>>> >     University of Pennsylvania
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>>>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>>>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>>>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated,
highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...> wrote:

>
>
> I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian Slesinsky
> and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal talents/interests
> are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
> general answer.
>
> From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
> using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
> shedding much light on this decision.
>
> One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
> discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits of
> for-profit activities.  Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
> improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over the
> last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall economic
> growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>
> For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus on
> outcomes.  It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
> about the relationship between profit and social good (including Dario's
> worries about finance).  But in a lot of industries, making money means
> helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money should be
> in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it away.
>  This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though finance
> has some definite problems as well) where the translation between making
> money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible.  I think
> the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
> charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly critical
> of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>
> I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated, insufficiently
> criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the way
> they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this).  But if your main value added
> is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather than
> challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
> framework where  incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
> aligned with social good.
>
> So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and have
> an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
> activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for an
> unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job.  In fact,
> the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there is a
> lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>
> Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to GiveWell.
>  Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the question
> of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than the
> question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
> institution working on this question.  However, I am personally very
> interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on it.
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>>
>> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
>> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
>>
>> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
>> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved the
>> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
>> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided to
>> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the only
>> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
>> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
>> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
>> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
>> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
>> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
>> what was happening.
>>
>> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
>> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
>> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
>> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a focus
>> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
>> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
>> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
>> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
>> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
>> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
>> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
>> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy, growth
>> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
>> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>>
>> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
>> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
>> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
>> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the fields
>> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
>> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised by
>> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
>> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
>> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade a
>> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
>> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
>> of your preferences now and save some time.
>>
>> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
>> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating, subjective
>> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>>
>> Sarah
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei <damodei@...>wrote:
>>
>>> Mark et al,
>>>
>>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
>>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
>>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
>>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
>>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
>>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
>>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
>>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
>>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
>>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
>>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
>>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
>>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>>
>>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
>>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
>>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
>>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
>>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
>>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
>>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
>>>
>>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
>>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
>>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
>>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
>>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>>
>>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
>>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
>>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
>>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
>>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
>>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
>>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>>
>>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
>>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
>>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
>>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
>>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
>>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
>>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
>>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
>>> sidenote to the first.
>>>
>>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
>>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>>
>>> Dario
>>>
>>> David Morrow wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Mark,
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>>> worth.
>>> >
>>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
>>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
>>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
>>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
>>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
>>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
>>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
>>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
>>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
>>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
>>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
>>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>>> > your list significantly.
>>> >
>>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
>>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
>>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
>>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
>>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
>>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
>>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
>>> > problems.
>>> >
>>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
>>> > readers have to say.
>>> >
>>> > David
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...
>>> > <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     Mark,
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
>>> >
>>> >     Jareb Price
>>> >
>>> >
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
>>> >     marklee@... <mailto:
>>> marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
>>> >     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@...n.edu>
>>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     Mark,
>>> >
>>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>>> >     utilitarianism
>>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>>> >     The first
>>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>>> >     measure
>>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>>> >     are the two
>>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>>> >     (QALY) and the
>>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>>> >
>>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>>> >     involve
>>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>>> >     might allow you
>>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>>> the
>>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>>> >     as a teacher,
>>> >     etc.
>>> >
>>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>>> >     know of anyone
>>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>>> >     QALYS I'd
>>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>>> >     and for
>>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>>> >     Jon Baron's
>>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
>>> >
>>> >     Ron
>>> >
>>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
>>> >     <mailto:marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu>>:
>>> >
>>> >     >
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
>>> >     >
>>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>>> >     most good? �  M
>>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>>> >     want to do
>>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>>> >     ability to go into
>>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>>> >     career, as
>>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
>>> >     the most good,
>>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>>> >     developing world,
>>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
>>> >     secure a
>>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>>> >     my income to
>>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>>> >     students to
>>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>>> >     directly help
>>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>>> >     can donate a
>>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>>> >     others to
>>> >     > pursue such careers?
>>> >     >
>>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
>>> >     questions on and off
>>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
>>> >     you could
>>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>>> >     What resources
>>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
>>> >     would have useful
>>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
>>> >     International
>>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
>>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
>>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
>>> >     these issues? �
>>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>>> >     Singer, Thomas
>>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>>> >     GiveWell and
>>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>>> >     anything that
>>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Thanks,
>>> >     >
>>> >     > Mark
>>> >     >
>>> >
>>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>> >     University of Pennsylvania
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>>
>>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

Interesting question; thanks.

I think it's important to highlight that we've emphasized the role of
others' funding in the research we've done.  We look for initiatives that
have enough other support to be stable and scalable, yet are still highly
underfunded in the sense that they can be scaled up further.  I think the
cost-effectiveness estimates for our top charities are outstanding,
reflecting (partly) the fact that they are in exactly this state of being
stable/doable but underfunded.

That said, sudden changes in external events (as in Haiti) and in others'
funding decisions (also as in Haiti) could, in theory, lead to sudden and
temporary opportunities for donors to do even better.

However:

   - There's a big question as to how practical it is for individual/casual
   donors to capitalize on such opportunities.  Our goal isn't to examine every
   opportunity possible, but to find great opportunities that can be reasonably
   presented to individual/casual donors, and that means to some extent
   focusing on the "easiest" options.  Foundations with their own research
   staffs may be better positioned to take advantage of sudden and temporary
   opportunities.
   - *As argued at
   http://blog.givewell.net/2010/01/29/haiti-earthquake-relief-seems-less-cost-effective-than-everyday-international-aid/
,
   we don't feel that Haiti relief specifically offers an unusually good
   opportunity for donors - at least in terms of the "overall"
   cost-effectiveness of the total effort.  As Brian points out, a particular
   outstanding organization working on the relief effort could still have great
   cost-effectiveness, but this leaves us where we were before: we haven't yet
   identified any such charities, and recommend the ones we have identified as
   outstanding in general (http://www.givewell.net/charities/top-charities)
   until and unless we determine that a particular disaster relief charity is
   strong.*

We are planning more work on disaster relief, and we may come up with some
way of identifying when a disaster leads to an unusually good opportunity.
 But broadly, I think the opportunities we've found are very strong in terms
of being neither financially non-viable nor overfunded.

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

>
>
> Oops, after sending this I see that there's a new blog post about Haiti:
>
>
>
> http://blog.givewell.net/2010/01/29/haiti-earthquake-relief-seems-less-cost-effective-than-everyday-international-aid/
>
> Calculating the overall funding per person is useful for getting an
> overall picture but not entirely convincing. Suppose there are two
> organizations working in a region and one is very cost-effective while
> the other one spends a lot of money without much impact. If we average
> them then we wouldn't see the opportunity for funding the
> more-effective organization.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Brian Slesinsky <brian@...<brian%40slesinsky.org>>
> wrote:
> > GiveWell's analysis of which charities are doing the most good seems
> > to assume a slowly-changing landscape where analysis done now is
> > likely to still be mostly valid for a few years. But at the moment,
> > lots of people are donating to charities that work in Haiti. It seems
> > like what other people are doing should be taken into account.
> >
> > It's possible that there's a bandwagon or critical-mass effect, that a
> > large number of donations concentrated in one country could have a
> > major impact. There might be a lot of waste or misdirected donations
> > due to problems with coordination, but the impact of well-targeted
> > donations might be improved because other people are donating to
> > related causes, resulting in increasing returns for everyone. A
> > well-prepared organization such as Partners in Health might take
> > advantage of the opportunity to have a higher impact.
> >
> > On the other hand, if you think there are diminishing returns, a
> > better strategy is to look for overlooked charities in other countries
> > that might be getting less money than usual because of the attention
> > on Haiti - or perhaps look for opportunities to continue the work
> > started after a previous crisis.
> >
> > Any thoughts on this?
> >
> > - Brian
> >
>
>  
>

One question I haven't noticed being addressed that might be of interest:  To
what extent are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness (however defined)
to do good for others?  This could be especially salient if you go the route of
a high-paying job with the intention of donating money.  If you make
$100,000/year, how much are you willing to donate of that $100,000, for
example?

As for DALYs, you can disagree with the measure but measuring good in some way
seems essential.  You'll have to choose between projects to put your time and
effort into, so you really have to quantify good in some manner.  Upon close
inspection, two projects which both look "very good" in terms of doing good
might differ by an order of magnitude in how much good they do.

Ron




Quoting Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...>:

> Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated,
> highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian Slesinsky
> > and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal talents/interests
> > are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
> > general answer.
> >
> > From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
> > using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
> > shedding much light on this decision.
> >
> > One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
> > discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits of
> > for-profit activities.  Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
> > improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over the
> > last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall economic
> > growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
> >
> > For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus on
> > outcomes.  It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
> > about the relationship between profit and social good (including Dario's
> > worries about finance).  But in a lot of industries, making money means
> > helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money should
> be
> > in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it
> away.
> >  This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though finance
> > has some definite problems as well) where the translation between making
> > money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible.  I think
> > the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
> > charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly
> critical
> > of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
> >
> > I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated, insufficiently
> > criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the way
> > they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this).  But if your main value added
> > is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather than
> > challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
> > framework where  incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
> > aligned with social good.
> >
> > So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and have
> > an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
> > activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for an
> > unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job.  In fact,
> > the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there is a
> > lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
> >
> > Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to GiveWell.
> >  Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the question
> > of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than the
> > question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
> > institution working on this question.  However, I am personally very
> > interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on it.
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
> >>
> >> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I add my
> >> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your thinking.
> >>
> >> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
> >> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary biology
> >> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I loved
> the
> >> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
> >> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I decided
> to
> >> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the
> only
> >> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between large
> >> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work was
> >> administrative, and working with the government of a developing country
> >> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of the
> >> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
> >> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence over
> >> what was happening.
> >>
> >> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt as
> >> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
> >> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S. and
> >> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a
> focus
> >> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting than
> >> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible. That
> >> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make paradigm-shifting
> >> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries are
> >> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of job
> >> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with my
> >> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance, donating
> >> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy,
> growth
> >> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work compensate
> >> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
> >>
> >> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a field
> >> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I think
> >> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you might
> >> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the
> fields
> >> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider the
> >> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was surprised
> by
> >> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
> >> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to live
> >> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will trade
> a
> >> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
> >> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate some
> >> of your preferences now and save some time.
> >>
> >> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact, which
> >> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating,
> subjective
> >> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
> >> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
> >>
> >> Sarah
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei
> <damodei@...>wrote:
> >>
> >>> Mark et al,
> >>>
> >>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it is
> >>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
> >>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here is
> >>> immense.  That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
> >>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
> >>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
> >>> the total impactful activity in the field.  One vivid example of this is
> >>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US president
> >>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more influence
> >>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state governor.
> >>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
> >>> local party official.  The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
> >>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have thousands
> >>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
> >>> business.  As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
> >>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
> >>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared to
> >>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
> >>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
> >>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
> >>> anyway.  It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance, and
> >>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
> >>>
> >>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
> >>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most promising
> >>> in some abstract utilitarian sense.  It is probably better to be wildly
> >>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than it
> >>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
> >>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
> >>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
> >>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work hard
> >>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest in.
> >>>
> >>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
> >>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
> >>> important.  One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
> >>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and (b)
> >>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.  Obviously
> >>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
> >>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
> >>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
> >>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
> >>>
> >>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself in
> >>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in finance,
> >>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.  I
> >>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned that
> >>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
> >>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008).  An analysis of
> >>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
> >>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
> >>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
> >>>
> >>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or even
> >>> whether they exist.  I suspect that such a project lies outside
> >>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work could
> >>> naturally take it very close to these questions.  For example, if
> >>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
> >>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question of
> >>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research?  I could imagine
> >>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of data
> >>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as a
> >>> sidenote to the first.
> >>>
> >>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?  Would
> >>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
> >>>
> >>> Dario
> >>>
> >>> David Morrow wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > Mark,
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
> >>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
> >>> worth.
> >>> >
> >>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
> >>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to do
> >>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does. I'd
> >>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers. It
> >>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
> >>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
> >>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent like
> >>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as much
> >>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
> >>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
> >>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting a
> >>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go on
> >>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a sufficiently
> >>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
> >>> > your list significantly.
> >>> >
> >>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I suppose
> >>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which of
> >>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
> >>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or of
> >>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy (here
> >>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
> >>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once you
> >>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
> >>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
> >>> > problems.
> >>> >
> >>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other GiveWell
> >>> > readers have to say.
> >>> >
> >>> > David
> >>> >
> >>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <j.c.price@...
> >>> > <mailto:j.c.price@...>> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >     Mark,
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >     As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
> >>> >     clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
> >>> >     action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
> >>> >     person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
> >>> >     your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
> >>> >     be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
> >>> >     an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
> >>> >     powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
> >>> >     day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
> >>> >     before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
> >>> >     intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
> >>> >     analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
> >>> >     simplistic throughout your life.
> >>> >
> >>> >     Jareb Price
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> >     To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>;
> >>> >     marklee@... <mailto:
> >>> marklee@...>
> >>> >     CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <mailto:givewell@yahoogroups.com>
> >>> >     From: rnoble@... <mailto:rnoble@...>
> >>> >     Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
> >>> >     Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >     Mark,
> >>> >
> >>> >     I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
> >>> >     utilitarianism
> >>> >     and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
> >>> >     The first
> >>> >     step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
> >>> >     measure
> >>> >     utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
> >>> >     are the two
> >>> >     essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
> >>> >     (QALY) and the
> >>> >     disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
> >>> >
> >>> >     After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
> >>> >     involve
> >>> >     uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
> >>> >     might allow you
> >>> >     to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
> >>> the
> >>> >     probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
> >>> >     as a teacher,
> >>> >     etc.
> >>> >
> >>> >     As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
> >>> >     know of anyone
> >>> >     who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
> >>> >     QALYS I'd
> >>> >     recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
> >>> >     and for
> >>> >     expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
> >>> >     Jon Baron's
> >>> >     Thinking and Deciding.
> >>> >
> >>> >     Ron
> >>> >
> >>> >     Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...
> >>> >     <mailto:marklee@...>>:
> >>> >
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > Dear GiveWell,
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
> >>> >     most good? �  M
> >>> >     > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
> >>> >     want to do
> >>> >     > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
> >>> >     ability to go into
> >>> >     > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
> >>> >     career, as
> >>> >     > well as the average person in that career. �  If I want to do
> >>> >     the most good,
> >>> >     > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
> >>> >     developing world,
> >>> >     > helping those who need it most? �  Or, at one remove, should I
> >>> >     secure a
> >>> >     > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
> >>> >     my income to
> >>> >     > such charities? �  Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> >>> >     > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
> >>> >     students to
> >>> >     > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
> >>> >     directly help
> >>> >     > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
> >>> >     can donate a
> >>> >     > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
> >>> >     others to
> >>> >     > pursue such careers?
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > � � � � � � � � � � �  I’ve been thinking about these
> >>> >     questions on and off
> >>> >     > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. �  Perhaps
> >>> >     you could
> >>> >     > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
> >>> >     What resources
> >>> >     > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? �  Who
> >>> >     would have useful
> >>> >     > advice to give? �  Should I be speaking to economists? �
> >>> >     International
> >>> >     > development and charity folks? �  Ethicists? �  Groups like
> >>> >     GiveWell? �  All,
> >>> >     > some, or none of the above? �  Has anything been written on
> >>> >     these issues? �
> >>> >     > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
> >>> >     Singer, Thomas
> >>> >     > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
> >>> >     GiveWell and
> >>> >     > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
> >>> >     anything that
> >>> >     > directly addresses these questions.
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > Thanks,
> >>> >     >
> >>> >     > Mark
> >>> >     >
> >>> >
> >>> >     Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> >>> >     University of Pennsylvania
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> >     Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
> >>> >     <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
> >>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
> >>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
> >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>


Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
University of Pennsylvania

There are few points that I wanted to make which are likely subtext for some
of the preceding posts but which I haven't seen made explicit yet:

(1)The marginal impact that an individual worker has on the effectiveness of
an organization (corporate or nonprofit) is usually very small. This is
because most workers are replaceable in the sense that if a given worker had
not signed on, the organization could have hired a slightly less qualified
worker who would have done nearly as a good a job.

With this in mind, it seems to me reasonable to me for the typical altruist
to focus what various jobs have to offer with respect to donatable funds,
personal satisfaction (with a view toward sustainability, c.f. Sarah Cobey's
story), and ability to influence others, while largely ignoring the effect
of the effect of one's work on society (on the grounds that somebody else
would be doing it anyway).

Of course, there are people with unusually strong abilities or rare
combinations of abilities who are not easily replaceable, and those who are
aware of possessing such skills should take this into account - my point is
just that the phenomenon of replaceability should be taken into account.

(2) While risk aversion is important in the context of personal finances, it
has little place in the domain of charitable activity, because diminishing
marginal utility sets in much faster for an individual than it does for
potential benefactors (taken as a group) of a well conceived charitable
effort.

For two (somewhat similar) perspectives on these points, see
http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/make-money.html and
http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/risky-investments.html . I don't
necessarily agree with everything in these essays, but the writing is clear.

Holistically, and especially in light of (2) above, I think that altruistic
people should seriously consider speculative endeavors (starting companies
or nonprofits, getting a job early on in a start up company, trying to
become a successful rock star, or film director, etc.). As Dario Amodei
remarked above, influence as a function of worldly success seems to be
strongly superlinear. Positive changes of the magnitude that we would most
like to see require resources and influence that a given individual cannot
reasonably expect to acquire, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

"The reasonable man [resp. woman] adapts himself [resp. herself] to the
world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself
[resp. herself]. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man
[resp. woman]" -- GB Shaw


On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:58 AM, <rnoble@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> One question I haven't noticed being addressed that might be of interest:
> To
> what extent are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness (however
> defined)
> to do good for others? This could be especially salient if you go the route
> of
> a high-paying job with the intention of donating money. If you make
> $100,000/year, how much are you willing to donate of that $100,000, for
> example?
>
> As for DALYs, you can disagree with the measure but measuring good in some
> way
> seems essential. You'll have to choose between projects to put your time
> and
> effort into, so you really have to quantify good in some manner. Upon close
> inspection, two projects which both look "very good" in terms of doing good
> might differ by an order of magnitude in how much good they do.
>
> Ron
>
>
> Quoting Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...tgers.edu<nbeckstead%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
> >:
>
> > Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated,
> > highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...<holden0%40gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian
> Slesinsky
> > > and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal
> talents/interests
> > > are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
> > > general answer.
> > >
> > > From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly those
> > > using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
> > > shedding much light on this decision.
> > >
> > > One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
> > > discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits
> of
> > > for-profit activities. Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
> > > improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over
> the
> > > last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall
> economic
> > > growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
> > >
> > > For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus
> on
> > > outcomes. It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid concerns
> > > about the relationship between profit and social good (including
> Dario's
> > > worries about finance). But in a lot of industries, making money means
> > > helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money
> should
> > be
> > > in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it
> > away.
> > > This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though
> finance
> > > has some definite problems as well) where the translation between
> making
> > > money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible. I
> think
> > > the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
> > > charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly
> > critical
> > > of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
> > >
> > > I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated,
> insufficiently
> > > criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the
> way
> > > they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this). But if your main value
> added
> > > is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather
> than
> > > challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
> > > framework where incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy and
> > > aligned with social good.
> > >
> > > So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and
> have
> > > an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
> > > activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for
> an
> > > unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job. In
> fact,
> > > the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there
> is a
> > > lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
> > >
> > > Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to
> GiveWell.
> > > Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the
> question
> > > of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than
> the
> > > question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
> > > institution working on this question. However, I am personally very
> > > interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on
> it.
> > >
> > > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...<sarahcobey%40gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
> > >>
> > >> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I
> add my
> > >> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your
> thinking.
> > >>
> > >> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
> > >> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary
> biology
> > >> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I
> loved
> > the
> > >> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
> > >> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I
> decided
> > to
> > >> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was the
> > only
> > >> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between
> large
> > >> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day work
> was
> > >> administrative, and working with the government of a developing
> country
> > >> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact of
> the
> > >> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
> > >> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence
> over
> > >> what was happening.
> > >>
> > >> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I felt
> as
> > >> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
> > >> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S.
> and
> > >> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a
> > focus
> > >> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting
> than
> > >> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible.
> That
> > >> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make
> paradigm-shifting
> > >> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries
> are
> > >> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of
> job
> > >> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with
> my
> > >> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance,
> donating
> > >> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy,
> > growth
> > >> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work
> compensate
> > >> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
> > >>
> > >> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a
> field
> > >> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I
> think
> > >> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you
> might
> > >> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the
> > fields
> > >> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider
> the
> > >> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was
> surprised
> > by
> > >> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
> > >> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to
> live
> > >> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will
> trade
> > a
> > >> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
> > >> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate
> some
> > >> of your preferences now and save some time.
> > >>
> > >> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact,
> which
> > >> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating,
> > subjective
> > >> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
> > >> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
> > >>
> > >> Sarah
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei
> > <damodei@princeton.edu <damodei%40princeton.edu>>wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Mark et al,
> > >>>
> > >>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that it
> is
> > >>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
> > >>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here
> is
> > >>> immense. That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
> > >>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
> > >>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction of
> > >>> the total impactful activity in the field. One vivid example of this
> is
> > >>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US
> president
> > >>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more
> influence
> > >>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state
> governor.
> > >>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
> > >>> local party official. The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
> > >>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have
> thousands
> > >>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
> > >>> business. As a grad student it�s been my impression that this pattern
> > >>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
> > >>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared
> to
> > >>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
> > >>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or is
> > >>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
> > >>> anyway. It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance,
> and
> > >>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
> > >>>
> > >>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you do
> > >>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most
> promising
> > >>> in some abstract utilitarian sense. It is probably better to be
> wildly
> > >>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than
> it
> > >>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
> > >>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good and
> > >>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
> > >>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work
> hard
> > >>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest
> in.
> > >>>
> > >>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers do
> > >>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
> > >>> important. One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
> > >>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and
> (b)
> > >>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have. Obviously
> > >>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think it
> > >>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
> > >>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
> > >>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
> > >>>
> > >>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice myself
> in
> > >>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in
> finance,
> > >>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do. I
> > >>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned
> that
> > >>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
> > >>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008). An analysis of
> > >>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
> > >>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of hiring
> > >>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
> > >>>
> > >>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or
> even
> > >>> whether they exist. I suspect that such a project lies outside
> > >>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work
> could
> > >>> naturally take it very close to these questions. For example, if
> > >>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
> > >>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question
> of
> > >>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research? I could
> imagine
> > >>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of
> data
> > >>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered as
> a
> > >>> sidenote to the first.
> > >>>
> > >>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell? Would
> > >>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
> > >>>
> > >>> Dario
> > >>>
> > >>> David Morrow wrote:
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Mark,
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
> > >>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
> > >>> worth.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that your
> > >>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to
> do
> > >>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does.
> I'd
> > >>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers.
> It
> > >>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
> > >>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at. I've
> > >>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent
> like
> > >>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as
> much
> > >>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since you're
> > >>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
> > >>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting
> a
> > >>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will go
> on
> > >>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
> sufficiently
> > >>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
> > >>> > your list significantly.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I
> suppose
> > >>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which
> of
> > >>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
> > >>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general or
> of
> > >>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy
> (here
> > >>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe you
> > >>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once
> you
> > >>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
> > >>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate those
> > >>> > problems.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other
> GiveWell
> > >>> > readers have to say.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > David
> > >>> >
> > >>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <
> j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>
> > >>> > <mailto:j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>>>
> wrote:
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Mark,
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
> > >>> > clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
> > >>> > action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
> > >>> > person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
> > >>> > your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
> > >>> > be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
> > >>> > an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
> > >>> > powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
> > >>> > day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
> > >>> > before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
> > >>> > intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
> > >>> > analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
> > >>> > simplistic throughout your life.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Jareb Price
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
> > >>> > To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:
> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>;
> > >>> > marklee@... <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu><mailto:
> > >>> marklee@... <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>>
> > >>> > CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:
> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>
> > >>> > From: rnoble@... <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu> <mailto:
> rnoble@sas.upenn.edu <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu>>
> > >>> > Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
> > >>> > Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Mark,
> > >>> >
> > >>> > I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
> > >>> > utilitarianism
> > >>> > and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
> > >>> > The first
> > >>> > step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
> > >>> > measure
> > >>> > utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
> > >>> > are the two
> > >>> > essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
> > >>> > (QALY) and the
> > >>> > disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
> > >>> >
> > >>> > After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
> > >>> > involve
> > >>> > uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
> > >>> > might allow you
> > >>> > to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
> > >>> the
> > >>> > probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
> > >>> > as a teacher,
> > >>> > etc.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
> > >>> > know of anyone
> > >>> > who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
> > >>> > QALYS I'd
> > >>> > recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
> > >>> > and for
> > >>> > expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
> > >>> > Jon Baron's
> > >>> > Thinking and Deciding.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Ron
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
> > >>> > <mailto:marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
> >>:
> > >>> >
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > Dear GiveWell,
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
> > >>> > most good? � M
> > >>> > > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
> > >>> > want to do
> > >>> > > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
> > >>> > ability to go into
> > >>> > > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
> > >>> > career, as
> > >>> > > well as the average person in that career. � If I want to do
> > >>> > the most good,
> > >>> > > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
> > >>> > developing world,
> > >>> > > helping those who need it most? � Or, at one remove, should I
> > >>> > secure a
> > >>> > > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
> > >>> > my income to
> > >>> > > such charities? � Or, at one more remove, should I become a
> > >>> > > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
> > >>> > students to
> > >>> > > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
> > >>> > directly help
> > >>> > > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
> > >>> > can donate a
> > >>> > > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
> > >>> > others to
> > >>> > > pursue such careers?
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > � � � � � � � � � � � I’ve been thinking about these
> > >>> > questions on and off
> > >>> > > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. � Perhaps
> > >>> > you could
> > >>> > > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
> > >>> > What resources
> > >>> > > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? � Who
> > >>> > would have useful
> > >>> > > advice to give? � Should I be speaking to economists? �
> > >>> > International
> > >>> > > development and charity folks? � Ethicists? � Groups like
> > >>> > GiveWell? � All,
> > >>> > > some, or none of the above? � Has anything been written on
> > >>> > these issues? �
> > >>> > > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
> > >>> > Singer, Thomas
> > >>> > > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
> > >>> > GiveWell and
> > >>> > > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
> > >>> > anything that
> > >>> > > directly addresses these questions.
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > Thanks,
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > Mark
> > >>> > >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> > >>> > University of Pennsylvania
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
> > >>> > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
> > >>> > <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> ------------------------------------
> > >>>
> > >>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes
> of
> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent official
> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> >
>
> Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
> University of Pennsylvania
>  
>

One of the areas we're planning to investigate in 2010 is the cause of
medical or disease research. By disease research, we mean the cause of
funding research institutions focused on researching and developing new or
improved treatments for diseases.

This area is one that we're interested in -- as we think it might offer
donors a strong opportunity to improve lives -- and it's one many donors
we've spoken with are interested in as well.

At this point, we've only begun to think about how we'd approach this
problem, and we wanted to share what we're thinking thus far. *Since we're
so early in our process, we're particularly interested in any feedback,
comments, or thoughts that you have on our approach, so please share.*

At the broadest level, our investigation focuses on the following questions:

   - What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
   to change lives?
   - Assuming this *cause* has high potential, what types of opportunities
   do specific charities offer donors?

Below, we first go into more detail about how we're planning to approach
these questions. Then, we offer some extremely preliminary data for a very
rough approximation of the potential cost-effectiveness for this cause.

*What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity to
change lives?*

This is one of the most basic questions we try to answer in any area. For
example, we believe that international aid offers donors far better
opportunities to change lives than US-focused charity (
http://www.givewell.net/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-overseas). How
does disease research stack up?

To answer this broad question, we focus on the following issues, our regular
criteria (http://www.givewell.net/criteria) for evaluating a cause:

   - Effectiveness: Does medical research work? What have major research
   successes been?
   - Cost-effectiveness: What have major successes cost? What has their
   impact been?
   - Room for more funding: Are there strong opportunities for *future* funding
   as opposed to merely past successes? Also, what's the difference between the
   *average* and *marginal *future dollar spent (which seems like a
   particularly important issue in the case of research)?

*Assuming the cause is a strong one, where should you give?*

Even if it's true that the *cause* seems like a good opportunity, a donor
still needs to find a charity to support, an obstacle we've run into in, for
example, a promising area like NTDs (
http://www.givewell.net/international/health/NTDs).

To answer this question, we'll look into many charities working in this area
asking them our main questions: What do you do? How will you use additional
funding?

One particularly thorny issue regarding disease research is that (a) private
funding (e.g., biotech or pharmaceutical companies) and (b) government
funding play a large role in this area, and it's important to figure out how
individual donations can or do contribute.

*Extremely preliminary, back-of-the-envelope calculation for the
cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular disease research*

The example below focuses on the decline in mortality from heart disease, a
major success story in medicine over the past 60 years, much of which can
arguably be attributed to research. This analysis is primarily based on a
paper by David Cutler, an economist (focus on healthcare) at Harvard (
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/cv_cutler), online at
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf

   - Cost: Cutler estimates that approximately $200 billion was spent
   (private and public) in the United States on research into cardiovascular
   disease from 1953-1997.
   - Impact: mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the United States
   fell sharply since 1953. In 1953, there were 5.1 deaths from heart disease
   per 1,000 people; in 2005, 2.9.
   - Cost-per-impact: There are a lot of complicating factors here (see note
   [2] below, but our very rough estimate is that every $32,000 spent saved the
   lives of 1 person under the age of 64 and 2 people over the age of 64. (For
   more detail on the calculation, see note [1] below.)

==========================================================================================

Notes:

[1] To arrive at this estimate, I looked at total annual deaths from
cardiovascular disease for each year from 1979-2005 compared to deaths in
1950. I also included the 2006-2015, maintaining 2005 mortality levels.
Cutler estimated that 2/3 of the prevented deaths are due to research and
1/3 due to other factors. We haven't yet evaluated this estimate.

[2] There are lots of factors that could affect this estimate. I've listed
some of them below. These are issues we'll consider more carefully as we
progress in our investigation:

   - Causing us to overstimate of cost-effectiveness:
      - There are additional costs needed to save the lives (e.g., doctors
      applying the treatment, public awareness); costs of research, alone,
      underestimate costs.
      - This analysis assesses only the lives saved vs lost as a discrete
      measure. which doesn't account for the  quality of life for those saved.
      What quality of life and future life expectancy would individuals saved
      expect to have?
   - Causing us to underestimate of cost-effectiveness:
      - Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b; in
      addition, there were lives saved pre-1979 that I haven't
included yet. (On
      the other hand, it's also true that there was spending pre-1950
that helped,
      but this was likely relatively small.)
      - I've only included lives saved from research through 2015. There
      will likely be lives saved past 2015 due to this research.
      - Non-American lives saved and dollars spent. This analysis focuses on
      the United States. While the U.S. *spends* the most on medical
      research, it's probably the case that many non-U.S. lives have been saved
   - Unclear of effect on the estimate: The impact of research vs other
   factors on the decline in mortality. I've used Cutler's estimate of 2/3.

I'd like to respond to a few points people have raised (again, these are all
personal/informal thoughts rather than "GiveWell views"):

*Re: social entrepreneurship*.  I actually think that going into "social
entrepreneurship" should be thought of much more like going into nonprofit
work than like going into for-profit work. The reason is that, as I stated
before, I feel there are parts of the for-profit sector where incentives are
already lined up in a very healthy way, i.e., by pursuing profit (which is
very measurable) you end up pursuing social good.  By contrast, "social
entrepreneurship" generally refers to areas where profit itself isn't/can't
be the primary motivator.  So you have to hold yourself accountable in other
ways, and I'm not confident that the sector has developed great ways of
accomplishing this.  Also see
http://blog.givewell.net/2009/12/01/when-donations-and-profits-meet-beware/

*Re: Nick's question* ("Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous,
unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job would be, or what some of
the best ones would be?")  It seems like a reasonable heuristic to me to
maximize your expected earnings.  Top athletes and entertainers earn
enormous amounts, but that may reflect a "winner-take-all" dynamic rather
than a shortage; if you feel virtually assured that you can make a lot of
money in career X, *and* you feel reasonably sure that career X is in one of
the areas where profit correlates with social good, you've probably found an
area with a lot of "room for more labor."

One specific example that jumps to mind is professional recruiter
("headhunter").  It seems to me that these people would have trouble making
money, over time, unless they're helping companies find the right people for
the roles they need filled.  And anecdotally, it seems like people in this
area make a lot more than they would in alternative careers.  I want to
reiterate that I'm not suggesting this path in general - personal talents
and interests are paramount in my view.

*Re: Ron's point about DALYs.*  I think DALYs can be useful for
sub-questions like "If I'm going into global health, should I be aiming to
focus on AIDS or tuberculosis?"  I think that if you try to use them to
estimate the entire value of careers, you're going to end up with more error
than you would get from informal reasoning.

*Re: Jonah's point about "ignoring the effect of the effect of one's work on
society (on the grounds that somebody else would be doing it anyway)."*  As
I understand this, he's arguing that if you're unusually altruistic, you
might do the most good by focusing on winning zero-sum games and doing
altruistic things with the rewards.  For example, if you beat person B in a
contest for job/role X, there isn't much difference in how well you'll
perform the job, but there's a big difference in what you'll do with the
earnings and other perks (like influence) of the job.  This reasoning would
push you in the opposite direction from the argument I laid out - you'd want
to go into areas where incentives are *not* healthy (where profit does not
align with social good), so that your altruistic focus on accomplishing good
will be more unusual and add more value.

It's an interesting argument.  My main comment is that I think it's easy to
overestimate (a) how altruistic you really are, i.e., what you will actually
do once you have a lot of money as opposed to what you think should be done
from your current vantage point of not having a lot of money; (b) how
"knowledgeable/powerful" you are as an altruist - i.e., how reliably the
things you would spend your money and influence on would improve the world.
We've certainly seen in our research on charities that a lot of things that
seem obviously good for the world turn out to be far more complex on closer
inspection.

Rather than relying on oneself to know and do the right thing, I like the
idea of going into an area where incentives "force" you to do the right
thing.  GiveWell looks for ways to increase the "force" on both charities
and on ourselves (our emphasis on transparency is one of our major attempts
at the latter).

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:

>
>
> There are few points that I wanted to make which are likely subtext for
> some of the preceding posts but which I haven't seen made explicit yet:
>
> (1)The marginal impact that an individual worker has on the effectiveness
> of an organization (corporate or nonprofit) is usually very small. This is
> because most workers are replaceable in the sense that if a given worker had
> not signed on, the organization could have hired a slightly less qualified
> worker who would have done nearly as a good a job.
>
> With this in mind, it seems to me reasonable to me for the typical altruist
> to focus what various jobs have to offer with respect to donatable funds,
> personal satisfaction (with a view toward sustainability, c.f. Sarah Cobey's
> story), and ability to influence others, while largely ignoring the effect
> of the effect of one's work on society (on the grounds that somebody else
> would be doing it anyway).
>
> Of course, there are people with unusually strong abilities or rare
> combinations of abilities who are not easily replaceable, and those who are
> aware of possessing such skills should take this into account - my point is
> just that the phenomenon of replaceability should be taken into account.
>
> (2) While risk aversion is important in the context of personal finances,
> it has little place in the domain of charitable activity, because
> diminishing marginal utility sets in much faster for an individual than it
> does for potential benefactors (taken as a group) of a well conceived
> charitable effort.
>
> For two (somewhat similar) perspectives on these points, see
> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/make-money.html and
> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/risky-investments.html . I don't
> necessarily agree with everything in these essays, but the writing is clear.
>
> Holistically, and especially in light of (2) above, I think that altruistic
> people should seriously consider speculative endeavors (starting companies
> or nonprofits, getting a job early on in a start up company, trying to
> become a successful rock star, or film director, etc.). As Dario Amodei
> remarked above, influence as a function of worldly success seems to be
> strongly superlinear. Positive changes of the magnitude that we would most
> like to see require resources and influence that a given individual cannot
> reasonably expect to acquire, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.
>
> "The reasonable man [resp. woman] adapts himself [resp. herself] to the
> world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself
> [resp. herself]. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man
> [resp. woman]" -- GB Shaw
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:58 AM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> One question I haven't noticed being addressed that might be of interest:
>> To
>> what extent are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness (however
>> defined)
>> to do good for others? This could be especially salient if you go the
>> route of
>> a high-paying job with the intention of donating money. If you make
>> $100,000/year, how much are you willing to donate of that $100,000, for
>> example?
>>
>> As for DALYs, you can disagree with the measure but measuring good in some
>> way
>> seems essential. You'll have to choose between projects to put your time
>> and
>> effort into, so you really have to quantify good in some manner. Upon
>> close
>> inspection, two projects which both look "very good" in terms of doing
>> good
>> might differ by an order of magnitude in how much good they do.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> Quoting Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@philosophy.rutgers.edu<nbeckstead%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>> >:
>>
>> > Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated,
>> > highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?
>> >
>> > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...<holden0%40gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian
>> Slesinsky
>> > > and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal
>> talents/interests
>> > > are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a very
>> > > general answer.
>> > >
>> > > From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly
>> those
>> > > using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
>> > > shedding much light on this decision.
>> > >
>> > > One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
>> > > discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the benefits
>> of
>> > > for-profit activities. Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
>> > > improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over
>> the
>> > > last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall
>> economic
>> > > growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>> > >
>> > > For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and focus
>> on
>> > > outcomes. It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid
>> concerns
>> > > about the relationship between profit and social good (including
>> Dario's
>> > > worries about finance). But in a lot of industries, making money means
>> > > helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money
>> should
>> > be
>> > > in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving it
>> > away.
>> > > This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though
>> finance
>> > > has some definite problems as well) where the translation between
>> making
>> > > money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible. I
>> think
>> > > the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
>> > > charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly
>> > critical
>> > > of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>> > >
>> > > I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated,
>> insufficiently
>> > > criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the
>> way
>> > > they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this). But if your main value
>> added
>> > > is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather
>> than
>> > > challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the for-profit
>> > > framework where incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy
>> and
>> > > aligned with social good.
>> > >
>> > > So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything, and
>> have
>> > > an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
>> > > activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for
>> an
>> > > unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job. In
>> fact,
>> > > the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there
>> is a
>> > > lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>> > >
>> > > Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to
>> GiveWell.
>> > > Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the
>> question
>> > > of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than
>> the
>> > > question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
>> > > institution working on this question. However, I am personally very
>> > > interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on
>> it.
>> > >
>> > > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...<sarahcobey%40gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>> > >>
>> > >> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I
>> add my
>> > >> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your
>> thinking.
>> > >>
>> > >> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>> > >> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary
>> biology
>> > >> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I
>> loved
>> > the
>> > >> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the academic
>> > >> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I
>> decided
>> > to
>> > >> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was
>> the
>> > only
>> > >> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between
>> large
>> > >> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day
>> work was
>> > >> administrative, and working with the government of a developing
>> country
>> > >> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact
>> of the
>> > >> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to see
>> > >> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence
>> over
>> > >> what was happening.
>> > >>
>> > >> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I
>> felt as
>> > >> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
>> > >> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S.
>> and
>> > >> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with a
>> > focus
>> > >> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting
>> than
>> > >> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is incredible.
>> That
>> > >> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make
>> paradigm-shifting
>> > >> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries
>> are
>> > >> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack of
>> job
>> > >> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with
>> my
>> > >> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance,
>> donating
>> > >> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy,
>> > growth
>> > >> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work
>> compensate
>> > >> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>> > >>
>> > >> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a
>> field
>> > >> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I
>> think
>> > >> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you
>> might
>> > >> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the
>> > fields
>> > >> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider
>> the
>> > >> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was
>> surprised
>> > by
>> > >> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of obvious
>> > >> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have to
>> live
>> > >> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will
>> trade
>> > a
>> > >> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me direct
>> > >> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can anticipate
>> some
>> > >> of your preferences now and save some time.
>> > >>
>> > >> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact,
>> which
>> > >> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating,
>> > subjective
>> > >> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>> > >> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>> > >>
>> > >> Sarah
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei
>> > <damodei@... <damodei%40princeton.edu>>wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>> Mark et al,
>> > >>>
>> > >>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that
>> it is
>> > >>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>> > >>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here
>> is
>> > >>> immense. That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>> > >>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a very
>> > >>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction
>> of
>> > >>> the total impactful activity in the field. One vivid example of this
>> is
>> > >>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US
>> president
>> > >>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more
>> influence
>> > >>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state
>> governor.
>> > >>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>> > >>> local party official. The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship � a
>> > >>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have
>> thousands
>> > >>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>> > >>> business. As a grad student it�s been my impression that this
>> pattern
>> > >>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>> > >>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress (compared
>> to
>> > >>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of them),
>> > >>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or
>> is
>> > >>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>> > >>> anyway. It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance,
>> and
>> > >>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you
>> do
>> > >>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most
>> promising
>> > >>> in some abstract utilitarian sense. It is probably better to be
>> wildly
>> > >>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than
>> it
>> > >>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>> > >>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good
>> and
>> > >>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very sensible.
>> > >>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work
>> hard
>> > >>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest
>> in.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers
>> do
>> > >>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>> > >>> important. One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>> > >>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner, and
>> (b)
>> > >>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.
>> Obviously
>> > >>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think
>> it
>> > >>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of a
>> > >>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>> > >>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice
>> myself in
>> > >>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in
>> finance,
>> > >>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do. I
>> > >>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned
>> that
>> > >>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>> > >>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008). An analysis of
>> > >>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the finance
>> > >>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of
>> hiring
>> > >>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or
>> even
>> > >>> whether they exist. I suspect that such a project lies outside
>> > >>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work
>> could
>> > >>> naturally take it very close to these questions. For example, if
>> > >>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>> > >>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related question
>> of
>> > >>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research? I could
>> imagine
>> > >>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of
>> data
>> > >>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered
>> as a
>> > >>> sidenote to the first.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell? Would
>> > >>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Dario
>> > >>>
>> > >>> David Morrow wrote:
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Mark,
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>> > >>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they're
>> > >>> worth.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that
>> your
>> > >>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able to
>> do
>> > >>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career does.
>> I'd
>> > >>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers.
>> It
>> > >>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good, and
>> > >>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at.
>> I've
>> > >>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent
>> like
>> > >>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as
>> much
>> > >>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since
>> you're
>> > >>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of the
>> > >>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at getting
>> a
>> > >>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will
>> go on
>> > >>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
>> sufficiently
>> > >>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should narrow
>> > >>> > your list significantly.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I
>> suppose
>> > >>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which
>> of
>> > >>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>> > >>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general
>> or of
>> > >>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy
>> (here
>> > >>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe
>> you
>> > >>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once
>> you
>> > >>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>> > >>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate
>> those
>> > >>> > problems.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other
>> GiveWell
>> > >>> > readers have to say.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > David
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <
>> j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>
>> > >>> > <mailto:j.c.price@alumni.iu.edu <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>>>
>> wrote:
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Mark,
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps to
>> > >>> > clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>> > >>> > action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a big-picture
>> > >>> > person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>> > >>> > your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>> > >>> > be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>> > >>> > an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>> > >>> > powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>> > >>> > day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>> > >>> > before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>> > >>> > intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>> > >>> > analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>> > >>> > simplistic throughout your life.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Jareb Price
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>> > >>> > To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>;
>> > >>> > marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu><mailto:
>> > >>> marklee@... <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>>
>> > >>> > CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>
>> > >>> > From: rnoble@...enn.edu <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu> <mailto:
>> rnoble@... <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu>>
>> > >>> > Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>> > >>> > Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Mark,
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>> > >>> > utilitarianism
>> > >>> > and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a utilitarian.
>> > >>> > The first
>> > >>> > step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>> > >>> > measure
>> > >>> > utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely applied
>> > >>> > are the two
>> > >>> > essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>> > >>> > (QALY) and the
>> > >>> > disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>> > >>> > involve
>> > >>> > uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>> > >>> > might allow you
>> > >>> > to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>> > >>> the
>> > >>> > probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>> > >>> > as a teacher,
>> > >>> > etc.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>> > >>> > know of anyone
>> > >>> > who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>> > >>> > QALYS I'd
>> > >>> > recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine,
>> > >>> > and for
>> > >>> > expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>> > >>> > Jon Baron's
>> > >>> > Thinking and Deciding.
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Ron
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>> > >>> > <mailto:marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>> >>:
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > Dear GiveWell,
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>> > >>> > most good? � M
>> > >>> > > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if I
>> > >>> > want to do
>> > >>> > > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>> > >>> > ability to go into
>> > >>> > > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in any
>> > >>> > career, as
>> > >>> > > well as the average person in that career. � If I want to do
>> > >>> > the most good,
>> > >>> > > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>> > >>> > developing world,
>> > >>> > > helping those who need it most? � Or, at one remove, should I
>> > >>> > secure a
>> > >>> > > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage of
>> > >>> > my income to
>> > >>> > > such charities? � Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>> > >>> > > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>> > >>> > students to
>> > >>> > > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>> > >>> > directly help
>> > >>> > > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that they
>> > >>> > can donate a
>> > >>> > > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>> > >>> > others to
>> > >>> > > pursue such careers?
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > � � � � � � � � � � � I’ve been thinking about these
>> > >>> > questions on and off
>> > >>> > > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. � Perhaps
>> > >>> > you could
>> > >>> > > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>> > >>> > What resources
>> > >>> > > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? � Who
>> > >>> > would have useful
>> > >>> > > advice to give? � Should I be speaking to economists? �
>> > >>> > International
>> > >>> > > development and charity folks? � Ethicists? � Groups like
>> > >>> > GiveWell? � All,
>> > >>> > > some, or none of the above? � Has anything been written on
>> > >>> > these issues? �
>> > >>> > > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>> > >>> > Singer, Thomas
>> > >>> > > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>> > >>> > GiveWell and
>> > >>> > > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>> > >>> > anything that
>> > >>> > > directly addresses these questions.
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > Thanks,
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> > > Mark
>> > >>> > >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>> > >>> > University of Pennsylvania
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>> > >>> > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
>> > >>> > <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>> ------------------------------------
>> > >>>
>> > >>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes
>> of
>> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent official
>> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>>
>> Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>> University of Pennsylvania
>>
>
>  
>

On Holden's last message:

More than arguing for a particular strategy I was arguing for taking into
account the phenomenon of replaceability.

For example, some well meaning people become doctors because they want to
help sick people. The question that such a person should be asking is not
"what is the expected effect of the work of a doctor on sick people?" but
"what is the expected effect of *me personally* *becoming *a doctor on sick
people?" As Holden says, high salaries in a given area can indicate real
demand, but even in such situations, naive intuition may attribute greater
effects to going into such a field than are actually there. It's a matter
for careful consideration.

I agree with (a) of Holden's 02/08 message.

I would also remark that I think that one should take into account the
general perception of the effect of a line of work in predicting one's
future capacity for influence. For example, working for a tobacco company
seems likely to me to be a bad idea for most altruistic people on the
grounds that the tobacco industry has such negative stigma.

Concerning Holden's (b), I agree that in certain contexts measuring a
product against economic demand can be a healthy reality check for whether
or not the product produces social good. But echoing Sarah's last post,
there are other areas where the potential social good is present while
market incentives are not. As usual there are issues of externalities,
induced demand, start up costs and individual risk aversion, etc.

In any case, I think that major potential for doing good in the for-profit
world is not so much in areas where the profit incentives are aligned with
social good (such areas are already fine almost by definition), but in
finding innovative ways to align profit incentives with social good (e.g. by
recognizing an unmet demand and offering a product to meet it).

I applaud GiveWell's mission and commitment to transparency.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...> wrote:

>
>
> I'd like to respond to a few points people have raised (again, these are
> all personal/informal thoughts rather than "GiveWell views"):
>
> *Re: social entrepreneurship*.  I actually think that going into "social
> entrepreneurship" should be thought of much more like going into nonprofit
> work than like going into for-profit work. The reason is that, as I stated
> before, I feel there are parts of the for-profit sector where incentives are
> already lined up in a very healthy way, i.e., by pursuing profit (which is
> very measurable) you end up pursuing social good.  By contrast, "social
> entrepreneurship" generally refers to areas where profit itself isn't/can't
> be the primary motivator.  So you have to hold yourself accountable in other
> ways, and I'm not confident that the sector has developed great ways of
> accomplishing this.  Also see
> http://blog.givewell.net/2009/12/01/when-donations-and-profits-meet-beware/
>
> *Re: Nick's question* ("Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous,
> unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job would be, or what some of
> the best ones would be?")  It seems like a reasonable heuristic to me to
> maximize your expected earnings.  Top athletes and entertainers earn
> enormous amounts, but that may reflect a "winner-take-all" dynamic rather
> than a shortage; if you feel virtually assured that you can make a lot of
> money in career X, *and* you feel reasonably sure that career X is in one of
> the areas where profit correlates with social good, you've probably found an
> area with a lot of "room for more labor."
>
> One specific example that jumps to mind is professional recruiter
> ("headhunter").  It seems to me that these people would have trouble making
> money, over time, unless they're helping companies find the right people for
> the roles they need filled.  And anecdotally, it seems like people in this
> area make a lot more than they would in alternative careers.  I want to
> reiterate that I'm not suggesting this path in general - personal talents
> and interests are paramount in my view.
>
> *Re: Ron's point about DALYs.*  I think DALYs can be useful for
> sub-questions like "If I'm going into global health, should I be aiming to
> focus on AIDS or tuberculosis?"  I think that if you try to use them to
> estimate the entire value of careers, you're going to end up with more error
> than you would get from informal reasoning.
>
> *Re: Jonah's point about "ignoring the effect of the effect of one's work
> on society (on the grounds that somebody else would be doing it anyway)."*
> As I understand this, he's arguing that if you're unusually altruistic, you
> might do the most good by focusing on winning zero-sum games and doing
> altruistic things with the rewards.  For example, if you beat person B in a
> contest for job/role X, there isn't much difference in how well you'll
> perform the job, but there's a big difference in what you'll do with the
> earnings and other perks (like influence) of the job.  This reasoning would
> push you in the opposite direction from the argument I laid out - you'd want
> to go into areas where incentives are *not* healthy (where profit does not
> align with social good), so that your altruistic focus on accomplishing good
> will be more unusual and add more value.
>
> It's an interesting argument.  My main comment is that I think it's easy to
> overestimate (a) how altruistic you really are, i.e., what you will actually
> do once you have a lot of money as opposed to what you think should be done
> from your current vantage point of not having a lot of money; (b) how
> "knowledgeable/powerful" you are as an altruist - i.e., how reliably the
> things you would spend your money and influence on would improve the world.
> We've certainly seen in our research on charities that a lot of things that
> seem obviously good for the world turn out to be far more complex on closer
> inspection.
>
> Rather than relying on oneself to know and do the right thing, I like the
> idea of going into an area where incentives "force" you to do the right
> thing.  GiveWell looks for ways to increase the "force" on both charities
> and on ourselves (our emphasis on transparency is one of our major attempts
> at the latter).
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> There are few points that I wanted to make which are likely subtext for
>> some of the preceding posts but which I haven't seen made explicit yet:
>>
>> (1)The marginal impact that an individual worker has on the effectiveness
>> of an organization (corporate or nonprofit) is usually very small. This is
>> because most workers are replaceable in the sense that if a given worker had
>> not signed on, the organization could have hired a slightly less qualified
>> worker who would have done nearly as a good a job.
>>
>> With this in mind, it seems to me reasonable to me for the typical
>> altruist to focus what various jobs have to offer with respect to donatable
>> funds, personal satisfaction (with a view toward sustainability, c.f. Sarah
>> Cobey's story), and ability to influence others, while largely ignoring the
>> effect of the effect of one's work on society (on the grounds that somebody
>> else would be doing it anyway).
>>
>> Of course, there are people with unusually strong abilities or rare
>> combinations of abilities who are not easily replaceable, and those who are
>> aware of possessing such skills should take this into account - my point is
>> just that the phenomenon of replaceability should be taken into account.
>>
>> (2) While risk aversion is important in the context of personal finances,
>> it has little place in the domain of charitable activity, because
>> diminishing marginal utility sets in much faster for an individual than it
>> does for potential benefactors (taken as a group) of a well conceived
>> charitable effort.
>>
>> For two (somewhat similar) perspectives on these points, see
>> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/make-money.html and
>> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/risky-investments.html . I don't
>> necessarily agree with everything in these essays, but the writing is clear.
>>
>> Holistically, and especially in light of (2) above, I think that
>> altruistic people should seriously consider speculative endeavors (starting
>> companies or nonprofits, getting a job early on in a start up company,
>> trying to become a successful rock star, or film director, etc.). As Dario
>> Amodei remarked above, influence as a function of worldly success seems to
>> be strongly superlinear. Positive changes of the magnitude that we would
>> most like to see require resources and influence that a given individual
>> cannot reasonably expect to acquire, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't
>> try.
>>
>> "The reasonable man [resp. woman] adapts himself [resp. herself] to the
>> world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself
>> [resp. herself]. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man
>> [resp. woman]" -- GB Shaw
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:58 AM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> One question I haven't noticed being addressed that might be of interest:
>>> To
>>> what extent are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness (however
>>> defined)
>>> to do good for others? This could be especially salient if you go the
>>> route of
>>> a high-paying job with the intention of donating money. If you make
>>> $100,000/year, how much are you willing to donate of that $100,000, for
>>> example?
>>>
>>> As for DALYs, you can disagree with the measure but measuring good in
>>> some way
>>> seems essential. You'll have to choose between projects to put your time
>>> and
>>> effort into, so you really have to quantify good in some manner. Upon
>>> close
>>> inspection, two projects which both look "very good" in terms of doing
>>> good
>>> might differ by an order of magnitude in how much good they do.
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>>>
>>> Quoting Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...<nbeckstead%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>> >:
>>>
>>> > Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated,
>>> > highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...<holden0%40gmail.com>>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian
>>> Slesinsky
>>> > > and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal
>>> talents/interests
>>> > > are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a
>>> very
>>> > > general answer.
>>> > >
>>> > > From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly
>>> those
>>> > > using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task of
>>> > > shedding much light on this decision.
>>> > >
>>> > > One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
>>> > > discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the
>>> benefits of
>>> > > for-profit activities. Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
>>> > > improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over
>>> the
>>> > > last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall
>>> economic
>>> > > growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>>> > >
>>> > > For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and
>>> focus on
>>> > > outcomes. It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid
>>> concerns
>>> > > about the relationship between profit and social good (including
>>> Dario's
>>> > > worries about finance). But in a lot of industries, making money
>>> means
>>> > > helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money
>>> should
>>> > be
>>> > > in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving
>>> it
>>> > away.
>>> > > This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though
>>> finance
>>> > > has some definite problems as well) where the translation between
>>> making
>>> > > money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible. I
>>> think
>>> > > the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical of
>>> > > charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly
>>> > critical
>>> > > of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>>> > >
>>> > > I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated,
>>> insufficiently
>>> > > criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change the
>>> way
>>> > > they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this). But if your main value
>>> added
>>> > > is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather
>>> than
>>> > > challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the
>>> for-profit
>>> > > framework where incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy
>>> and
>>> > > aligned with social good.
>>> > >
>>> > > So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything,
>>> and have
>>> > > an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
>>> > > activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting for
>>> an
>>> > > unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job. In
>>> fact,
>>> > > the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that there
>>> is a
>>> > > lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>>> > >
>>> > > Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to
>>> GiveWell.
>>> > > Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the
>>> question
>>> > > of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on than
>>> the
>>> > > question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
>>> > > institution working on this question. However, I am personally very
>>> > > interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on
>>> it.
>>> > >
>>> > > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...<sarahcobey%40gmail.com>>
>>> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>>> > >>
>>> > >> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I
>>> add my
>>> > >> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your
>>> thinking.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>>> > >> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary
>>> biology
>>> > >> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I
>>> loved
>>> > the
>>> > >> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the
>>> academic
>>> > >> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I
>>> decided
>>> > to
>>> > >> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was
>>> the
>>> > only
>>> > >> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between
>>> large
>>> > >> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day
>>> work was
>>> > >> administrative, and working with the government of a developing
>>> country
>>> > >> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact
>>> of the
>>> > >> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to
>>> see
>>> > >> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence
>>> over
>>> > >> what was happening.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I
>>> felt as
>>> > >> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population) and
>>> > >> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S.
>>> and
>>> > >> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with
>>> a
>>> > focus
>>> > >> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more interesting
>>> than
>>> > >> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is
>>> incredible. That
>>> > >> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make
>>> paradigm-shifting
>>> > >> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller discoveries
>>> are
>>> > >> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack
>>> of job
>>> > >> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere with
>>> my
>>> > >> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance,
>>> donating
>>> > >> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the autonomy,
>>> > growth
>>> > >> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work
>>> compensate
>>> > >> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in a
>>> field
>>> > >> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I
>>> think
>>> > >> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you
>>> might
>>> > >> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For the
>>> > fields
>>> > >> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider
>>> the
>>> > >> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was
>>> surprised
>>> > by
>>> > >> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of
>>> obvious
>>> > >> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have
>>> to live
>>> > >> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I will
>>> trade
>>> > a
>>> > >> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me
>>> direct
>>> > >> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can
>>> anticipate some
>>> > >> of your preferences now and save some time.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact,
>>> which
>>> > >> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating,
>>> > subjective
>>> > >> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>>> > >> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Sarah
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei
>>> > <damodei@... <damodei%40princeton.edu>>wrote:
>>> > >>
>>> > >>> Mark et al,
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that
>>> it is
>>> > >>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>>> > >>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play here
>>> is
>>> > >>> immense. That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is that
>>> > >>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a
>>> very
>>> > >>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction
>>> of
>>> > >>> the total impactful activity in the field. One vivid example of
>>> this is
>>> > >>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US
>>> president
>>> > >>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more
>>> influence
>>> > >>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state
>>> governor.
>>> > >>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or a
>>> > >>> local party official. The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship �
>>> a
>>> > >>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have
>>> thousands
>>> > >>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the average
>>> > >>> business. As a grad student it�s been my impression that this
>>> pattern
>>> > >>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>>> > >>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress
>>> (compared to
>>> > >>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of
>>> them),
>>> > >>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or
>>> is
>>> > >>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it soon
>>> > >>> anyway. It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law, finance,
>>> and
>>> > >>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you
>>> do
>>> > >>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most
>>> promising
>>> > >>> in some abstract utilitarian sense. It is probably better to be
>>> wildly
>>> > >>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world, than
>>> it
>>> > >>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>>> > >>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good
>>> and
>>> > >>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very
>>> sensible.
>>> > >>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to work
>>> hard
>>> > >>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and interest
>>> in.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers
>>> do
>>> > >>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>>> > >>> important. One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>>> > >>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner,
>>> and (b)
>>> > >>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.
>>> Obviously
>>> > >>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think
>>> it
>>> > >>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of
>>> a
>>> > >>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>>> > >>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice
>>> myself in
>>> > >>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in
>>> finance,
>>> > >>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do. I
>>> > >>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned
>>> that
>>> > >>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on the
>>> > >>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008). An analysis
>>> of
>>> > >>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the
>>> finance
>>> > >>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of
>>> hiring
>>> > >>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses or
>>> even
>>> > >>> whether they exist. I suspect that such a project lies outside
>>> > >>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work
>>> could
>>> > >>> naturally take it very close to these questions. For example, if
>>> > >>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>>> > >>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related
>>> question of
>>> > >>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research? I could
>>> imagine
>>> > >>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap of
>>> data
>>> > >>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered
>>> as a
>>> > >>> sidenote to the first.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell? Would
>>> > >>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> Dario
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> David Morrow wrote:
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>>> > >>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what
>>> they're
>>> > >>> worth.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that
>>> your
>>> > >>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able
>>> to do
>>> > >>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career
>>> does. I'd
>>> > >>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some careers.
>>> It
>>> > >>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good,
>>> and
>>> > >>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at.
>>> I've
>>> > >>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical talent
>>> like
>>> > >>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as
>>> much
>>> > >>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since
>>> you're
>>> > >>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of
>>> the
>>> > >>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at
>>> getting a
>>> > >>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will
>>> go on
>>> > >>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
>>> sufficiently
>>> > >>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should
>>> narrow
>>> > >>> > your list significantly.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I
>>> suppose
>>> > >>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are. Which
>>> of
>>> > >>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to NGOs'
>>> > >>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general
>>> or of
>>> > >>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy
>>> (here
>>> > >>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe
>>> you
>>> > >>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once
>>> you
>>> > >>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>>> > >>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate
>>> those
>>> > >>> > problems.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other
>>> GiveWell
>>> > >>> > readers have to say.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > David
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <
>>> j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>
>>> > >>> > <mailto:j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>>>
>>> wrote:
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps
>>> to
>>> > >>> > clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>>> > >>> > action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a
>>> big-picture
>>> > >>> > person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in seeing
>>> > >>> > your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>>> > >>> > be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>>> > >>> > an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>>> > >>> > powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day to
>>> > >>> > day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>>> > >>> > before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>>> > >>> > intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>>> > >>> > analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>>> > >>> > simplistic throughout your life.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Jareb Price
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>> > >>> > To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>;
>>> > >>> > marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu><mailto:
>>> > >>> marklee@... <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>>
>>> > >>> > CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>
>>> > >>> > From: rnoble@... <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu> <mailto:
>>> rnoble@....edu <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu>>
>>> > >>> > Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>>> > >>> > Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>>> > >>> > utilitarianism
>>> > >>> > and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a
>>> utilitarian.
>>> > >>> > The first
>>> > >>> > step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>>> > >>> > measure
>>> > >>> > utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely
>>> applied
>>> > >>> > are the two
>>> > >>> > essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>>> > >>> > (QALY) and the
>>> > >>> > disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>>> > >>> > involve
>>> > >>> > uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>>> > >>> > might allow you
>>> > >>> > to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>>> > >>> the
>>> > >>> > probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>>> > >>> > as a teacher,
>>> > >>> > etc.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>>> > >>> > know of anyone
>>> > >>> > who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction to
>>> > >>> > QALYS I'd
>>> > >>> > recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and
>>> medicine,
>>> > >>> > and for
>>> > >>> > expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>>> > >>> > Jon Baron's
>>> > >>> > Thinking and Deciding.
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Ron
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>> > >>> > <mailto:marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>> >>:
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > Dear GiveWell,
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>>> > >>> > most good? � M
>>> > >>> > > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if
>>> I
>>> > >>> > want to do
>>> > >>> > > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>>> > >>> > ability to go into
>>> > >>> > > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in
>>> any
>>> > >>> > career, as
>>> > >>> > > well as the average person in that career. � If I want to do
>>> > >>> > the most good,
>>> > >>> > > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>>> > >>> > developing world,
>>> > >>> > > helping those who need it most? � Or, at one remove, should I
>>> > >>> > secure a
>>> > >>> > > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage
>>> of
>>> > >>> > my income to
>>> > >>> > > such charities? � Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>>> > >>> > > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>>> > >>> > students to
>>> > >>> > > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>>> > >>> > directly help
>>> > >>> > > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that
>>> they
>>> > >>> > can donate a
>>> > >>> > > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>>> > >>> > others to
>>> > >>> > > pursue such careers?
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > � � � � � � � � � � � I’ve been thinking about these
>>> > >>> > questions on and off
>>> > >>> > > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. � Perhaps
>>> > >>> > you could
>>> > >>> > > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>>> > >>> > What resources
>>> > >>> > > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? � Who
>>> > >>> > would have useful
>>> > >>> > > advice to give? � Should I be speaking to economists? �
>>> > >>> > International
>>> > >>> > > development and charity folks? � Ethicists? � Groups like
>>> > >>> > GiveWell? � All,
>>> > >>> > > some, or none of the above? � Has anything been written on
>>> > >>> > these issues? �
>>> > >>> > > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>>> > >>> > Singer, Thomas
>>> > >>> > > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>>> > >>> > GiveWell and
>>> > >>> > > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>>> > >>> > anything that
>>> > >>> > > directly addresses these questions.
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > Thanks,
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> > > Mark
>>> > >>> > >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> > Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>> > >>> > University of Pennsylvania
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>> > >>> > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up
>>> now.
>>> > >>> > <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>> >
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> ------------------------------------
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and
>>> notes of
>>> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent
>>> official
>>> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> >
>>>
>>> Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>> University of Pennsylvania
>>>
>>
>>
>  
>

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:
>
> For example, some well meaning people become doctors because they want to
> help sick people. The question that such a person should be asking is not
> "what is the expected effect of the work of a doctor on sick people?" but
> "what is the expected effect of *me personally* *becoming *a doctor on
> sick people?" As Holden says, high salaries in a given area can indicate
> real demand, but even in such situations, naive intuition may attribute
> greater effects to going into such a field than are actually there. It's a
> matter for careful consideration.
>
I haven't done any analysis, but it seems pretty unlikely that there will be
any shortage of opportunities for doctors to do volunteer work in poor
places with a very good chance of saving lives, so becoming a doctor should
greatly increase a person's ability to do good. Of course there's still the
question of what's the best way for a doctor to maximize that impact.

- Brian

I don't think that areas with healthy incentives are "fine almost by
definition."  For example, the incentives to create a Google-quality search
were there for a while, but someone still had to come along and do it.

Again, I do think it comes down to personal strengths/weaknesses/interests.
 If you think you have the ability/opportunity to change an area with
currently bad incentives, that might be the right move.  If you see yourself
as planning to enter an area and execute within its existing
framework/status quo, I'd encourage seeking out an area where incentives are
already healthy.

BTW, I am leaving tomorrow for a 2-week trip to South Africa and Mozambique,
during which I will be visiting VillageReach and Small Enterprise
Foundation.  So I won't be sending any more thoughts on this thread until I
get back.


On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:

>
>
> On Holden's last message:
>
> More than arguing for a particular strategy I was arguing for taking into
> account the phenomenon of replaceability.
>
> For example, some well meaning people become doctors because they want to
> help sick people. The question that such a person should be asking is not
> "what is the expected effect of the work of a doctor on sick people?" but
> "what is the expected effect of *me personally* *becoming *a doctor on
> sick people?" As Holden says, high salaries in a given area can indicate
> real demand, but even in such situations, naive intuition may attribute
> greater effects to going into such a field than are actually there. It's a
> matter for careful consideration.
>
> I agree with (a) of Holden's 02/08 message.
>
> I would also remark that I think that one should take into account the
> general perception of the effect of a line of work in predicting one's
> future capacity for influence. For example, working for a tobacco company
> seems likely to me to be a bad idea for most altruistic people on the
> grounds that the tobacco industry has such negative stigma.
>
> Concerning Holden's (b), I agree that in certain contexts measuring a
> product against economic demand can be a healthy reality check for whether
> or not the product produces social good. But echoing Sarah's last post,
> there are other areas where the potential social good is present while
> market incentives are not. As usual there are issues of externalities,
> induced demand, start up costs and individual risk aversion, etc.
>
> In any case, I think that major potential for doing good in the for-profit
> world is not so much in areas where the profit incentives are aligned with
> social good (such areas are already fine almost by definition), but in
> finding innovative ways to align profit incentives with social good (e.g. by
> recognizing an unmet demand and offering a product to meet it).
>
> I applaud GiveWell's mission and commitment to transparency.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I'd like to respond to a few points people have raised (again, these are
>> all personal/informal thoughts rather than "GiveWell views"):
>>
>> *Re: social entrepreneurship*.  I actually think that going into "social
>> entrepreneurship" should be thought of much more like going into nonprofit
>> work than like going into for-profit work. The reason is that, as I stated
>> before, I feel there are parts of the for-profit sector where incentives are
>> already lined up in a very healthy way, i.e., by pursuing profit (which is
>> very measurable) you end up pursuing social good.  By contrast, "social
>> entrepreneurship" generally refers to areas where profit itself isn't/can't
>> be the primary motivator.  So you have to hold yourself accountable in other
>> ways, and I'm not confident that the sector has developed great ways of
>> accomplishing this.  Also see
>> http://blog.givewell.net/2009/12/01/when-donations-and-profits-meet-beware/
>>
>> *Re: Nick's question* ("Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous,
>> unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job would be, or what some of
>> the best ones would be?")  It seems like a reasonable heuristic to me to
>> maximize your expected earnings.  Top athletes and entertainers earn
>> enormous amounts, but that may reflect a "winner-take-all" dynamic rather
>> than a shortage; if you feel virtually assured that you can make a lot of
>> money in career X, *and* you feel reasonably sure that career X is in one of
>> the areas where profit correlates with social good, you've probably found an
>> area with a lot of "room for more labor."
>>
>> One specific example that jumps to mind is professional recruiter
>> ("headhunter").  It seems to me that these people would have trouble making
>> money, over time, unless they're helping companies find the right people for
>> the roles they need filled.  And anecdotally, it seems like people in this
>> area make a lot more than they would in alternative careers.  I want to
>> reiterate that I'm not suggesting this path in general - personal talents
>> and interests are paramount in my view.
>>
>> *Re: Ron's point about DALYs.*  I think DALYs can be useful for
>> sub-questions like "If I'm going into global health, should I be aiming to
>> focus on AIDS or tuberculosis?"  I think that if you try to use them to
>> estimate the entire value of careers, you're going to end up with more error
>> than you would get from informal reasoning.
>>
>> *Re: Jonah's point about "ignoring the effect of the effect of one's work
>> on society (on the grounds that somebody else would be doing it anyway)."
>> *  As I understand this, he's arguing that if you're unusually
>> altruistic, you might do the most good by focusing on winning zero-sum games
>> and doing altruistic things with the rewards.  For example, if you beat
>> person B in a contest for job/role X, there isn't much difference in how
>> well you'll perform the job, but there's a big difference in what you'll do
>> with the earnings and other perks (like influence) of the job.  This
>> reasoning would push you in the opposite direction from the argument I laid
>> out - you'd want to go into areas where incentives are *not* healthy (where
>> profit does not align with social good), so that your altruistic focus on
>> accomplishing good will be more unusual and add more value.
>>
>> It's an interesting argument.  My main comment is that I think it's easy
>> to overestimate (a) how altruistic you really are, i.e., what you will
>> actually do once you have a lot of money as opposed to what you think should
>> be done from your current vantage point of not having a lot of money; (b)
>> how "knowledgeable/powerful" you are as an altruist - i.e., how reliably the
>> things you would spend your money and influence on would improve the world.
>> We've certainly seen in our research on charities that a lot of things that
>> seem obviously good for the world turn out to be far more complex on closer
>> inspection.
>>
>> Rather than relying on oneself to know and do the right thing, I like the
>> idea of going into an area where incentives "force" you to do the right
>> thing.  GiveWell looks for ways to increase the "force" on both charities
>> and on ourselves (our emphasis on transparency is one of our major attempts
>> at the latter).
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There are few points that I wanted to make which are likely subtext for
>>> some of the preceding posts but which I haven't seen made explicit yet:
>>>
>>> (1)The marginal impact that an individual worker has on the effectiveness
>>> of an organization (corporate or nonprofit) is usually very small. This is
>>> because most workers are replaceable in the sense that if a given worker had
>>> not signed on, the organization could have hired a slightly less qualified
>>> worker who would have done nearly as a good a job.
>>>
>>> With this in mind, it seems to me reasonable to me for the typical
>>> altruist to focus what various jobs have to offer with respect to donatable
>>> funds, personal satisfaction (with a view toward sustainability, c.f. Sarah
>>> Cobey's story), and ability to influence others, while largely ignoring the
>>> effect of the effect of one's work on society (on the grounds that somebody
>>> else would be doing it anyway).
>>>
>>> Of course, there are people with unusually strong abilities or rare
>>> combinations of abilities who are not easily replaceable, and those who are
>>> aware of possessing such skills should take this into account - my point is
>>> just that the phenomenon of replaceability should be taken into account.
>>>
>>> (2) While risk aversion is important in the context of personal finances,
>>> it has little place in the domain of charitable activity, because
>>> diminishing marginal utility sets in much faster for an individual than it
>>> does for potential benefactors (taken as a group) of a well conceived
>>> charitable effort.
>>>
>>> For two (somewhat similar) perspectives on these points, see
>>> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/make-money.html and
>>> http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/risky-investments.html . I don't
>>> necessarily agree with everything in these essays, but the writing is clear.
>>>
>>> Holistically, and especially in light of (2) above, I think that
>>> altruistic people should seriously consider speculative endeavors (starting
>>> companies or nonprofits, getting a job early on in a start up company,
>>> trying to become a successful rock star, or film director, etc.). As Dario
>>> Amodei remarked above, influence as a function of worldly success seems to
>>> be strongly superlinear. Positive changes of the magnitude that we would
>>> most like to see require resources and influence that a given individual
>>> cannot reasonably expect to acquire, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't
>>> try.
>>>
>>> "The reasonable man [resp. woman] adapts himself [resp. herself] to the
>>> world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself
>>> [resp. herself]. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man
>>> [resp. woman]" -- GB Shaw
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:58 AM, <rnoble@...enn.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> One question I haven't noticed being addressed that might be of
>>>> interest: To
>>>> what extent are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness (however
>>>> defined)
>>>> to do good for others? This could be especially salient if you go the
>>>> route of
>>>> a high-paying job with the intention of donating money. If you make
>>>> $100,000/year, how much are you willing to donate of that $100,000, for
>>>> example?
>>>>
>>>> As for DALYs, you can disagree with the measure but measuring good in
>>>> some way
>>>> seems essential. You'll have to choose between projects to put your time
>>>> and
>>>> effort into, so you really have to quantify good in some manner. Upon
>>>> close
>>>> inspection, two projects which both look "very good" in terms of doing
>>>> good
>>>> might differ by an order of magnitude in how much good they do.
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Quoting Nick Beckstead <nbeckstead@...u<nbeckstead%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>>> >:
>>>>
>>>> > Any thoughts on what the best unglamorous, unprestigious,
>>>> uncelebrated,
>>>> > highly lucrative job would be, or what some of the best ones would be?
>>>> >
>>>> > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...<holden0%40gmail.com>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > >
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I'm broadly in agreement with the points raised by Dario, Brian
>>>> Slesinsky
>>>> > > and David Morrow, all of which stress that your personal
>>>> talents/interests
>>>> > > are a huge factor in the equation, making it impossible to give a
>>>> very
>>>> > > general answer.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > From what I've seen of cost-effectiveness estimates (particularly
>>>> those
>>>> > > using DALYs), I think current methodologies are not up to the task
>>>> of
>>>> > > shedding much light on this decision.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > One thing I'd like to add is that I feel that in these sorts of
>>>> > > discussions, people very often seem to be underestimating the
>>>> benefits of
>>>> > > for-profit activities. Most scholarly discussions of the enormous
>>>> > > improvement in living standards and drastic declines in poverty over
>>>> the
>>>> > > last few hundred years give a huge amount of the credit to overall
>>>> economic
>>>> > > growth driven largely by for-profit activities.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > For-profit activities have a sort of built-in accountability and
>>>> focus on
>>>> > > outcomes. It's obviously not perfect, and there are many valid
>>>> concerns
>>>> > > about the relationship between profit and social good (including
>>>> Dario's
>>>> > > worries about finance). But in a lot of industries, making money
>>>> means
>>>> > > helping someone, and the benefits you might create by making money
>>>> should
>>>> > be
>>>> > > in the same conversation as the benefits you might create by giving
>>>> it
>>>> > away.
>>>> > > This includes fields such as accounting and even finance (though
>>>> finance
>>>> > > has some definite problems as well) where the translation between
>>>> making
>>>> > > money and helping people doesn't seem very clear/direct/tangible. I
>>>> think
>>>> > > the same mentality that leads people to be insufficiently critical
>>>> of
>>>> > > charities ("they're trying to help people") leads them to be overly
>>>> > critical
>>>> > > of for-profit activities ("they're just trying to make a buck").
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I think a lot of good can be done by entering celebrated,
>>>> insufficiently
>>>> > > criticized sectors *in order to* add criticism to them and change
>>>> the way
>>>> > > they operate (I see GiveWell as doing this). But if your main value
>>>> added
>>>> > > is your ability to execute within an institutional framework, rather
>>>> than
>>>> > > challenge it, that to me is a reason to put yourself in the
>>>> for-profit
>>>> > > framework where incentives are (in many cases) already very healthy
>>>> and
>>>> > > aligned with social good.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > So if your situation really is that you're willing to do anything,
>>>> and have
>>>> > > an edge on other people in tolerating unpleasant or non-glamorous
>>>> > > activities, I'd urge you to give strong consideration to shooting
>>>> for an
>>>> > > unglamorous, unprestigious, uncelebrated, highly lucrative job. In
>>>> fact,
>>>> > > the high pay of such a job could be taken as an indication that
>>>> there is a
>>>> > > lot of "room for more labor" in that area.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Note that all of this stuff is my personal thoughts, unrelated to
>>>> GiveWell.
>>>> > > Related to the points made by Dario, David and Brian, I think the
>>>> question
>>>> > > of "What should I do?" is much harder to give general answers on
>>>> than the
>>>> > > question of "Where should I give?" and I don't see GiveWell as an
>>>> > > institution working on this question. However, I am personally very
>>>> > > interested in the question and may someday see what work I can do on
>>>> it.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Sarah Cobey <sarahcobey@...<sarahcobey%40gmail.com>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > >
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Dear Mark and GiveWell,
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> It's exciting to read such thoughtful responses to this question. I
>>>> add my
>>>> > >> personal experience as an anecdote that might help guide your
>>>> thinking.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> I graduated from college in 2002 with largely the same approach and
>>>> > >> question as you. I had, however, majored in ecology & evolutionary
>>>> biology
>>>> > >> (EEB) and minored in environmental studies and Russian studies. I
>>>> loved
>>>> > the
>>>> > >> theory and implications of EEB, but I was concerned that the
>>>> academic
>>>> > >> approach would be too "indulgent" and slow to improve welfare. I
>>>> decided
>>>> > to
>>>> > >> do development work in SE Asia immediately after graduating; I was
>>>> the
>>>> > only
>>>> > >> native English speaker in the office and interfaced largely between
>>>> large
>>>> > >> funding bodies and the national government. Most of my day-to-day
>>>> work was
>>>> > >> administrative, and working with the government of a developing
>>>> country
>>>> > >> presented enormous challenges. I wondered about the ultimate impact
>>>> of the
>>>> > >> projects we were funding and especially how long it would take to
>>>> see
>>>> > >> changes. I was also not in a position to have substantive influence
>>>> over
>>>> > >> what was happening.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Uncertainty over outcomes, combined with the extreme loneliness I
>>>> felt as
>>>> > >> an expat in a small country (with a very small expat population)
>>>> and
>>>> > >> persistent intellectual boredom, motivated me to return to the U.S.
>>>> and
>>>> > >> apply to PhD programs. I recently graduated with a PhD in EEB, with
>>>> a
>>>> > focus
>>>> > >> on infectious disease. I find research dramatically more
>>>> interesting than
>>>> > >> what I was doing, and the potential impact of the work is
>>>> incredible. That
>>>> > >> said, the probability that I or any scientist will make
>>>> paradigm-shifting
>>>> > >> discoveries is low, but I enjoy knowing that the smaller
>>>> discoveries are
>>>> > >> helpful. The burdens of scientific careers are low income and lack
>>>> of job
>>>> > >> security--sometimes I struggle not to let this stress interfere
>>>> with my
>>>> > >> work. I have wondered whether I might be better off in finance,
>>>> donating
>>>> > >> much of my income, but I'm increasingly confident that the
>>>> autonomy,
>>>> > growth
>>>> > >> opportunities, and undeniable importance of my scientific work
>>>> compensate
>>>> > >> better than a more lucrative and stable job would.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Dario suggested we might be more effective doing excellent work in
>>>> a field
>>>> > >> where we can succeed than doing average work in a central field. I
>>>> think
>>>> > >> it's clear that there are some fields where, no matter how good you
>>>> might
>>>> > >> be, your excellence will still negligibly benefit the world. For
>>>> the
>>>> > fields
>>>> > >> where there's some possibility of a larger benefit, please consider
>>>> the
>>>> > >> psychological components that contribute to your success. I was
>>>> surprised
>>>> > by
>>>> > >> my own constraints: I need intellectual challenge and work of
>>>> obvious
>>>> > >> importance (to me) and potentially far-reaching impact, and I have
>>>> to live
>>>> > >> in a place where I can have enough friends. For these things, I
>>>> will trade
>>>> > a
>>>> > >> great degree of financial welfare and job security. It took me
>>>> direct
>>>> > >> experimentation to learn these things, but perhaps you can
>>>> anticipate some
>>>> > >> of your preferences now and save some time.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Lastly, this general question about how to maximize one's impact,
>>>> which
>>>> > >> includes GiveWell's overall mission, rests on such a fascinating,
>>>> > subjective
>>>> > >> and hidden calculus. It's exciting for me as a scientist to read
>>>> > >> philosophers' approaches to this problem.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Sarah
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Dario Amodei
>>>> > <damodei@... <damodei%40princeton.edu>>wrote:
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>> Mark et al,
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> I�ve thought about this question quite a bit, and my sense is that
>>>> it is
>>>> > >>> extremely difficult to answer rigorously -- the complexity of the
>>>> > >>> personal, institutional, and even macroeconomic issues at play
>>>> here is
>>>> > >>> immense. That said, one relevant pattern which I�ve noticed is
>>>> that
>>>> > >>> many careers seem to have a winner-take-all dynamic: that is, a
>>>> very
>>>> > >>> small number of individuals are responsible for a sizable fraction
>>>> of
>>>> > >>> the total impactful activity in the field. One vivid example of
>>>> this is
>>>> > >>> politics: though one can argue about how much influence the US
>>>> president
>>>> > >>> has over public policy, it seems clear that he has much more
>>>> influence
>>>> > >>> than a typical elected official one level down � say a state
>>>> governor.
>>>> > >>> A governor, in turn, has much more influence than a town mayor or
>>>> a
>>>> > >>> local party official. The same dynamic holds in entrepreneurship �
>>>> a
>>>> > >>> few very large companies, such as Microsoft and Google, have
>>>> thousands
>>>> > >>> of times the profitability and impact on the economy as the
>>>> average
>>>> > >>> business. As a grad student it�s been my impression that this
>>>> pattern
>>>> > >>> is also present in science -� a relatively small number of key
>>>> > >>> innovations seem to tangibly speed up the rate of progress
>>>> (compared to
>>>> > >>> what would have happened if their inventors hadn�t thought of
>>>> them),
>>>> > >>> while the bulk of scientific work is either very small in scope or
>>>> is
>>>> > >>> �inevitable� in the sense that someone else would have done it
>>>> soon
>>>> > >>> anyway. It�s my guess that many other fields, such as law,
>>>> finance, and
>>>> > >>> nonprofits, exhibit the same dynamic, to varying extents.
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> A key implication of this view is that being very good at what you
>>>> do
>>>> > >>> may be more important than choosing the field that seems most
>>>> promising
>>>> > >>> in some abstract utilitarian sense. It is probably better to be
>>>> wildly
>>>> > >>> successful at a career with some positive effect on the world,
>>>> than it
>>>> > >>> is to be average in the �most� efficacious possible career choice.
>>>> > >>> Thus, David�s advice to make a list of careers that could do good
>>>> and
>>>> > >>> then ask yourself which you are best at strikes me as very
>>>> sensible.
>>>> > >>> There is also the practical consideration that it is easier to
>>>> work hard
>>>> > >>> and persevere in a career that one has natural ability and
>>>> interest in.
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> All that said, I agree that the abstract question of which careers
>>>> do
>>>> > >>> the most good (at various levels of achievement) is relevant and
>>>> > >>> important. One thing I would find useful is a rough analysis, for
>>>> > >>> various careers, of the impact that (a) an average practitioner,
>>>> and (b)
>>>> > >>> an extremely successful practitioner, might expect to have.
>>>> Obviously
>>>> > >>> there will be a lot of unknowns, and for the reasons above I think
>>>> it
>>>> > >>> would be unwise to use such an analysis as the main determinant of
>>>> a
>>>> > >>> career decision, but it might be a valuable resource for someone
>>>> > >>> choosing between two careers they are already attracted to.
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> To give a very concrete example, I may be making such a choice
>>>> myself in
>>>> > >>> a year or two: after I get my PhD, I am considering a career in
>>>> finance,
>>>> > >>> which would allow me to give away more money than I currently do.
>>>> I
>>>> > >>> think I would excel at and enjoy such a career, but I�m concerned
>>>> that
>>>> > >>> the finance industry may be having systemic negative effects on
>>>> the
>>>> > >>> economy (as evidenced by the economic crash in 2008). An analysis
>>>> of
>>>> > >>> the possible positive and negative impacts of working in the
>>>> finance
>>>> > >>> industry � particularly the marginal, counterfactual impact of
>>>> hiring
>>>> > >>> one additional analyst - would be very helpful for me.
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> I don�t know where one might find these types of career analyses
>>>> or even
>>>> > >>> whether they exist. I suspect that such a project lies outside
>>>> > >>> GiveWell�s mission, but I wonder if some of GiveWell�s future work
>>>> could
>>>> > >>> naturally take it very close to these questions. For example, if
>>>> > >>> GiveWell decided to look into the efficacy of *funding* scientific
>>>> > >>> research, would it be worthwhile to also tackle the related
>>>> question of
>>>> > >>> the efficacy of *participating* in scientific research? I could
>>>> imagine
>>>> > >>> that answering these two questions might involve a large overlap
>>>> of data
>>>> > >>> and analysis -- perhaps the second question might even be answered
>>>> as a
>>>> > >>> sidenote to the first.
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> Could this sort of thing potentially make sense for GiveWell?
>>>> Would
>>>> > >>> others on this list find such analyses valuable?
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> Dario
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> David Morrow wrote:
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Good question. I don't know of any publication that specifically
>>>> > >>> > addresses it. Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what
>>>> they're
>>>> > >>> worth.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > I think the question is much easier to answer if we admit that
>>>> your
>>>> > >>> > first assumption never holds. I would wager that no one is able
>>>> to do
>>>> > >>> > as well in *any* career as the average person in that career
>>>> does. I'd
>>>> > >>> > also wager that you could do better than average in some
>>>> careers. It
>>>> > >>> > seems worthwhile to make a list of careers that could do good,
>>>> and
>>>> > >>> > then ask yourself which of those careers you would be best at.
>>>> I've
>>>> > >>> > heard that Peter Unger says that anyone with philosophical
>>>> talent like
>>>> > >>> > yours should go to law school, get a lucrative job, and give as
>>>> much
>>>> > >>> > as he or she can to poverty relief. On the other hand, since
>>>> you're
>>>> > >>> > already at Rutgers (which, for those who don't know, is one of
>>>> the
>>>> > >>> > best philosophy programs in the world), you have a shot at
>>>> getting a
>>>> > >>> > job somewhere where you could influence a lot of people who will
>>>> go on
>>>> > >>> > to lucrative and powerful careers -- assuming you'd be a
>>>> sufficiently
>>>> > >>> > inspirational teacher. These kinds of considerations should
>>>> narrow
>>>> > >>> > your list significantly.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > We might still want to know which career does the most good. I
>>>> suppose
>>>> > >>> > that depends on where the most important "bottlenecks" are.
>>>> Which of
>>>> > >>> > the following would make the biggest marginal difference to
>>>> NGOs'
>>>> > >>> > ability to do good: More money? More human resources (in general
>>>> or of
>>>> > >>> > a particular kind)? More information? Changes to public policy
>>>> (here
>>>> > >>> > or abroad)? Maybe GiveWell can help answer that question. Maybe
>>>> you
>>>> > >>> > could contact people at some NGOs of interest and ask them. Once
>>>> you
>>>> > >>> > know where the bottlenecks are, you can narrow your search even
>>>> > >>> > further by asking what you could do that would help alleviate
>>>> those
>>>> > >>> > problems.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing what other
>>>> GiveWell
>>>> > >>> > readers have to say.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > David
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Jareb Price <
>>>> j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>
>>>> > >>> > <mailto:j.c.price@... <j.c.price%40alumni.iu.edu>>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > As a BA in philosophy, I would suggest taking a couple of steps
>>>> to
>>>> > >>> > clarify your position. Ask yourself, what is the scope of the
>>>> > >>> > action you wish to engage in, are you, individually, a
>>>> big-picture
>>>> > >>> > person, or a detail person, and what is your time frame in
>>>> seeing
>>>> > >>> > your success. These answers will help to clarify where you would
>>>> > >>> > be most successful in your own measure, if you are successful as
>>>> > >>> > an individual, the wish to give back will be that much more
>>>> > >>> > powerful, if you aren't seeing yourself as successful, the day
>>>> to
>>>> > >>> > day struggles are likely to frustrate you and you may burn out
>>>> > >>> > before you can have the effect that you wish. Giving is an
>>>> > >>> > intensely personal process, so give it the intense personal
>>>> > >>> > analysis it deserves in order to keep it strong, effective and
>>>> > >>> > simplistic throughout your life.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Jareb Price
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>> > >>> > To: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>>>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>;
>>>> > >>> > marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu><mailto:
>>>> > >>> marklee@...tgers.edu <marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>>> >
>>>> > >>> > CC: givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com><mailto:
>>>> givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>>
>>>> > >>> > From: rnoble@...n.edu <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu> <mailto:
>>>> rnoble@... <rnoble%40sas.upenn.edu>>
>>>> > >>> > Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:46:35 -0500
>>>> > >>> > Subject: Re: [givewell] On doing the most good (my two cents)
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Mark,
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > I'm guessing as a philosophy major you are pretty familiar with
>>>> > >>> > utilitarianism
>>>> > >>> > and I'd further guess that you think of yourself as a
>>>> utilitarian.
>>>> > >>> > The first
>>>> > >>> > step in figuring out how to do the most good is deciding how to
>>>> > >>> > measure
>>>> > >>> > utility. The best measure of utility that have been widely
>>>> applied
>>>> > >>> > are the two
>>>> > >>> > essentially identical concepts of the quality-adjusted life-year
>>>> > >>> > (QALY) and the
>>>> > >>> > disability-adjusted life-year (DALY).
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > After that, I'd say that the decision you make about what to do
>>>> > >>> > involve
>>>> > >>> > uncertainty--your attempt to become very wealthy if successful
>>>> > >>> > might allow you
>>>> > >>> > to do much more good than if you worked for an NGO, but what are
>>>> > >>> the
>>>> > >>> > probabilities of success. Likewise with how influential you'd be
>>>> > >>> > as a teacher,
>>>> > >>> > etc.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > As for the actual calculations about a choice like that, I don't
>>>> > >>> > know of anyone
>>>> > >>> > who's tried to perform them and published. But an introduction
>>>> to
>>>> > >>> > QALYS I'd
>>>> > >>> > recommend a book called Cost-effectiveness in health and
>>>> medicine,
>>>> > >>> > and for
>>>> > >>> > expected utilty theory and practically applying it I'd recommend
>>>> > >>> > Jon Baron's
>>>> > >>> > Thinking and Deciding.
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Ron
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Quoting Mark Lee <marklee@philosophy.rutgers.edu<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>>> > >>> > <mailto:marklee@...<marklee%40philosophy.rutgers.edu>
>>>> >>:
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > Dear GiveWell,
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > I’m interested in answering the question: how can I do the
>>>> > >>> > most good? � M
>>>> > >>> > > ore manageably, I’m interested in answering the question: if
>>>> I
>>>> > >>> > want to do
>>>> > >>> > > the most good, what career should I pursue? �
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > Suppose that I have just finished college, that I have the
>>>> > >>> > ability to go into
>>>> > >>> > > and tolerate almost any career, and that I would perform, in
>>>> any
>>>> > >>> > career, as
>>>> > >>> > > well as the average person in that career. � If I want to do
>>>> > >>> > the most good,
>>>> > >>> > > should I work for an efficient charity group or NGO in the
>>>> > >>> > developing world,
>>>> > >>> > > helping those who need it most? � Or, at one remove, should I
>>>> > >>> > secure a
>>>> > >>> > > stable and highly lucrative job, and donate a high percentage
>>>> of
>>>> > >>> > my income to
>>>> > >>> > > such charities? � Or, at one more remove, should I become a
>>>> > >>> > > teacher/professor/other person of influence, and influence my
>>>> > >>> > students to
>>>> > >>> > > pursue careers that promote the good, e.g. careers that (a)
>>>> > >>> > directly help
>>>> > >>> > > those who need it most, or (b) are highly lucrative so that
>>>> they
>>>> > >>> > can donate a
>>>> > >>> > > lot, or (c) are influential so that they can in turn influence
>>>> > >>> > others to
>>>> > >>> > > pursue such careers?
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > � � � � � � � � � � � I’ve been thinking about these
>>>> > >>> > questions on and off
>>>> > >>> > > for several years now, but have not gotten very far. � Perhaps
>>>> > >>> > you could
>>>> > >>> > > shed some light on them, and/or on the following questions: �
>>>> > >>> > What resources
>>>> > >>> > > are out there that are pertinent to these questions? � Who
>>>> > >>> > would have useful
>>>> > >>> > > advice to give? � Should I be speaking to economists? �
>>>> > >>> > International
>>>> > >>> > > development and charity folks? � Ethicists? � Groups like
>>>> > >>> > GiveWell? � All,
>>>> > >>> > > some, or none of the above? � Has anything been written on
>>>> > >>> > these issues? �
>>>> > >>> > > I’m aware of some indirectly relevant literature� from Peter
>>>> > >>> > Singer, Thomas
>>>> > >>> > > Pogge, and Amartya Sen, and some of the information on the
>>>> > >>> > GiveWell and
>>>> > >>> > > Giving What We Can sites/blogs, but I’ve not encountered
>>>> > >>> > anything that
>>>> > >>> > > directly addresses these questions.
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > Thanks,
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> > > Mark
>>>> > >>> > >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> > Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>>> > >>> > University of Pennsylvania
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>> > >>> > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up
>>>> now.
>>>> > >>> > <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/>
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>> >
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> ------------------------------------
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>>> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and
>>>> notes of
>>>> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent
>>>> official
>>>> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
>>>> University of Pennsylvania
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

In this email, I want to give a brief overview of our research plans for the
coming year and also update this group on our plans for one particular area
of research: disaster relief.

*Overview of our research plans*

Our research focus areas for the coming year are:

   1. *Fleshing out additional areas in our international aid report.* This
   includes (a) disaster relief, (b) a search for
   microfinance institutions (MFIs) in regions aside from Sub-Saharan Africa
   (the region we've looked at already), (c) looking into the causes of orphans
   and vulnerable children and sex slavery and human trafficking, and (d)
   continuing to review high-potential international charities regardless of
   focus area as we come across them. This work will largely be done by Natalie
   and Alanna Shaikh (who's going to be working with us a contractor).
   2. *Completing a more comprehensive evaluation of US Equality of
   Opportunity.* This work is intended to build out the report that already
   exists on our site (http://www.givewell.net/united-states) along the
   lines of how we improved our international aid report from our first release
   in December 2007 to our updated release in July 2009. This work will largely
   be done by Simon Knutsson, a graduate student who's going to be working with
   us as a contractor over the summer).
   3. *Disease research.* This work will largely be done by Holden and me.
   We've laid out some of our thoughts in a previous email:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163

We intend to complete items #1 and #2 this year. We're not sure how much of
time we'll able to devote to #3, and completing items #1 and #2 will take
precedence over #3.

*Update on plans for disaster relief*
*
*
*Why disaster relief*
*
*
We believe that disaster relief is a good area for us to focus on because
disasters generate a large amount of interest in the media and from donors
who both (a) want to give and (b) don't already have a specific organization
in mind to give to and are therefore looking for recommendations. If we do
high quality research, this is an opportunity to influence a large amount of
giving towards more effective options and an opportunity to engage in the
conversation of how to think about effective giving at a time when there is
significant attention.

In addition, we believe that many of the issues involved in disaster relief
overlap with work we've done on international aid.

We think that these reasons to investigate disaster relief outweigh the
downside that based on what we know, we would not guess that disaster relief
charities will offer donors a *better* option than giving to our top-rated
international charities (e.g., VillageReach, Stop TB).

*What we've done so far*
*
*
First, we've blogged some of our thoughts about the Haiti disaster and
disaster relief in general at
http://blog.givewell.net/category/disaster-relief/

Since then, we've reviewed the websites of 10 big-name organizations as well
as sites that publish reports on disaster relief (e.g.,
http://www.alnap.org/) looking for monitoring and evaluation reports from
their responses to the 2004 Tsunami. We did not find particularly useful
information.

We've also spoken with Saundra Schimmelpfennig (of
http://informationincontext.typepad.com/) and Alanna Shaikh (of
http://bloodandmilk.org/) to get their thoughts on the best ways to evaluate
disaster relief activities.

*Some preliminary thoughts*

   - Our goal is to be in a position to recommend an organization when a
   disaster hits. That means we have to find an organization that works in lots
   of different parts of the world. So, even though a local organization *
   might *offer better relief, it's not feasible for us to recommend one
   ahead of time. (It's also not realistic that we could evaluate local
   organizations in the day or so following a disaster.)
   - It makes sense to us to distinguish between two phases of the relief
   effort: (a) immediate relief to provide for basic, short-term needs (e.g.,
   food, water, medical) and (b) longer-term rebuilding.
      - My instinct (not Holden's) is that A likely offers donors a better
      opportunity than B as because A includes providing for very
basic needs like
      health, food, water. My instinct is that long-term aid
post-disaster could
      easily be a case of over-funded, "general" international aid projects.
      - On the other hand, it's possible that long-term aid for disasters
      provides for longer-term basic needs (e.g., roads, shelter) and
is therefore
      likely to be more effective than "normal" international aid. There are
      people we respect who point to long-term aid as important and potentially
      under-funded relative to short-term aid: (see #4 at
      http://www.philanthropyaction.com/nc/advice_for_donors_to_haiti/)
   - We should be able to evaluate organizations based on (a) their focus on
   immediate vs. long-term relief, (b) documentation of past relief efforts
   (plans and evaluations reports), (c) country-level or regional plans for
   responding to future disasters, and (d) what they can tell us about their
   process for deciding to respond to particular disasters; deciding how much
   money to raise; and what they do if/when they receive more money than they
   can use.
   - We'll also considered "alternative" disaster-focused charities, for
   example, those that focus on disaster preparedness. This isn't an area we've
   looked into at all yet.

*Our plans*

Due to the fact that we want to find an organization we can recommend for
disasters in different regions, we think the most likely place to start is
with "big-name" charities like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, etc.

We're particularly interested in Doctors Without Borders (MSF) because of
their past refusal of emergency response funds (they said they already had
enough money raised); our understanding that they almost entirely focus
their disaster response efforts on short-term relief; and they have a
reputation for critical evaluation of their work (which may be indicated in
the report of a program failure that earned them a 1-star rating from us).

Our next step is to contact organizations directly and see what answers we
can get. We've put together a specific list of questions to ask MSF (and
others) on our MSF review page:
http://www.givewell.net/international/charities/doctors-without-borders

Alanna Shaikh who's going to be working with us as a contractor is going to
be leading our research here.

Please share any thoughts you have on our plans as we're at an early stage
in this process and feedback would be very useful.

Best,
Elie

Good thoughts.  

I'm glad to see that environmental charities do not make the cut at this time (they had been discussed previously).  I think that environmental charities don't really fit the template of what GiveWell has done so far, and would introduce a lot of political messiness.  

Disaster relief, US equality of opportunity, and, if possible, disease research all seem like good areas for GiveWell to explore.  Personally, I'm more interested in disease research than US equality of opportunity, but given the interests of a wide variety of donors and potential GiveWell readers, I can certainly see value in researching US equality of opportunity as well.



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Elie Hassenfeld 
  To: givewell@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 11:56 AM
  Subject: [givewell] Research priorities and plans


    

  In this email, I want to give a brief overview of our research plans for the coming year and also update this group on our plans for one particular area of research: disaster relief. 


  Overview of our research plans


  Our research focus areas for the coming year are:
    1.. Fleshing out additional areas in our international aid report. This includes (a) disaster relief, (b) a search for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in regions aside from Sub-Saharan Africa (the region we've looked at already), (c) looking into the causes of orphans and vulnerable children and sex slavery and human trafficking, and (d) continuing to review high-potential international charities regardless of focus area as we come across them. This work will largely be done by Natalie and Alanna Shaikh (who's going to be working with us a contractor). 
    2.. Completing a more comprehensive evaluation of US Equality of Opportunity. This work is intended to build out the report that already exists on our site (http://www.givewell.net/united-states) along the lines of how we improved our international aid report from our first release in December 2007 to our updated release in July 2009. This work will largely be done by Simon Knutsson, a graduate student who's going to be working with us as a contractor over the summer). 
    3.. Disease research. This work will largely be done by Holden and me. We've laid out some of our thoughts in a previous email: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163 
  We intend to complete items #1 and #2 this year. We're not sure how much of time we'll able to devote to #3, and completing items #1 and #2 will take precedence over #3.


  Update on plans for disaster relief


  Why disaster relief


  We believe that disaster relief is a good area for us to focus on because disasters generate a large amount of interest in the media and from donors who both (a) want to give and (b) don't already have a specific organization in mind to give to and are therefore looking for recommendations. If we do high quality research, this is an opportunity to influence a large amount of giving towards more effective options and an opportunity to engage in the conversation of how to think about effective giving at a time when there is significant attention. 


  In addition, we believe that many of the issues involved in disaster relief overlap with work we've done on international aid.


  We think that these reasons to investigate disaster relief outweigh the downside that based on what we know, we would not guess that disaster relief charities will offer donors a better option than giving to our top-rated international charities (e.g., VillageReach, Stop TB).


  What we've done so far


  First, we've blogged some of our thoughts about the Haiti disaster and disaster relief in general at http://blog.givewell.net/category/disaster-relief/


  Since then, we've reviewed the websites of 10 big-name organizations as well as sites that publish reports on disaster relief (e.g., http://www.alnap.org/) looking for monitoring and evaluation reports from their responses to the 2004 Tsunami. We did not find particularly useful information.


  We've also spoken with Saundra Schimmelpfennig (of http://informationincontext.typepad.com/) and Alanna Shaikh (of http://bloodandmilk.org/) to get their thoughts on the best ways to evaluate disaster relief activities.


  Some preliminary thoughts
    a.. Our goal is to be in a position to recommend an organization when a disaster hits. That means we have to find an organization that works in lots of different parts of the world. So, even though a local organization might offer better relief, it's not feasible for us to recommend one ahead of time. (It's also not realistic that we could evaluate local organizations in the day or so following a disaster.) 
    b.. It makes sense to us to distinguish between two phases of the relief effort: (a) immediate relief to provide for basic, short-term needs (e.g., food, water, medical) and (b) longer-term rebuilding. 
      a.. My instinct (not Holden's) is that A likely offers donors a better opportunity than B as because A includes providing for very basic needs like health, food, water. My instinct is that long-term aid post-disaster could easily be a case of over-funded, "general" international aid projects. 
      b.. On the other hand, it's possible that long-term aid for disasters provides for longer-term basic needs (e.g., roads, shelter) and is therefore likely to be more effective than "normal" international aid. There are people we respect who point to long-term aid as important and potentially under-funded relative to short-term aid: (see #4 at http://www.philanthropyaction.com/nc/advice_for_donors_to_haiti/) 
    c.. We should be able to evaluate organizations based on (a) their focus on immediate vs. long-term relief, (b) documentation of past relief efforts (plans and evaluations reports), (c) country-level or regional plans for responding to future disasters, and (d) what they can tell us about their process for deciding to respond to particular disasters; deciding how much money to raise; and what they do if/when they receive more money than they can use. 
    d.. We'll also considered "alternative" disaster-focused charities, for example, those that focus on disaster preparedness. This isn't an area we've looked into at all yet.
  Our plans


  Due to the fact that we want to find an organization we can recommend for disasters in different regions, we think the most likely place to start is with "big-name" charities like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, etc. 


  We're particularly interested in Doctors Without Borders (MSF) because of their past refusal of emergency response funds (they said they already had enough money raised); our understanding that they almost entirely focus their disaster response efforts on short-term relief; and they have a reputation for critical evaluation of their work (which may be indicated in the report of a program failure that earned them a 1-star rating from us).


  Our next step is to contact organizations directly and see what answers we can get. We've put together a specific list of questions to ask MSF (and others) on our MSF review page: http://www.givewell.net/international/charities/doctors-without-borders


  Alanna Shaikh who's going to be working with us as a contractor is going to be leading our research here.


  Please share any thoughts you have on our plans as we're at an early stage in this process and feedback would be very useful.


  Best,
  Elie

  

Overall your research plans look good and seems coherent to me.

One thing that I'm unclear on is why disease research looks to GiveWell to
be a potentially strong opportunity to change lives relative to other
causes. I'm not expressing skepticism, I just don't have a clear idea of
what your train of thought on this point is. On the face of things, the
estimate of $32,000 to save two lives of (> 64 year olds) and one life of a
(< 64 year old) doesn't seem competitive with the VillageReach and StopTB
figures.

Is the point that you have an eye toward neglected tropical diseases which
may be relatively cheap to develop cures for on account of having
been...well...neglected? Or do you have in mind finding cheaper
cures/immunizations which can be more practically implemented in poor
countries where? Or the fact that improvements in medical technology will
(hopefully) yield returns for many subsequent years, raising the number of
lives saved/improved for a fixed cost (an effect which must be balanced
against the fact that with the passage of time it's more likely that
somebody else would have discovered a cure without additional funding?)


On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Phil Steinmeyer
<psteinmeyer@...>wrote:

>
>
> Good thoughts.
>
> I'm glad to see that environmental charities do not make the cut at this
> time (they had been discussed previously).  I think that environmental
> charities don't really fit the template of what GiveWell has done so far,
> and would introduce a lot of political messiness.
>
> Disaster relief, US equality of opportunity, and, if possible, disease
> research all seem like good areas for GiveWell to explore.  Personally, I'm
> more interested in disease research than US equality of opportunity, but
> given the interests of a wide variety of donors and potential GiveWell
> readers, I can certainly see value in researching US equality of opportunity
> as well.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>
> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 11, 2010 11:56 AM
> *Subject:* [givewell] Research priorities and plans
>
>
>
>  In this email, I want to give a brief overview of our research plans for
> the coming year and also update this group on our plans for one particular
> area of research: disaster relief.
>
> *Overview of our research plans*
>
> Our research focus areas for the coming year are:
>
>    1. *Fleshing out additional areas in our international aid report.* This
>    includes (a) disaster relief, (b) a search for
>    microfinance institutions (MFIs) in regions aside from Sub-Saharan Africa
>    (the region we've looked at already), (c) looking into the causes of orphans
>    and vulnerable children and sex slavery and human trafficking, and (d)
>    continuing to review high-potential international charities regardless of
>    focus area as we come across them. This work will largely be done by Natalie
>    and Alanna Shaikh (who's going to be working with us a contractor).
>    2. *Completing a more comprehensive evaluation of US Equality of
>    Opportunity.* This work is intended to build out the report that
>    already exists on our site (http://www.givewell.net/united-states)
>    along the lines of how we improved our international aid report from our
>    first release in December 2007 to our updated release in July 2009. This
>    work will largely be done by Simon Knutsson, a graduate student who's going
>    to be working with us as a contractor over the summer).
>    3. *Disease research.* This work will largely be done by Holden and me.
>    We've laid out some of our thoughts in a previous email:
>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163
>
> We intend to complete items #1 and #2 this year. We're not sure how much of
> time we'll able to devote to #3, and completing items #1 and #2 will take
> precedence over #3.
>
> *Update on plans for disaster relief*
> *
> *
> *Why disaster relief*
> *
> *
> We believe that disaster relief is a good area for us to focus on because
> disasters generate a large amount of interest in the media and from donors
> who both (a) want to give and (b) don't already have a specific organization
> in mind to give to and are therefore looking for recommendations. If we do
> high quality research, this is an opportunity to influence a large amount of
> giving towards more effective options and an opportunity to engage in the
> conversation of how to think about effective giving at a time when there is
> significant attention.
>
> In addition, we believe that many of the issues involved in disaster relief
> overlap with work we've done on international aid.
>
> We think that these reasons to investigate disaster relief outweigh the
> downside that based on what we know, we would not guess that disaster relief
> charities will offer donors a *better* option than giving to our top-rated
> international charities (e.g., VillageReach, Stop TB).
>
> *What we've done so far*
> *
> *
> First, we've blogged some of our thoughts about the Haiti disaster and
> disaster relief in general at
> http://blog.givewell.net/category/disaster-relief/
>
> Since then, we've reviewed the websites of 10 big-name organizations as
> well as sites that publish reports on disaster relief (e.g.,
> http://www.alnap.org/) looking for monitoring and evaluation reports from
> their responses to the 2004 Tsunami. We did not find particularly useful
> information.
>
> We've also spoken with Saundra Schimmelpfennig (of
> http://informationincontext.typepad.com/) and Alanna Shaikh (of
> http://bloodandmilk.org/) to get their thoughts on the best ways to
> evaluate disaster relief activities.
>
> *Some preliminary thoughts*
>
>    - Our goal is to be in a position to recommend an organization when a
>    disaster hits. That means we have to find an organization that works in lots
>    of different parts of the world. So, even though a local organization *
>    might *offer better relief, it's not feasible for us to recommend one
>    ahead of time. (It's also not realistic that we could evaluate local
>    organizations in the day or so following a disaster.)
>    - It makes sense to us to distinguish between two phases of the relief
>    effort: (a) immediate relief to provide for basic, short-term needs (e.g.,
>    food, water, medical) and (b) longer-term rebuilding.
>       - My instinct (not Holden's) is that A likely offers donors a better
>       opportunity than B as because A includes providing for very basic needs like
>       health, food, water. My instinct is that long-term aid post-disaster could
>       easily be a case of over-funded, "general" international aid projects.
>       - On the other hand, it's possible that long-term aid for disasters
>       provides for longer-term basic needs (e.g., roads, shelter) and is therefore
>       likely to be more effective than "normal" international aid. There are
>       people we respect who point to long-term aid as important and potentially
>       under-funded relative to short-term aid: (see #4 at
>       http://www.philanthropyaction.com/nc/advice_for_donors_to_haiti/)
>    - We should be able to evaluate organizations based on (a) their focus
>    on immediate vs. long-term relief, (b) documentation of past relief efforts
>    (plans and evaluations reports), (c) country-level or regional plans for
>    responding to future disasters, and (d) what they can tell us about their
>    process for deciding to respond to particular disasters; deciding how much
>    money to raise; and what they do if/when they receive more money than they
>    can use.
>    - We'll also considered "alternative" disaster-focused charities, for
>    example, those that focus on disaster preparedness. This isn't an area we've
>    looked into at all yet.
>
> *Our plans*
>
> Due to the fact that we want to find an organization we can recommend for
> disasters in different regions, we think the most likely place to start is
> with "big-name" charities like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, etc.
>
> We're particularly interested in Doctors Without Borders (MSF) because of
> their past refusal of emergency response funds (they said they already had
> enough money raised); our understanding that they almost entirely focus
> their disaster response efforts on short-term relief; and they have a
> reputation for critical evaluation of their work (which may be indicated in
> the report of a program failure that earned them a 1-star rating from us).
>
> Our next step is to contact organizations directly and see what answers we
> can get. We've put together a specific list of questions to ask MSF (and
> others) on our MSF review page:
> http://www.givewell.net/international/charities/doctors-without-borders
>
> Alanna Shaikh who's going to be working with us as a contractor is going to
> be leading our research here.
>
> Please share any thoughts you have on our plans as we're at an early stage
> in this process and feedback would be very useful.
>
> Best,
> Elie
>
>  
>

Before reading through Cutler's paper http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf and Elie's comments, I would have guessed that medical research wasn't a terribly cost-effective use of resources.  Some of my initial concerns:
-New treatments, devices, and technologies are extremely expensive.  Bringing a new drug to market costs somewhere in the vicinity of $800 million.  Of course, prices come down quickly once the treatments are no longer new.
-There is risk inherent in any charitable contribution, but it felt to me that there was even more risk involved in research.  So many promising ideas die in the early stages of research, frequently after millions have already been spent.  Although, in theory, even this is not wasted money, since we should then know that the failed approaches did not work and we should try different approaches.
-There is a feeling among many academics with whom I've spoken that a great deal of medical research is done just to get publications and prop up careers rather than to actually advance our collective knowledge.  This is why it's so important for Givewell to identify groups that have shown, and continue to show, the most promise.


However, after reading the Cutler paper and thinking through the staggering advances in medicine over the past 60 years, I do feel that, historically, medical research (at least cardiovascular research) has been much more cost effective than I first thought.  We need to get a better feel for how the cost/benefit analysis has shifted over the years.  It may be that, since the low-hanging fruits were picked first, the most inexpensive and cost-effective interventions have already been done, leaving us with increasingly expensive interventions for more marginal gain.  In the Cutler paper, he's basically dividing all the investment in cardiovascular disease research by all the reduction in morbidity and mortality between the 1950's and the 1990's to get an estimate of the cost per life saved/QALY/etc.  The difference is that they were basically starting from scratch in the 1950's.  There were almost no effective treatments for cardiovascular disease at that time.  I don't know whether investing another 1% of our GNP over the next 40 years (as we've done for the past 40 years) would result in the same degree of improvement.  One other thing, this paper was from 2001, I'd be curious to see how the past ten years' data fit into his model.


Regarding Elie's second note about the factors affecting his estimate of cost per life saved, a few thoughts:

-I don't understand what Elie meant by "Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b".  True, but there were fewer lives saved at that time compared to later.  I guess you mean that advances had been made up to that point that had already reduced mortality; to see whether the cost per life saved up to that point in 1979 compared to 2005 was higher or lower would take a whole separate calculation, right?

-Overall, I think Elie's factors affecting cost-effectiveness estimates in both directions are spot-on (I actually wrote the exact same ones down as I was reading the paper). 

-Elie mentions that the lives saved may translate into fewer saved QALY's than you would think since many of these lives saved were already older people who likely had comorbid conditions that reduced the quality and quantity of life ahead of them.  I've always thought this was true of medicine in general, saving 200 people from heart attacks results in far fewer QALY's saved than, say, preventing a 200 person plane crash largely because a population of people susceptible to heart attacks is already at least somewhat sicker and older than average and has fewer QALY's ahead of them. 

-On the flip side, though, I would add that quality of life was frequently improved by these interventions, adding QALY's without technically saving a life.  Good examples would be strokes prevented (a stroke can be debilitating but not fatal of course) and congestive heart failure prevented (before treatment, it made it difficult for these patients to move around and even to breathe, not a high quality of life!)



Regarding which diseases to investigate:

-I should mention that my impression as a physician is that management of cardiovascular disease has been a tremendous success story, just as Cutler says.  I don't think the results and cost-benefit analysis would be as encouraging if you were to investigate, say, pancreatic cancer in the same way.
-Givewell should probably focus on two areas first:  those that generate lots of press and would be likely to be of interest to donors (e.g. breast cancer, AIDS) and those that show great potential for additional research (I would guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates).  There is plenty of overlap here, too.
-Pharmaceutical companies have much more of an incentive to research diseases that have profit potential.  Chemotherapy and diabetes drugs come to mind.  They have little incentive to investigate drugs that have less profit potential, a great example being antibiotics.  Why are antibiotics not profitable?  Because they aren't used chronically:  they are given in a single short course, after which (hopefully) the infection is eradicated.  It's much more profitable to invent Lipitor or Plavix, which patients may use daily for years or more.  It may be that greater potential benefit per dollar exists by diverting funds into areas that have less profit potential, since in theory pharmaceutical companies are already dedicating their resources to the profitable ones.  I believe this is already a guiding principle of the Gates foundation's efforts on diseases such as malaria that only affect people who cannot pay.



One last issue is that of cost per life or QALY saved.  Based on Cutler's numbers (he estimates a "return on investment" of $7 for every dollar spent on cardiovascular research thus far) and Elie's calculations, cardiovascular research appears to have been extraordinarily cost effective, especially when future generations and populations of other countries are taken into account.  I'm still inclined to say that Villagereach and Stop TB partnership are even more cost effective (Givewell's estimates being somewhere in the $400-1000 range per life saved), so I'll keep giving to them for now.  But I'll be interested to see what is found as Givewell's research moves forward.



--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:
>
> One of the areas we're planning to investigate in 2010 is the cause of
> medical or disease research. By disease research, we mean the cause of
> funding research institutions focused on researching and developing new or
> improved treatments for diseases.
> 
> This area is one that we're interested in -- as we think it might offer
> donors a strong opportunity to improve lives -- and it's one many donors
> we've spoken with are interested in as well.
> 
> At this point, we've only begun to think about how we'd approach this
> problem, and we wanted to share what we're thinking thus far. *Since we're
> so early in our process, we're particularly interested in any feedback,
> comments, or thoughts that you have on our approach, so please share.*
> 
> At the broadest level, our investigation focuses on the following questions:
> 
>    - What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
>    to change lives?
>    - Assuming this *cause* has high potential, what types of opportunities
>    do specific charities offer donors?
> 
> Below, we first go into more detail about how we're planning to approach
> these questions. Then, we offer some extremely preliminary data for a very
> rough approximation of the potential cost-effectiveness for this cause.
> 
> *What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity to
> change lives?*
> 
> This is one of the most basic questions we try to answer in any area. For
> example, we believe that international aid offers donors far better
> opportunities to change lives than US-focused charity (
> http://www.givewell.net/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-overseas). How
> does disease research stack up?
> 
> To answer this broad question, we focus on the following issues, our regular
> criteria (http://www.givewell.net/criteria) for evaluating a cause:
> 
>    - Effectiveness: Does medical research work? What have major research
>    successes been?
>    - Cost-effectiveness: What have major successes cost? What has their
>    impact been?
>    - Room for more funding: Are there strong opportunities for *future* funding
>    as opposed to merely past successes? Also, what's the difference between the
>    *average* and *marginal *future dollar spent (which seems like a
>    particularly important issue in the case of research)?
> 
> *Assuming the cause is a strong one, where should you give?*
> 
> Even if it's true that the *cause* seems like a good opportunity, a donor
> still needs to find a charity to support, an obstacle we've run into in, for
> example, a promising area like NTDs (
> http://www.givewell.net/international/health/NTDs).
> 
> To answer this question, we'll look into many charities working in this area
> asking them our main questions: What do you do? How will you use additional
> funding?
> 
> One particularly thorny issue regarding disease research is that (a) private
> funding (e.g., biotech or pharmaceutical companies) and (b) government
> funding play a large role in this area, and it's important to figure out how
> individual donations can or do contribute.
> 
> *Extremely preliminary, back-of-the-envelope calculation for the
> cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular disease research*
> 
> The example below focuses on the decline in mortality from heart disease, a
> major success story in medicine over the past 60 years, much of which can
> arguably be attributed to research. This analysis is primarily based on a
> paper by David Cutler, an economist (focus on healthcare) at Harvard (
> http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/cv_cutler), online at
> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf
> 
>    - Cost: Cutler estimates that approximately $200 billion was spent
>    (private and public) in the United States on research into cardiovascular
>    disease from 1953-1997.
>    - Impact: mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the United States
>    fell sharply since 1953. In 1953, there were 5.1 deaths from heart disease
>    per 1,000 people; in 2005, 2.9.
>    - Cost-per-impact: There are a lot of complicating factors here (see note
>    [2] below, but our very rough estimate is that every $32,000 spent saved the
>    lives of 1 person under the age of 64 and 2 people over the age of 64. (For
>    more detail on the calculation, see note [1] below.)
> 
> ==========================================================================================
> 
> Notes:
> 
> [1] To arrive at this estimate, I looked at total annual deaths from
> cardiovascular disease for each year from 1979-2005 compared to deaths in
> 1950. I also included the 2006-2015, maintaining 2005 mortality levels.
> Cutler estimated that 2/3 of the prevented deaths are due to research and
> 1/3 due to other factors. We haven't yet evaluated this estimate.
> 
> [2] There are lots of factors that could affect this estimate. I've listed
> some of them below. These are issues we'll consider more carefully as we
> progress in our investigation:
> 
>    - Causing us to overstimate of cost-effectiveness:
>       - There are additional costs needed to save the lives (e.g., doctors
>       applying the treatment, public awareness); costs of research, alone,
>       underestimate costs.
>       - This analysis assesses only the lives saved vs lost as a discrete
>       measure. which doesn't account for the  quality of life for those saved.
>       What quality of life and future life expectancy would individuals saved
>       expect to have?
>    - Causing us to underestimate of cost-effectiveness:
>       - Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b; in
>       addition, there were lives saved pre-1979 that I haven't
> included yet. (On
>       the other hand, it's also true that there was spending pre-1950
> that helped,
>       but this was likely relatively small.)
>       - I've only included lives saved from research through 2015. There
>       will likely be lives saved past 2015 due to this research.
>       - Non-American lives saved and dollars spent. This analysis focuses on
>       the United States. While the U.S. *spends* the most on medical
>       research, it's probably the case that many non-U.S. lives have been saved
>    - Unclear of effect on the estimate: The impact of research vs other
>    factors on the decline in mortality. I've used Cutler's estimate of 2/3.
>

I want to quickly respond to the points made by Jonah and Phil.

Regarding environmental causes. This is still an area we do want to look
into because it's one that a lot of donors care about and we would guess
that we'll be able to offer some useful analysis.

Part of the reason we've decided to delay on environmental causes is that we
think that we will end up reviewing organizations focused on researching new
approaches to reducing global warming, and thinking through the issues
regarding researching research this year will help with that.

Regarding Jonah's point about the case for disease research as a
cost-effective option for donors. First, we recognize that donors have
different philosophical priorities and some prefer to support people in the
U.S. rather than those abroad. For this group (which in our experience is
significant), distinguishing between disease research organizations will be
useful. Second, we think there's a reasonable argument that strictly
comparing the dollars-per-life-saved in Africa to the U.S. misses something
-- for example, helping people in the U.S. may be more "leveraged" in terms
of enabling them to help others across the globe.

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:

>
>
> Overall your research plans look good and seems coherent to me.
>
> One thing that I'm unclear on is why disease research looks to GiveWell to
> be a potentially strong opportunity to change lives relative to other
> causes. I'm not expressing skepticism, I just don't have a clear idea of
> what your train of thought on this point is. On the face of things, the
> estimate of $32,000 to save two lives of (> 64 year olds) and one life of a
> (< 64 year old) doesn't seem competitive with the VillageReach and StopTB
> figures.
>
> Is the point that you have an eye toward neglected tropical diseases which
> may be relatively cheap to develop cures for on account of having
> been...well...neglected? Or do you have in mind finding cheaper
> cures/immunizations which can be more practically implemented in poor
> countries where? Or the fact that improvements in medical technology will
> (hopefully) yield returns for many subsequent years, raising the number of
> lives saved/improved for a fixed cost (an effect which must be balanced
> against the fact that with the passage of time it's more likely that
> somebody else would have discovered a cure without additional funding?)
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Good thoughts.
>>
>> I'm glad to see that environmental charities do not make the cut at this
>> time (they had been discussed previously).  I think that environmental
>> charities don't really fit the template of what GiveWell has done so far,
>> and would introduce a lot of political messiness.
>>
>> Disaster relief, US equality of opportunity, and, if possible, disease
>> research all seem like good areas for GiveWell to explore.  Personally, I'm
>> more interested in disease research than US equality of opportunity, but
>> given the interests of a wide variety of donors and potential GiveWell
>> readers, I can certainly see value in researching US equality of opportunity
>> as well.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>  *From:* Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>
>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 11, 2010 11:56 AM
>> *Subject:* [givewell] Research priorities and plans
>>
>>
>>
>>  In this email, I want to give a brief overview of our research plans for
>> the coming year and also update this group on our plans for one particular
>> area of research: disaster relief.
>>
>> *Overview of our research plans*
>>
>> Our research focus areas for the coming year are:
>>
>>    1. *Fleshing out additional areas in our international aid report.* This
>>    includes (a) disaster relief, (b) a search for
>>    microfinance institutions (MFIs) in regions aside from Sub-Saharan Africa
>>    (the region we've looked at already), (c) looking into the causes of orphans
>>    and vulnerable children and sex slavery and human trafficking, and (d)
>>    continuing to review high-potential international charities regardless of
>>    focus area as we come across them. This work will largely be done by Natalie
>>    and Alanna Shaikh (who's going to be working with us a contractor).
>>    2. *Completing a more comprehensive evaluation of US Equality of
>>    Opportunity.* This work is intended to build out the report that
>>    already exists on our site (http://www.givewell.net/united-states)
>>    along the lines of how we improved our international aid report from our
>>    first release in December 2007 to our updated release in July 2009. This
>>    work will largely be done by Simon Knutsson, a graduate student who's going
>>    to be working with us as a contractor over the summer).
>>    3. *Disease research.* This work will largely be done by Holden and
>>    me. We've laid out some of our thoughts in a previous email:
>>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163
>>
>> We intend to complete items #1 and #2 this year. We're not sure how much
>> of time we'll able to devote to #3, and completing items #1 and #2 will take
>> precedence over #3.
>>
>> *Update on plans for disaster relief*
>> *
>> *
>> *Why disaster relief*
>> *
>> *
>> We believe that disaster relief is a good area for us to focus on because
>> disasters generate a large amount of interest in the media and from donors
>> who both (a) want to give and (b) don't already have a specific organization
>> in mind to give to and are therefore looking for recommendations. If we do
>> high quality research, this is an opportunity to influence a large amount of
>> giving towards more effective options and an opportunity to engage in the
>> conversation of how to think about effective giving at a time when there is
>> significant attention.
>>
>> In addition, we believe that many of the issues involved in disaster
>> relief overlap with work we've done on international aid.
>>
>> We think that these reasons to investigate disaster relief outweigh the
>> downside that based on what we know, we would not guess that disaster relief
>> charities will offer donors a *better* option than giving to our
>> top-rated international charities (e.g., VillageReach, Stop TB).
>>
>> *What we've done so far*
>> *
>> *
>> First, we've blogged some of our thoughts about the Haiti disaster and
>> disaster relief in general at
>> http://blog.givewell.net/category/disaster-relief/
>>
>> Since then, we've reviewed the websites of 10 big-name organizations as
>> well as sites that publish reports on disaster relief (e.g.,
>> http://www.alnap.org/) looking for monitoring and evaluation reports from
>> their responses to the 2004 Tsunami. We did not find particularly useful
>> information.
>>
>> We've also spoken with Saundra Schimmelpfennig (of
>> http://informationincontext.typepad.com/) and Alanna Shaikh (of
>> http://bloodandmilk.org/) to get their thoughts on the best ways to
>> evaluate disaster relief activities.
>>
>> *Some preliminary thoughts*
>>
>>    - Our goal is to be in a position to recommend an organization when a
>>    disaster hits. That means we have to find an organization that works in lots
>>    of different parts of the world. So, even though a local organization
>>    *might *offer better relief, it's not feasible for us to recommend one
>>    ahead of time. (It's also not realistic that we could evaluate local
>>    organizations in the day or so following a disaster.)
>>    - It makes sense to us to distinguish between two phases of the relief
>>    effort: (a) immediate relief to provide for basic, short-term needs (e.g.,
>>    food, water, medical) and (b) longer-term rebuilding.
>>       - My instinct (not Holden's) is that A likely offers donors a
>>       better opportunity than B as because A includes providing for very basic
>>       needs like health, food, water. My instinct is that long-term aid
>>       post-disaster could easily be a case of over-funded, "general" international
>>       aid projects.
>>       - On the other hand, it's possible that long-term aid for disasters
>>       provides for longer-term basic needs (e.g., roads, shelter) and is therefore
>>       likely to be more effective than "normal" international aid. There are
>>       people we respect who point to long-term aid as important and potentially
>>       under-funded relative to short-term aid: (see #4 at
>>       http://www.philanthropyaction.com/nc/advice_for_donors_to_haiti/)
>>    - We should be able to evaluate organizations based on (a) their focus
>>    on immediate vs. long-term relief, (b) documentation of past relief efforts
>>    (plans and evaluations reports), (c) country-level or regional plans for
>>    responding to future disasters, and (d) what they can tell us about their
>>    process for deciding to respond to particular disasters; deciding how much
>>    money to raise; and what they do if/when they receive more money than they
>>    can use.
>>    - We'll also considered "alternative" disaster-focused charities, for
>>    example, those that focus on disaster preparedness. This isn't an area we've
>>    looked into at all yet.
>>
>> *Our plans*
>>
>> Due to the fact that we want to find an organization we can recommend for
>> disasters in different regions, we think the most likely place to start is
>> with "big-name" charities like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, etc.
>>
>> We're particularly interested in Doctors Without Borders (MSF) because of
>> their past refusal of emergency response funds (they said they already had
>> enough money raised); our understanding that they almost entirely focus
>> their disaster response efforts on short-term relief; and they have a
>> reputation for critical evaluation of their work (which may be indicated in
>> the report of a program failure that earned them a 1-star rating from us).
>>
>> Our next step is to contact organizations directly and see what answers we
>> can get. We've put together a specific list of questions to ask MSF (and
>> others) on our MSF review page:
>> http://www.givewell.net/international/charities/doctors-without-borders
>>
>> Alanna Shaikh who's going to be working with us as a contractor is going
>> to be leading our research here.
>>
>> Please share any thoughts you have on our plans as we're at an early stage
>> in this process and feedback would be very useful.
>>
>> Best,
>> Elie
>>
>>
>  
>

Thanks for the thoughts, Jason.

I've been continuing to work on disease research. I've mostly been (a)
fleshing out the questions we want to try to answer and (b) beginning to see
which ones have some available research that will heps us answer them. The
biggest progress we've made is finding a group of researchers (particularly
David Cutler and Frank Lichtenberg) who are both focused on the question of
the historical cost-effectiveness of medical research.

Below is the outline of questions we want to address along with some of what
we've learned so far, and the questions we're still planning to look into.

I think the most promising next-steps for us are going to be (a) looking
more into how the NIH (National Institutes of Health responsible for most
government-funded research) allocates its funding (including talking to a
professor that focuses on this area); (b) looking into papers which focus on
how pharmaceutical companies could/should improve their research process
(what literature exists in this area to see if we can
identify reasonable heuristics for organizations/organizations' grant
process) and (c) focus on the question of room for more funding.
*
*
*We maintain longer (but rougher) notes for each question on an internal
wiki. If anyone is interested in accessing this wiki page, please send me an
email, and we can set you up with log-in information.*

   - *Evidence of effectiveness: has medical research caused improved
   health?* This appears to be an issue for which a good deal of literature
   exists, and we should be able to answer it. In brief, health has improved
   over the last 50-100 years, but there's some question as to the role that
   research plays relative to other factors such as improved nutrition or
   public health campaigns (e.g., to prevent smoking). There are two types of
   evidence we've seen academics point to as evidence for the effectiveness of
   medical research:
      - Micro-evidence from clinical trials showing that particular drugs
      reduce mortality/morbidity relative to previously existing drugs
      - Macro-evidence of falls in mortality/morbidity in particular
      diseases connected to the development of new drugs. Thus far, I've seen
      relatively strong evidence from several "case studies": HIV/AIDS, "orphan
      drugs" (drugs for rare diseases -- both HIV and orphan drugs are
discussed
      in Frank Lichtenberg's "THE EFFECT OF NEW DRUGS ON MORTALITY FROM RARE
      DISEASES AND HIV at http://www.nber.org/papers/w8677), and heart
      disease (Cutler paper referenced in my previous email). Thus
far, I've seen
      some pretty compelling evidence that mortality from cancer is falling
      (from The Decline in U.S. Cancer Mortality in People Born since
1925. Eric
      J.Kort, Nigel Paneth, George F.Vande Woude. 2009) but haven't yet seen
      evidence of *research* as the cause.
   - *Cost-effectiveness: what is the cost-effectiveness of past medical
   research? *Note: the examples below only include the costs of *developing
   * new drugs and exclude the costs of *administering* treatment. We
   haven't yet looked into how big a deal this is, though, based on what we
   know about HIV/AIDS treatment (
   http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/ART), I think
   it's a substantial issue that could significantly raise the estimates
   below.
      - Heart disease: My previous email discussed heart disease. I think
      it's reasonable to believe that heart disease is a "success story" rather
      than representative of a "normal" outcome. Our very rough estimate was
      ~$30,000 for 1 under-65-year-old *and* 2 over-65-year-old lives saved.
      - HIV/AIDS: The paper I reviewed (Frank Lichtenberg The effect of new
      drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US, 1987�1998. 2002.)
estimates there
      were approximately 84,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS averted each year
after the
      development of AIDS drugs. He says, "Data on the cost of developing HIV
      drugs are unavailable, but according to the Tufts Center for the Study of
      Drug Development, the average cost to develop a new prescription drug (in
      constant $ 2000) was $386 million in 1991 and $802 million in
2001." In the
      period he reviewed, 14 AIDS drugs were created. At a cost of
approximately,
      $400m-$800m per drug, this yield a cost-effectiveness estimate of
      $66,667-$133,333 per death averted.
      - Orphan drugs: Lichtenberg 2001 cited above estimates about 500
      deaths averted per drug developed. At a cost of $400-800m per drug
      developed, that's roughly $1m per death averted. (Note that using the an
      *average* cost for drug development might be inappropriate for orphan
      drugs as part of the potential value in rare diseases is that
because they
      haven't been studied, it may be easier to make progress in
research. (Also,
      there appears to be a large, fixed cost to research in running
the required
      phases of clinical trials and obtaining FDA approval; my
impression is that
      this aspect makes up a significant portion of the total cost
estimated above
      and wouldn't vary for orphan diseases Overall, I think the
magnitude of this
      cost likely supports the notion that research on low-burden diseases is
      unlikely to be cost-effective.)
   - *Better/worse approaches to research. *This is not an area I've looked
   into much yet.
      - How do others decide how to allocate research funding? I'm planning
      to talk to a professor at Columbia's School of Public Health. One area he
      researchers in NIH funding allocation; he has already sent me
some sources
      which have been generally helpful, and I think a conversation
will be very
      useful.
         - *Has NIH-funded research been impactful? *
         - *How does/should NIH allocate funding? (Gross et al. 1999)*
         - *Are there good estimates of expected scientific progress in a
         certain area? This seems like a particularly important issue.
I've looked
         very briefly at the viatical settlement (
         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viatical_settlement) market to see if
         it might offer us some help re market expectations of cures
for diseases,
         but it didn't seem promising. An interesting paper about the
effects of the
         development of AIDS drugs on the market is at
         http://works.bepress.com/neeraj_sood/11/.*
            - *A Frank Lichtenberg paper does state, "Lichtenberg 2000 says,
            "At this point we lack useful indicators of research
productivity (that is,
            of the cost of achieving research advances), we have
several measures of
            disease burden (that is, of the benefit of achieving these
advances)."
            *
         - *How can the pharmaceutical industry improve their research?
      (Paul et al 2010)*
      - *How does effectiveness of government-funded research compare to
      privately funded R&D?*
      - *Is there any literature about which types of research (e.g., basic
      biology vs specific drugs) are best to fund?*
      - *Are credentials of researchers considered important?*
   - *Room-for-more-funding: Should more money be spent on research? So far,
   I've seen a couple articles which question the impact of additional research
   money from the government, but neither was particularly compelling. This is
   an area we need to look into further.*
      - *Should government fund research more or less? (Jacob 2007, Goolsbee
      1998)*
      - *Are there specific research proposals they've been unable to secure
      funding for?*
      - *What sorts of proposals are over- and under-funded according to
      researchers?*
      - *If NIH doesn't fund a project is that a sign that it's bad? Some
      orgs get some funding from NIH but still request charitable funding*
      - *Is there any need for funding for clinical trials? I.e., research
      at this stage for market failure drugs?*
   - *Room-for-more funding: What role do charities play? I haven't seen
   information on this yet. March of Dimes and other foundations played a role
   before WWII, but after that the government got very involved. See Cook-Degan
   and McGeary, preview available on Google Books:
   http://books.google.com/books?id=qFD1BB7hU9sC&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=%22The+Jewel+in+the+Federal+Crown%3F+History,+Politics+and+the+National+Institutes+of+Health.&source=bl&ots=S0c2gD9fUp&sig=7lhAFkN_Yn9j21M2L2FUeazAYgU&hl=en&ei=eYqVS8f4G9PB8gapw9WoBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Jewel%20in%20the%20Federal%20Crown%3F%20History%2C%20Politics%20and%20the%20National%20Institutes%20of%20Health.&f=false
   *
   - *Data for context*
      - *History of research spending*
      - *What's the breakdown of funding by entity type (government,
      charity, private sector)? From Moses 2005 (at
      http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/294/11/1333), charity makes
      up a very small portion -- <5% of spending. Government and
industry make up
      the cast majority.*
      - *What's the funding breakdown by type of research (e.g., basic,
      applied, clinical trials)? According to Moses 2005, it's ~32%
      pre-human/pre-clinical; 52% in clinical trials, and 16% in
regulatory/other.
      *
      - *Funding by disease -- we can get this for NIH; not sure how easily
      we can get this from industry, but I think we could find it.*
      - *Burden of disease by disease -- we can get this*
   - *Choosing between organizations -- *below are some preliminary thoughts
   we have on heuristics to choose between organizations.
      - *Disease focus: if you focus solely on a disease with a very low
      burden, that's bad.*
      - *If you fund activities that would otherwise be funded by the market
      if there were a larger burden or they were likely to work (e.g., drug
      clinical trials), that's bad.*
      - *There should be evidence that your org has good credentials: NIH
      grants, peer-reviewed publications, top-20 university researchers.*
      - *What portion of your budget do you spend on research as opposed to
      other aspects of a disease (like advocacy)?*
      - *What orgs do researchers consider prestigious and doing great work?
      Do they have any unfunded stuff? What are the reputations of different
      research funding sources among researchers? (What is it like to
try to get
      money from ACS?)*
      - *Can any org plausibly claim credit for a major role in a major
      success story?*


On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 9:59 PM, jasonfehr66 <fehrjason@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Before reading through Cutler's paper
> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf and Elie's comments, I
> would have guessed that medical research wasn't a terribly cost-effective
> use of resources. Some of my initial concerns:
> -New treatments, devices, and technologies are extremely expensive.
> Bringing a new drug to market costs somewhere in the vicinity of $800
> million. Of course, prices come down quickly once the treatments are no
> longer new.
> -There is risk inherent in any charitable contribution, but it felt to me
> that there was even more risk involved in research. So many promising ideas
> die in the early stages of research, frequently after millions have already
> been spent. Although, in theory, even this is not wasted money, since we
> should then know that the failed approaches did not work and we should try
> different approaches.
> -There is a feeling among many academics with whom I've spoken that a great
> deal of medical research is done just to get publications and prop up
> careers rather than to actually advance our collective knowledge. This is
> why it's so important for Givewell to identify groups that have shown, and
> continue to show, the most promise.
>
> However, after reading the Cutler paper and thinking through the staggering
> advances in medicine over the past 60 years, I do feel that, historically,
> medical research (at least cardiovascular research) has been much more cost
> effective than I first thought. We need to get a better feel for how the
> cost/benefit analysis has shifted over the years. It may be that, since the
> low-hanging fruits were picked first, the most inexpensive and
> cost-effective interventions have already been done, leaving us with
> increasingly expensive interventions for more marginal gain. In the Cutler
> paper, he's basically dividing all the investment in cardiovascular disease
> research by all the reduction in morbidity and mortality between the 1950's
> and the 1990's to get an estimate of the cost per life saved/QALY/etc. The
> difference is that they were basically starting from scratch in the 1950's.
> There were almost no effective treatments for cardiovascular disease at that
> time. I don't know whether investing another 1% of our GNP over the next 40
> years (as we've done for the past 40 years) would result in the same degree
> of improvement. One other thing, this paper was from 2001, I'd be curious to
> see how the past ten years' data fit into his model.
>
> Regarding Elie's second note about the factors affecting his estimate of
> cost per life saved, a few thoughts:
>
> -I don't understand what Elie meant by "Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a
> cost of much less than $200b". True, but there were fewer lives saved at
> that time compared to later. I guess you mean that advances had been made up
> to that point that had already reduced mortality; to see whether the cost
> per life saved up to that point in 1979 compared to 2005 was higher or lower
> would take a whole separate calculation, right?
>
> -Overall, I think Elie's factors affecting cost-effectiveness estimates in
> both directions are spot-on (I actually wrote the exact same ones down as I
> was reading the paper).
>
> -Elie mentions that the lives saved may translate into fewer saved QALY's
> than you would think since many of these lives saved were already older
> people who likely had comorbid conditions that reduced the quality and
> quantity of life ahead of them. I've always thought this was true of
> medicine in general, saving 200 people from heart attacks results in far
> fewer QALY's saved than, say, preventing a 200 person plane crash largely
> because a population of people susceptible to heart attacks is already at
> least somewhat sicker and older than average and has fewer QALY's ahead of
> them.
>
> -On the flip side, though, I would add that quality of life was frequently
> improved by these interventions, adding QALY's without technically saving a
> life. Good examples would be strokes prevented (a stroke can be debilitating
> but not fatal of course) and congestive heart failure prevented (before
> treatment, it made it difficult for these patients to move around and even
> to breathe, not a high quality of life!)
>
> Regarding which diseases to investigate:
>
> -I should mention that my impression as a physician is that management of
> cardiovascular disease has been a tremendous success story, just as Cutler
> says. I don't think the results and cost-benefit analysis would be as
> encouraging if you were to investigate, say, pancreatic cancer in the same
> way.
> -Givewell should probably focus on two areas first: those that generate
> lots of press and would be likely to be of interest to donors (e.g. breast
> cancer, AIDS) and those that show great potential for additional research (I
> would guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates).
> There is plenty of overlap here, too.
> -Pharmaceutical companies have much more of an incentive to research
> diseases that have profit potential. Chemotherapy and diabetes drugs come to
> mind. They have little incentive to investigate drugs that have less profit
> potential, a great example being antibiotics. Why are antibiotics not
> profitable? Because they aren't used chronically: they are given in a single
> short course, after which (hopefully) the infection is eradicated. It's much
> more profitable to invent Lipitor or Plavix, which patients may use daily
> for years or more. It may be that greater potential benefit per dollar
> exists by diverting funds into areas that have less profit potential, since
> in theory pharmaceutical companies are already dedicating their resources to
> the profitable ones. I believe this is already a guiding principle of the
> Gates foundation's efforts on diseases such as malaria that only affect
> people who cannot pay.
>
> One last issue is that of cost per life or QALY saved. Based on Cutler's
> numbers (he estimates a "return on investment" of $7 for every dollar spent
> on cardiovascular research thus far) and Elie's calculations, cardiovascular
> research appears to have been extraordinarily cost effective, especially
> when future generations and populations of other countries are taken into
> account. I'm still inclined to say that Villagereach and Stop TB partnership
> are even more cost effective (Givewell's estimates being somewhere in the
> $400-1000 range per life saved), so I'll keep giving to them for now. But
> I'll be interested to see what is found as Givewell's research moves
> forward.
>
> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Elie
> Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:
> >
> > One of the areas we're planning to investigate in 2010 is the cause of
> > medical or disease research. By disease research, we mean the cause of
> > funding research institutions focused on researching and developing new
> or
> > improved treatments for diseases.
> >
> > This area is one that we're interested in -- as we think it might offer
> > donors a strong opportunity to improve lives -- and it's one many donors
> > we've spoken with are interested in as well.
> >
> > At this point, we've only begun to think about how we'd approach this
> > problem, and we wanted to share what we're thinking thus far. *Since
> we're
> > so early in our process, we're particularly interested in any feedback,
> > comments, or thoughts that you have on our approach, so please share.*
> >
> > At the broadest level, our investigation focuses on the following
> questions:
> >
> > - What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
> > to change lives?
> > - Assuming this *cause* has high potential, what types of opportunities
> > do specific charities offer donors?
> >
> > Below, we first go into more detail about how we're planning to approach
> > these questions. Then, we offer some extremely preliminary data for a
> very
> > rough approximation of the potential cost-effectiveness for this cause.
> >
> > *What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
> to
> > change lives?*
> >
> > This is one of the most basic questions we try to answer in any area. For
> > example, we believe that international aid offers donors far better
> > opportunities to change lives than US-focused charity (
> > http://www.givewell.net/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-overseas).
> How
> > does disease research stack up?
> >
> > To answer this broad question, we focus on the following issues, our
> regular
> > criteria (http://www.givewell.net/criteria) for evaluating a cause:
> >
> > - Effectiveness: Does medical research work? What have major research
> > successes been?
> > - Cost-effectiveness: What have major successes cost? What has their
> > impact been?
> > - Room for more funding: Are there strong opportunities for *future*
> funding
> > as opposed to merely past successes? Also, what's the difference between
> the
> > *average* and *marginal *future dollar spent (which seems like a
> > particularly important issue in the case of research)?
> >
> > *Assuming the cause is a strong one, where should you give?*
> >
> > Even if it's true that the *cause* seems like a good opportunity, a donor
> > still needs to find a charity to support, an obstacle we've run into in,
> for
> > example, a promising area like NTDs (
> > http://www.givewell.net/international/health/NTDs).
> >
> > To answer this question, we'll look into many charities working in this
> area
> > asking them our main questions: What do you do? How will you use
> additional
> > funding?
> >
> > One particularly thorny issue regarding disease research is that (a)
> private
> > funding (e.g., biotech or pharmaceutical companies) and (b) government
> > funding play a large role in this area, and it's important to figure out
> how
> > individual donations can or do contribute.
> >
> > *Extremely preliminary, back-of-the-envelope calculation for the
> > cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular disease research*
> >
> > The example below focuses on the decline in mortality from heart disease,
> a
> > major success story in medicine over the past 60 years, much of which can
> > arguably be attributed to research. This analysis is primarily based on a
> > paper by David Cutler, an economist (focus on healthcare) at Harvard (
> > http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/cv_cutler), online at
> > http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf
> >
> > - Cost: Cutler estimates that approximately $200 billion was spent
> > (private and public) in the United States on research into cardiovascular
> > disease from 1953-1997.
> > - Impact: mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the United States
> > fell sharply since 1953. In 1953, there were 5.1 deaths from heart
> disease
> > per 1,000 people; in 2005, 2.9.
> > - Cost-per-impact: There are a lot of complicating factors here (see note
> > [2] below, but our very rough estimate is that every $32,000 spent saved
> the
> > lives of 1 person under the age of 64 and 2 people over the age of 64.
> (For
> > more detail on the calculation, see note [1] below.)
> >
> >
> ==========================================================================================
> >
> > Notes:
> >
> > [1] To arrive at this estimate, I looked at total annual deaths from
> > cardiovascular disease for each year from 1979-2005 compared to deaths in
> > 1950. I also included the 2006-2015, maintaining 2005 mortality levels.
> > Cutler estimated that 2/3 of the prevented deaths are due to research and
> > 1/3 due to other factors. We haven't yet evaluated this estimate.
> >
> > [2] There are lots of factors that could affect this estimate. I've
> listed
> > some of them below. These are issues we'll consider more carefully as we
> > progress in our investigation:
> >
> > - Causing us to overstimate of cost-effectiveness:
> > - There are additional costs needed to save the lives (e.g., doctors
> > applying the treatment, public awareness); costs of research, alone,
> > underestimate costs.
> > - This analysis assesses only the lives saved vs lost as a discrete
> > measure. which doesn't account for the quality of life for those saved.
> > What quality of life and future life expectancy would individuals saved
> > expect to have?
> > - Causing us to underestimate of cost-effectiveness:
> > - Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b; in
> > addition, there were lives saved pre-1979 that I haven't
> > included yet. (On
> > the other hand, it's also true that there was spending pre-1950
> > that helped,
> > but this was likely relatively small.)
> > - I've only included lives saved from research through 2015. There
> > will likely be lives saved past 2015 due to this research.
> > - Non-American lives saved and dollars spent. This analysis focuses on
> > the United States. While the U.S. *spends* the most on medical
> > research, it's probably the case that many non-U.S. lives have been saved
> > - Unclear of effect on the estimate: The impact of research vs other
> > factors on the decline in mortality. I've used Cutler's estimate of 2/3.
> >
>
>  
>

Jason,

You wrote, "those that show great potential for additional research (I would
guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates)."

What makes you say that those diseases in particular show good potential
for additional research?

-Elie

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:

> Thanks for the thoughts, Jason.
>
> I've been continuing to work on disease research. I've mostly been (a)
> fleshing out the questions we want to try to answer and (b) beginning to see
> which ones have some available research that will heps us answer them. The
> biggest progress we've made is finding a group of researchers (particularly
> David Cutler and Frank Lichtenberg) who are both focused on the question of
> the historical cost-effectiveness of medical research.
>
> Below is the outline of questions we want to address along with some of
> what we've learned so far, and the questions we're still planning to look
> into.
>
> I think the most promising next-steps for us are going to be (a) looking
> more into how the NIH (National Institutes of Health responsible for most
> government-funded research) allocates its funding (including talking to a
> professor that focuses on this area); (b) looking into papers which focus on
> how pharmaceutical companies could/should improve their research process
> (what literature exists in this area to see if we can
> identify reasonable heuristics for organizations/organizations' grant
> process) and (c) focus on the question of room for more funding.
> *
> *
> *We maintain longer (but rougher) notes for each question on an internal
> wiki. If anyone is interested in accessing this wiki page, please send me an
> email, and we can set you up with log-in information.*
>
>    - *Evidence of effectiveness: has medical research caused improved
>    health?* This appears to be an issue for which a good deal of
>    literature exists, and we should be able to answer it. In brief, health has
>    improved over the last 50-100 years, but there's some question as to the
>    role that research plays relative to other factors such as improved
>    nutrition or public health campaigns (e.g., to prevent smoking). There are
>    two types of evidence we've seen academics point to as evidence for the
>    effectiveness of medical research:
>       - Micro-evidence from clinical trials showing that particular drugs
>       reduce mortality/morbidity relative to previously existing drugs
>       - Macro-evidence of falls in mortality/morbidity in particular
>       diseases connected to the development of new drugs. Thus far, I've seen
>       relatively strong evidence from several "case studies": HIV/AIDS, "orphan
>       drugs" (drugs for rare diseases -- both HIV and orphan drugs are discussed
>       in Frank Lichtenberg's "THE EFFECT OF NEW DRUGS ON MORTALITY FROM RARE
>       DISEASES AND HIV at http://www.nber.org/papers/w8677), and heart
>       disease (Cutler paper referenced in my previous email). Thus far, I've seen
>       some pretty compelling evidence that mortality from cancer is falling
>       (from The Decline in U.S. Cancer Mortality in People Born since 1925. Eric
>       J.Kort, Nigel Paneth, George F.Vande Woude. 2009) but haven't yet seen
>       evidence of *research* as the cause.
>    - *Cost-effectiveness: what is the cost-effectiveness of past medical
>    research? *Note: the examples below only include the costs of *
>    developing* new drugs and exclude the costs of *administering* treatment.
>    We haven't yet looked into how big a deal this is, though, based on what we
>    know about HIV/AIDS treatment (
>    http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/ART), I think
>    it's a substantial issue that could significantly raise the estimates
>    below.
>       - Heart disease: My previous email discussed heart disease. I think
>       it's reasonable to believe that heart disease is a "success story" rather
>       than representative of a "normal" outcome. Our very rough estimate was
>       ~$30,000 for 1 under-65-year-old *and* 2 over-65-year-old lives
>       saved.
>       - HIV/AIDS: The paper I reviewed (Frank Lichtenberg The effect of
>       new drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US, 1987�1998. 2002.) estimates
>       there were approximately 84,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS averted each year after
>       the development of AIDS drugs. He says, "Data on the cost of developing HIV
>       drugs are unavailable, but according to the Tufts Center for the Study of
>       Drug Development, the average cost to develop a new prescription drug (in
>       constant $ 2000) was $386 million in 1991 and $802 million in 2001." In the
>       period he reviewed, 14 AIDS drugs were created. At a cost of approximately,
>       $400m-$800m per drug, this yield a cost-effectiveness estimate of
>       $66,667-$133,333 per death averted.
>       - Orphan drugs: Lichtenberg 2001 cited above estimates about 500
>       deaths averted per drug developed. At a cost of $400-800m per drug
>       developed, that's roughly $1m per death averted. (Note that using the an
>       *average* cost for drug development might be inappropriate for
>       orphan drugs as part of the potential value in rare diseases is
>       that because they haven't been studied, it may be easier to make progress in
>       research. (Also, there appears to be a large, fixed cost to research in
>       running the required phases of clinical trials and obtaining FDA approval;
>       my impression is that this aspect makes up a significant portion of the
>       total cost estimated above and wouldn't vary for orphan diseases Overall, I
>       think the magnitude of this cost likely supports the notion that research on
>       low-burden diseases is unlikely to be cost-effective.)
>    - *Better/worse approaches to research. *This is not an area I've
>    looked into much yet.
>       - How do others decide how to allocate research funding? I'm
>       planning to talk to a professor at Columbia's School of Public Health. One
>       area he researchers in NIH funding allocation; he has already sent me some
>       sources which have been generally helpful, and I think a conversation will
>       be very useful.
>          - *Has NIH-funded research been impactful? *
>          - *How does/should NIH allocate funding? (Gross et al. 1999)*
>          - *Are there good estimates of expected scientific progress in a
>          certain area? This seems like a particularly important issue. I've looked
>          very briefly at the viatical settlement (
>          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viatical_settlement) market to see
>          if it might offer us some help re market expectations of cures for diseases,
>          but it didn't seem promising. An interesting paper about the effects of the
>          development of AIDS drugs on the market is at
>          http://works.bepress.com/neeraj_sood/11/.*
>             - *A Frank Lichtenberg paper does state, "Lichtenberg 2000
>             says, "At this point we lack useful indicators of research productivity
>             (that is, of the cost of achieving research advances), we have several
>             measures of disease burden (that is, of the benefit of achieving these
>             advances)."*
>          - *How can the pharmaceutical industry improve their research?
>       (Paul et al 2010)*
>       - *How does effectiveness of government-funded research compare to
>       privately funded R&D?*
>       - *Is there any literature about which types of research (e.g.,
>       basic biology vs specific drugs) are best to fund?*
>       - *Are credentials of researchers considered important?*
>    - *Room-for-more-funding: Should more money be spent on research? So
>    far, I've seen a couple articles which question the impact of
>    additional research money from the government, but neither was
>    particularly compelling. This is an area we need to look into further.*
>       - *Should government fund research more or less? (Jacob 2007,
>       Goolsbee 1998)*
>       - *Are there specific research proposals they've been unable to
>       secure funding for?*
>       - *What sorts of proposals are over- and under-funded according to
>       researchers?*
>       - *If NIH doesn't fund a project is that a sign that it's bad? Some
>       orgs get some funding from NIH but still request charitable funding*
>       - *Is there any need for funding for clinical trials? I.e., research
>       at this stage for market failure drugs?*
>    - *Room-for-more funding: What role do charities play? I haven't seen
>    information on this yet. March of Dimes and other foundations played a role
>    before WWII, but after that the government got very involved. See Cook-Degan
>    and McGeary, preview available on Google Books:
>    http://books.google.com/books?id=qFD1BB7hU9sC&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=%22The+Jewel+in+the+Federal+Crown%3F+History,+Politics+and+the+National+Institutes+of+Health.&source=bl&ots=S0c2gD9fUp&sig=7lhAFkN_Yn9j21M2L2FUeazAYgU&hl=en&ei=eYqVS8f4G9PB8gapw9WoBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Jewel%20in%20the%20Federal%20Crown%3F%20History%2C%20Politics%20and%20the%20National%20Institutes%20of%20Health.&f=false
>    *
>    - *Data for context*
>       - *History of research spending*
>       - *What's the breakdown of funding by entity type (government,
>       charity, private sector)? From Moses 2005 (at
>       http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/294/11/1333), charity
>       makes up a very small portion -- <5% of spending. Government and industry
>       make up the cast majority.*
>       - *What's the funding breakdown by type of research (e.g., basic,
>       applied, clinical trials)? According to Moses 2005, it's ~32%
>       pre-human/pre-clinical; 52% in clinical trials, and 16% in regulatory/other.
>       *
>       - *Funding by disease -- we can get this for NIH; not sure how
>       easily we can get this from industry, but I think we could find it.*
>       - *Burden of disease by disease -- we can get this*
>    - *Choosing between organizations -- *below are some preliminary
>    thoughts we have on heuristics to choose between organizations.
>       - *Disease focus: if you focus solely on a disease with a very low
>       burden, that's bad.*
>       - *If you fund activities that would otherwise be funded by the
>       market if there were a larger burden or they were likely to work (e.g., drug
>       clinical trials), that's bad.*
>       - *There should be evidence that your org has good credentials: NIH
>       grants, peer-reviewed publications, top-20 university researchers.*
>       - *What portion of your budget do you spend on research as opposed
>       to other aspects of a disease (like advocacy)?*
>       - *What orgs do researchers consider prestigious and doing great
>       work? Do they have any unfunded stuff? What are the reputations of
>       different research funding sources among researchers? (What is it like to
>       try to get money from ACS?)*
>       - *Can any org plausibly claim credit for a major role in a major
>       success story?*
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 9:59 PM, jasonfehr66 <fehrjason@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Before reading through Cutler's paper
>> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf and Elie's comments, I
>> would have guessed that medical research wasn't a terribly cost-effective
>> use of resources. Some of my initial concerns:
>> -New treatments, devices, and technologies are extremely expensive.
>> Bringing a new drug to market costs somewhere in the vicinity of $800
>> million. Of course, prices come down quickly once the treatments are no
>> longer new.
>> -There is risk inherent in any charitable contribution, but it felt to me
>> that there was even more risk involved in research. So many promising ideas
>> die in the early stages of research, frequently after millions have already
>> been spent. Although, in theory, even this is not wasted money, since we
>> should then know that the failed approaches did not work and we should try
>> different approaches.
>> -There is a feeling among many academics with whom I've spoken that a
>> great deal of medical research is done just to get publications and prop up
>> careers rather than to actually advance our collective knowledge. This is
>> why it's so important for Givewell to identify groups that have shown, and
>> continue to show, the most promise.
>>
>> However, after reading the Cutler paper and thinking through the
>> staggering advances in medicine over the past 60 years, I do feel that,
>> historically, medical research (at least cardiovascular research) has been
>> much more cost effective than I first thought. We need to get a better feel
>> for how the cost/benefit analysis has shifted over the years. It may be
>> that, since the low-hanging fruits were picked first, the most inexpensive
>> and cost-effective interventions have already been done, leaving us with
>> increasingly expensive interventions for more marginal gain. In the Cutler
>> paper, he's basically dividing all the investment in cardiovascular disease
>> research by all the reduction in morbidity and mortality between the 1950's
>> and the 1990's to get an estimate of the cost per life saved/QALY/etc. The
>> difference is that they were basically starting from scratch in the 1950's.
>> There were almost no effective treatments for cardiovascular disease at that
>> time. I don't know whether investing another 1% of our GNP over the next 40
>> years (as we've done for the past 40 years) would result in the same degree
>> of improvement. One other thing, this paper was from 2001, I'd be curious to
>> see how the past ten years' data fit into his model.
>>
>> Regarding Elie's second note about the factors affecting his estimate of
>> cost per life saved, a few thoughts:
>>
>> -I don't understand what Elie meant by "Lives saved in 1979 were saved at
>> a cost of much less than $200b". True, but there were fewer lives saved at
>> that time compared to later. I guess you mean that advances had been made up
>> to that point that had already reduced mortality; to see whether the cost
>> per life saved up to that point in 1979 compared to 2005 was higher or lower
>> would take a whole separate calculation, right?
>>
>> -Overall, I think Elie's factors affecting cost-effectiveness estimates in
>> both directions are spot-on (I actually wrote the exact same ones down as I
>> was reading the paper).
>>
>> -Elie mentions that the lives saved may translate into fewer saved QALY's
>> than you would think since many of these lives saved were already older
>> people who likely had comorbid conditions that reduced the quality and
>> quantity of life ahead of them. I've always thought this was true of
>> medicine in general, saving 200 people from heart attacks results in far
>> fewer QALY's saved than, say, preventing a 200 person plane crash largely
>> because a population of people susceptible to heart attacks is already at
>> least somewhat sicker and older than average and has fewer QALY's ahead of
>> them.
>>
>> -On the flip side, though, I would add that quality of life was frequently
>> improved by these interventions, adding QALY's without technically saving a
>> life. Good examples would be strokes prevented (a stroke can be debilitating
>> but not fatal of course) and congestive heart failure prevented (before
>> treatment, it made it difficult for these patients to move around and even
>> to breathe, not a high quality of life!)
>>
>> Regarding which diseases to investigate:
>>
>> -I should mention that my impression as a physician is that management of
>> cardiovascular disease has been a tremendous success story, just as Cutler
>> says. I don't think the results and cost-benefit analysis would be as
>> encouraging if you were to investigate, say, pancreatic cancer in the same
>> way.
>> -Givewell should probably focus on two areas first: those that generate
>> lots of press and would be likely to be of interest to donors (e.g. breast
>> cancer, AIDS) and those that show great potential for additional research (I
>> would guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates).
>> There is plenty of overlap here, too.
>> -Pharmaceutical companies have much more of an incentive to research
>> diseases that have profit potential. Chemotherapy and diabetes drugs come to
>> mind. They have little incentive to investigate drugs that have less profit
>> potential, a great example being antibiotics. Why are antibiotics not
>> profitable? Because they aren't used chronically: they are given in a single
>> short course, after which (hopefully) the infection is eradicated. It's much
>> more profitable to invent Lipitor or Plavix, which patients may use daily
>> for years or more. It may be that greater potential benefit per dollar
>> exists by diverting funds into areas that have less profit potential, since
>> in theory pharmaceutical companies are already dedicating their resources to
>> the profitable ones. I believe this is already a guiding principle of the
>> Gates foundation's efforts on diseases such as malaria that only affect
>> people who cannot pay.
>>
>> One last issue is that of cost per life or QALY saved. Based on Cutler's
>> numbers (he estimates a "return on investment" of $7 for every dollar spent
>> on cardiovascular research thus far) and Elie's calculations, cardiovascular
>> research appears to have been extraordinarily cost effective, especially
>> when future generations and populations of other countries are taken into
>> account. I'm still inclined to say that Villagereach and Stop TB partnership
>> are even more cost effective (Givewell's estimates being somewhere in the
>> $400-1000 range per life saved), so I'll keep giving to them for now. But
>> I'll be interested to see what is found as Givewell's research moves
>> forward.
>>
>> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Elie
>> Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:
>> >
>> > One of the areas we're planning to investigate in 2010 is the cause of
>> > medical or disease research. By disease research, we mean the cause of
>> > funding research institutions focused on researching and developing new
>> or
>> > improved treatments for diseases.
>> >
>> > This area is one that we're interested in -- as we think it might offer
>> > donors a strong opportunity to improve lives -- and it's one many donors
>> > we've spoken with are interested in as well.
>> >
>> > At this point, we've only begun to think about how we'd approach this
>> > problem, and we wanted to share what we're thinking thus far. *Since
>> we're
>> > so early in our process, we're particularly interested in any feedback,
>> > comments, or thoughts that you have on our approach, so please share.*
>> >
>> > At the broadest level, our investigation focuses on the following
>> questions:
>> >
>> > - What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great
>> opportunity
>> > to change lives?
>> > - Assuming this *cause* has high potential, what types of opportunities
>> > do specific charities offer donors?
>> >
>> > Below, we first go into more detail about how we're planning to approach
>> > these questions. Then, we offer some extremely preliminary data for a
>> very
>> > rough approximation of the potential cost-effectiveness for this cause.
>> >
>> > *What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
>> to
>> > change lives?*
>> >
>> > This is one of the most basic questions we try to answer in any area.
>> For
>> > example, we believe that international aid offers donors far better
>> > opportunities to change lives than US-focused charity (
>> > http://www.givewell.net/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-overseas).
>> How
>> > does disease research stack up?
>> >
>> > To answer this broad question, we focus on the following issues, our
>> regular
>> > criteria (http://www.givewell.net/criteria) for evaluating a cause:
>> >
>> > - Effectiveness: Does medical research work? What have major research
>> > successes been?
>> > - Cost-effectiveness: What have major successes cost? What has their
>> > impact been?
>> > - Room for more funding: Are there strong opportunities for *future*
>> funding
>> > as opposed to merely past successes? Also, what's the difference between
>> the
>> > *average* and *marginal *future dollar spent (which seems like a
>> > particularly important issue in the case of research)?
>> >
>> > *Assuming the cause is a strong one, where should you give?*
>> >
>> > Even if it's true that the *cause* seems like a good opportunity, a
>> donor
>> > still needs to find a charity to support, an obstacle we've run into in,
>> for
>> > example, a promising area like NTDs (
>> > http://www.givewell.net/international/health/NTDs).
>> >
>> > To answer this question, we'll look into many charities working in this
>> area
>> > asking them our main questions: What do you do? How will you use
>> additional
>> > funding?
>> >
>> > One particularly thorny issue regarding disease research is that (a)
>> private
>> > funding (e.g., biotech or pharmaceutical companies) and (b) government
>> > funding play a large role in this area, and it's important to figure out
>> how
>> > individual donations can or do contribute.
>> >
>> > *Extremely preliminary, back-of-the-envelope calculation for the
>> > cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular disease research*
>> >
>> > The example below focuses on the decline in mortality from heart
>> disease, a
>> > major success story in medicine over the past 60 years, much of which
>> can
>> > arguably be attributed to research. This analysis is primarily based on
>> a
>> > paper by David Cutler, an economist (focus on healthcare) at Harvard (
>> > http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/cv_cutler), online at
>> > http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf
>> >
>> > - Cost: Cutler estimates that approximately $200 billion was spent
>> > (private and public) in the United States on research into
>> cardiovascular
>> > disease from 1953-1997.
>> > - Impact: mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the United States
>> > fell sharply since 1953. In 1953, there were 5.1 deaths from heart
>> disease
>> > per 1,000 people; in 2005, 2.9.
>> > - Cost-per-impact: There are a lot of complicating factors here (see
>> note
>> > [2] below, but our very rough estimate is that every $32,000 spent saved
>> the
>> > lives of 1 person under the age of 64 and 2 people over the age of 64.
>> (For
>> > more detail on the calculation, see note [1] below.)
>> >
>> >
>> ==========================================================================================
>> >
>> > Notes:
>> >
>> > [1] To arrive at this estimate, I looked at total annual deaths from
>> > cardiovascular disease for each year from 1979-2005 compared to deaths
>> in
>> > 1950. I also included the 2006-2015, maintaining 2005 mortality levels.
>> > Cutler estimated that 2/3 of the prevented deaths are due to research
>> and
>> > 1/3 due to other factors. We haven't yet evaluated this estimate.
>> >
>> > [2] There are lots of factors that could affect this estimate. I've
>> listed
>> > some of them below. These are issues we'll consider more carefully as we
>> > progress in our investigation:
>> >
>> > - Causing us to overstimate of cost-effectiveness:
>> > - There are additional costs needed to save the lives (e.g., doctors
>> > applying the treatment, public awareness); costs of research, alone,
>> > underestimate costs.
>> > - This analysis assesses only the lives saved vs lost as a discrete
>> > measure. which doesn't account for the quality of life for those saved.
>> > What quality of life and future life expectancy would individuals saved
>> > expect to have?
>> > - Causing us to underestimate of cost-effectiveness:
>> > - Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b; in
>> > addition, there were lives saved pre-1979 that I haven't
>> > included yet. (On
>> > the other hand, it's also true that there was spending pre-1950
>> > that helped,
>> > but this was likely relatively small.)
>> > - I've only included lives saved from research through 2015. There
>> > will likely be lives saved past 2015 due to this research.
>> > - Non-American lives saved and dollars spent. This analysis focuses on
>> > the United States. While the U.S. *spends* the most on medical
>> > research, it's probably the case that many non-U.S. lives have been
>> saved
>> > - Unclear of effect on the estimate: The impact of research vs other
>> > factors on the decline in mortality. I've used Cutler's estimate of 2/3.
>> >
>>
>>  
>>
>
>

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:
>
> Jason,
> 
> You wrote, "those that show great potential for additional research (I would
> guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates)."
> 
> What makes you say that those diseases in particular show good potential
> for additional research?
> 
> -Elie

A few reasons. 
 
Generally, great progress is more likely with a disease that has a single identifiable cause which is consistent from person to person.  A great example is one of the most exciting drugs to come out of the last ten years, Gleevec, which has transformed the treatment of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML).  One of the reasons it works so well is that CML patients pretty much always have the same problem:  a specific chromosomal abnormality resulting in a specific aberrant protein.  If a Givewell donor wants to contribute to medical research, we should help them find groups with the potential to invent another Gleevec.  Here's an article I found about it:  http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Gleevec-The-Breakthrough-in-Cancer-Treatment-565
 
Now take cystic fibrosis (CF).  CF is caused by a single gene, which codes for something called the CFTR protein.  With all the progress made recently on the human genome and gene sequencing, Cystic fibrosis appears to me to have great potential for the development of a single extraordinarily effective treatment along the lines of Gleevec.  A CF patient has severe lung and digestive problems that result in a terrible quality of life and death usually by their 30's-40's (at best).  If a treatment could alter protein expression to replace the defective CFTR protein with a normal one, they would be completely cured.  This seems not at all impossible to me with the progress we've made with gene sequencing over the past decade.
 
Type I diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response to a part of the pancreas, destroying the cells that make insulin.  A Type 1 diabetic then needs to use insulin injections.  Insulin pumps exist, but they are far from perfect.  With so much progress having been made with implantable cardiac defibrillators, I'd be surprised if we couldn't make similar advances in implantable insulin pump technology.  Again, the problem is a single, consistent, well-identified one.
 
More tricky would be something more nebulous like Alzheimer's or Schizophrenia, whose causes and mechanisms aren't nearly as well defined.  Existing treatments make a difference, but mechanistically they're not as elegant as a drug like Gleevec which specifically targets the one and only cause of the disease.  Similarly, most types of cancer are very heterogeneous in their causes, i.e. there are many things that could go wrong in a cell to lead to cancer, so you can't necessarily treat them all the same way.
 




> 
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for the thoughts, Jason.
> >
> > I've been continuing to work on disease research. I've mostly been (a)
> > fleshing out the questions we want to try to answer and (b) beginning to see
> > which ones have some available research that will heps us answer them. The
> > biggest progress we've made is finding a group of researchers (particularly
> > David Cutler and Frank Lichtenberg) who are both focused on the question of
> > the historical cost-effectiveness of medical research.
> >
> > Below is the outline of questions we want to address along with some of
> > what we've learned so far, and the questions we're still planning to look
> > into.
> >
> > I think the most promising next-steps for us are going to be (a) looking
> > more into how the NIH (National Institutes of Health responsible for most
> > government-funded research) allocates its funding (including talking to a
> > professor that focuses on this area); (b) looking into papers which focus on
> > how pharmaceutical companies could/should improve their research process
> > (what literature exists in this area to see if we can
> > identify reasonable heuristics for organizations/organizations' grant
> > process) and (c) focus on the question of room for more funding.
> > *
> > *
> > *We maintain longer (but rougher) notes for each question on an internal
> > wiki. If anyone is interested in accessing this wiki page, please send me an
> > email, and we can set you up with log-in information.*
> >
> >    - *Evidence of effectiveness: has medical research caused improved
> >    health?* This appears to be an issue for which a good deal of
> >    literature exists, and we should be able to answer it. In brief, health has
> >    improved over the last 50-100 years, but there's some question as to the
> >    role that research plays relative to other factors such as improved
> >    nutrition or public health campaigns (e.g., to prevent smoking). There are
> >    two types of evidence we've seen academics point to as evidence for the
> >    effectiveness of medical research:
> >       - Micro-evidence from clinical trials showing that particular drugs
> >       reduce mortality/morbidity relative to previously existing drugs
> >       - Macro-evidence of falls in mortality/morbidity in particular
> >       diseases connected to the development of new drugs. Thus far, I've seen
> >       relatively strong evidence from several "case studies": HIV/AIDS, "orphan
> >       drugs" (drugs for rare diseases -- both HIV and orphan drugs are discussed
> >       in Frank Lichtenberg's "THE EFFECT OF NEW DRUGS ON MORTALITY FROM RARE
> >       DISEASES AND HIV at http://www.nber.org/papers/w8677), and heart
> >       disease (Cutler paper referenced in my previous email). Thus far, I've seen
> >       some pretty compelling evidence that mortality from cancer is falling
> >       (from The Decline in U.S. Cancer Mortality in People Born since 1925. Eric
> >       J.Kort, Nigel Paneth, George F.Vande Woude. 2009) but haven't yet seen
> >       evidence of *research* as the cause.
> >    - *Cost-effectiveness: what is the cost-effectiveness of past medical
> >    research? *Note: the examples below only include the costs of *
> >    developing* new drugs and exclude the costs of *administering* treatment.
> >    We haven't yet looked into how big a deal this is, though, based on what we
> >    know about HIV/AIDS treatment (
> >    http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/ART), I think
> >    it's a substantial issue that could significantly raise the estimates
> >    below.
> >       - Heart disease: My previous email discussed heart disease. I think
> >       it's reasonable to believe that heart disease is a "success story" rather
> >       than representative of a "normal" outcome. Our very rough estimate was
> >       ~$30,000 for 1 under-65-year-old *and* 2 over-65-year-old lives
> >       saved.
> >       - HIV/AIDS: The paper I reviewed (Frank Lichtenberg The effect of
> >       new drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US, 1987�1998. 2002.) estimates
> >       there were approximately 84,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS averted each year after
> >       the development of AIDS drugs. He says, "Data on the cost of developing HIV
> >       drugs are unavailable, but according to the Tufts Center for the Study of
> >       Drug Development, the average cost to develop a new prescription drug (in
> >       constant $ 2000) was $386 million in 1991 and $802 million in 2001." In the
> >       period he reviewed, 14 AIDS drugs were created. At a cost of approximately,
> >       $400m-$800m per drug, this yield a cost-effectiveness estimate of
> >       $66,667-$133,333 per death averted.
> >       - Orphan drugs: Lichtenberg 2001 cited above estimates about 500
> >       deaths averted per drug developed. At a cost of $400-800m per drug
> >       developed, that's roughly $1m per death averted. (Note that using the an
> >       *average* cost for drug development might be inappropriate for
> >       orphan drugs as part of the potential value in rare diseases is
> >       that because they haven't been studied, it may be easier to make progress in
> >       research. (Also, there appears to be a large, fixed cost to research in
> >       running the required phases of clinical trials and obtaining FDA approval;
> >       my impression is that this aspect makes up a significant portion of the
> >       total cost estimated above and wouldn't vary for orphan diseases Overall, I
> >       think the magnitude of this cost likely supports the notion that research on
> >       low-burden diseases is unlikely to be cost-effective.)
> >    - *Better/worse approaches to research. *This is not an area I've
> >    looked into much yet.
> >       - How do others decide how to allocate research funding? I'm
> >       planning to talk to a professor at Columbia's School of Public Health. One
> >       area he researchers in NIH funding allocation; he has already sent me some
> >       sources which have been generally helpful, and I think a conversation will
> >       be very useful.
> >          - *Has NIH-funded research been impactful? *
> >          - *How does/should NIH allocate funding? (Gross et al. 1999)*
> >          - *Are there good estimates of expected scientific progress in a
> >          certain area? This seems like a particularly important issue. I've looked
> >          very briefly at the viatical settlement (
> >          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viatical_settlement) market to see
> >          if it might offer us some help re market expectations of cures for diseases,
> >          but it didn't seem promising. An interesting paper about the effects of the
> >          development of AIDS drugs on the market is at
> >          http://works.bepress.com/neeraj_sood/11/.*
> >             - *A Frank Lichtenberg paper does state, "Lichtenberg 2000
> >             says, "At this point we lack useful indicators of research productivity
> >             (that is, of the cost of achieving research advances), we have several
> >             measures of disease burden (that is, of the benefit of achieving these
> >             advances)."*
> >          - *How can the pharmaceutical industry improve their research?
> >       (Paul et al 2010)*
> >       - *How does effectiveness of government-funded research compare to
> >       privately funded R&D?*
> >       - *Is there any literature about which types of research (e.g.,
> >       basic biology vs specific drugs) are best to fund?*
> >       - *Are credentials of researchers considered important?*
> >    - *Room-for-more-funding: Should more money be spent on research? So
> >    far, I've seen a couple articles which question the impact of
> >    additional research money from the government, but neither was
> >    particularly compelling. This is an area we need to look into further.*
> >       - *Should government fund research more or less? (Jacob 2007,
> >       Goolsbee 1998)*
> >       - *Are there specific research proposals they've been unable to
> >       secure funding for?*
> >       - *What sorts of proposals are over- and under-funded according to
> >       researchers?*
> >       - *If NIH doesn't fund a project is that a sign that it's bad? Some
> >       orgs get some funding from NIH but still request charitable funding*
> >       - *Is there any need for funding for clinical trials? I.e., research
> >       at this stage for market failure drugs?*
> >    - *Room-for-more funding: What role do charities play? I haven't seen
> >    information on this yet. March of Dimes and other foundations played a role
> >    before WWII, but after that the government got very involved. See Cook-Degan
> >    and McGeary, preview available on Google Books:
> >    http://books.google.com/books?id=qFD1BB7hU9sC&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=%22The+Jewel+in+the+Federal+Crown%3F+History,+Politics+and+the+National+Institutes+of+Health.&source=bl&ots=S0c2gD9fUp&sig=7lhAFkN_Yn9j21M2L2FUeazAYgU&hl=en&ei=eYqVS8f4G9PB8gapw9WoBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Jewel%20in%20the%20Federal%20Crown%3F%20History%2C%20Politics%20and%20the%20National%20Institutes%20of%20Health.&f=false
> >    *
> >    - *Data for context*
> >       - *History of research spending*
> >       - *What's the breakdown of funding by entity type (government,
> >       charity, private sector)? From Moses 2005 (at
> >       http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/294/11/1333), charity
> >       makes up a very small portion -- <5% of spending. Government and industry
> >       make up the cast majority.*
> >       - *What's the funding breakdown by type of research (e.g., basic,
> >       applied, clinical trials)? According to Moses 2005, it's ~32%
> >       pre-human/pre-clinical; 52% in clinical trials, and 16% in regulatory/other.
> >       *
> >       - *Funding by disease -- we can get this for NIH; not sure how
> >       easily we can get this from industry, but I think we could find it.*
> >       - *Burden of disease by disease -- we can get this*
> >    - *Choosing between organizations -- *below are some preliminary
> >    thoughts we have on heuristics to choose between organizations.
> >       - *Disease focus: if you focus solely on a disease with a very low
> >       burden, that's bad.*
> >       - *If you fund activities that would otherwise be funded by the
> >       market if there were a larger burden or they were likely to work (e.g., drug
> >       clinical trials), that's bad.*
> >       - *There should be evidence that your org has good credentials: NIH
> >       grants, peer-reviewed publications, top-20 university researchers.*
> >       - *What portion of your budget do you spend on research as opposed
> >       to other aspects of a disease (like advocacy)?*
> >       - *What orgs do researchers consider prestigious and doing great
> >       work? Do they have any unfunded stuff? What are the reputations of
> >       different research funding sources among researchers? (What is it like to
> >       try to get money from ACS?)*
> >       - *Can any org plausibly claim credit for a major role in a major
> >       success story?*
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 9:59 PM, jasonfehr66 <fehrjason@...> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Before reading through Cutler's paper
> >> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf and Elie's comments, I
> >> would have guessed that medical research wasn't a terribly cost-effective
> >> use of resources. Some of my initial concerns:
> >> -New treatments, devices, and technologies are extremely expensive.
> >> Bringing a new drug to market costs somewhere in the vicinity of $800
> >> million. Of course, prices come down quickly once the treatments are no
> >> longer new.
> >> -There is risk inherent in any charitable contribution, but it felt to me
> >> that there was even more risk involved in research. So many promising ideas
> >> die in the early stages of research, frequently after millions have already
> >> been spent. Although, in theory, even this is not wasted money, since we
> >> should then know that the failed approaches did not work and we should try
> >> different approaches.
> >> -There is a feeling among many academics with whom I've spoken that a
> >> great deal of medical research is done just to get publications and prop up
> >> careers rather than to actually advance our collective knowledge. This is
> >> why it's so important for Givewell to identify groups that have shown, and
> >> continue to show, the most promise.
> >>
> >> However, after reading the Cutler paper and thinking through the
> >> staggering advances in medicine over the past 60 years, I do feel that,
> >> historically, medical research (at least cardiovascular research) has been
> >> much more cost effective than I first thought. We need to get a better feel
> >> for how the cost/benefit analysis has shifted over the years. It may be
> >> that, since the low-hanging fruits were picked first, the most inexpensive
> >> and cost-effective interventions have already been done, leaving us with
> >> increasingly expensive interventions for more marginal gain. In the Cutler
> >> paper, he's basically dividing all the investment in cardiovascular disease
> >> research by all the reduction in morbidity and mortality between the 1950's
> >> and the 1990's to get an estimate of the cost per life saved/QALY/etc. The
> >> difference is that they were basically starting from scratch in the 1950's.
> >> There were almost no effective treatments for cardiovascular disease at that
> >> time. I don't know whether investing another 1% of our GNP over the next 40
> >> years (as we've done for the past 40 years) would result in the same degree
> >> of improvement. One other thing, this paper was from 2001, I'd be curious to
> >> see how the past ten years' data fit into his model.
> >>
> >> Regarding Elie's second note about the factors affecting his estimate of
> >> cost per life saved, a few thoughts:
> >>
> >> -I don't understand what Elie meant by "Lives saved in 1979 were saved at
> >> a cost of much less than $200b". True, but there were fewer lives saved at
> >> that time compared to later. I guess you mean that advances had been made up
> >> to that point that had already reduced mortality; to see whether the cost
> >> per life saved up to that point in 1979 compared to 2005 was higher or lower
> >> would take a whole separate calculation, right?
> >>
> >> -Overall, I think Elie's factors affecting cost-effectiveness estimates in
> >> both directions are spot-on (I actually wrote the exact same ones down as I
> >> was reading the paper).
> >>
> >> -Elie mentions that the lives saved may translate into fewer saved QALY's
> >> than you would think since many of these lives saved were already older
> >> people who likely had comorbid conditions that reduced the quality and
> >> quantity of life ahead of them. I've always thought this was true of
> >> medicine in general, saving 200 people from heart attacks results in far
> >> fewer QALY's saved than, say, preventing a 200 person plane crash largely
> >> because a population of people susceptible to heart attacks is already at
> >> least somewhat sicker and older than average and has fewer QALY's ahead of
> >> them.
> >>
> >> -On the flip side, though, I would add that quality of life was frequently
> >> improved by these interventions, adding QALY's without technically saving a
> >> life. Good examples would be strokes prevented (a stroke can be debilitating
> >> but not fatal of course) and congestive heart failure prevented (before
> >> treatment, it made it difficult for these patients to move around and even
> >> to breathe, not a high quality of life!)
> >>
> >> Regarding which diseases to investigate:
> >>
> >> -I should mention that my impression as a physician is that management of
> >> cardiovascular disease has been a tremendous success story, just as Cutler
> >> says. I don't think the results and cost-benefit analysis would be as
> >> encouraging if you were to investigate, say, pancreatic cancer in the same
> >> way.
> >> -Givewell should probably focus on two areas first: those that generate
> >> lots of press and would be likely to be of interest to donors (e.g. breast
> >> cancer, AIDS) and those that show great potential for additional research (I
> >> would guess type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis would be good candidates).
> >> There is plenty of overlap here, too.
> >> -Pharmaceutical companies have much more of an incentive to research
> >> diseases that have profit potential. Chemotherapy and diabetes drugs come to
> >> mind. They have little incentive to investigate drugs that have less profit
> >> potential, a great example being antibiotics. Why are antibiotics not
> >> profitable? Because they aren't used chronically: they are given in a single
> >> short course, after which (hopefully) the infection is eradicated. It's much
> >> more profitable to invent Lipitor or Plavix, which patients may use daily
> >> for years or more. It may be that greater potential benefit per dollar
> >> exists by diverting funds into areas that have less profit potential, since
> >> in theory pharmaceutical companies are already dedicating their resources to
> >> the profitable ones. I believe this is already a guiding principle of the
> >> Gates foundation's efforts on diseases such as malaria that only affect
> >> people who cannot pay.
> >>
> >> One last issue is that of cost per life or QALY saved. Based on Cutler's
> >> numbers (he estimates a "return on investment" of $7 for every dollar spent
> >> on cardiovascular research thus far) and Elie's calculations, cardiovascular
> >> research appears to have been extraordinarily cost effective, especially
> >> when future generations and populations of other countries are taken into
> >> account. I'm still inclined to say that Villagereach and Stop TB partnership
> >> are even more cost effective (Givewell's estimates being somewhere in the
> >> $400-1000 range per life saved), so I'll keep giving to them for now. But
> >> I'll be interested to see what is found as Givewell's research moves
> >> forward.
> >>
> >> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Elie
> >> Hassenfeld <elie@> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > One of the areas we're planning to investigate in 2010 is the cause of
> >> > medical or disease research. By disease research, we mean the cause of
> >> > funding research institutions focused on researching and developing new
> >> or
> >> > improved treatments for diseases.
> >> >
> >> > This area is one that we're interested in -- as we think it might offer
> >> > donors a strong opportunity to improve lives -- and it's one many donors
> >> > we've spoken with are interested in as well.
> >> >
> >> > At this point, we've only begun to think about how we'd approach this
> >> > problem, and we wanted to share what we're thinking thus far. *Since
> >> we're
> >> > so early in our process, we're particularly interested in any feedback,
> >> > comments, or thoughts that you have on our approach, so please share.*
> >> >
> >> > At the broadest level, our investigation focuses on the following
> >> questions:
> >> >
> >> > - What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great
> >> opportunity
> >> > to change lives?
> >> > - Assuming this *cause* has high potential, what types of opportunities
> >> > do specific charities offer donors?
> >> >
> >> > Below, we first go into more detail about how we're planning to approach
> >> > these questions. Then, we offer some extremely preliminary data for a
> >> very
> >> > rough approximation of the potential cost-effectiveness for this cause.
> >> >
> >> > *What is the potential of this cause to offer donors a great opportunity
> >> to
> >> > change lives?*
> >> >
> >> > This is one of the most basic questions we try to answer in any area.
> >> For
> >> > example, we believe that international aid offers donors far better
> >> > opportunities to change lives than US-focused charity (
> >> > http://www.givewell.net/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-overseas).
> >> How
> >> > does disease research stack up?
> >> >
> >> > To answer this broad question, we focus on the following issues, our
> >> regular
> >> > criteria (http://www.givewell.net/criteria) for evaluating a cause:
> >> >
> >> > - Effectiveness: Does medical research work? What have major research
> >> > successes been?
> >> > - Cost-effectiveness: What have major successes cost? What has their
> >> > impact been?
> >> > - Room for more funding: Are there strong opportunities for *future*
> >> funding
> >> > as opposed to merely past successes? Also, what's the difference between
> >> the
> >> > *average* and *marginal *future dollar spent (which seems like a
> >> > particularly important issue in the case of research)?
> >> >
> >> > *Assuming the cause is a strong one, where should you give?*
> >> >
> >> > Even if it's true that the *cause* seems like a good opportunity, a
> >> donor
> >> > still needs to find a charity to support, an obstacle we've run into in,
> >> for
> >> > example, a promising area like NTDs (
> >> > http://www.givewell.net/international/health/NTDs).
> >> >
> >> > To answer this question, we'll look into many charities working in this
> >> area
> >> > asking them our main questions: What do you do? How will you use
> >> additional
> >> > funding?
> >> >
> >> > One particularly thorny issue regarding disease research is that (a)
> >> private
> >> > funding (e.g., biotech or pharmaceutical companies) and (b) government
> >> > funding play a large role in this area, and it's important to figure out
> >> how
> >> > individual donations can or do contribute.
> >> >
> >> > *Extremely preliminary, back-of-the-envelope calculation for the
> >> > cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular disease research*
> >> >
> >> > The example below focuses on the decline in mortality from heart
> >> disease, a
> >> > major success story in medicine over the past 60 years, much of which
> >> can
> >> > arguably be attributed to research. This analysis is primarily based on
> >> a
> >> > paper by David Cutler, an economist (focus on healthcare) at Harvard (
> >> > http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/cv_cutler), online at
> >> > http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/burch/april2.pdf
> >> >
> >> > - Cost: Cutler estimates that approximately $200 billion was spent
> >> > (private and public) in the United States on research into
> >> cardiovascular
> >> > disease from 1953-1997.
> >> > - Impact: mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the United States
> >> > fell sharply since 1953. In 1953, there were 5.1 deaths from heart
> >> disease
> >> > per 1,000 people; in 2005, 2.9.
> >> > - Cost-per-impact: There are a lot of complicating factors here (see
> >> note
> >> > [2] below, but our very rough estimate is that every $32,000 spent saved
> >> the
> >> > lives of 1 person under the age of 64 and 2 people over the age of 64.
> >> (For
> >> > more detail on the calculation, see note [1] below.)
> >> >
> >> >
> >> ==========================================================================================
> >> >
> >> > Notes:
> >> >
> >> > [1] To arrive at this estimate, I looked at total annual deaths from
> >> > cardiovascular disease for each year from 1979-2005 compared to deaths
> >> in
> >> > 1950. I also included the 2006-2015, maintaining 2005 mortality levels.
> >> > Cutler estimated that 2/3 of the prevented deaths are due to research
> >> and
> >> > 1/3 due to other factors. We haven't yet evaluated this estimate.
> >> >
> >> > [2] There are lots of factors that could affect this estimate. I've
> >> listed
> >> > some of them below. These are issues we'll consider more carefully as we
> >> > progress in our investigation:
> >> >
> >> > - Causing us to overstimate of cost-effectiveness:
> >> > - There are additional costs needed to save the lives (e.g., doctors
> >> > applying the treatment, public awareness); costs of research, alone,
> >> > underestimate costs.
> >> > - This analysis assesses only the lives saved vs lost as a discrete
> >> > measure. which doesn't account for the quality of life for those saved.
> >> > What quality of life and future life expectancy would individuals saved
> >> > expect to have?
> >> > - Causing us to underestimate of cost-effectiveness:
> >> > - Lives saved in 1979 were saved at a cost of much less than $200b; in
> >> > addition, there were lives saved pre-1979 that I haven't
> >> > included yet. (On
> >> > the other hand, it's also true that there was spending pre-1950
> >> > that helped,
> >> > but this was likely relatively small.)
> >> > - I've only included lives saved from research through 2015. There
> >> > will likely be lives saved past 2015 due to this research.
> >> > - Non-American lives saved and dollars spent. This analysis focuses on
> >> > the United States. While the U.S. *spends* the most on medical
> >> > research, it's probably the case that many non-U.S. lives have been
> >> saved
> >> > - Unclear of effect on the estimate: The impact of research vs other
> >> > factors on the decline in mortality. I've used Cutler's estimate of 2/3.
> >> >
> >>
> >>  
> >>
> >
> >
>

> Regarding Jonah's point about the case for disease research as a
> cost-effective option for donors. First, we recognize that donors have
> different philosophical priorities and some prefer to support people in the
> U.S. rather than those abroad. For this group (which in our experience is
> significant), distinguishing between disease research organizations will be
> useful. Second, we think there's a reasonable argument that strictly
> comparing the dollars-per-life-saved in Africa to the U.S. misses something
> -- for example, helping people in the U.S. may be more "leveraged" in terms
> of enabling them to help others across the globe.


I think this is very interesting, and it's something that had not occurred to me until reading Holden's post about giving to Stop TB rather than Villagereach.  His quote:  "(a) I put more weight on preventing adult deaths than on preventing child deaths (and tuberculosis affects adults more than vaccine-preventable diseases do); (b) VillageReach works in the most remote areas, while Stop TB works in a great variety of areas. I prefer (all else equal) to help people in less remote areas, who I believe have more opportunities (for themselves and for helping others)."

This is probably true and seems similar to what Elie is saying about "leveraged" aid.  Just as I don't (and shouldn't) give equal weight to saving an infant vs. a 30 year old vs. a 90 year old, saving a subsistence farmer in rural Mozambique who will never contact anyone outside his village in his whole life is very different than saving a person in a western nation with potential to have a greater effect on the world.  Think of Bill Clinton, who has now had a heart bypass as well as a cardiac catheterization at age 63.  The world will almost certainly be better off having Bill Clinton around for a few more decades running his foundation, thanks to all that cardiovascular research we've been discussing. 

I may have missed this issue being addressed and apolgize if so:

I think most medical research is probably very cost-effective given a long
enough time horizon.  The discussion I've seen focuses on benefits to date. 
Once knowledge exists it will presumably be useful as long as the human race
exists.  Treatment of individuals on the other hand have their direct benefit
only during individual lifetimes.

Of course, the research will probably be done eventually anyway, so it may be
that what you'd really want to estimate is the lives or quality of lives saved
by doing it earlier rather than later.

Greater uncertainty also comes in to play here too.  Each individual research
project is a gamble.  It may be a total dead end. On the other hand a few
projects may have huge benefits.

Ok, end of my thoughts for now.

Ron


Quoting Jason <fehrjason@...>:

>
>
>
> > Regarding Jonah's point about the case for disease research as a
> > cost-effective option for donors. First, we recognize that donors have
> > different philosophical priorities and some prefer to support people in the
> > U.S. rather than those abroad. For this group (which in our experience is
> > significant), distinguishing between disease research organizations will be
> > useful. Second, we think there's a reasonable argument that strictly
> > comparing the dollars-per-life-saved in Africa to the U.S. misses something
> > -- for example, helping people in the U.S. may be more "leveraged" in terms
> > of enabling them to help others across the globe.
>
>
> I think this is very interesting, and it's something that had not occurred to
> me until reading Holden's post about giving to Stop TB rather than
> Villagereach.  His quote:  "(a) I put more weight on preventing adult deaths
> than on preventing child deaths (and tuberculosis affects adults more than
> vaccine-preventable diseases do); (b) VillageReach works in the most remote
> areas, while Stop TB works in a great variety of areas. I prefer (all else
> equal) to help people in less remote areas, who I believe have more
> opportunities (for themselves and for helping others)."
>
> This is probably true and seems similar to what Elie is saying about
> "leveraged" aid.  Just as I don't (and shouldn't) give equal weight to saving
> an infant vs. a 30 year old vs. a 90 year old, saving a subsistence farmer in
> rural Mozambique who will never contact anyone outside his village in his
> whole life is very different than saving a person in a western nation with
> potential to have a greater effect on the world.  Think of Bill Clinton, who
> has now had a heart bypass as well as a cardiac catheterization at age 63.
> The world will almost certainly be better off having Bill Clinton around for
> a few more decades running his foundation, thanks to all that cardiovascular
> research we've been discussing.
>
>


Ronald Noble, Ph. D.
University of Pennsylvania

Another cause we're planning to cover this year is Equality of Opportunity
in the United States (the full list of causes we're working on is at the top
of this post: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/168). We've
already completed some work in this area (
http://www.givewell.net/united-states) in our first year. The pages linked
there explain a lot of the background for how we think about this cause.

Simon Knutsson, who will be working with us as an independent contractor, is
going to be working on this cause.

The goal in 2010 is to bring the quality level of our research in this area
up to the quality level of our current international report.

Our broad plan is to:

   - Investigate and complete "intervention reports" (similar to
   http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets).
   We used this process in our international report to identify "priority"
   programs, i.e., programs that had a strong track record of effectiveness.
   We're planning to primarily rely on two resources:
      - The Campbell Collaboration (http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/), a
      group that conducts literature reviews similar to those produced by the
      Cochrane Library (
      http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/criteria/program-evaluation#CochraneLibrary)),
      which we relied on in our international report and
      - Evidenced Based Programs (
      http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/), a group focused
      on identifying US social programs with strong evidence of effectiveness.
      - Note:
         - We also considered other resources such as ChildTrends, the
         WhatWorks Clearinghouse, Best Evidence Encyclopedia, and
Promising Practices
         Network. We'll fully write-up on our site why we chose the
sources we did,
         but in brief, these sources either (a) didn't add new
information once we
         use Campbell and EBP or (b) mixed rigorous and non-rigorous
studies in a way
         where we can't easily determine strong programs.
         - This is just a preliminary list; our sources will probably change
         as we learn more and see where the two primary sources fall short.
      - Scan a large list of charities to identify possible recommended
   organizations. Notes on the process we'll use to identify organizations to
   scan is below. We're planning to check these websites using a process
   similar to the one we used for international aid: go to each website and
   ask, does this organization either (a) demonstrate that it primarily works
   on a "priority" program or (b) publish monitoring and evaluation of its work
   such that we can gain confidence that its programs are effective.
   - Investigate and write-up (a) "macro" information about the cause and
   (b) pages that support the methodological choices we're making (e.g., focus
   on programs that have been subject to randomized control trials and not
   quasi-experimental trials; concerns about publication
   bias; statistical significance is enough -- effect size matters too.)

*Areas for which we're planning to create intervention reports*

This list comes from (a) literature reviews conducted by the
Campbell Collaboration; (b) programs reviewed and recommended by Evidence
Based Programs; (c) major areas of interest that we want to look into.

Note: these areas are not always in comparable terms (e.g., Teacher
Training, a method, vs Teen Pregnancy, a goal); these are largely the terms
in which people talk about them

   - Early childhood care
      - Home visits
      - Day care
      - Other prenatal/parental counseling
   - Age K-12 (largely academic achievement focused)
      - Volunteer tutoring
      - Vocational education (e.g., Career Academies)
      - Teacher training
      - After-school programs
      - New/better schools (e.g., charter schools, private schools)
      - Parental involvement
      - Summer
      - College enrollment assistance
      - Improved curricula
   - Teen pregnancy
      - Crime prevention
      - Substance abuse
      - Mental health
      - Employment/earnings
      - Domestic abuse

I've created two sample reports. One for volunteer tutoring and one for
after-school programs. These are both password-protected on our site. If
you'd like to take a look at these, send us an email at info@... ,
and we'll send you login information.

*Organizations we're going to consider*
*
*
The goal is to consider all well-known, big name charities and seek out
organizations that have a better-than-average chance at being a recommended
organization.

   - CharityNavigator: charities in related causes, based on browsing the
   cause areas
   - Creating a list of "famous charities" (e.g., Teach for America, KIPP,
   Harlem Children's Zone)
   - Considering every charity in the area that's been submitted through our
   website
   - Considering lists of "award-winning" charities (e.g., Fast Company
   Social Capitalist Awards)
   - Any charity that applied in these causes for a GiveWell grant in 2007
   - Polling Alliance for Effective Social Investing members for top
   organizations

Please submit any you know of. The best place to do that is
http://www.givewell.net/submitcharity-form

>Elie,

I am enjoying reading about your work and glad to 
see that you will be looking into the whole area 
of Equality of Opportunity.  The question of what 
interventions and programs help overcome the 
disadvantages children born into low income 
families face is an important question, that has 
been addressed by lots of research but still 
needs clarification.  Using your methods with 
this question will be interesting. However as a 
researcher and evaluator in this field I have 
some suggestions, specifically  with the early childhood bullets below.

>    * Early childhood care
Home visits
Day care
Other prenatal/parental counseling

These terms should instead read
>    * Early childhood interventions
Home visits
Center-based Early Care and Education. 
(Preschools, Infant Early Care and Education).
Other prenatal/parental counseling
The term "day care" is not used in the literature 
or viewed as an intervention, more just as place 
to hold children with only the criteria of being 
safe.  Meanwhile center based preschools are 
viewed as important to children's development. I 
know this is just terminology but it will help 
those looking for information in this area. It is 
worth while to make the distinction between 0-3 
and 3-5 years of age.  Some widely accepted 
research holds that language directed at the 
child in the first 3 years of life makes a huge 
difference in a child's life course. (Hart & 
Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday 
Experience of young American Children)

Good luck,
Helen Walka



>Another cause we're planning to cover this year 
>is Equality of Opportunity in the United States 
>(the full list of causes we're working on is at 
>the top of this post: 
><http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/168>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/168). 
>We've already completed some work in this area 
>(<http://www.givewell.net/united-states>http://www.givewell.net/united-states) 
>in our first year. The pages linked there 
>explain a lot of the background for how we think about this cause.
>
>Simon Knutsson, who will be working with us as 
>an independent contractor, is going to be working on this cause.
>
>The goal in 2010 is to bring the quality level 
>of our research in this area up to the quality 
>level of our current international report.
>
>Our broad plan is to:
>    * Investigate and complete "intervention 
> reports" (similar to 
> <http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets>http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets). 
> We used this process in our international 
> report to identify "priority" programs, i.e., 
> programs that had a strong track record of 
> effectiveness. We're planning to primarily rely on two resources:
>        * The Campbell Collaboration 
> (<http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/>http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/), 
> a group that conducts literature reviews 
> similar to those produced by the Cochrane 
> Library 
> (<http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/criteria/program-evaluation#CochraneLibrary>http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/criteria/program-evaluation#CochraneLibrary)), 
> which we relied on in our international report and
>        * Evidenced Based Programs 
> (<http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/>http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/), 
> a group focused on identifying US social 
> programs with strong evidence of effectiveness.
>        * Note:
>            * We also considered other resources 
> such as ChildTrends, the WhatWorks 
> Clearinghouse, Best Evidence Encyclopedia, and 
> Promising Practices Network. We'll fully 
> write-up on our site why we chose the sources 
> we did, but in brief, these sources either (a) 
> didn't add new information once we use Campbell 
> and EBP or (b) mixed rigorous and non-rigorous 
> studies in a way where we can't easily determine strong programs.
>            * This is just a preliminary list; 
> our sources will probably change as we learn 
> more and see where the two primary sources fall short.
>    * Scan a large list of charities to identify 
> possible recommended organizations. Notes on 
> the process we'll use to identify organizations 
> to scan is below. We're planning to check these 
> websites using a process similar to the one we 
> used for international aid: go to each website 
> and ask, does this organization either (a) 
> demonstrate that it primarily works on a 
> "priority" program or (b) publish monitoring 
> and evaluation of its work such that we can 
> gain confidence that its programs are effective.
>    * Investigate and write-up (a) "macro" 
> information about the cause and (b) pages that 
> support the methodological choices we're making 
> (e.g., focus on programs that have been subject 
> to randomized control trials and not 
> quasi-experimental trials; concerns about 
> publication bias; statistical significance is 
> enough -- effect size matters too.)
>Areas for which we're planning to create intervention reports
>
>This list comes from (a) literature reviews 
>conducted by the Campbell Collaboration; (b) 
>programs reviewed and recommended by Evidence 
>Based Programs; (c) major areas of interest that we want to look into.
>
>Note: these areas are not always in comparable 
>terms (e.g., Teacher Training, a method, vs Teen 
>Pregnancy, a goal); these are largely the terms 
>in which people talk about them
>    * Early childhood care
>        * Home visits
>        * Day care
>        * Other prenatal/parental counseling
>    * Age K-12 (largely academic achievement focused)
>        * Volunteer tutoring
>        * Vocational education (e.g., Career Academies)
>        * Teacher training
>        * After-school programs
>        * New/better schools (e.g., charter schools, private schools)
>        * Parental involvement
>        * Summer
>        * College enrollment assistance
>        * Improved curricula
>    * Teen pregnancy
>    * Crime prevention
>    * Substance abuse
>    * Mental health
>    * Employment/earnings
>    * Domestic abuse
>I've created two sample reports. One for 
>volunteer tutoring and one for after-school 
>programs. These are both password-protected on 
>our site. If you'd like to take a look at these, 
>send us an email at 
><mailto:info@givewell.net>info@... , 
>and we'll send you login information.
>
>Organizations we're going to consider
>
>The goal is to consider all well-known, big name 
>charities and seek out organizations that have a 
>better-than-average chance at being a recommended organization.
>    * CharityNavigator: charities in related 
> causes, based on browsing the cause areas
>    * Creating a list of "famous charities" 
> (e.g., Teach for America, KIPP, Harlem Children's Zone)
>    * Considering every charity in the area 
> that's been submitted through our website
>    * Considering lists of "award-winning" 
> charities (e.g., Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards)
>    * Any charity that applied in these causes for a GiveWell grant in 2007
>    * Polling Alliance for Effective Social 
> Investing members for top organizations
>Please submit any you know of. The best place to 
>do that is 
><http://www.givewell.net/submitcharity-form>http://www.givewell.net/submitcharity-form
>

We have been continuing our process to find great microfinance charities. In
this post we discuss our process to date and the evolution of our criteria.

*Background*

As part of the process of distributing $250,000 to economic empowerment
charities in Sub-Saharan Africa, we asked a number of large U.S.-based
microfinance organizations to apply for our grant. We found that, while some
of these organizations own or provide direct financial support to
microfinance institutions (MFIs), a large part of what these organizations
do involves technical assistance to MFIs, an activity for which there
appears to be little evidence of impact. Furthermore, we did not identify a
U.S.-based organization working in Sub-Saharan Africa that had a strong
process of determining whether the MFIs it works with are able to answer our
questions for microfinance
charities<http://www.givewell.net/international/economic-empowerment/microfinance/questions>
 (more at
http://blog.givewell.net/2009/11/20/two-charities-one-microfinance-institution/
).

We wondered if approaching the MFIs themselves, rather than the U.S.-based
networks, would yield stronger answers to our questions (more at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/130<http://groups.yahoo.com/message/130>).
We contacted a number of Sub-Saharan African MFIs, and identified the Small
Enterprise Foundation<http://www.givewell.net/international/top-charities/Small-Enterprise-Foundation>
as
the strongest MFI we have seen to date--it stands out from other MFIs we've
looked at for its monitoring of clients' poverty levels and reasons why
clients drop out of the program, and for its commitment to self-evaluation.

*What we're doing to find more strong MFIs*

Since disbursing our Economic Empowerment grant, we have continued to
research MFIs, expanding our geographic focus from Sub-Saharan Africa to all
developing countries. We have done the following to identify promising MFIs:

   - We downloaded all "Social Performance Standards" reports from Mix
   Market. We believe this is a good starting point for finding MFIs that (a)
   are committed to such "social impact" (as opposed to purely financial) goals
   as serving the poorest and providing high quality service, and (b) have
   data, and are willing to share it publicly, about their progress toward
   these social goals. As of early April 2010, there were about 170 MFIs with
   reports listed at http://www.themix.org/standards/sp-reports.A few other
   MFIs were added to this list based on referrals from
Imp-Act<http://www2.ids.ac.uk/impact/>,
   a group working to promote "social performance management" by MFIs.
   - Of the MFIs on this list, 114 had accepted donations in the recent past
   or had indicated that they were seeking donations currently, according to
   their Mix Market profile. We did not look further at MFIs that did not
   appear to accept or be seeking donations.
   -  Based on their responses to certain questions in the Social
   Performance Standards report and information available on their Mix Market
   profiles, we were able to focus in on those MFIs that appeared most likely
   to be able to answer our questions for microfinance
charities<http://www.givewell.net/international/economic-empowerment/microfinance/questions>.
   Specifically, we looked for evidence that an MFI tracks data on clients'
   standard of living and either surveys dropouts for reasons why they left the
   program (if loans are the primary financial service the MFI offers) or
   offers voluntary savings (in which case we have a different set of
   questions<http://www.givewell.net/international/economic-empowerment/microfinance/questions#Fororganizationsprovidingsavings>).These
   screens left us with 59 MFIs to investigate further.

We have compiled additional information on these 59 MFIs, based only on
publicly available documents, and identified 3 promising ones (each had
moderate to high quality data publicly available on clients' standards of
living as well as either evidence of regular monitoring of dropout/repayment
rates or have a focus on voluntary savings), which we have recently
contacted.We hope to speak with these 3 MFIs about our remaining questions
and draw on this experience to decide on next steps with the remaining MFIs
that have passed our initial screens.**

*Rethinking our criteria*

In thinking about how to separate the great MFIs from the average ones, we
have revised our criteria a number of times. The following outlines our
thought process and our remaining questions:

   - We originally looked for rigorous evidence that clients' incomes had
   been raised by their participation in microfinance programs. After
   investigations of a number of organizations and the independent literature
   on the subject, it became clear that impact studies performed by
   microfinance charities did not establish that microfinance *caused* higher
   incomes. Furthermore, the few rigorous studies of the impact of microfinance
   that exist did not show that microfinance increased incomes (more at
   http://blog.givewell.net/2009/09/07/microfinance-evidence-of-impact/).


   - We shifted our focus to microfinance as a service that allows the poor
   to have more control over their cash flows. Viewing microfinance as a
   service, rather than a program to raise incomes, led us to ask a different
   set of questions. We have been working to refine this set of questions as we
   read more, speak with MFIs and leaders in the field, and think harder about
   which questions lead to the clearest picture of an MFI's impact.
      -  *Is the charity creating self-sustaining institutions?* If an
      organization is providing a service people are willing to pay for, this
      seems like a good indication that the service is valuable. In practice,
      however, we have not found that this is a very useful question.
For one, if
      an MFI is able to cover its own costs, this raises questions
about the MFI's
      ability to use additional donations productively. The concept of
"a history
      of creating self-sustaining institutions" may be helpful at the network
      level, but is less helpful at the MFI level. Secondly, as Holden
noted in a
      recent blog post, there seem to be certain areas where the mere fact of
      selling something for a non-trivial price would seem to indicate
a certain
      success in filling a need, even if not all costs are covered. As such,
      looking at interest rates, compared with standard rates in a
country, may be
      a more useful metric.
      - *Does the charity have high repayment rates?* We've discussed at
      length on our blog why interpreting an MFI's repayment rate is often
      complex. We have been thinking about ways that we can use
standard measures
      of delinquency, many of which are reported on Mix Market, to estimate a
      lower bound on an MFI's repayment rate. We have not defined what
we consider
      a "high" and a "low" repayment rate, but informally, we consider
repayment
      rates below 90% to be worrisome, and we suspect that an MFI with strong
      systems and practices would have a repayment rate above 95%.
      - *Who are the customers?* The question of how poor the customers are
      is particularly important if loans are heavily subsidized (to
the point of
      having extremely favorable interest rates and/or forgiveness of repeated
      default).  Based on our investigations of interest rates and repayment
      rates, we suspect that this kind of heavy subsidy is rare and that MFIs
      nearly/always are highly concerned with profit and loss.  At this
      point, we are somewhat hesitant to disqualify an MFI on the
basis that its
      customers "aren't poor enough" (since it seems very unlikely that clients
      are wealthy by our standards), but we still believe there is
great variation
      in how poor clients are and that it is important for both MFIs
and donors to
      have a clear sense of where they stand.
      - *How many people drop out of the program and why do they drop
out?* Like
      repayment, calculating a dropout rate can be complex and MFIs may use
      different methods and definitions (for more, see this
paper<http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.26453/34248_file_2FINALClient_Retention_1_.pdf>).
      Information on an MFI's dropout rate and evidence that it is
monitoring the
      reasons why clients leave the program is key to our judgment of
whether an
      MFI is creating more benefit than harm with its loans. An MFI
won't earn 2
      or 3stars if it is not able to show that it tracks dropout rates (and is
      able to describe how this is calculated) and the reasons behind it.
      - *Are clients protected against harassment from loan officers and
      group members? Do clients become over-indebted?* Also key to our
      judgment of whether an MFI is causing harm is evidence that an MFI has
      strong systems for monitoring client protection and
indebtedness. We would
      like to see past reports of how this was monitored, what such monitoring
      activities found, and how they were dealt with. An initiative by
the Center
      for Financial Inclusion, the Smart
Campaign<http://smartcampaign.org/about-the-campaign/smart-microfinance-and-the-client-protection-principles>,
      defines 6 dimensions of appropriate treatment of clients. We plan to ask
      MFIs what systems they have (and what these systems have found) to ensure
      that they have effective practices on 4 of these dimensions: avoidance of
      over-indebtedness, appropriate collections practices, ethical staff
      behavior, and mechanisms for redress or grievances.

We expect that we will continue to refine our criteria as we review more
MFIs and welcome any feedback on the points above.

Natalie

The following msg was sent to Natalie Stone in response to her findings on
the microfinance. This is being sent again on her request for benefit of
givewell group members and other like-minded people who have acess to this
site

*Quote*

Dear Natalie
At the outset, permit me to introduce myself. I am Anil Mahajan, from Navi
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. I am a development professional and has over 33
years of working/meaningful experience in India/ W.Africa of devising,
developing and implementing a number of programs aimed at improving lives of
economically poor and socially, educationally backward people, especially
tribal and women groups. I have been working in formation of self-help
groups and self-development groups of rural/urban poor women for last
fifteen years in many Indian states. Your write-up and experience with
microfinance has prompted me to write these few lines for you to review/
re-structure strategies so that your efforts are of some use for the people
you are ultimately working for, that is poor women and men!
1. first i am aginst of using term 'clients' for the beneficieries of any
micro-finance scheme. I feel we term them as 'user's' for the aim and
objectives of the micro-finance scheme, at least to me, can never be purely
'commercial'
2. My experience, in India where there are a number of microfinance
institutions have come-up in last few years, tells me that charities have
actually failed to create self-sustaining institutions. The reason as i see
is the lack of honesty, focuse and integrity on part of most of charities
involved. I have come across a number of charities involved in the so called
'micro-finance' who indulge in exploitation of the users and charge them
with extreme high rate of interests. These charities are well aware of the
plights of the rural/ urban poor and know that they lack access to financial
institutes controlled by governments, I am refering to nationalized banks in
India.
The finance given is so tiny that it never helps either a group and or an
individual member change their living as they fail to earn meaningful
profits. in the incomes that they earn at the end of the day, they can not
even repay the interest and this is the opportunity used by the charity to
exploite such groups, members by charging them 'ineterst over the interest'
that is the 'compund interest' Soon many groups and group members find the
going hard and are forced to even sale the small land that they might be
holding. I have seen many groups/ and members are made more poor by some of
the charities because they behave and act in a way that is contrary to their
very formation, aims and objectives.
2. As written above, some so called 'charities' charge exorbitant interest
rates and actually exploite the 'users' physically, financially, sexually
and even spiritually. There are number of charities started by people who
actually are money lenders and or exploiters. As Government agencies have no
control over functioning of such institutions, they do things openly,
without any fear and do with only one purpose and that is to make huge
profits. some such institutions charge up to 48-60 percent interest!
3. The users (and not customers) should actually be the extreme rural/ urban
population but now even the people with good incomes are using the finance
to further their interest.. there are people i have met who use their clout
and borrow money from MFI at a lower rate and then lend to others at a much
more higher rate of interest.. these people are actually (traditionally)
involved in lending money to poor/small farmers and traders.. this is one
thing that the charities are not bothered about as they also look for money
and more money.
4. All the people who are benefitted by charities/ loans extended by MFI
lack protection and are openely abused and exploited. Officers and or
employees of most of such institutions are paid lowere remuneration saying
that they are working for a godly and or noble cause of helping poor.. when
these employees learn about the activities carried out by their employer,
they start making money by exploiting the end'users' of the program/ scheme.
Even if the institutions learn about this, they prefer to ignore the facts
as they know that they are getting their own share on time. In the process
beneficieries are actually 'loosers' and are exposed to all types of threats
and exploitation. Even if they approach law implementing agencies, instead
of getting justice, they aresubjected to more humiliation and even put
behind bars as law enforcing agencies are 'looked' after by the charities.
I am not saying all the charities are same but know most of these
institutions have corrupt mind and act accordingly.
What I believe is that the poor can change their lives for better only when
MFI are honest about their plans and intentions. They should have economic
programs for groups and such programs need to last longer in any/ all
conditions. ]
We did a small thing that changed lives of many. What we did was identifying
three young men from the villages we have adopted for all inclusive
development, send these men to the authorized workshop of one of the largest
selling two wheelers in india for a bout one months training in repairs and
maintenence, set-up road-side, village workshops for them and employ their
services on full time basis. The young were allowed to take home 70 percent
of the daily earnings, 10 percent were diverted to the institution and 20
percent was kept for the development of the village where the workshop is
located. This experiment has helped young people with so much of finance
that not only helped them change their lives but also of their family
members and that of the community. As these bikes are in large numbers in
most of the rural india, the users often experienced problems with small
repairs as there are no workshops
on highways/ small roads and small villages and habitations. The situation
forced many to shell out huge sums towards transporting the faulty bike to
city by using hired services.Our idea to provide excellent services to the
bike users/ owners on the spot at rates which are much lower than the
city-based workshops has thus paid off so well that we have planned for more
of such innovative and creative enterprises that help people sustain.
I do hope that my expeience will help u arrive at something that ultimately
benefits the end users of MFI.
with many best wishes and regards
DR. Anil Mahajan
MUmbai, India

Unquote:

please forward/send responses/ share new thoughts/research findings with me
at: anilanilm@...
thanks
anil

This is an update on our progress on the cause of disease research.
(Previous update and related messages at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163.)

At the top level, the questions we're trying to answer are:

   1. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has the
   cost-effectiveness been?
   2. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most
   successful?
   3. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*?
   4. Is there room for more funding for research in general?
   5. What factors would we use to choose between charities?

We've found a decent amount of literature focused on question 1 -- largely
case studies of the cost and impact of drugs to fight heart disease, cancer,
HIV, orphan diseases, and Polio. We've also found research that tries to
evaluate the cost effectiveness of research in general focusing on all newly
approved drugs or selected sets of clinical trials.

The researchers whose work we've looked at most are David Cutler and Frank
Lichtenberg.

From what we've read, we'd ballpark that the cost-effectiveness of past
disease research in the range of $1,000/DALY or $10,000-$100,000 per life
saved.

For question 4, we've found a good deal of literature on the interplay
between public and private funding (including a literature review at
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf by Bronwyn
Hall, Paul David and Andrew Toole), though for a variety of reasons we don't
think this literature can shed much light on the specific question we're
asking.

We've found practically nothing on questions 2 and 3. The ideal for us would
be a group of experts (along the lines of the Disease Control Priorities
Report or Copenhagen Consensus) laying out their case for top priroties for
research.

We're still not sure about question 5, a lot will depend on what we end up
finding for questions 2 and 3. One factor we've considered so far is along
the lines of today's blog post:
http://blog.givewell.net/2010/05/18/how-the-american-cancer-society-and-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-spend-their-money/

At this point we're planning to focus more on conversations with relevant
people, including charities; we usually try to have a basic grounding in the
academic literature first to make these conversations more efficient, but at
this point it seems like we've found what we're going to find (which is
relatively little).

Forgive me, for asking such a basic questions, but how are you or other
researchers weighing benefits from medical research that are highly indirect
or occurring in the future?  When you say that this research has an impact
in the ballpark of $1000/DALY, does this include benefits from the following
sorts of things?

(i) Indirect current/past benefits: Benefits from research that was made
possible by doing the research that was originally funded.
(ii) Future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive treatment
within the next 10 years, where the treatment is directly made possible by
the research.
(iii) Distant future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive
treatment within the next 10-50 years, or later, etc, where the treatment is
directly made possible by the research.
(iv) Indirect future benefits: Benefits from research that will be made
possible by doing the research that was originally funded, even if these
benefits haven't materialized yet.

If these future benefits are included, how long into the future are we
thinking about them?  If indirect benefits are included, how do we weigh
cases where future research is made possible by some past research, but a
particular bit of past research plays a relatively small role in the future
research?

I'm imagining that the future/indirect benefits are nearly impossible to
quantify, and so are ignored in this kind of cost-benefit analysis.  Is that
true?  Is it likely that they are highly significant?  Maybe the thing to do
here is just to point me at some paper/introductory text, which would be
fine.

On an unrelated note, is $1000/DALY an average figure, or an estimate of
some of the best instances of medical research you've seen/are likely to
find?

Best,

Nick

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:

>
>
> This is an update on our progress on the cause of disease research.
> (Previous update and related messages at
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163.)
>
> At the top level, the questions we're trying to answer are:
>
>    1. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has the
>    cost-effectiveness been?
>    2. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most
>    successful?
>    3. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*?
>    4. Is there room for more funding for research in general?
>    5. What factors would we use to choose between charities?
>
> We've found a decent amount of literature focused on question 1 -- largely
> case studies of the cost and impact of drugs to fight heart disease, cancer,
> HIV, orphan diseases, and Polio. We've also found research that tries to
> evaluate the cost effectiveness of research in general focusing on all newly
> approved drugs or selected sets of clinical trials.
>
> The researchers whose work we've looked at most are David Cutler and Frank
> Lichtenberg.
>
> From what we've read, we'd ballpark that the cost-effectiveness of past
> disease research in the range of $1,000/DALY or $10,000-$100,000 per life
> saved.
>
> For question 4, we've found a good deal of literature on the interplay
> between public and private funding (including a literature review at
> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf<http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Ebhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf>by Bronwyn Hall, Paul David and Andrew Toole), though for a variety of
> reasons we don't think this literature can shed much light on the specific
> question we're asking.
>
> We've found practically nothing on questions 2 and 3. The ideal for us
> would be a group of experts (along the lines of the Disease Control
> Priorities Report or Copenhagen Consensus) laying out their case for top
> priroties for research.
>
> We're still not sure about question 5, a lot will depend on what we end up
> finding for questions 2 and 3. One factor we've considered so far is along
> the lines of today's blog post:
> http://blog.givewell.net/2010/05/18/how-the-american-cancer-society-and-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-spend-their-money/
>
> At this point we're planning to focus more on conversations with relevant
> people, including charities; we usually try to have a basic grounding in the
> academic literature first to make these conversations more efficient, but at
> this point it seems like we've found what we're going to find (which is
> relatively little).
>  
>

Nick,

The estimates are not meant to be precise -- they're a preliminary
impression and we're planning to look into these studies more.

The point we want to make with the estimates is that it appears to us that
(a) on a per-life-saved or per-DALY basis, disease research will likely not
be competitive with developing-world direct aid (
http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs) but (b) are
competitive with estimates of the value of a statistical life in the United
States (~$10,000-100,000 per life year saved -- DCP Pg 158-9).

It's also important to note that the average *past *cost-effectiveness of
disease research is not necessarily a good indication of either (a) the
average future cost-effectiveness for research or (b) the cost-effectiveness
of the marginal dollar donated to disease research.

To answer some of your specific questions:

The estimates I've considered include (ii) but not your (i), (iii), or (iv).
  The lower end of the estimates are from the "best cases" -- the lower end
are attempts to look at "averages."

Some of the papers I've looked at are:

   - The Return to Biomedical Research: Treatment and Behavioral Effects --
   David Cutler and Srikanth Kadiyala
   - The effect of new drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US, 1987�1998
   -- Frank Lichtenberg
   - The effect of new drugs on mortality from rare diseases and HIV
   -- Frank R. Lichtenberg
   - Effect of a US National Institutes of Health programme of clinical
   trials on public health and costs -- S Claiborne Johnston, John D
   Rootenberg, Shereen Katrak, Wade S Smith, Jacob S Elkins

-Elie

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Nick Beckstead <
nbeckstead@...> wrote:

>
>
> Forgive me, for asking such a basic questions, but how are you or other
> researchers weighing benefits from medical research that are highly indirect
> or occurring in the future?  When you say that this research has an impact
> in the ballpark of $1000/DALY, does this include benefits from the following
> sorts of things?
>
> (i) Indirect current/past benefits: Benefits from research that was made
> possible by doing the research that was originally funded.
> (ii) Future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive treatment
> within the next 10 years, where the treatment is directly made possible by
> the research.
> (iii) Distant future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive
> treatment within the next 10-50 years, or later, etc, where the treatment is
> directly made possible by the research.
> (iv) Indirect future benefits: Benefits from research that will be made
> possible by doing the research that was originally funded, even if these
> benefits haven't materialized yet.
>
> If these future benefits are included, how long into the future are we
> thinking about them?  If indirect benefits are included, how do we weigh
> cases where future research is made possible by some past research, but a
> particular bit of past research plays a relatively small role in the future
> research?
>
> I'm imagining that the future/indirect benefits are nearly impossible to
> quantify, and so are ignored in this kind of cost-benefit analysis.  Is that
> true?  Is it likely that they are highly significant?  Maybe the thing to do
> here is just to point me at some paper/introductory text, which would be
> fine.
>
> On an unrelated note, is $1000/DALY an average figure, or an estimate of
> some of the best instances of medical research you've seen/are likely to
> find?
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> This is an update on our progress on the cause of disease research.
>> (Previous update and related messages at
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163.)
>>
>> At the top level, the questions we're trying to answer are:
>>
>>    1. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has the
>>    cost-effectiveness been?
>>    2. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most
>>    successful?
>>    3. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*?
>>    4. Is there room for more funding for research in general?
>>    5. What factors would we use to choose between charities?
>>
>> We've found a decent amount of literature focused on question 1 -- largely
>> case studies of the cost and impact of drugs to fight heart disease, cancer,
>> HIV, orphan diseases, and Polio. We've also found research that tries to
>> evaluate the cost effectiveness of research in general focusing on all newly
>> approved drugs or selected sets of clinical trials.
>>
>> The researchers whose work we've looked at most are David Cutler and Frank
>> Lichtenberg.
>>
>> From what we've read, we'd ballpark that the cost-effectiveness of past
>> disease research in the range of $1,000/DALY or $10,000-$100,000 per life
>> saved.
>>
>> For question 4, we've found a good deal of literature on the interplay
>> between public and private funding (including a literature review at
>> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf<http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Ebhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf>by Bronwyn Hall, Paul David and Andrew Toole), though for a variety of
>> reasons we don't think this literature can shed much light on the specific
>> question we're asking.
>>
>> We've found practically nothing on questions 2 and 3. The ideal for us
>> would be a group of experts (along the lines of the Disease Control
>> Priorities Report or Copenhagen Consensus) laying out their case for top
>> priroties for research.
>>
>> We're still not sure about question 5, a lot will depend on what we end up
>> finding for questions 2 and 3. One factor we've considered so far is along
>> the lines of today's blog post:
>> http://blog.givewell.net/2010/05/18/how-the-american-cancer-society-and-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-spend-their-money/
>>
>> At this point we're planning to focus more on conversations with relevant
>> people, including charities; we usually try to have a basic grounding in the
>> academic literature first to make these conversations more efficient, but at
>> this point it seems like we've found what we're going to find (which is
>> relatively little).
>>
>
>  
>

>>
  1.. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has the cost-effectiveness been? 
  2.. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most successful?  
  3.. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*? 
  4.. Is there room for more funding for research in general? 
  5.. What factors would we use to choose between charities?
<<

As a first order approximation for numbers 3 and perhaps 5, I would think it would be useful to research the number of folks dying or otherwise seriously affected by a disease, versus the dollars spent on that disease.

i.e. For disease A, 20,000 people die from it per year, worldwide, and worldwide research is $20 million/year. For disease B, the numbers are 50,000 people and $200 million/year.

All else being equal, this would suggest that a marginal dollar would be better off researching disease A vs. disease B.

Of course, that ignores the issue of which disease might have a cure readily identified by research as well as other issues, but it's at least better than nothing...  

Very helpful, Elie.

What about the question of whether things like (i), (iii), and (iv) are
highly significant?  Is it within the realm of reasonable estimates, for
instance, that they account for more than 25% of the benefit?

Thanks,

Nick

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@givewell.net> wrote:

>
>
> Nick,
>
> The estimates are not meant to be precise -- they're a preliminary
> impression and we're planning to look into these studies more.
>
> The point we want to make with the estimates is that it appears to us that
> (a) on a per-life-saved or per-DALY basis, disease research will likely not
> be competitive with developing-world direct aid (
> http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs) but (b) are
> competitive with estimates of the value of a statistical life in the United
> States (~$10,000-100,000 per life year saved -- DCP Pg 158-9).
>
> It's also important to note that the average *past *cost-effectiveness of
> disease research is not necessarily a good indication of either (a) the
> average future cost-effectiveness for research or (b) the cost-effectiveness
> of the marginal dollar donated to disease research.
>
> To answer some of your specific questions:
>
> The estimates I've considered include (ii) but not your (i), (iii), or
> (iv).   The lower end of the estimates are from the "best cases" -- the
> lower end are attempts to look at "averages."
>
> Some of the papers I've looked at are:
>
>    - The Return to Biomedical Research: Treatment and Behavioral Effects
>    -- David Cutler and Srikanth Kadiyala
>    - The effect of new drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US,
>    1987�1998 -- Frank Lichtenberg
>    - The effect of new drugs on mortality from rare diseases and HIV
>    -- Frank R. Lichtenberg
>    - Effect of a US National Institutes of Health programme of clinical
>    trials on public health and costs -- S Claiborne Johnston, John D
>    Rootenberg, Shereen Katrak, Wade S Smith, Jacob S Elkins
>
> -Elie
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Nick Beckstead <
> nbeckstead@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Forgive me, for asking such a basic questions, but how are you or other
>> researchers weighing benefits from medical research that are highly indirect
>> or occurring in the future?  When you say that this research has an impact
>> in the ballpark of $1000/DALY, does this include benefits from the following
>> sorts of things?
>>
>> (i) Indirect current/past benefits: Benefits from research that was made
>> possible by doing the research that was originally funded.
>> (ii) Future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive treatment
>> within the next 10 years, where the treatment is directly made possible by
>> the research.
>> (iii) Distant future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive
>> treatment within the next 10-50 years, or later, etc, where the treatment is
>> directly made possible by the research.
>> (iv) Indirect future benefits: Benefits from research that will be made
>> possible by doing the research that was originally funded, even if these
>> benefits haven't materialized yet.
>>
>> If these future benefits are included, how long into the future are we
>> thinking about them?  If indirect benefits are included, how do we weigh
>> cases where future research is made possible by some past research, but a
>> particular bit of past research plays a relatively small role in the future
>> research?
>>
>> I'm imagining that the future/indirect benefits are nearly impossible to
>> quantify, and so are ignored in this kind of cost-benefit analysis.  Is that
>> true?  Is it likely that they are highly significant?  Maybe the thing to do
>> here is just to point me at some paper/introductory text, which would be
>> fine.
>>
>> On an unrelated note, is $1000/DALY an average figure, or an estimate of
>> some of the best instances of medical research you've seen/are likely to
>> find?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@givewell.net>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This is an update on our progress on the cause of disease research.
>>> (Previous update and related messages at
>>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163.)
>>>
>>> At the top level, the questions we're trying to answer are:
>>>
>>>    1. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has the
>>>    cost-effectiveness been?
>>>    2. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most
>>>    successful?
>>>    3. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*?
>>>    4. Is there room for more funding for research in general?
>>>    5. What factors would we use to choose between charities?
>>>
>>> We've found a decent amount of literature focused on question 1 --
>>> largely case studies of the cost and impact of drugs to fight heart disease,
>>> cancer, HIV, orphan diseases, and Polio. We've also found research that
>>> tries to evaluate the cost effectiveness of research in general focusing on
>>> all newly approved drugs or selected sets of clinical trials.
>>>
>>> The researchers whose work we've looked at most are David Cutler and
>>> Frank Lichtenberg.
>>>
>>> From what we've read, we'd ballpark that the cost-effectiveness of past
>>> disease research in the range of $1,000/DALY or $10,000-$100,000 per life
>>> saved.
>>>
>>> For question 4, we've found a good deal of literature on the interplay
>>> between public and private funding (including a literature review at
>>> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf<http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Ebhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf>by Bronwyn Hall, Paul David and Andrew Toole), though for a variety of
>>> reasons we don't think this literature can shed much light on the specific
>>> question we're asking.
>>>
>>> We've found practically nothing on questions 2 and 3. The ideal for us
>>> would be a group of experts (along the lines of the Disease Control
>>> Priorities Report or Copenhagen Consensus) laying out their case for top
>>> priroties for research.
>>>
>>> We're still not sure about question 5, a lot will depend on what we end
>>> up finding for questions 2 and 3. One factor we've considered so far is
>>> along the lines of today's blog post:
>>> http://blog.givewell.net/2010/05/18/how-the-american-cancer-society-and-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-spend-their-money/
>>>
>>> At this point we're planning to focus more on conversations with relevant
>>> people, including charities; we usually try to have a basic grounding in the
>>> academic literature first to make these conversations more efficient, but at
>>> this point it seems like we've found what we're going to find (which is
>>> relatively little).
>>>
>>
>>
>  
>

We haven't found and aren't sure how to find information that would shed
light on these questions.

I agree they're important factors to consider.

-Elie

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Nick Beckstead <
nbeckstead@philosophy.rutgers.edu> wrote:

>
>
> Very helpful, Elie.
>
> What about the question of whether things like (i), (iii), and (iv) are
> highly significant?  Is it within the realm of reasonable estimates, for
> instance, that they account for more than 25% of the benefit?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> The estimates are not meant to be precise -- they're a preliminary
>> impression and we're planning to look into these studies more.
>>
>> The point we want to make with the estimates is that it appears to us that
>> (a) on a per-life-saved or per-DALY basis, disease research will likely not
>> be competitive with developing-world direct aid (
>> http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs) but (b) are
>> competitive with estimates of the value of a statistical life in the United
>> States (~$10,000-100,000 per life year saved -- DCP Pg 158-9).
>>
>> It's also important to note that the average *past *cost-effectiveness of
>> disease research is not necessarily a good indication of either (a) the
>> average future cost-effectiveness for research or (b) the cost-effectiveness
>> of the marginal dollar donated to disease research.
>>
>> To answer some of your specific questions:
>>
>> The estimates I've considered include (ii) but not your (i), (iii), or
>> (iv).   The lower end of the estimates are from the "best cases" -- the
>> lower end are attempts to look at "averages."
>>
>> Some of the papers I've looked at are:
>>
>>    - The Return to Biomedical Research: Treatment and Behavioral Effects
>>    -- David Cutler and Srikanth Kadiyala
>>    - The effect of new drug approvals on HIV mortality in the US,
>>    1987�1998 -- Frank Lichtenberg
>>    - The effect of new drugs on mortality from rare diseases and HIV
>>    -- Frank R. Lichtenberg
>>    - Effect of a US National Institutes of Health programme of clinical
>>    trials on public health and costs -- S Claiborne Johnston, John D
>>    Rootenberg, Shereen Katrak, Wade S Smith, Jacob S Elkins
>>
>> -Elie
>>
>> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Nick Beckstead <
>> nbeckstead@philosophy.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Forgive me, for asking such a basic questions, but how are you or other
>>> researchers weighing benefits from medical research that are highly indirect
>>> or occurring in the future?  When you say that this research has an impact
>>> in the ballpark of $1000/DALY, does this include benefits from the following
>>> sorts of things?
>>>
>>> (i) Indirect current/past benefits: Benefits from research that was made
>>> possible by doing the research that was originally funded.
>>> (ii) Future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive
>>> treatment within the next 10 years, where the treatment is directly made
>>> possible by the research.
>>> (iii) Distant future direct benefits: Benefits to people who will receive
>>> treatment within the next 10-50 years, or later, etc, where the treatment is
>>> directly made possible by the research.
>>> (iv) Indirect future benefits: Benefits from research that will be made
>>> possible by doing the research that was originally funded, even if these
>>> benefits haven't materialized yet.
>>>
>>> If these future benefits are included, how long into the future are we
>>> thinking about them?  If indirect benefits are included, how do we weigh
>>> cases where future research is made possible by some past research, but a
>>> particular bit of past research plays a relatively small role in the future
>>> research?
>>>
>>> I'm imagining that the future/indirect benefits are nearly impossible to
>>> quantify, and so are ignored in this kind of cost-benefit analysis.  Is that
>>> true?  Is it likely that they are highly significant?  Maybe the thing to do
>>> here is just to point me at some paper/introductory text, which would be
>>> fine.
>>>
>>> On an unrelated note, is $1000/DALY an average figure, or an estimate of
>>> some of the best instances of medical research you've seen/are likely to
>>> find?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is an update on our progress on the cause of disease research.
>>>> (Previous update and related messages at
>>>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163.)
>>>>
>>>> At the top level, the questions we're trying to answer are:
>>>>
>>>>    1. Has medical research been a cause of improved health? What has
>>>>    the cost-effectiveness been?
>>>>    2. Is there a consensus on what type of research *has been* most
>>>>    successful?
>>>>    3. Is there a consensus on the best type of research *to fund*?
>>>>    4. Is there room for more funding for research in general?
>>>>    5. What factors would we use to choose between charities?
>>>>
>>>> We've found a decent amount of literature focused on question 1 --
>>>> largely case studies of the cost and impact of drugs to fight heart disease,
>>>> cancer, HIV, orphan diseases, and Polio. We've also found research that
>>>> tries to evaluate the cost effectiveness of research in general focusing on
>>>> all newly approved drugs or selected sets of clinical trials.
>>>>
>>>> The researchers whose work we've looked at most are David Cutler and
>>>> Frank Lichtenberg.
>>>>
>>>> From what we've read, we'd ballpark that the cost-effectiveness of past
>>>> disease research in the range of $1,000/DALY or $10,000-$100,000 per life
>>>> saved.
>>>>
>>>> For question 4, we've found a good deal of literature on the interplay
>>>> between public and private funding (including a literature review at
>>>> http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf<http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Ebhhall/papers/DavidHallToole%20RP00.pdf>by Bronwyn Hall, Paul David and Andrew Toole), though for a variety of
>>>> reasons we don't think this literature can shed much light on the specific
>>>> question we're asking.
>>>>
>>>> We've found practically nothing on questions 2 and 3. The ideal for us
>>>> would be a group of experts (along the lines of the Disease Control
>>>> Priorities Report or Copenhagen Consensus) laying out their case for top
>>>> priroties for research.
>>>>
>>>> We're still not sure about question 5, a lot will depend on what we end
>>>> up finding for questions 2 and 3. One factor we've considered so far is
>>>> along the lines of today's blog post:
>>>> http://blog.givewell.net/2010/05/18/how-the-american-cancer-society-and-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-spend-their-money/
>>>>
>>>> At this point we're planning to focus more on conversations with
>>>> relevant people, including charities; we usually try to have a basic
>>>> grounding in the academic literature first to make these conversations more
>>>> efficient, but at this point it seems like we've found what we're going to
>>>> find (which is relatively little).
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

In discussing different models of research funding (NIH vs. corporations vs. small startups vs. funding through charities) I thought it might be useful to point out the partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the Gates Foundation at Tres Cantos:

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2010/05/31/story3.html?b=1275278400^3426321

http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/access/rnd-neglected-tropical-diseases.htm


Basically, it's my understanding that the Gates Foundation has helped fund this GSK lab (Tres Cantos) in Spain for the purpose of malaria research, but in exchange has demanded that the lab make its findings public.  This appears to be a new idea; researchers tend to be very secretive about their work, just like charities!

Sounds like a step in the right direction.

Hello everyone,

When speaking to charities by phone, we create a "conceptual transcript,"
that, while not always being word-for-word, records the ideas conveyed in
the conversation.  We ask charities whether it would be OK if we posted
these publicly and we allow the charity to make edits to the transcript to
improve its accuracy before posting.

Transcripts from our conversations (that have been approved by the charity)
are now available in one place at
http://www.givewell.org/conversations-with-charities.

We will continue to post transcripts to this page as they become available.
If you are interested in following our posts, you can enter the URL for the
page in the "Add a subscription" box in Google Reader. It will create a feed
for the page and notify you when we edit it.

Best,
Natalie Stone
Research Analyst
GiveWell

As we mentioned previously on this list, we are working this year on
causes focused on improving lives in the United States (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178).  This is an update on
what we've done so far and what we're planning to do to complete this work
over the next few months.

*Background*

We feel that in this area:

   - Many past attempts to improve lives through social programs have
   failed. We've covered this briefly in the past at
   http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work and
   we intend to expand on this point this year.
   - There are many different types of evaluations. Strong evaluations
   (primarily randomized controlled trials (RCTs)) can give strong confidence
   that a program is effective. Other types of evaluations can easily imply
   strong impact when there is none.

Therefore, we are looking for charities whose programs have been evaluated
and deemed effective in a RCT.

*Our process*
*
*
To identify such charities, we've done the following:

   - *Searching lists of social programs that have undergone RCTs, and
   looking for charities that focus on implementing promising ones.*
      - Looked at every program on sites which list social programs that
      have undergone an RCT.  The sites we've used are
      http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/,
http://childtrends.org/ (specifically,
      this list: http://www.childtrends.org/Lifecourse/allprograms_menu.htm),
      and http://www.mdrc.org/  (using the list "All MDRC Projects" on the
      left-hand side of http://www.mdrc.org/area_overview_1.html). There
      were a total of 499 unique programs listed across these 3 sites.
      - We would exclude a program for one of the following reasons:
      - No charity we could find running the program: 307 programs. This was
         the most common.
         - The evaluation found no impact, negative impact, or fadeout
         (i.e., impact measured at an early followup by no measured
impact at a later
         followup): 62 programs.
         - The evaluation was not an RCT or was still in progress: 34
         programs.
         - The study itself was not compelling because of one of the
         following: (a) it had a serious methodological flaw (such has
high attrition
         or extremely low sample size): 8 programs; or, (b) the
measured impacts were
         "gameable", (in that results largely came from asking people
questions that
         they knew the "right answers" to - for example, asking
teachers who knew
         they were part of a study about the progress of their
students' general
         behavior over time): 16 programs.
         - The program runs a similar program and had a similar *type (type
         being something like "increasing test scores" or "reducing substance
         abuse") *impact to another program that had a stronger evaluation:
         16 programs. For example, other programs that provided home
visits to new,
         young, single mothers were "outclassed" by the Nurse-Family
Partnership
         which has been evaluated in three separate studies and has conducted
         followup studies more than 15 years after the program ended.
         - This left us with 49 programs. We were relatively liberal
      in identifying charities running programs (i.e., we included many
      questionable charities) and we have yet to review studies
carefully (we only
      excluded studies as flawed if the information available on the
summary sites
      made it clear that there was a serious flaw). We expect that when we look
      closer at this set of programs, we will exclude many of them for
lacking a
      charity or for relying on a questionable impact study.
      - *Asking for referrals to outstanding organizations in this area.* We've
   asked the members of the Alliance for Effective Social investing (
   http://www.alleffective.org/members.html) many of whom are
   well-positioned to know about organizations that meet our criteria.
   - *Considering "big name" (e.g., Harlem Children's Zone, Teach for
   America, DonorsChoose) organizations that donors will likely want to know
   our opinion about. *
   - *Considering all charities submitted through our online, charity
   submission form. *

In all, we expect to do substantial investigations of 20-30 organizations,
approximately the same number we covered for our international aid report
last year. These investigations will involve contacting the charities,
speaking them directly, and creating reviews. Our aim is to complete this
work in the next 3 months (around 9/15) and have it up and available on our
website for giving season this December.

*Other notes*
*
*
1. While going through the programs listed above, we made a list of the
outcomes that each program achieves. Here's a list of some of the
programs/outcomes we've found. I've include these examples here because they
may provide a better sense of the types of programs we're investigating.

Direct life outcomes -- criminal record
Direct life outcomes -- earnings
Direct life outcomes -- health
Education -- college enrollment
Education -- dropping out of school
Education -- high school graduation
Education -- test scores
Education -- GPA
Education -- reading skills
Education -- attendance
Behavior -- principal referrals
Behavior -- violence
Incidence of teen pregnancies
Substance abuse -- illegal drugs
Substance abuse -- alcohol
Substance abuse -- smoking
Substance abuse -- general
Obesity
Mental illness
Physical activity
Placement in foster care services
Children's feeling of stigma about being different due to divorce
Delayed sexual activity
Teen drunk driving
Incidence of STDs

2. In the past, we've called this cause "equality of opportunity in the
United States."  We now feel that title is a little misleading (overly
narrow), and aren't sure of exactly what to replace it with, but we are
looking at any charity that may be running a program that's undergone
rigorous long-term evaluation and demonstrated to improve life outcomes in
the U.S., including things like  on preventing drunk driving or reducing
mental illness. (This decision was only tactical - we'll continue to
separate charities into causes so donors specifically interested in
"equality of opportunity" can give there, but we've noticed that the
resources we've relied on for information on effective programs cover all
types of "social programs" and therefore there was little additional cost to
including those programs in our current work.)

As always, please respond with any suggestions, comments or questions.

Thanks,
Elie

I agree that "equality of opportunity in the United States" is a bad name for the rather broader areas you're studying here.  

Brainstorming:

"Improving life outcomes in the United States"
"Better life outcomes in the United States"
"Social Improvement in the United States"
"Social and Educational Improvement in the United States"


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Elie Hassenfeld 
  To: givewell@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 4:30 PM
  Subject: [givewell] United States research update


    
  As we mentioned previously on this list, we are working this year on causes focused on improving lives in the United States (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178).  This is an update on what we've done so far and what we're planning to do to complete this work over the next few months.



  Background



  We feel that in this area:
    a.. Many past attempts to improve lives through social programs have failed. We've covered this briefly in the past at http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work and we intend to expand on this point this year. 
    b.. There are many different types of evaluations. Strong evaluations (primarily randomized controlled trials (RCTs)) can give strong confidence that a program is effective. Other types of evaluations can easily imply strong impact when there is none. 
  Therefore, we are looking for charities whose programs have been evaluated and deemed effective in a RCT.


  Our process


  To identify such charities, we've done the following:
    a.. Searching lists of social programs that have undergone RCTs, and looking for charities that focus on implementing promising ones.
      a.. Looked at every program on sites which list social programs that have undergone an RCT.  The sites we've used are http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/, http://childtrends.org/ (specifically, this list: http://www.childtrends.org/Lifecourse/allprograms_menu.htm), and http://www.mdrc.org/  (using the list "All MDRC Projects" on the left-hand side of http://www.mdrc.org/area_overview_1.html). There were a total of 499 unique programs listed across these 3 sites. 
      b.. We would exclude a program for one of the following reasons:
        a.. No charity we could find running the program: 307 programs. This was the most common. 
        b.. The evaluation found no impact, negative impact, or fadeout (i.e., impact measured at an early followup by no measured impact at a later followup): 62 programs.
        c.. The evaluation was not an RCT or was still in progress: 34 programs.
  a.. The study itself was not compelling because of one of the following: (a) it had a serious methodological flaw (such has high attrition or extremely low sample size): 8 programs; or, (b) the measured impacts were "gameable", (in that results largely came from asking people questions that they knew the "right answers" to - for example, asking teachers who knew they were part of a study about the progress of their students' general behavior over time): 16 programs. 
  a.. The program runs a similar program and had a similar type (type being something like "increasing test scores" or "reducing substance abuse") impact to another program that had a stronger evaluation: 16 programs. For example, other programs that provided home visits to new, young, single mothers were "outclassed" by the Nurse-Family Partnership which has been evaluated in three separate studies and has conducted followup studies more than 15 years after the program ended. 
  a.. This left us with 49 programs. We were relatively liberal in identifying charities running programs (i.e., we included many questionable charities) and we have yet to review studies carefully (we only excluded studies as flawed if the information available on the summary sites made it clear that there was a serious flaw). We expect that when we look closer at this set of programs, we will exclude many of them for lacking a charity or for relying on a questionable impact study. 
  a.. Asking for referrals to outstanding organizations in this area. We've asked the members of the Alliance for Effective Social investing (http://www.alleffective.org/members.html) many of whom are well-positioned to know about organizations that meet our criteria.  
  a.. Considering "big name" (e.g., Harlem Children's Zone, Teach for America, DonorsChoose) organizations that donors will likely want to know our opinion about. 
  a.. Considering all charities submitted through our online, charity submission form. 
  In all, we expect to do substantial investigations of 20-30 organizations, approximately the same number we covered for our international aid report last year. These investigations will involve contacting the charities, speaking them directly, and creating reviews. Our aim is to complete this work in the next 3 months (around 9/15) and have it up and available on our website for giving season this December.


  Other notes


  1. While going through the programs listed above, we made a list of the outcomes that each program achieves. Here's a list of some of the programs/outcomes we've found. I've include these examples here because they may provide a better sense of the types of programs we're investigating.


  Direct life outcomes -- criminal record
  Direct life outcomes -- earnings
  Direct life outcomes -- health
  Education -- college enrollment
  Education -- dropping out of school
  Education -- high school graduation
  Education -- test scores
  Education -- GPA
  Education -- reading skills
  Education -- attendance
  Behavior -- principal referrals
  Behavior -- violence
  Incidence of teen pregnancies
  Substance abuse -- illegal drugs
  Substance abuse -- alcohol
  Substance abuse -- smoking
  Substance abuse -- general
  Obesity
  Mental illness
  Physical activity
  Placement in foster care services
  Children's feeling of stigma about being different due to divorce
  Delayed sexual activity
  Teen drunk driving
  Incidence of STDs


  2. In the past, we've called this cause "equality of opportunity in the United States."  We now feel that title is a little misleading (overly narrow), and aren't sure of exactly what to replace it with, but we are looking at any charity that may be running a program that's undergone rigorous long-term evaluation and demonstrated to improve life outcomes in the U.S., including things like  on preventing drunk driving or reducing mental illness. (This decision was only tactical - we'll continue to separate charities into causes so donors specifically interested in "equality of opportunity" can give there, but we've noticed that the resources we've relied on for information on effective programs cover all types of "social programs" and therefore there was little additional cost to including those programs in our current work.)


  As always, please respond with any suggestions, comments or questions.


  Thanks,
  Elie

  

At 05:30 PM 6/9/2010, you wrote:
>
>As we mentioned previously on this list, we are working this year on 
>causes focused on improving lives in the United States 
>(<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178). 
>This is an update on what we've done so far and what we're planning 
>to do to complete this work over the next few months.
>
>Background
>
>We feel that in this area:
>    * Many past attempts to improve lives through social programs 
> have failed. We've covered this briefly in the past at 
> <http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work>http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work 
> and we intend to expand on this point this year.

I followed the link above to "Social Programs That Just Don't 
Work."  At the top of the list was "Education," and clicking through 
was a discussion concluding (and titled) "Schools Are Not The Key" 
based on an analysis of the results of the New York City Voucher Experiment.

(I'm commenting here, because that's not a page that facilitates 
direct commentary.)

I have to say, I find the inferences and the conclusion there to be, 
well, unfounded.  Frankly, I don't believe you can reasonably draw 
the extremely broad and sweeping conclusion that you draw, from the 
study (or other studies) you cite.

It is likely the case that the NY Experiment was not well constructed 
as a tool to measure the impact of "school choice."  It is definitely 
the case that your use of it, to conclude that school choice doesn't 
work, is ill-founded.


AUTHOR'S BIAS:

Before I go further, allow me to state a clear bias I have:

I believe in the power of competition.  I believe that in almost all 
areas, effective competition produces more efficient result -- 
typically much more efficient results -- than does the absence of 
competition.  And I believe that there is no special circumstance 
that makes schools immune to the beneficial effects of 
competition.  Accordingly, I believe that it surely must be the case 
that effective competition will produce better results in education 
-- or at least that this should be our expectation in the absence of 
strong evidence to the contrary.  (And I certainly don't believe we 
have strong evidence to the contrary.  I'm not clear that we have 
even weak evidence to the contrary.)


EFFECTIVE COMPETITION VS. SWITCHING SCHOOLS:

That out of the way, let me get back to what I see as the problem 
with your analysis, and your reliance on the NYC study (and probably 
the other studies, though I am not familiar with their details) as 
evidence to reach the conclusion that "Schools are not the key" and 
that changing schools "doesn't seem to help much at all."

The point of school choice efforts is not that students changing 
(switching) schools will improve education.  It is not the act of 
changing schools that is expected to produce improvements.  Rather, 
it is that the ability of parents to move their children to different 
schools is expected to produce competition that will pressure schools 
to improve (or go out of business, for lack of students).

It is certainly not that school choice advocates generally believe 
that any particular school or educational approach is superior, and 
can be expected to produce superior results.  Rather, the belief is 
that, as with competition in almost all other contexts, different 
schools will experiment with different approaches, some will prove 
misguided and some will produce great results, and over a period of 
time the successful schools will be recognized for producing superior 
results, and competition will force other schools to either copy 
their methods, or develop alternative methods that produce results at 
least as good.

An effective school choice program should ultimately be expected to 
produce significant increases not just for students who change 
schools, but also for students who don't change schools, because all 
schools are forced to produce good results in order to retain their 
student base.

To my view, to conclude that school choice is an approach that "Just 
Doesn't Work" one would have to evaluate an example that could 
reasonably be concluded to have succeeded at creating effective 
competition, and still failed.  (Or, one would have to find 
convincing evidence that it is, in practice, impossible to create 
such effective competition.)

The NYC Voucher Experiment is surely not an example of creating 
effective competition.  The experiment included 1300 children, out of 
more than a million in the NYC school system.  So just over one tenth 
of a percent of all NYC public school students were allowed to 
participate in this program.

Are we to believe that this quantity of students was sufficient to 
create effective competition, and place significant pressure on 
schools (either public or private) to produce better results?

I could hardly believe so.


IMPROVING THE MARKET FOR GROCERIES:

Let's conduct a thought experiment.

Suppose you live in a city where there's just one grocery store.  It 
possesses a franchise from the city that grants it the exclusive 
right to sell groceries in the city.  Because the store operates as a 
monopoly, the prices are exorbitant, the quality is poor, the hours 
are limited, and the service is generally poor.

A group of people argue that grocery store choice would create 
competition, reducing prices, improving quality and improving customer service.

Because most people have never known anything else -- at least when 
it comes to groceries -- they are skeptical.  So the city council 
decides to conduct an experiment: they will grant grocery franchises 
to several other vendors.  However, they limit the capacity of these 
other vendors so that they are effectively limited to supplying just 
one tenth of one percent of the city's groceries -- say by conducting 
a lottery to select one tenth of a percent of the city's population 
who will be allowed to shop at the new grocery stores.

What happens?  Would you expect the market for groceries to change much?

Well, there may be small differences in various aspects of the 
products and service that the different stores provide, but because 
the competition is extremely limited, there's extremely little 
pressure on either the monopoly store, or the new entrants, to reduce 
prices, improve quality, or improve service, overall.

Undoubtedly many consumers lucky enough to win, by lottery, the right 
to shop at their choice of stores will, on average, be more satisfied 
than they were previously (and presumably more than the "unlucky" 
consumers are, on average).  For one thing, merely having a choice, 
rather than being forced to shop at the monopoly store, creates a 
sense of satisfaction.  (It's well known that people become invested 
in decisions they make, once they have made them, so having made the 
decision to shop at a given store from among multiple choices, will 
create greater satisfaction, by itself.)

For another, each consumer may be sensitive to small variations among 
the stores.  I may be sensitive to the price of bananas, and so am 
satisfied that the store I chose has lower banana prices, even if the 
prices for other items roughly offset the savings.  Or you may be 
sensitive to the fact that the store you chose is just a 30 second 
walk from your apartment.  Somebody else may be sensitive to the fact 
that the store she chose is small enough that the employees recognize 
her when she comes to shop.

The difference are all minor, and in many cases, do not relate 
directly to the measures that were intended to be improved.  So 
customers using the new stores are more satisfied, but not 
significantly better off in temrs of overall price, quality and service.

After a year, the city council hires a consultant to evaluate the 
results.  The consultant concludes that the market for groceries doe 
snot seem to have improved at all.  The city council declares the 
experiment a failure, and concludes "Stores are not the key" and that 
introducing competition into the grocery market "Just does not work."


Of course, anybody can see that the problem is that the experiment 
never produced effective competition.  Accordingly, the conclusion 
that competition "just doesn't work" is fundamentally flawed.  It 
draws a sweeping conclusion from a poorly structured experiment that 
didn't actually test the original theory for how the situation could 
be improved.


IT'S EVEN HARDER, BUT CERTAINLY NOT IMPOSSIBLE, FOR SCHOOL COMPETITION:

Now, in the case of school choice, the problem is just that much more 
complicated, and the experiment just that much more flawed.  For 
groceries, consumers can be expected to accurately recognize, and 
respond to, significant differences in price, quality and service, 
quite quickly.  The same is not true for schools.  There, one can 
expect it is likely to take a significant amount of time for 
competing methods to demonstrate clear differences in results, and 
for consumers (parents and students) to accurately recognize and 
respond to such.

The NYC voucher experiment lasted three years.  Is that long enough 
for market clarity to occur?  Personally, I'm very skeptical that it was.

And also, the NYC voucher program granted recipients vouchers for 
just $1400 per year -- clearly low enough to significantly limit the 
options among school alternatives, and clearly low enough that it 
would not provide a large incentive to attract new entrants to 
compete in the market.

Some may be tempted to view these challenges as evidence that 
education is not amenable to effective competition.  Yet our own 
experience with higher education provides compelling evidence to the 
contrary.  In higher education, the market has successfully 
stabilized to a point where consumers can effectively evaluate 
differences among institutions.  As a result, propsective students 
and their parents are able to effectively evaluate differences among 
institutions, and few would argue that the system hasn't produced 
strong results, across the board: the US has one of the best (if not 
the best) higher education systems in the world, attracting many 
international students, even from countries that clearly produce 
better results in primary and secondary education.


ILL-FOUNDED CONCLUSIONS:

Accordingly, I think that a conclusion that school choice programs 
"just don't work" based on the results of the NYC voucher experiment 
is ill-founded.

I don't have details on the other experiments you discuss, in another 
piece.  I expect that the fact that they were experiments -- and in 
at least a few cases characterized as similar to the NYC experiment 
-- suggests that they form no better basis for your conclusion.  (Of 
course, you seem to rely on them less, anyway, because of the absence 
of fully-published data for them.)

As a result, I cannot help but think that none of the examples you 
cite are likely to justify a conclusion that school choice "just doesn't work."


(Forgetting for a moment what one can justify as a logical, 
eveidence-based conclusion, frankly, I don't even think there is a 
basis for having an intuition that school choice "just doesn't 
work."  If you believe that competition in primary/secondary 
education can't and won't work to improve primary/secondary 
education, you should at least have a pretty compelling theory for 
why it clearly does work for higher education, for groceries, and for 
almost every other domain known to man, but not for primary/secondary 
education....)


Jonathan

Hi,

> I have to say, I find the inferences and the conclusion there to be, 
> well, unfounded.  Frankly, I don't believe you can reasonably draw 
> the extremely broad and sweeping conclusion that you draw, from the 
> study (or other studies) you cite.
> 
> It is likely the case that the NY Experiment was not well constructed 
> as a tool to measure the impact of "school choice."  It is definitely 
> the case that your use of it, to conclude that school choice doesn't 
> work, is ill-founded.

I think that's true -- sweeping conclusions about school choice cannot
be drawn from a single study, or even from hundreds of studies that
look only at small scale voucher programs in a huge educational
market. But I think the point being made here is not whether a free
market in education would lead to better education outcomes overall,
but whether, *at the margin*, providing more school vouchers or
educational options creates significant improvements in student
performance. And the answer seems to be "no." The value on the dollar
is low.

This also seems to suggest that a piecemeal vouchers approach is not
an effective or quick way of transitioning to a free market in
education. If a free market in education is desirable (and personally
I think it is) different strategies need to be considered to reach
it. Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute, for instance, argues that
tax credits are a better approach than vouchers or charters:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1251

Vipul

J.S., thanks for the thoughtful comments.

I am not actually sure whether we actually disagree.  You are focused on the
effects of school choice, whereas we are focused on the effects of school
switching within the range of currently (widely) available options.

The hypothesis that we believe is both (a) quite popular, implicitly; (b)
seriously undermined by the NYC Voucher Experiment goes something like: "The
reason that low-income kids underperform high-income kids is because they go
to schools that are at the low end of the range of currently existing
schools (as distinct from the range of 'possible' schools), instead of
schools at the high end.  If they switched from low-end to high-end schools,
their performance would come into line."

We believe that Voucher Experiment seriously undermines the idea that it's
this difference between "high-end" and "low-end" schools that is the key to
the achievement gap.  The idea is further undermined by the observation that
the achievement gap is present at a young age (the "Next" link on this page
presents that observation).

This is very different from arguing about whether (a) education could be
improved by school choice; or (b) schools *could be* the key if they took a
fundamentally different approach (and experimenting with different
approaches would be one of the benefits of school choice).  In fact, we
think there is some limited evidence for optimism about (b); note that KIPP
is one of our recommended charities.

Unfortunately, it is hard to boil down what I wrote in a
clear/readable/engaging way, and particularly hard to boil it down into a
page title/headline.  We did the best we could with "Schools are not the
key" (which is distinct from something like "Schools can't help" or "School
choice is a bad idea").  However, we are open to suggestions for clarifying
our language.

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 11:48 PM, J. S. Greenfield <jsg@...> wrote:

>
>
> At 05:30 PM 6/9/2010, you wrote:
> >
> >As we mentioned previously on this list, we are working this year on
> >causes focused on improving lives in the United States
> >(<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/178).
> >This is an update on what we've done so far and what we're planning
> >to do to complete this work over the next few months.
> >
> >Background
> >
> >We feel that in this area:
> > * Many past attempts to improve lives through social programs
> > have failed. We've covered this briefly in the past at
> > <http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work>
> http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Social-Programs-That-Just-Dont-Work
> > and we intend to expand on this point this year.
>
> I followed the link above to "Social Programs That Just Don't
> Work." At the top of the list was "Education," and clicking through
> was a discussion concluding (and titled) "Schools Are Not The Key"
> based on an analysis of the results of the New York City Voucher
> Experiment.
>
> (I'm commenting here, because that's not a page that facilitates
> direct commentary.)
>
> I have to say, I find the inferences and the conclusion there to be,
> well, unfounded. Frankly, I don't believe you can reasonably draw
> the extremely broad and sweeping conclusion that you draw, from the
> study (or other studies) you cite.
>
> It is likely the case that the NY Experiment was not well constructed
> as a tool to measure the impact of "school choice." It is definitely
> the case that your use of it, to conclude that school choice doesn't
> work, is ill-founded.
>
> AUTHOR'S BIAS:
>
> Before I go further, allow me to state a clear bias I have:
>
> I believe in the power of competition. I believe that in almost all
> areas, effective competition produces more efficient result --
> typically much more efficient results -- than does the absence of
> competition. And I believe that there is no special circumstance
> that makes schools immune to the beneficial effects of
> competition. Accordingly, I believe that it surely must be the case
> that effective competition will produce better results in education
> -- or at least that this should be our expectation in the absence of
> strong evidence to the contrary. (And I certainly don't believe we
> have strong evidence to the contrary. I'm not clear that we have
> even weak evidence to the contrary.)
>
> EFFECTIVE COMPETITION VS. SWITCHING SCHOOLS:
>
> That out of the way, let me get back to what I see as the problem
> with your analysis, and your reliance on the NYC study (and probably
> the other studies, though I am not familiar with their details) as
> evidence to reach the conclusion that "Schools are not the key" and
> that changing schools "doesn't seem to help much at all."
>
> The point of school choice efforts is not that students changing
> (switching) schools will improve education. It is not the act of
> changing schools that is expected to produce improvements. Rather,
> it is that the ability of parents to move their children to different
> schools is expected to produce competition that will pressure schools
> to improve (or go out of business, for lack of students).
>
> It is certainly not that school choice advocates generally believe
> that any particular school or educational approach is superior, and
> can be expected to produce superior results. Rather, the belief is
> that, as with competition in almost all other contexts, different
> schools will experiment with different approaches, some will prove
> misguided and some will produce great results, and over a period of
> time the successful schools will be recognized for producing superior
> results, and competition will force other schools to either copy
> their methods, or develop alternative methods that produce results at
> least as good.
>
> An effective school choice program should ultimately be expected to
> produce significant increases not just for students who change
> schools, but also for students who don't change schools, because all
> schools are forced to produce good results in order to retain their
> student base.
>
> To my view, to conclude that school choice is an approach that "Just
> Doesn't Work" one would have to evaluate an example that could
> reasonably be concluded to have succeeded at creating effective
> competition, and still failed. (Or, one would have to find
> convincing evidence that it is, in practice, impossible to create
> such effective competition.)
>
> The NYC Voucher Experiment is surely not an example of creating
> effective competition. The experiment included 1300 children, out of
> more than a million in the NYC school system. So just over one tenth
> of a percent of all NYC public school students were allowed to
> participate in this program.
>
> Are we to believe that this quantity of students was sufficient to
> create effective competition, and place significant pressure on
> schools (either public or private) to produce better results?
>
> I could hardly believe so.
>
> IMPROVING THE MARKET FOR GROCERIES:
>
> Let's conduct a thought experiment.
>
> Suppose you live in a city where there's just one grocery store. It
> possesses a franchise from the city that grants it the exclusive
> right to sell groceries in the city. Because the store operates as a
> monopoly, the prices are exorbitant, the quality is poor, the hours
> are limited, and the service is generally poor.
>
> A group of people argue that grocery store choice would create
> competition, reducing prices, improving quality and improving customer
> service.
>
> Because most people have never known anything else -- at least when
> it comes to groceries -- they are skeptical. So the city council
> decides to conduct an experiment: they will grant grocery franchises
> to several other vendors. However, they limit the capacity of these
> other vendors so that they are effectively limited to supplying just
> one tenth of one percent of the city's groceries -- say by conducting
> a lottery to select one tenth of a percent of the city's population
> who will be allowed to shop at the new grocery stores.
>
> What happens? Would you expect the market for groceries to change much?
>
> Well, there may be small differences in various aspects of the
> products and service that the different stores provide, but because
> the competition is extremely limited, there's extremely little
> pressure on either the monopoly store, or the new entrants, to reduce
> prices, improve quality, or improve service, overall.
>
> Undoubtedly many consumers lucky enough to win, by lottery, the right
> to shop at their choice of stores will, on average, be more satisfied
> than they were previously (and presumably more than the "unlucky"
> consumers are, on average). For one thing, merely having a choice,
> rather than being forced to shop at the monopoly store, creates a
> sense of satisfaction. (It's well known that people become invested
> in decisions they make, once they have made them, so having made the
> decision to shop at a given store from among multiple choices, will
> create greater satisfaction, by itself.)
>
> For another, each consumer may be sensitive to small variations among
> the stores. I may be sensitive to the price of bananas, and so am
> satisfied that the store I chose has lower banana prices, even if the
> prices for other items roughly offset the savings. Or you may be
> sensitive to the fact that the store you chose is just a 30 second
> walk from your apartment. Somebody else may be sensitive to the fact
> that the store she chose is small enough that the employees recognize
> her when she comes to shop.
>
> The difference are all minor, and in many cases, do not relate
> directly to the measures that were intended to be improved. So
> customers using the new stores are more satisfied, but not
> significantly better off in temrs of overall price, quality and service.
>
> After a year, the city council hires a consultant to evaluate the
> results. The consultant concludes that the market for groceries doe
> snot seem to have improved at all. The city council declares the
> experiment a failure, and concludes "Stores are not the key" and that
> introducing competition into the grocery market "Just does not work."
>
> Of course, anybody can see that the problem is that the experiment
> never produced effective competition. Accordingly, the conclusion
> that competition "just doesn't work" is fundamentally flawed. It
> draws a sweeping conclusion from a poorly structured experiment that
> didn't actually test the original theory for how the situation could
> be improved.
>
> IT'S EVEN HARDER, BUT CERTAINLY NOT IMPOSSIBLE, FOR SCHOOL COMPETITION:
>
> Now, in the case of school choice, the problem is just that much more
> complicated, and the experiment just that much more flawed. For
> groceries, consumers can be expected to accurately recognize, and
> respond to, significant differences in price, quality and service,
> quite quickly. The same is not true for schools. There, one can
> expect it is likely to take a significant amount of time for
> competing methods to demonstrate clear differences in results, and
> for consumers (parents and students) to accurately recognize and
> respond to such.
>
> The NYC voucher experiment lasted three years. Is that long enough
> for market clarity to occur? Personally, I'm very skeptical that it was.
>
> And also, the NYC voucher program granted recipients vouchers for
> just $1400 per year -- clearly low enough to significantly limit the
> options among school alternatives, and clearly low enough that it
> would not provide a large incentive to attract new entrants to
> compete in the market.
>
> Some may be tempted to view these challenges as evidence that
> education is not amenable to effective competition. Yet our own
> experience with higher education provides compelling evidence to the
> contrary. In higher education, the market has successfully
> stabilized to a point where consumers can effectively evaluate
> differences among institutions. As a result, propsective students
> and their parents are able to effectively evaluate differences among
> institutions, and few would argue that the system hasn't produced
> strong results, across the board: the US has one of the best (if not
> the best) higher education systems in the world, attracting many
> international students, even from countries that clearly produce
> better results in primary and secondary education.
>
> ILL-FOUNDED CONCLUSIONS:
>
> Accordingly, I think that a conclusion that school choice programs
> "just don't work" based on the results of the NYC voucher experiment
> is ill-founded.
>
> I don't have details on the other experiments you discuss, in another
> piece. I expect that the fact that they were experiments -- and in
> at least a few cases characterized as similar to the NYC experiment
> -- suggests that they form no better basis for your conclusion. (Of
> course, you seem to rely on them less, anyway, because of the absence
> of fully-published data for them.)
>
> As a result, I cannot help but think that none of the examples you
> cite are likely to justify a conclusion that school choice "just doesn't
> work."
>
> (Forgetting for a moment what one can justify as a logical,
> eveidence-based conclusion, frankly, I don't even think there is a
> basis for having an intuition that school choice "just doesn't
> work." If you believe that competition in primary/secondary
> education can't and won't work to improve primary/secondary
> education, you should at least have a pretty compelling theory for
> why it clearly does work for higher education, for groceries, and for
> almost every other domain known to man, but not for primary/secondary
> education....)
>
> Jonathan
>
>  
>

Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is to
you.
GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
$1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
"confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
the source of the large difference between them.

We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel this
approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too rough
to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely sounds
to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
"expected value."

I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.

Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers disagree
with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check that.
 So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you (specifically,
if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates literally
enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high relative
theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
effectiveness), please let me know.

Just a quick clarification on this: I didn't mean to ask about
"cost-effectiveness estimates in general," but rather, specifically about
the global-health-related estimates that we use, whose issues we discussed
recently at
http://blog.givewell.org/2010/03/19/cost-effectiveness-estimates-inside-the-sausage-factory/

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:

> Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is
> to you.
> GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
> estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
> very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
> $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
> don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
> "confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
> on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
> we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
> the source of the large difference between them.
>
> We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel this
> approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too rough
> to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely sounds
> to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
> "expected value."
>
> I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
> approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>
> Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers disagree
> with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check that.
>  So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you (specifically,
> if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates literally
> enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high relative
> theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
> effectiveness), please let me know.
>

I haven't followed your approach to cost-effectiveness closely lately,  
but I have gotten an uneasy feeling that you are quickly dismissive of  
attempts to determine cost-effectiveness mathemtically.  This is a  
very rough impression but I think others that think like I do my get  
the same impression.

For example, in the post on clean water from yesterday, you state that  
your own DALY calculations differ from those of the authors.  From  
your wording, I get the impression that you think there's a good  
chance the authors made some basic math error in their calculation,  
and that therefore no one should take their estimate too seriously.  I  
glanced at the paper briefly.  Two things I notice are that the  
authors have many pages of explanation of complex mathemtical  
calculations, and that their credentials would appear to be pretty  
solid.  I think it far more likely that the basic for the calculation  
is more complicated than anything you could do from the simple  
spreadsheet.

Another example is that a recent blog post is entitled "Futility of  
standardized metrics."  I have only glanced at it but the title itself  
suggests a rather extreme view.

Finally, I've noticed several times that you put terms from the  
literature on DALYs and standardized metrics in quotation marks; you  
even do so with expected value below.  To me that comes off as  
somewhat disparaging of attempts to deal with cost-effectiveness  
mathematically.

In reality I know you understand the concepts better than this, but I  
can see how someone could get the impression that you don't.  I think  
this could be an impediment to being taken seriously by some.  And  
these might be people it would be really good to be taken seriously  
by, in terms of what they might ultimately say about GiveWell.





Quoting Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>:

> Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is to
> you.
> GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
> estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
> very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
> $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
> don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
> "confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
> on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
> we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
> the source of the large difference between them.
>
> We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel this
> approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too rough
> to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely sounds
> to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
> "expected value."
>
> I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
> approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>
> Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers disagree
> with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check that.
>  So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you (specifically,
> if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates literally
> enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high relative
> theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
> effectiveness), please let me know.
>

Ron,

As I wrote the blog post on Tuesday about the spring protection for clean
water, I would like to take a moment to respond to your comments. While I
never intended to imply that the authors had made a mathematical mistake, I
can see how the wording came across as that. My intention was only to say
that I was not able to follow the steps they took to come to their estimate
of the cost per DALY averted by spring protection.

Upon going back to the study, however, I realized that I had made an error.
It was in fact possible to follow their steps, and it became clear that the
assumptions that the authors made were more specific to the intervention,
and therefore more reasonable, than the assumptions I made in my own
estimation. I have edited the blog post to reflect my error:
http://blog.givewell.org/2010/06/15/new-evidence-that-cleaner-water-less-diarrhea/
.

Natalie

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:43 AM, <rnoble@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> I haven't followed your approach to cost-effectiveness closely lately,
> but I have gotten an uneasy feeling that you are quickly dismissive of
> attempts to determine cost-effectiveness mathemtically. This is a
> very rough impression but I think others that think like I do my get
> the same impression.
>
> For example, in the post on clean water from yesterday, you state that
> your own DALY calculations differ from those of the authors. From
> your wording, I get the impression that you think there's a good
> chance the authors made some basic math error in their calculation,
> and that therefore no one should take their estimate too seriously. I
> glanced at the paper briefly. Two things I notice are that the
> authors have many pages of explanation of complex mathemtical
> calculations, and that their credentials would appear to be pretty
> solid. I think it far more likely that the basic for the calculation
> is more complicated than anything you could do from the simple
> spreadsheet.
>
> Another example is that a recent blog post is entitled "Futility of
> standardized metrics." I have only glanced at it but the title itself
> suggests a rather extreme view.
>
> Finally, I've noticed several times that you put terms from the
> literature on DALYs and standardized metrics in quotation marks; you
> even do so with expected value below. To me that comes off as
> somewhat disparaging of attempts to deal with cost-effectiveness
> mathematically.
>
> In reality I know you understand the concepts better than this, but I
> can see how someone could get the impression that you don't. I think
> this could be an impediment to being taken seriously by some. And
> these might be people it would be really good to be taken seriously
> by, in terms of what they might ultimately say about GiveWell.
>
>
> Quoting Holden Karnofsky <Holden@... <Holden%40givewell.net>>:
>
> > Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is
> to
> > you.
> > GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
> > estimates are "too rough to take literally." We therefore use them in a
> > very non-literal way. Specifically, any organization that comes in under
> > $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and
> we
> > don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
> > "confidence in their effectiveness" factors). By contrast, we do put
> weight
> > on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control,"
> where
> > we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence
> in
> > the source of the large difference between them.
> >
> > We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel
> this
> > approach is appropriate. When we stick to language like "This is too
> rough
> > to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely
> sounds
> > to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
> > "expected value."
> >
> > I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
> > approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
> >
> > Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers
> disagree
> > with us on (and care about) this issue. However, I'd like to check that.
> > So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you (specifically,
> > if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates literally
> > enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high relative
> > theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
> > effectiveness), please let me know.
> >
>
>  
>

Just wanted to add that we do take cost-effectiveness estimates seriously
and consider them a major part of how we choose between causes and between
charities.  None of the things Ron pointed out had occurred to me as
potentially giving a different impression; I appreciate the heads up.

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Natalie Stone <natalie@...> wrote:

>
>
> Ron,
>
> As I wrote the blog post on Tuesday about the spring protection for clean
> water, I would like to take a moment to respond to your comments. While I
> never intended to imply that the authors had made a mathematical mistake, I
> can see how the wording came across as that. My intention was only to say
> that I was not able to follow the steps they took to come to their estimate
> of the cost per DALY averted by spring protection.
>
> Upon going back to the study, however, I realized that I had made an error.
> It was in fact possible to follow their steps, and it became clear that the
> assumptions that the authors made were more specific to the intervention,
> and therefore more reasonable, than the assumptions I made in my own
> estimation. I have edited the blog post to reflect my error:
> http://blog.givewell.org/2010/06/15/new-evidence-that-cleaner-water-less-diarrhea/
> .
>
> Natalie
>
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:43 AM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I haven't followed your approach to cost-effectiveness closely lately,
>> but I have gotten an uneasy feeling that you are quickly dismissive of
>> attempts to determine cost-effectiveness mathemtically. This is a
>> very rough impression but I think others that think like I do my get
>> the same impression.
>>
>> For example, in the post on clean water from yesterday, you state that
>> your own DALY calculations differ from those of the authors. From
>> your wording, I get the impression that you think there's a good
>> chance the authors made some basic math error in their calculation,
>> and that therefore no one should take their estimate too seriously. I
>> glanced at the paper briefly. Two things I notice are that the
>> authors have many pages of explanation of complex mathemtical
>> calculations, and that their credentials would appear to be pretty
>> solid. I think it far more likely that the basic for the calculation
>> is more complicated than anything you could do from the simple
>> spreadsheet.
>>
>> Another example is that a recent blog post is entitled "Futility of
>> standardized metrics." I have only glanced at it but the title itself
>> suggests a rather extreme view.
>>
>> Finally, I've noticed several times that you put terms from the
>> literature on DALYs and standardized metrics in quotation marks; you
>> even do so with expected value below. To me that comes off as
>> somewhat disparaging of attempts to deal with cost-effectiveness
>> mathematically.
>>
>> In reality I know you understand the concepts better than this, but I
>> can see how someone could get the impression that you don't. I think
>> this could be an impediment to being taken seriously by some. And
>> these might be people it would be really good to be taken seriously
>> by, in terms of what they might ultimately say about GiveWell.
>>
>>
>> Quoting Holden Karnofsky <Holden@... <Holden%40givewell.net>>:
>>
>> > Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue
>> is to
>> > you.
>> > GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
>> > estimates are "too rough to take literally." We therefore use them in a
>> > very non-literal way. Specifically, any organization that comes in under
>> > $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective"
>> and we
>> > don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
>> > "confidence in their effectiveness" factors). By contrast, we do put
>> weight
>> > on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control,"
>> where
>> > we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more
>> confidence in
>> > the source of the large difference between them.
>> >
>> > We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel
>> this
>> > approach is appropriate. When we stick to language like "This is too
>> rough
>> > to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely
>> sounds
>> > to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
>> > "expected value."
>> >
>> > I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
>> > approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>> >
>> > Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers
>> disagree
>> > with us on (and care about) this issue. However, I'd like to check that.
>> > So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
>> (specifically,
>> > if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates literally
>> > enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high relative
>> > theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
>> > effectiveness), please let me know.
>> >
>>
>>
>  
>

There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive suffering in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of our willingness to do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot `knowingly' stop a single one of those occurrences. In other words, and put into the interrogative: is there a way for me to give a part of my money or time and know that, as a consequence of my personal contribution, some individual is going to avoid an agonizing experience?

GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to Stop TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good logistics for immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate provision of drugs, that is enough excessive suffering alleviation for me, of course. However, most organizations claim that they reach that kind of results. Why should I trust GiveWell more? At this time, I realize that GiveWell provides more detailed demonstrative analysis, and so, unless I find something better in the meantime, my next donation will be for it. 

Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, and I continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, I understand that it would be impracticable for charities to track individual donors' impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I am given to understand that the impact of collective donation is equally impossible to establish quite satisfactorily. It seems that analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as much as it diminishes them. So, partly related to the thread "On doing the most good", my question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any significant good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer lies in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and plenty of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one occurrence of excessive suffering?

Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent researcher on the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question might be used to start up a project called "Setting in motion a collective management of suffering". More information is available on my website.

Robert Daoust
www.algosphere.org 

Robert, thanks for the thoughtful question.

If I'm reading you right, it sounds like you have more time than money and
value certainty of impact over expected magnitude of impact.  In that case
you might go somewhere in the developing world yourself, seek out a remote
poor area where interactions with tourists/Westerners are rare, and give
your money to someone who is clearly living in abject poverty.  You still
can't be assured that they will put the money to good use, but offhand it
seems like the best way to meet your specific parameters as I understand
them (please correct me if I'm not).

On the other hand, I think this is a very inefficient way to accomplish
good.  Personally, I'm more than happy to trade certainty of impact for
significance of impact.

Best,
Holden

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Robert Daoust <robertdaoust@...> wrote:

>
>
> There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive suffering
> in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of our willingness to
> do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot `knowingly' stop a single one
> of those occurrences. In other words, and put into the interrogative: is
> there a way for me to give a part of my money or time and know that, as a
> consequence of my personal contribution, some individual is going to avoid
> an agonizing experience?
>
> GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to Stop
> TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good logistics for
> immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate provision of drugs,
> that is enough excessive suffering alleviation for me, of course. However,
> most organizations claim that they reach that kind of results. Why should I
> trust GiveWell more? At this time, I realize that GiveWell provides more
> detailed demonstrative analysis, and so, unless I find something better in
> the meantime, my next donation will be for it.
>
> Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, and I
> continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, I understand
> that it would be impracticable for charities to track individual donors'
> impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I am given to understand
> that the impact of collective donation is equally impossible to establish
> quite satisfactorily. It seems that analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as
> much as it diminishes them. So, partly related to the thread "On doing the
> most good", my question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any
> significant good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer
> lies in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and plenty
> of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one occurrence of
> excessive suffering?
>
> Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent researcher on
> the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question might be used to start up
> a project called "Setting in motion a collective management of suffering".
> More information is available on my website.
>
> Robert Daoust
> www.algosphere.org
>
>  
>

Your post gets at several of the reasons why giving effectively and intelligently is challenging:

1) Credibility.  Many entities make claims about impact.  This ranges from the charities themselves ("Give $X.xx a day to help/save a child") to those who are a step or two back, either charity evaluators (like GiveWell) or academics or others.

I don't know of an easy way to painlessly evaluate the credibility of impact statements.  In any case, you will likely need to evaluate the supporting evidence or authority for any such claims.  

While GiveWell is not perfect, I think they do better than just about anyone else in supporting their claims and evaluations with evidence and analysis. 


2) Impact/Tangibility.  This is something I struggle with too.  It would be nice if your specific gift could be closely tied to a specific project or intervention that would not have occurred without your contribution, and that can be proven to be effective.  

Unfortunately, it seems there is a trade-off between tangibility and effectiveness.  At one end of the scale, you can give a homeless man on the street $5.  You can be confident that the money has arrived at it's intended destination, and in fact you can see the beneficiary with your own eyes.  Unfortunately, it is far more difficult to say that the $5 gift will really do a lot of good.  Perhaps the homeless man will simply spend the money on booze or drugs or simply delay attempts at rehabilitation that much longer.  

On the other hand, programs with reasonably good evidence of effectiveness, and potentially high dollar returns, in terms of lives impacted or saved per $1000, tend not to support the close linkage between a specific donors gift and a specific impact.  When charities try to establish such linkages in the donor's mind (Kiva or various child sponsorship charities), closer analysis sometimes reveals that such linkages are not necessarily as close as portrayed to the donor, and the charities themselves may not be among the best in terms of impact.

===

Bottom line:  Giving effectively is hard.  Much of what the public at large believes and/or practices in their giving is rather questionable, if analyzed reasonably objectively with a standard of trying to maximize positive impact.  It's a bit disillusioning at first, but I think learning more about giving is still important and a good thing for the charitably minded.

I have a couple of thoughts on this.  One is that certainty of good  
effects is impossible.  You might hand deliver drugs to me that will  
cure a fatal illness that I have.  After I take them you might find  
out I also have another fatal condition which can't be treated, which  
will kill much more painfully that the first one would have.  In my  
daily life, I'm constantly trying to bring about good effects for  
myself.  On average I succeed to a fair extent, but that's just on  
average.  Many individual efforts I make are wasted or  
counterproductive.

It may help to think of your efforts at helping in the aggregate.  If  
each effort has a reasonable chance of doing some good, it is almost a  
certainty that when you make many such efforts, you have done at least  
some good.

Quoting Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>:

> Robert, thanks for the thoughtful question.
>
> If I'm reading you right, it sounds like you have more time than money and
> value certainty of impact over expected magnitude of impact.  In that case
> you might go somewhere in the developing world yourself, seek out a remote
> poor area where interactions with tourists/Westerners are rare, and give
> your money to someone who is clearly living in abject poverty.  You still
> can't be assured that they will put the money to good use, but offhand it
> seems like the best way to meet your specific parameters as I understand
> them (please correct me if I'm not).
>
> On the other hand, I think this is a very inefficient way to accomplish
> good.  Personally, I'm more than happy to trade certainty of impact for
> significance of impact.
>
> Best,
> Holden
>
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Robert Daoust <robertdaoust@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive suffering
>> in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of our willingness to
>> do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot `knowingly' stop a single one
>> of those occurrences. In other words, and put into the interrogative: is
>> there a way for me to give a part of my money or time and know that, as a
>> consequence of my personal contribution, some individual is going to avoid
>> an agonizing experience?
>>
>> GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to Stop
>> TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good logistics for
>> immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate provision of drugs,
>> that is enough excessive suffering alleviation for me, of course. However,
>> most organizations claim that they reach that kind of results. Why should I
>> trust GiveWell more? At this time, I realize that GiveWell provides more
>> detailed demonstrative analysis, and so, unless I find something better in
>> the meantime, my next donation will be for it.
>>
>> Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, and I
>> continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, I understand
>> that it would be impracticable for charities to track individual donors'
>> impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I am given to understand
>> that the impact of collective donation is equally impossible to establish
>> quite satisfactorily. It seems that analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as
>> much as it diminishes them. So, partly related to the thread "On doing the
>> most good", my question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any
>> significant good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer
>> lies in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and plenty
>> of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one occurrence of
>> excessive suffering?
>>
>> Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent researcher on
>> the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question might be used to start up
>> a project called "Setting in motion a collective management of suffering".
>> More information is available on my website.
>>
>> Robert Daoust
>> www.algosphere.org
>>
>>
>>
>

Good point.  Even decisions that we take for ourselves, with purely selfish motives, don't always have positive outcomes.  

So obviously we should not have unrealistic expectations of certainty in our actions intended to benefit others whose circumstances we understand less well than our own, and whom we generally need to use a chain of intermediaries to reach.  

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, rnoble@... wrote:
>
> 
> 
> I have a couple of thoughts on this.  One is that certainty of good  
> effects is impossible.  You might hand deliver drugs to me that will  
> cure a fatal illness that I have.  After I take them you might find  
> out I also have another fatal condition which can't be treated, which  
> will kill much more painfully that the first one would have.  In my  
> daily life, I'm constantly trying to bring about good effects for  
> myself.  On average I succeed to a fair extent, but that's just on  
> average.  Many individual efforts I make are wasted or  
> counterproductive.
> 
> It may help to think of your efforts at helping in the aggregate.  If  
> each effort has a reasonable chance of doing some good, it is almost a  
> certainty that when you make many such efforts, you have done at least  
> some good.
> 

There's a very basic question that you need to ask yourself, here: 
what is your ultimate goal in charitable giving?

Is it to produce the greatest benefit (or in your terms, the largest 
reduction in suffering)?  Or is it to produce the greatest sense of 
self-satisfaction that you have done something to reduce suffering?

Understand, I mean this only half-critically, as I'm sure we all, to 
one degree or another, indulge a desire to feel as if we are 
achieving some good by our various charitable activities.  I am 
certainly not immune to such, myself.

But as I read your post, this is the essential issue that I see -- a 
struggle between the intellectual and the emotional.  It is certainly 
more personally satisfying to be able to clearly identify a 
particular person or persons whom you have helped.  However, it is 
reasonable to expect that pursuing such self-gratifaction makes our 
charitable endeavors less efficient than they might otherwise be.

One can probably do the most good by researching charitable efforts 
that occur on large scales, with the efficiencies (and almost 
certainly more effective-prioritization of resources) that come with 
such, and choosing one that seems to have a convincing case for being 
efficient.  One probably does significantly less good by pursuing 
small scale, but more easily observable, interventions with specific 
people (on one's own, or otherwise).

So I do think that there's an essential question for each of us of 
just how much we are willing to indulge our own emotional 
gratification, at the expense of efficiency.

To the degree that one is motivated to do more by the gratification 
of tangible impact, perhaps that offsets the reduction in 
efficiency.  (Though I'm not sure this works out in a economic 
sense.)  Or there may be benefits to the degree that small-scale, 
individually-oriented interventions are much less likely to foster dependency.

But I do think the essential question that must first be addressed 
here is whether the desire to see tangible impact from your personal 
contribution is fundamentally just an emotional indulgence.  And if 
you conclude it is, then the question is the degree to which you are 
comfortable actually indulging that desire.


At 01:40 PM 6/21/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
>
>There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive 
>suffering in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of 
>our willingness to do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot 
>`knowingly' stop a single one of those occurrences. In other words, 
>and put into the interrogative: is there a way for me to give a part 
>of my money or time and know that, as a consequence of my personal 
>contribution, some individual is going to avoid an agonizing experience?
>
>GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to 
>Stop TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good 
>logistics for immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate 
>provision of drugs, that is enough excessive suffering alleviation 
>for me, of course. However, most organizations claim that they reach 
>that kind of results. Why should I trust GiveWell more? At this 
>time, I realize that GiveWell provides more detailed demonstrative 
>analysis, and so, unless I find something better in the meantime, my 
>next donation will be for it.
>
>Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, 
>and I continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, 
>I understand that it would be impracticable for charities to track 
>individual donors' impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I 
>am given to understand that the impact of collective donation is 
>equally impossible to establish quite satisfactorily. It seems that 
>analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as much as it diminishes them. 
>So, partly related to the thread "On doing the most good", my 
>question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any significant 
>good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer lies 
>in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and 
>plenty of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one 
>occurrence of excessive suffering?
>
>Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent 
>researcher on the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question 
>might be used to start up a project called "Setting in motion a 
>collective management of suffering". More information is available 
>on my website.
>
>Robert Daoust
>www.algosphere.org

Holden, thanks and congratulations for your wonderful work at GiveWell, and for this specialized forum that allows to address a question which is so important to me.

I have plenty of time and almost no money. I could not afford to travel to the developing world for delivering my meager donation myself, even if such a donation was an efficient way to accomplish good, which I think it might if I took care to deliver by myself the good that money could buy.

I am all for expected magnitude of impact, but my concern is the same for the smallest or biggest of impacts: how to make apparent the link between `my' action and any impact at all in terms of intended alleviation of excessive suffering? Show me one case for which I am the efficient cause of alleviation, and I hold you quits with whatever magnitude you want. As I said in a different context a few years ago: "If your organization is not able to guarantee that my action is rescuing someone who would be lost without me, why should I care to help you?" My point will be better understood, hopefully, as I reply to other posts. 

Best,
Robert


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...> wrote:
>
> Robert, thanks for the thoughtful question.
> 
> If I'm reading you right, it sounds like you have more time than money and
> value certainty of impact over expected magnitude of impact.  In that case
> you might go somewhere in the developing world yourself, seek out a remote
> poor area where interactions with tourists/Westerners are rare, and give
> your money to someone who is clearly living in abject poverty.  You still
> can't be assured that they will put the money to good use, but offhand it
> seems like the best way to meet your specific parameters as I understand
> them (please correct me if I'm not).
> 
> On the other hand, I think this is a very inefficient way to accomplish
> good.  Personally, I'm more than happy to trade certainty of impact for
> significance of impact.
> 
> Best,
> Holden
> 
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Robert Daoust <robertdaoust@...> wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive suffering
> > in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of our willingness to
> > do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot `knowingly' stop a single one
> > of those occurrences. In other words, and put into the interrogative: is
> > there a way for me to give a part of my money or time and know that, as a
> > consequence of my personal contribution, some individual is going to avoid
> > an agonizing experience?
> >
> > GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to Stop
> > TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good logistics for
> > immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate provision of drugs,
> > that is enough excessive suffering alleviation for me, of course. However,
> > most organizations claim that they reach that kind of results. Why should I
> > trust GiveWell more? At this time, I realize that GiveWell provides more
> > detailed demonstrative analysis, and so, unless I find something better in
> > the meantime, my next donation will be for it.
> >
> > Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, and I
> > continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, I understand
> > that it would be impracticable for charities to track individual donors'
> > impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I am given to understand
> > that the impact of collective donation is equally impossible to establish
> > quite satisfactorily. It seems that analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as
> > much as it diminishes them. So, partly related to the thread "On doing the
> > most good", my question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any
> > significant good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer
> > lies in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and plenty
> > of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one occurrence of
> > excessive suffering?
> >
> > Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent researcher on
> > the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question might be used to start up
> > a project called "Setting in motion a collective management of suffering".
> > More information is available on my website.
> >
> > Robert Daoust
> > www.algosphere.org
> >
> >  
> >
>

My first post can be read as if I was after the personal emotional satisfaction of being able to identify a particular person whom I have helped. As a matter of fact, in spite that I am indeed basically motivated by the pursuit of self-satisfaction in doing good (shouldn't we all?), I am after something quite different. I am an algonomist, a theoretician of suffering looking for a way to further a collective management of suffering. From my specialized point of view, I am raising the issues of credibility, tangibility, performance, or impact (to use words from psteinx) in order that we get the best mutually profiting exchange possible in this forum.

"What is your ultimate goal in charitable giving?" This is probably the primary question par excellence. If someone wants to give for the teaching of piano, that is okay with me, but not much of my business. In a blog entry titled "My favorite cause", Holden for instance wrote on July 30th 2007: "I don't value happiness, or even the absence of pain, as much as most people do. What I really value is giving someone the opportunity to reach their full potential as a world-shaper, not just -citizen; I want people to experience, learn from, compete with, or even be the best in the world at what they care most about." That sounds very good, but from my point of view there is a risk that someone's full potential would be too much pain-producing. I generally think that the good will take care of itself, so that we should focus instead on the bad that must be reined in. To be thoroughly clear, I must say that my ultimate goal in charitable giving is to use that sphere of activity as a means in the collective management of suffering. That is not to say that philanthropy should be reduced to that role. It could happen that I would want myself to give for the teaching of piano. But in my understanding, those who are concerned with suffering in the world should give in a way that is informed first and foremost by algonomy. And since so many donors care about suffering, I believe philanthropy should become allied with algonomy.

The best and simplest way to reach the magnitude of impact required for resolving the huge problems with which philanthropy and algonomy are concerned, I suggest, is to scale up `seaminglessly' from the individual to the organizational level, by dealing INDIVIDUALLY* through our personal contributions with ALL those who MUST be urgently helped. That is what I have in mind with the question "How can I stop or prevent at least one occurrence of excessive suffering?" and the related algonomic project "Setting in motion a collective management of suffering". If I could stop one occurrence, it is probable that from then on this would be repeatable and scalable. If I or anybody could not, that would represent, in my humble opinion, an incredible discovery! 
 
I know that GiveWell is not in the business of starting new organization, so I am not asking you to follow me in my endeavor, but as I said above, perhaps we can be mutually useful. 

*I believe, maybe counter-intuitively, that it would be simpler to deal with the millions or billions of excessive suffering occurrences than with supposedly simple categories like causes of problems or groups of victims. That is not to say that those categories are worthless in other respects.


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "J. S. Greenfield" <jsg@...> wrote:
>
> There's a very basic question that you need to ask yourself, here: 
> what is your ultimate goal in charitable giving?
> 
> Is it to produce the greatest benefit (or in your terms, the largest 
> reduction in suffering)?  Or is it to produce the greatest sense of 
> self-satisfaction that you have done something to reduce suffering?
> 
> Understand, I mean this only half-critically, as I'm sure we all, to 
> one degree or another, indulge a desire to feel as if we are 
> achieving some good by our various charitable activities.  I am 
> certainly not immune to such, myself.
> 
> But as I read your post, this is the essential issue that I see -- a 
> struggle between the intellectual and the emotional.  It is certainly 
> more personally satisfying to be able to clearly identify a 
> particular person or persons whom you have helped.  However, it is 
> reasonable to expect that pursuing such self-gratifaction makes our 
> charitable endeavors less efficient than they might otherwise be.
> 
> One can probably do the most good by researching charitable efforts 
> that occur on large scales, with the efficiencies (and almost 
> certainly more effective-prioritization of resources) that come with 
> such, and choosing one that seems to have a convincing case for being 
> efficient.  One probably does significantly less good by pursuing 
> small scale, but more easily observable, interventions with specific 
> people (on one's own, or otherwise).
> 
> So I do think that there's an essential question for each of us of 
> just how much we are willing to indulge our own emotional 
> gratification, at the expense of efficiency.
> 
> To the degree that one is motivated to do more by the gratification 
> of tangible impact, perhaps that offsets the reduction in 
> efficiency.  (Though I'm not sure this works out in a economic 
> sense.)  Or there may be benefits to the degree that small-scale, 
> individually-oriented interventions are much less likely to foster dependency.
> 
> But I do think the essential question that must first be addressed 
> here is whether the desire to see tangible impact from your personal 
> contribution is fundamentally just an emotional indulgence.  And if 
> you conclude it is, then the question is the degree to which you are 
> comfortable actually indulging that desire.
> 
> 
> At 01:40 PM 6/21/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> >
> >There are countless, perhaps millions of occurrences of excessive 
> >suffering in the world around us, and yet it seems that in spite of 
> >our willingness to do so, we the people, as individuals, cannot 
> >`knowingly' stop a single one of those occurrences. In other words, 
> >and put into the interrogative: is there a way for me to give a part 
> >of my money or time and know that, as a consequence of my personal 
> >contribution, some individual is going to avoid an agonizing experience?
> >
> >GiveWell recommends that I give, for instance, to VillageReach or to 
> >Stop TB Partnership. Preventing severe illnesses through good 
> >logistics for immunization, or curing tuberculosis through adequate 
> >provision of drugs, that is enough excessive suffering alleviation 
> >for me, of course. However, most organizations claim that they reach 
> >that kind of results. Why should I trust GiveWell more? At this 
> >time, I realize that GiveWell provides more detailed demonstrative 
> >analysis, and so, unless I find something better in the meantime, my 
> >next donation will be for it.
> >
> >Still, I really need to see more `clearly' the impact of my action, 
> >and I continue to look for something better. Browsing GiveWell site, 
> >I understand that it would be impracticable for charities to track 
> >individual donors' impact, but as well, if I go deeper in details, I 
> >am given to understand that the impact of collective donation is 
> >equally impossible to establish quite satisfactorily. It seems that 
> >analysis multiplies reasonable doubts as much as it diminishes them. 
> >So, partly related to the thread "On doing the most good", my 
> >question remains: is it possible for anyone to do any significant 
> >good for sure? For me, beyond all abstract analysis, the answer lies 
> >in a practical demonstration. I have a few hundred dollars and 
> >plenty of time to give: can you tell me how to `knowingly' stop one 
> >occurrence of excessive suffering?
> >
> >Disclosure of (non financial) interest: I am an independent 
> >researcher on the topic of suffering. Your answer to my question 
> >might be used to start up a project called "Setting in motion a 
> >collective management of suffering". More information is available 
> >on my website.
> >
> >Robert Daoust
> >www.algosphere.org
>

Good point indeed. We may agree however, and please correct me if I am wrong on this capital point, that certainty of good effects is impossible only inasmuch as the good in question cannot be defined, observed, or done. As a consequence, I prefer to speak specifically of suffering, and more specifically of excessive suffering. Suffering, as defined in Wikipedia, can be observed and acted upon. We can start, stop, shorten, prolong, or prevent an occurrence of suffering. As an objective phenomenon, suffering is not good or bad, but because I am a moral agent, I may consider that, to me, suffering `excessively' is bad, and that alleviating excessive suffering is the main good at stake in an approach to philanthropy.

You may object: "You might hand deliver drugs to me that will cure a fatal illness that I have. After I take them you might find out I also have another fatal condition which can't be treated, which will kill much more painfully that the first one would have." Well... provided that I cannot know in advance that my action will cause you more harm than good, my effort to alleviate your pain is certainly worthwhile! In the aggregate of our efforts, of course, there will be good result, waste and counterproduction. In order to minimize uncertainty and maximize impact in philanthropic endeavor, I suggest that an `algonomic' (i.e. specialized) approach to suffering could be useful. It could help for instance in dealing with the fact that we understand other people's circumstances less well than our own, or that intermediaries are a complicating factor.


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "psteinx" <psteinmeyer@...> wrote:
>
> Good point.  Even decisions that we take for ourselves, with purely selfish motives, don't always have positive outcomes.  
> 
> So obviously we should not have unrealistic expectations of certainty in our actions intended to benefit others whose circumstances we understand less well than our own, and whom we generally need to use a chain of intermediaries to reach.  
> 
> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, rnoble@ wrote:
> >
> > 
> > 
> > I have a couple of thoughts on this.  One is that certainty of good  
> > effects is impossible.  You might hand deliver drugs to me that will  
> > cure a fatal illness that I have.  After I take them you might find  
> > out I also have another fatal condition which can't be treated, which  
> > will kill much more painfully that the first one would have.  In my  
> > daily life, I'm constantly trying to bring about good effects for  
> > myself.  On average I succeed to a fair extent, but that's just on  
> > average.  Many individual efforts I make are wasted or  
> > counterproductive.
> > 
> > It may help to think of your efforts at helping in the aggregate.  If  
> > each effort has a reasonable chance of doing some good, it is almost a  
> > certainty that when you make many such efforts, you have done at least  
> > some good.
> >
>

If you have a lot of time and very little money, then it is very 
inefficient for you to spend your time deciding how best to spend your money.

Let's suppose you have $100 to donate.  You want to make sure it has 
the maximum impact, so you spend a week evaluating how best to use 
it.  Let's call that 40 hours.  Now suppose that your time is worth 
$20/hour.  That is, you could earn $20/hour working at a job, or you 
could provide $20/hour worth of value to some charity, donating your services.

If you spend 40 hours, you're effectively investing $800 worth of 
value in research.  But the largest payoff  you can possibly achieve 
is $100 of value -- assuming that without the research you would have 
donated the $100 to a totally ineffective charity that completely 
wasted it, and by doing the research you were able to find a charity 
that put the $100 to its best and highest possible use.

In that case, you have invested $900 of value to achieve an output of 
$100 of value.  So the maximum efficiency in this case is 11%.  In 
reality, it is probably much smaller than 11%.

In that case, you'd almost certainly be much more efficient throwing 
darts to choose a charity (or charities), and then donating the $100 
and your $800 worth of time to whatever charities you come up 
with.  Even a very inefficient charity that wastes 75% of the 
potential value of donations would yield an output value of $225 -- 
more than twice the result in the hypothetical case of perfecting 
your research.

Bottom line, unless you are planning to make a large donation (or 
like givewell, trying to influence many donors representing large net 
donations), investing in research to assure (or "guarantee") 
effectiveness necessarily yields highly ineffective results.



At 06:43 AM 6/24/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:

>I have plenty of time and almost no money. I could not afford to 
>travel to the developing world for delivering my meager donation 
>myself, even if such a donation was an efficient way to accomplish 
>good, which I think it might if I took care to deliver by myself the 
>good that money could buy.
>
>I am all for expected magnitude of impact, but my concern is the 
>same for the smallest or biggest of impacts: how to make apparent 
>the link between `my' action and any impact at all in terms of 
>intended alleviation of excessive suffering? Show me one case for 
>which I am the efficient cause of alleviation, and I hold you quits 
>with whatever magnitude you want. As I said in a different context a 
>few years ago: "If your organization is not able to guarantee that 
>my action is rescuing someone who would be lost without me, why 
>should I care to help you?" My point will be better understood, 
>hopefully, as I reply to other posts.
>
>Best,
>Robert

In reality, focusing on near-term reduction of (excessive) suffering 
is almost certainly an extremely inefficient way to reduce 
(excessive) suffering.  It may be a humane impulse, to help an 
individual suffering right now and/or right in front of you, but it 
is almost certainly an inefficient one -- at least where the 
suffering is tied to poverty, as the vast majority of suffering 
surely must be.  Poverty-related suffering is almost certainly much 
more efficiently addressed by economic development.

To my view, this suggests that one must thoughfully limit one's 
investment in near-term point reductions in suffering vs. long-term 
systemic efforts to develop economies.  It's very easy to see a 
person suffering today, but what about the 10 or 100 or 1000 that 
will suffer tomorrow, whose suffering could be alleviated or 
eliminated by wise investment of the same dollars?

If your intent is to think long and hard about how to minimize 
suffering (or achieve the maximum reduction is excessive suffering, 
or whatever), it seems very strange to me to emphasize easily (and 
personally) observable results, as opposed emphasizing efficiency and impact.


At 02:06 PM 6/24/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:

>My first post can be read as if I was after the personal emotional 
>satisfaction of being able to identify a particular person whom I 
>have helped. As a matter of fact, in spite that I am indeed 
>basically motivated by the pursuit of self-satisfaction in doing 
>good (shouldn't we all?), I am after something quite different. I am 
>an algonomist, a theoretician of suffering looking for a way to 
>further a collective management of suffering. From my specialized 
>point of view, I am raising the issues of credibility, tangibility, 
>performance, or impact (to use words from psteinx) in order that we 
>get the best mutually profiting exchange possible in this forum.
>
>"What is your ultimate goal in charitable giving?" This is probably 
>the primary question par excellence. If someone wants to give for 
>the teaching of piano, that is okay with me, but not much of my 
>business. In a blog entry titled "My favorite cause", Holden for 
>instance wrote on July 30th 2007: "I don't value happiness, or even 
>the absence of pain, as much as most people do. What I really value 
>is giving someone the opportunity to reach their full potential as a 
>world-shaper, not just -citizen; I want people to experience, learn 
>from, compete with, or even be the best in the world at what they 
>care most about." That sounds very good, but from my point of view 
>there is a risk that someone's full potential would be too much 
>pain-producing. I generally think that the good will take care of 
>itself, so that we should focus instead on the bad that must be 
>reined in. To be thoroughly clear, I must say that my ultimate goal 
>in charitable giving is to use that sphere of activity as a means in 
>the collective management of suffering. That is not to say that 
>philanthropy should be reduced to that role. It could happen that I 
>would want myself to give for the teaching of piano. But in my 
>understanding, those who are concerned with suffering in the world 
>should give in a way that is informed first and foremost by 
>algonomy. And since so many donors care about suffering, I believe 
>philanthropy should become allied with algonomy.
>
>The best and simplest way to reach the magnitude of impact required 
>for resolving the huge problems with which philanthropy and algonomy 
>are concerned, I suggest, is to scale up `seaminglessly' from the 
>individual to the organizational level, by dealing INDIVIDUALLY* 
>through our personal contributions with ALL those who MUST be 
>urgently helped. That is what I have in mind with the question "How 
>can I stop or prevent at least one occurrence of excessive 
>suffering?" and the related algonomic project "Setting in motion a 
>collective management of suffering". If I could stop one occurrence, 
>it is probable that from then on this would be repeatable and 
>scalable. If I or anybody could not, that would represent, in my 
>humble opinion, an incredible discovery!
>
>I know that GiveWell is not in the business of starting new 
>organization, so I am not asking you to follow me in my endeavor, 
>but as I said above, perhaps we can be mutually useful.
>
>*I believe, maybe counter-intuitively, that it would be simpler to 
>deal with the millions or billions of excessive suffering 
>occurrences than with supposedly simple categories like causes of 
>problems or groups of victims. That is not to say that those 
>categories are worthless in other respects.

Below is an exchange I had with Nick Beckstead on the subject of
cost-effectiveness estimates (which I requested feedback on previously),
forwarded with permission.

(Read from the bottom if interested)

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Hi Nick, thanks for the thoughts.  I think these are good questions, and
would like to forward this exchange to the list with your permission.

*Re: the $1000 threshold.  *It would take serious effort to flesh out and
defend our full picture of what differences are and aren't meaningful.  The
short answer is that there are a substantial number of interventions that
are 1. Under this threshold and 2. "Best in class" in the sense that there's
no highly comparable intervention that seems to perform better.  The
differences between estimates for these "best in class" interventions seem
highly fragile to us (there are sometimes even conflicting estimates given
on different pages of the DCP report that are off by a factor of several,
with no clear explanation).  However, for most of the things we've seen that
fail the threshold, there are fairly concrete explanations for why they are
less cost-effective than the "best-in-class" interventions (for example, the
higher cost-effectiveness of TB treatment relative to ART can clearly be
seen in differences in how much the drugs cost and in how long they need to
be taken).
*
*
*Re: weighing confidence in the organization vs. cost-effectiveness of the
estimate.  I think a lot of this comes down to intuitions, especially re:
the proper prior for a charity's efficacy.*
*
*
*Our prior is pretty low for a variety of reasons, including:*

   - *We just think the whole endeavor of helping people in the developing
   world seems inherently challenging, especially for organizations and people
   that we don't believe have functioning/healthy incentives.  *
   - *When we look at the history of aid, we don't see anything to undermine
   this view; there are some striking successes, but no macro **picture that
   suggests aid is usually or even often effective.  (To be clear, we also
   don't think the macro picture suggests aid is *ineffective* - it's mostly
   just unclear.)*
   - *And when we investigate the very best charities (in terms of giving us
   confidence that their activities work) we can find, we end up constantly
   coming up with new things to be worried about, not all of which are
   satisfyingly addressed even by these outstanding and highly transparent
   organizations.  From 10,000 feet these organizations' activities seem at
   least as simple and likely to succeed as any others'.  We keep this
   observation in mind when thinking about other organizations that also seem
   to have relatively straightforward activities, but haven't share information
   that would even let us begin to think about potential problems.*

There are a couple of other reasons that we generally put "confidence that
it works" at the center of our rankings, rather than formally multiplying
P(it works) by (cost-effectiveness if it does work):

   - Incentives.  Thought experiment: imagine that organizations A, B, and C
   are all health organizations facing similar challenges, but that C's program
   has 3x the theoretical cost-effectiveness of A's and B's.  Imagine that A
   discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely work; B
   discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely fail; C
   discloses nothing.  One might find it appropriate to expect C to perform
   about as well as the average of A and B (I wouldn't, since I think
   willingness to disclose is correlated with quality) ... but even if so, I
   think it would be a mistake to fund C in this case.  Doing so would create
   incentives for poor organizations to disclose less and therefore benefit
   from the fact that donors base their estimates on strong organizations.  As
   an evaluator, we are particularly mindful of what behavior we are rewarding,
   but I think a donor ought to pay some attention to this as well.
   - The question of how to weigh confidence in activiteis vs. theoretical
   cost-effectiveness of activities seems somewhat moot to us since our top
   charities perform well on both.  Our top-rated organizations have very high
   cost-effectiveness in the scheme of things, and we don't think there's good
   reason to expect higher cost-effectiveness from anyone else just based on
   what program they're running.

Hopefully this helps clarify how we are thinking, even if I haven't given
the specifics/sources that would let you evaluate our thinking (as I said,
that would be a significant enough undertaking that I want a good sense of
how important it is).

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Nick Beckstead wrote:

> Hi Holden, (cc: Elie)
>
> 1.  I would like to know more about why you do not attempt to distinguish
> between organizations whose cost-effectiveness falls below the $1000/death
> range.  Prima facie, it sounds like a strange policy.  The only
> justification I can think of is of the form: we just can't tell the
> difference between organizations that work at $250/death and $500/death with
> any confidence to speak of.  This answer is hard to understand from the
> outside, since you seem to be able to distinguish between organizations that
> are at $750/death and those over $1500/death.
>
> 2.  You write: "So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
> (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates
> literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high
> relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
> effectiveness), please let me know." I'm worried about this (but I don't
> really know what to think).  I tend to agree that many of the theoretical
> cost-effectiveness estimates are too optimistic, but I wouldn't want to
> overcorrect for this.  Some of the GWWC folks, Toby Ord in particular, make
> it sound like you guys go too far in "assuming the worst" when it comes to
> unknowns in a charity.  (I think Toby said this about SCI in particular.)  I
> need to understand the situation more before I agree or disagree, but I'd
> like to know more about your policy here.
>
> If I were in your shoes, I would work with a risk over uncertainty premium
> and a good bit or risk aversion, since that is important for your long term
> credibility.  But as an individual donor, I am less concerned about such
> things.  I just want to give where it maximizes expected value, so I might
> be willing to tolerate many unanswered questions with murky probabilities,
> provided the expected value calculation works out right.
>
> Not sure if you wanted me to post this to the listserv, or just send to you
> directly.
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is
>> to you.
>> GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
>> estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
>> very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
>> $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
>> don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
>> "confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
>> on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
>> we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
>> the source of the large difference between them.
>>
>> We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel this
>> approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too rough
>> to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely sounds
>> to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
>> "expected value."
>>
>> I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
>> approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>>
>> Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers
>> disagree with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check
>> that.  So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
>> (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates
>> literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high
>> relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
>> effectiveness), please let me know.
>>  
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Nick Beckstead
> Ph.D. Student
> Department of Philosophy
> Rutgers University
>

As far as suffering is concerned `first and foremost', I hold that economy is as much a part of the problem than of the solution. That's why I lend no credibility to the idea of doing charity by working to accumulate surpluses and giving them away. And I believe it is the same thing, with respective differences taken into consideration, in relation to politics, religion, or any other domain in which suffering is in fact a secondary consideration.

For the rest, I am afraid I am quite misunderstood by you, Mr. Greenfield.


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "J. S. Greenfield" <jsg@...> wrote:
>
> In reality, focusing on near-term reduction of (excessive) suffering 
> is almost certainly an extremely inefficient way to reduce 
> (excessive) suffering.  It may be a humane impulse, to help an 
> individual suffering right now and/or right in front of you, but it 
> is almost certainly an inefficient one -- at least where the 
> suffering is tied to poverty, as the vast majority of suffering 
> surely must be.  Poverty-related suffering is almost certainly much 
> more efficiently addressed by economic development.
> 
> To my view, this suggests that one must thoughfully limit one's 
> investment in near-term point reductions in suffering vs. long-term 
> systemic efforts to develop economies.  It's very easy to see a 
> person suffering today, but what about the 10 or 100 or 1000 that 
> will suffer tomorrow, whose suffering could be alleviated or 
> eliminated by wise investment of the same dollars?
> 
> If your intent is to think long and hard about how to minimize 
> suffering (or achieve the maximum reduction is excessive suffering, 
> or whatever), it seems very strange to me to emphasize easily (and 
> personally) observable results, as opposed emphasizing efficiency and impact.
> 
> 
> At 02:06 PM 6/24/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> 
> >My first post can be read as if I was after the personal emotional 
> >satisfaction of being able to identify a particular person whom I 
> >have helped. As a matter of fact, in spite that I am indeed 
> >basically motivated by the pursuit of self-satisfaction in doing 
> >good (shouldn't we all?), I am after something quite different. I am 
> >an algonomist, a theoretician of suffering looking for a way to 
> >further a collective management of suffering. From my specialized 
> >point of view, I am raising the issues of credibility, tangibility, 
> >performance, or impact (to use words from psteinx) in order that we 
> >get the best mutually profiting exchange possible in this forum.
> >
> >"What is your ultimate goal in charitable giving?" This is probably 
> >the primary question par excellence. If someone wants to give for 
> >the teaching of piano, that is okay with me, but not much of my 
> >business. In a blog entry titled "My favorite cause", Holden for 
> >instance wrote on July 30th 2007: "I don't value happiness, or even 
> >the absence of pain, as much as most people do. What I really value 
> >is giving someone the opportunity to reach their full potential as a 
> >world-shaper, not just -citizen; I want people to experience, learn 
> >from, compete with, or even be the best in the world at what they 
> >care most about." That sounds very good, but from my point of view 
> >there is a risk that someone's full potential would be too much 
> >pain-producing. I generally think that the good will take care of 
> >itself, so that we should focus instead on the bad that must be 
> >reined in. To be thoroughly clear, I must say that my ultimate goal 
> >in charitable giving is to use that sphere of activity as a means in 
> >the collective management of suffering. That is not to say that 
> >philanthropy should be reduced to that role. It could happen that I 
> >would want myself to give for the teaching of piano. But in my 
> >understanding, those who are concerned with suffering in the world 
> >should give in a way that is informed first and foremost by 
> >algonomy. And since so many donors care about suffering, I believe 
> >philanthropy should become allied with algonomy.
> >
> >The best and simplest way to reach the magnitude of impact required 
> >for resolving the huge problems with which philanthropy and algonomy 
> >are concerned, I suggest, is to scale up `seaminglessly' from the 
> >individual to the organizational level, by dealing INDIVIDUALLY* 
> >through our personal contributions with ALL those who MUST be 
> >urgently helped. That is what I have in mind with the question "How 
> >can I stop or prevent at least one occurrence of excessive 
> >suffering?" and the related algonomic project "Setting in motion a 
> >collective management of suffering". If I could stop one occurrence, 
> >it is probable that from then on this would be repeatable and 
> >scalable. If I or anybody could not, that would represent, in my 
> >humble opinion, an incredible discovery!
> >
> >I know that GiveWell is not in the business of starting new 
> >organization, so I am not asking you to follow me in my endeavor, 
> >but as I said above, perhaps we can be mutually useful.
> >
> >*I believe, maybe counter-intuitively, that it would be simpler to 
> >deal with the millions or billions of excessive suffering 
> >occurrences than with supposedly simple categories like causes of 
> >problems or groups of victims. That is not to say that those 
> >categories are worthless in other respects.
>

Dear Robert

this is in reference to your reply to geernfield. I agree fully with you
with regard to the economy and sufferings. in fact this is what is happening
in most part of the world and with special regard to developing countries
where economies are mismanaged resulting into poor and middle class people
suffering. In India, high level corruption and bad economy has benn taking
millions for a ride.. around 80 percent people are going to bed with only
one time food and this is inspite of the fact that we, in India, are always
with the surplus food stocks. In fact our godowns are actually flooded with
the food.. the economy is managed in such a bad way that people are unable
to buy vegetables and milk, every day. You are absolutely justified in
whatever you have written to greenfield and you rightly saying that
suffering is a secondary consideration..In fact sufferings of people in
general are never ever given any consideration by most of the states.
Politics, winning elections, swindling funds and becoming rich and famous
are the priorities for most leaders and to me, no country and leader seems
to be an exception. Robert I really appreciate your concern for those who
suffer and wish to state that let me know if I can be of any help to you in
your mission of helping those who suffer.
Best luck
Dr. Anil
Navi Mumbai, India
Cell: 9820179008

At 11:46 AM 6/25/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
>
>As far as suffering is concerned `first and foremost', I hold that 
>economy is as much a part of the problem than of the solution. 
>That's why I lend no credibility to the idea of doing charity by 
>working to accumulate surpluses and giving them away. And I believe 
>it is the same thing, with respective differences taken into 
>consideration, in relation to politics, religion, or any other 
>domain in which suffering is in fact a secondary consideration.

I believe that either you (and Dr. Anil) took my comment to mean 
something I hadn't intended, or you are very mistaken in your 
(collective) view.

I am not asserting any role of benevolence or beneficence in the 
connection between the economy and suffering.  This is not a 
statement about government, political or relgious action, in any way.

Rather, it is a very simple observation of fact: as per capita income 
increases, suffering lessens.  That an extremely high correlation 
between such exists is indisputable.  And in fact, it would be 
extremely hard to argue cogently that the link is not, in fact, causal.

This fact has nothing to do with any form of charity or goodwill.  In 
fact, as Fareed Zakaria astutely observed in _The Future of Freedom_ 
the same is effectively true of democracy.  (i.e., a relatively high 
per capita income is a necessary precondition to sustainable 
democracy, and high per capita income is almost certainly an eventual 
impetus to democracy.)

As the economy develops, and per capita income increases, people have 
the means to alleviate their own suffering, and many forms of 
suffering are naturally suppressed by changes in lifestyle.

For example, when people are very poor, others with means may 
undertake a charitable distribution of mosquito nets to prevent 
malaria.  As people have higher incomes, they can afford to buy their 
own mosquito nets.  As their incomes grow even higher, mosquito nets 
may becomes irrelevant for a variety of reasons: they may live in 
better houses with windows and window screens, they may move to other 
areas where mosquitos are less of a problem, the community may 
undertake to spray for mosquitos, etc.

The same is true for almost any form of suffering that is associated 
with poverty.

It simply isn't a matter of charity, politics or religion.  It's the 
very fundamental connection between poverty and suffering.  Economic 
development reduces poverty, and therefore, unavoidably reduces suffering.

Both you and Dr. Anil seem to have interpretted my comment about 
economic development as some prod to some specific set of political 
policies.  It was not (though I certainly do believe that there are 
some policies that will serve to accelerate economic development, and 
some which will serve to retard it).


As for accumulating surplusses and giving them away, I actually 
believe that's typically an inefficient means to achieve good things, 
like reducing suffering.  And that was precisely my point in saying 
that, while acting immediately to reduce easily observable suffering 
may feel compelling, in reality, it is probably one of the least 
efficient and least impactful things one could do to reduce 
suffering, in the grand scheme.


>For the rest, I am afraid I am quite misunderstood by you, Mr. Greenfield.

In that case, I would love to understand just what it is that you 
seek, and what it is that I misunderstand.

For clarity, I take you to be saying that you are interested in 
understanding how you (and others) can maximize your (and their) 
contribution to the reduction of (excess) suffering.

(To be frank, however, my impression at this point is that you have 
constrained your analysis and approach within a philosophical 
framework that will prevent you from ever approaching a true maximum.)

I won't speak for Dr. Anil, just for myself. 

I apologize if I have not been as clear as I should. What I have to say is not easy to convey, especially in a forum like this. My first post mentioned that more information is available on my website, algosphere.org. It seems however that even there, if I judge by people's reaction, what I propose is not readily as simple, clear and desirable than I suppose. Nobody subscribes to it yet, but nobody either seems against it, and most encourage me to persevere. 

I agree with you that economy is part of the solution. My point is that 
1) economy is not at all the whole solution to suffering, 
2) economy is also a big part of the problem.

I mentioned politics and religion only to make understood that all areas of human activity are part of the problem and solution. They all consider suffering as subordinate to their primary concerns. I claim that a whole, but not necessarily perfect or complete, solution to suffering is possible if there is a whole or global or comprehensive approach to the problem of suffering, an approach where this is the primary concern.

My sentence about "doing charity by working to accumulate surpluses and giving them away" was referring to an idea that I have encountered in various places, for instance on this forum in a thread called "On doing the most good". I was meaning that I lend no credibility to the idea of choosing a career to make money in order to make good with that money.  

My main interest is not in understanding how to maximize our contribution to the reduction of excessive suffering. It is, since 1975, in furthering what I call an `algonomy', a radically new and vast sphere of human activity concerned with the knowledge and management of suffering. In this forum, I am interested in promoting an alliance between philanthropy and algonomy.


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "J. S. Greenfield" <jsg@...> wrote:
>
> At 11:46 AM 6/25/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> >
> >As far as suffering is concerned `first and foremost', I hold that 
> >economy is as much a part of the problem than of the solution. 
> >That's why I lend no credibility to the idea of doing charity by 
> >working to accumulate surpluses and giving them away. And I believe 
> >it is the same thing, with respective differences taken into 
> >consideration, in relation to politics, religion, or any other 
> >domain in which suffering is in fact a secondary consideration.
> 
> I believe that either you (and Dr. Anil) took my comment to mean 
> something I hadn't intended, or you are very mistaken in your 
> (collective) view.
> 
> I am not asserting any role of benevolence or beneficence in the 
> connection between the economy and suffering.  This is not a 
> statement about government, political or relgious action, in any way.
> 
> Rather, it is a very simple observation of fact: as per capita income 
> increases, suffering lessens.  That an extremely high correlation 
> between such exists is indisputable.  And in fact, it would be 
> extremely hard to argue cogently that the link is not, in fact, causal.
> 
> This fact has nothing to do with any form of charity or goodwill.  In 
> fact, as Fareed Zakaria astutely observed in _The Future of Freedom_ 
> the same is effectively true of democracy.  (i.e., a relatively high 
> per capita income is a necessary precondition to sustainable 
> democracy, and high per capita income is almost certainly an eventual 
> impetus to democracy.)
> 
> As the economy develops, and per capita income increases, people have 
> the means to alleviate their own suffering, and many forms of 
> suffering are naturally suppressed by changes in lifestyle.
> 
> For example, when people are very poor, others with means may 
> undertake a charitable distribution of mosquito nets to prevent 
> malaria.  As people have higher incomes, they can afford to buy their 
> own mosquito nets.  As their incomes grow even higher, mosquito nets 
> may becomes irrelevant for a variety of reasons: they may live in 
> better houses with windows and window screens, they may move to other 
> areas where mosquitos are less of a problem, the community may 
> undertake to spray for mosquitos, etc.
> 
> The same is true for almost any form of suffering that is associated 
> with poverty.
> 
> It simply isn't a matter of charity, politics or religion.  It's the 
> very fundamental connection between poverty and suffering.  Economic 
> development reduces poverty, and therefore, unavoidably reduces suffering.
> 
> Both you and Dr. Anil seem to have interpretted my comment about 
> economic development as some prod to some specific set of political 
> policies.  It was not (though I certainly do believe that there are 
> some policies that will serve to accelerate economic development, and 
> some which will serve to retard it).
> 
> 
> As for accumulating surplusses and giving them away, I actually 
> believe that's typically an inefficient means to achieve good things, 
> like reducing suffering.  And that was precisely my point in saying 
> that, while acting immediately to reduce easily observable suffering 
> may feel compelling, in reality, it is probably one of the least 
> efficient and least impactful things one could do to reduce 
> suffering, in the grand scheme.
> 
> 
> >For the rest, I am afraid I am quite misunderstood by you, Mr. Greenfield.
> 
> In that case, I would love to understand just what it is that you 
> seek, and what it is that I misunderstand.
> 
> For clarity, I take you to be saying that you are interested in 
> understanding how you (and others) can maximize your (and their) 
> contribution to the reduction of (excess) suffering.
> 
> (To be frank, however, my impression at this point is that you have 
> constrained your analysis and approach within a philosophical 
> framework that will prevent you from ever approaching a true maximum.)
>

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:43 AM, J. S. Greenfield <jsg@...> wrote:

>
>
> At 11:46 AM 6/25/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> >
> >As far as suffering is concerned `first and foremost', I hold that
> >economy is as much a part of the problem than of the solution.
> >That's why I lend no credibility to the idea of doing charity by
> >working to accumulate surpluses and giving them away. And I believe
> >it is the same thing, with respective differences taken into
> >consideration, in relation to politics, religion, or any other
> >domain in which suffering is in fact a secondary consideration.
>
> I believe that either you (and Dr. Anil) took my comment to mean
> something I hadn't intended, or you are very mistaken in your
> (collective) view.
>
> I am not asserting any role of benevolence or beneficence in the
> connection between the economy and suffering. This is not a
> statement about government, political or relgious action, in any way.
>
> Rather, it is a very simple observation of fact: as per capita income
> increases, suffering lessens. That an extremely high correlation
> between such exists is indisputable. And in fact, it would be
> extremely hard to argue cogently that the link is not, in fact, causal.
>
> This fact has nothing to do with any form of charity or goodwill. In
> fact, as Fareed Zakaria astutely observed in _The Future of Freedom_
> the same is effectively true of democracy. (i.e., a relatively high
> per capita income is a necessary precondition to sustainable
> democracy, and high per capita income is almost certainly an eventual
> impetus to democracy.)
>
> As the economy develops, and per capita income increases, people have
> the means to alleviate their own suffering, and many forms of
> suffering are naturally suppressed by changes in lifestyle.
>
> For example, when people are very poor, others with means may
> undertake a charitable distribution of mosquito nets to prevent
> malaria. As people have higher incomes, they can afford to buy their
> own mosquito nets. As their incomes grow even higher, mosquito nets
> may becomes irrelevant for a variety of reasons: they may live in
> better houses with windows and window screens, they may move to other
> areas where mosquitos are less of a problem, the community may
> undertake to spray for mosquitos, etc.
>
> The same is true for almost any form of suffering that is associated
> with poverty.
>
> It simply isn't a matter of charity, politics or religion. It's the
> very fundamental connection between poverty and suffering. Economic
> development reduces poverty, and therefore, unavoidably reduces suffering.
>
> Both you and Dr. Anil seem to have interpretted my comment about
> economic development as some prod to some specific set of political
> policies. It was not (though I certainly do believe that there are
> some policies that will serve to accelerate economic development, and
> some which will serve to retard it).
>
> As for accumulating surplusses and giving them away, I actually
> believe that's typically an inefficient means to achieve good things,
> like reducing suffering. And that was precisely my point in saying
> that, while acting immediately to reduce easily observable suffering
> may feel compelling, in reality, it is probably one of the least
> efficient and least impactful things one could do to reduce
> suffering, in the grand scheme.
>
>
> >For the rest, I am afraid I am quite misunderstood by you, Mr. Greenfield.
>
> In that case, I would love to understand just what it is that you
> seek, and what it is that I misunderstand.
>
> For clarity, I take you to be saying that you are interested in
> understanding how you (and others) can maximize your (and their)
> contribution to the reduction of (excess) suffering.
>
> (To be frank, however, my impression at this point is that you have
> constrained your analysis and approach within a philosophical
> framework that will prevent you from ever approaching a true maximum.)
>
>  
>
dear greenfield

no, i haven't misunderstood ur statement. I just wanted to convey to robert
that economy, to me, plays and important role in making poor suffer more and
that is all. I could get the right massage from your comment and that is it.
best luck
Anil

At 05:21 PM 6/25/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:

>I agree with you that economy is part of the solution. My point is that
>1) economy is not at all the whole solution to suffering,
>2) economy is also a big part of the problem.

I don't think that developing the economy alleviates or eliminates 
all suffering.  I do think it alleviates or eliminates the vast 
majority of suffering (and especially if we talk about "excessive" 
suffering) -- particularly the kind of suffering typically targetted 
by philanthropy (which I believe is very heavily weighted toward 
poverty-related suffering).

I'm very interested in understanding how you believe that the economy 
is a big part of the problem.


At 12:28 AM 6/26/2010, anil mahajan wrote:

>no, i haven't misunderstood ur statement. I just wanted to convey to 
>robert that economy, to me, plays and important role in making poor 
>suffer more and that is all. I could get the right massage from your 
>comment and that is it.

Likewise, I would be interested to understand how you believe that 
developing the economy creates more suffering, rather than less.

Here are my two cents:

1. I am sympathetic to Givewell's position on cost-effectiveness -
my intuition is  that not only an accurate cost estimate is realistically
difficult, but also the estimate might not necessarily apply as the program
gets scaled up or replicated.

2. Having said that, in the event that if the cost estimate is an order of
magnitude lower ($1000 / death), I do think it'I'd warrant to be called
out.

3. I do have a side question though: what is the policy towards intervention
is mainly on increasingly DALY (and less so on preventing death)?  E.g., for
school-based deworming profiled by Poverty Action Lab, my impression is that
while the program increases DALY and less so on preventing death (intestinal
worms are not as fatal as diseases like Malaria, TB, as far as I know).
  http://www.povertyactionlab.org/scale-ups/school-based-deworming


- sam
"Joy comes not to him who seeks it for himself, but to him who seeks it for
other people."


On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:

>
>
> Below is an exchange I had with Nick Beckstead on the subject of
> cost-effectiveness estimates (which I requested feedback on previously),
> forwarded with permission.
>
> (Read from the bottom if interested)
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> Hi Nick, thanks for the thoughts.  I think these are good questions, and
> would like to forward this exchange to the list with your permission.
>
> *Re: the $1000 threshold.  *It would take serious effort to flesh out and
> defend our full picture of what differences are and aren't meaningful.  The
> short answer is that there are a substantial number of interventions that
> are 1. Under this threshold and 2. "Best in class" in the sense that there's
> no highly comparable intervention that seems to perform better.  The
> differences between estimates for these "best in class" interventions seem
> highly fragile to us (there are sometimes even conflicting estimates given
> on different pages of the DCP report that are off by a factor of several,
> with no clear explanation).  However, for most of the things we've seen that
> fail the threshold, there are fairly concrete explanations for why they are
> less cost-effective than the "best-in-class" interventions (for example, the
> higher cost-effectiveness of TB treatment relative to ART can clearly be
> seen in differences in how much the drugs cost and in how long they need to
> be taken).
> *
> *
> *Re: weighing confidence in the organization vs. cost-effectiveness of the
> estimate.  I think a lot of this comes down to intuitions, especially re:
> the proper prior for a charity's efficacy.*
> *
> *
> *Our prior is pretty low for a variety of reasons, including:*
>
>    - *We just think the whole endeavor of helping people in the developing
>    world seems inherently challenging, especially for organizations and people
>    that we don't believe have functioning/healthy incentives.  *
>    - *When we look at the history of aid, we don't see anything to
>    undermine this view; there are some striking successes, but no macro **picture
>    that suggests aid is usually or even often effective.  (To be clear, we also
>    don't think the macro picture suggests aid is *ineffective* - it's mostly
>    just unclear.)*
>    - *And when we investigate the very best charities (in terms of giving
>    us confidence that their activities work) we can find, we end up constantly
>    coming up with new things to be worried about, not all of which are
>    satisfyingly addressed even by these outstanding and highly transparent
>    organizations.  From 10,000 feet these organizations' activities seem at
>    least as simple and likely to succeed as any others'.  We keep this
>    observation in mind when thinking about other organizations that also seem
>    to have relatively straightforward activities, but haven't share information
>    that would even let us begin to think about potential problems.*
>
> There are a couple of other reasons that we generally put "confidence that
> it works" at the center of our rankings, rather than formally multiplying
> P(it works) by (cost-effectiveness if it does work):
>
>    - Incentives.  Thought experiment: imagine that organizations A, B, and
>    C are all health organizations facing similar challenges, but that C's
>    program has 3x the theoretical cost-effectiveness of A's and B's.  Imagine
>    that A discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely
>    work; B discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely
>    fail; C discloses nothing.  One might find it appropriate to expect C to
>    perform about as well as the average of A and B (I wouldn't, since I think
>    willingness to disclose is correlated with quality) ... but even if so, I
>    think it would be a mistake to fund C in this case.  Doing so would create
>    incentives for poor organizations to disclose less and therefore benefit
>    from the fact that donors base their estimates on strong organizations.  As
>    an evaluator, we are particularly mindful of what behavior we are rewarding,
>    but I think a donor ought to pay some attention to this as well.
>    - The question of how to weigh confidence in activiteis vs. theoretical
>    cost-effectiveness of activities seems somewhat moot to us since our top
>    charities perform well on both.  Our top-rated organizations have very high
>    cost-effectiveness in the scheme of things, and we don't think there's good
>    reason to expect higher cost-effectiveness from anyone else just based on
>    what program they're running.
>
> Hopefully this helps clarify how we are thinking, even if I haven't given
> the specifics/sources that would let you evaluate our thinking (as I said,
> that would be a significant enough undertaking that I want a good sense of
> how important it is).
>
> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Nick Beckstead wrote:
>
>> Hi Holden, (cc: Elie)
>>
>> 1.  I would like to know more about why you do not attempt to distinguish
>> between organizations whose cost-effectiveness falls below the $1000/death
>> range.  Prima facie, it sounds like a strange policy.  The only
>> justification I can think of is of the form: we just can't tell the
>> difference between organizations that work at $250/death and $500/death with
>> any confidence to speak of.  This answer is hard to understand from the
>> outside, since you seem to be able to distinguish between organizations that
>> are at $750/death and those over $1500/death.
>>
>> 2.  You write: "So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
>> (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates
>> literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high
>> relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
>> effectiveness), please let me know." I'm worried about this (but I don't
>> really know what to think).  I tend to agree that many of the theoretical
>> cost-effectiveness estimates are too optimistic, but I wouldn't want to
>> overcorrect for this.  Some of the GWWC folks, Toby Ord in particular, make
>> it sound like you guys go too far in "assuming the worst" when it comes to
>> unknowns in a charity.  (I think Toby said this about SCI in particular.)  I
>> need to understand the situation more before I agree or disagree, but I'd
>> like to know more about your policy here.
>>
>> If I were in your shoes, I would work with a risk over uncertainty premium
>> and a good bit or risk aversion, since that is important for your long term
>> credibility.  But as an individual donor, I am less concerned about such
>> things.  I just want to give where it maximizes expected value, so I might
>> be willing to tolerate many unanswered questions with murky probabilities,
>> provided the expected value calculation works out right.
>>
>> Not sure if you wanted me to post this to the listserv, or just send to
>> you directly.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue is
>>> to you.
>>> GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
>>> estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
>>> very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
>>> $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
>>> don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
>>> "confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
>>> on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
>>> we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
>>> the source of the large difference between them.
>>>
>>> We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel
>>> this approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too
>>> rough to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely
>>> sounds to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
>>> "expected value."
>>>
>>> I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
>>> approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>>>
>>> Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers
>>> disagree with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check
>>> that.  So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
>>> (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates
>>> literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high
>>> relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
>>> effectiveness), please let me know.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nick Beckstead
>> Ph.D. Student
>> Department of Philosophy
>> Rutgers University
>>
>
>
>  
>

Economic activities are essential for our survival and well-being. In that sense they prevent the majority of suffering. Yet, I don't think economic development can be credited for as much as you claim. Most often, economic development occurs because it is relaying a progress that occurred in another domain than economic activities, for instance from medicine, or scientific research, or morally motivated movements, etc. I would even say that the Chinese revolution was made against the economic activities of accumulative capitalism, and it was a turning point in alleviating or eliminating the vast majority of excessive suffering in the most populated country on Earth.

Economy is a big part of the problem in countless ways. I guess you might find thousands of those ways if you browse the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential on the website of the Union of International Association.

In what regards the primary cause or solution concerning our predicaments, there seem to be  as many opinions as heads. I suggest that we begin by gathering all our opinions in a same framework, and I submit that because algonomy is oriented toward the knowledge and management of suffering in a universally open and neutral fashion, algonomy only is able to provide a framework for organizing together those opinions in a manner that is appropriate for mastering our predicaments.    


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "J. S. Greenfield" <jsg@...> wrote:
>
> At 05:21 PM 6/25/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> 
> >I agree with you that economy is part of the solution. My point is that
> >1) economy is not at all the whole solution to suffering,
> >2) economy is also a big part of the problem.
> 
> I don't think that developing the economy alleviates or eliminates 
> all suffering.  I do think it alleviates or eliminates the vast 
> majority of suffering (and especially if we talk about "excessive" 
> suffering) -- particularly the kind of suffering typically targetted 
> by philanthropy (which I believe is very heavily weighted toward 
> poverty-related suffering).
> 
> I'm very interested in understanding how you believe that the economy 
> is a big part of the problem.
> 
> 
> At 12:28 AM 6/26/2010, anil mahajan wrote:
> 
> >no, i haven't misunderstood ur statement. I just wanted to convey to 
> >robert that economy, to me, plays and important role in making poor 
> >suffer more and that is all. I could get the right massage from your 
> >comment and that is it.
> 
> Likewise, I would be interested to understand how you believe that 
> developing the economy creates more suffering, rather than less.
>

Well, thanks for clarifying.  I suspected as much, but was not 
certain from your prior posts.

Perhaps somebody else here will be interested, but I do not believe 
anything productive will come of what you are suggesting, so I am not 
interested.  I certainly don't believe I can gather my opinions 
together with yours in a common framework, since based on the 
comments below, I cannot help but conclude that the framework you 
have chosen is completely divorced from the reality that I know.

You suggest that the Chinese revolution was a turning point in 
alleviating or eliminating suffering.  In fact, it was exactly the 
opposite.  Mao Tse-tung brought untold suffering upon the Chinese 
people, a massive portion of which was precisely due to the terrible 
poverty that accompanied the imposition of communism and central 
planning.  And it was precisely once Mao died, when Deng Xiaoping 
began instituting market reforms, that China began to ascend from 
desperate poverty, and began to reduce the massive suffering that 
went with such.

Now, some 30 years later, with nearly whole-hearted adoption of 
market reforms, the standard of living in China has increased 
tremendously, and the Chinese are well on their way to escaping the 
poverty-related suffering that the Chinese revolution 
brought/continued/made worse.

What's more, the ongoing very successful economic development in 
China will almost certainly eventually drive out the suffering in 
China related to government oppression and human rights abuses, by 
driving them towards democracy.  (See my prior comments regarding the 
compelling case Fareed Zakaria has made for such.)

If you see the situation as the opposite -- if you're seriously 
prepared to argue that the Chinese were better off experiencing 
famine (among other things) under Mao and his "Great Leap Forward" 
than they are today (or were before that, for that matter!) -- then I 
can only conclude that you are blinded by your philosophical beliefs, 
which you have apparently made axioms in your analytical framework.

Attempting to gather and reconcile our opinions would clearly be a 
futile and incredibly unproductive effort.


At 04:01 PM 6/26/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
>
>Economic activities are essential for our survival and well-being. 
>In that sense they prevent the majority of suffering. Yet, I don't 
>think economic development can be credited for as much as you claim. 
>Most often, economic development occurs because it is relaying a 
>progress that occurred in another domain than economic activities, 
>for instance from medicine, or scientific research, or morally 
>motivated movements, etc. I would even say that the Chinese 
>revolution was made against the economic activities of accumulative 
>capitalism, and it was a turning point in alleviating or eliminating 
>the vast majority of excessive suffering in the most populated 
>country on Earth.
>
>Economy is a big part of the problem in countless ways. I guess you 
>might find thousands of those ways if you browse the Encyclopedia of 
>World Problems and Human Potential on the website of the Union of 
>International Association.
>
>In what regards the primary cause or solution concerning our 
>predicaments, there seem to be as many opinions as heads. I suggest 
>that we begin by gathering all our opinions in a same framework, and 
>I submit that because algonomy is oriented toward the knowledge and 
>management of suffering in a universally open and neutral fashion, 
>algonomy only is able to provide a framework for organizing together 
>those opinions in a manner that is appropriate for mastering our predicaments.

Dear Anil, some technical glitch is causing long delays between the moment I post something and the moment it appears online. I wonder how long this message will take! In any case, I decided to write to your mailbox directly instead. Cheers. 

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, anil mahajan <anilanilm@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Robert
> 
> this is in reference to your reply to geernfield. I agree fully with you
> with regard to the economy and sufferings. in fact this is what is happening
> in most part of the world and with special regard to developing countries
> where economies are mismanaged resulting into poor and middle class people
> suffering. In India, high level corruption and bad economy has benn taking
> millions for a ride.. around 80 percent people are going to bed with only
> one time food and this is inspite of the fact that we, in India, are always
> with the surplus food stocks. In fact our godowns are actually flooded with
> the food.. the economy is managed in such a bad way that people are unable
> to buy vegetables and milk, every day. You are absolutely justified in
> whatever you have written to greenfield and you rightly saying that
> suffering is a secondary consideration..In fact sufferings of people in
> general are never ever given any consideration by most of the states.
> Politics, winning elections, swindling funds and becoming rich and famous
> are the priorities for most leaders and to me, no country and leader seems
> to be an exception. Robert I really appreciate your concern for those who
> suffer and wish to state that let me know if I can be of any help to you in
> your mission of helping those who suffer.
> Best luck
> Dr. Anil
> Navi Mumbai, India
> Cell: 9820179008
>

Dear Greenfield

In my last mail addressed to u, I think i made my position clear. however,
after going through the post from robert to u, i felt like writing to again.
In case my post to robert have hurt you any way, i say sorry for that. Hope,
we keep exchanging views that ultimately provides lasting solutions to
individuals and organizations helping those who suffer socially,
economically and spiritually.
looking forward to hear from u soon
anil
Mumbai, India

Dear Robert

yes, there appears to be some technical problem for me to reply to u also
full of difficulties Any way thanks for ur reply and ur most welcome to
write to me at my mailbox: anilanilm@... and or
anilhyd97@...

i have started feeling that our thinking, views, and ideas do match and felt
that we can do a wonderful job to help minimise the sufferings by coming
together.
good day
anil

As I said before, I am afraid I am quite misunderstood by you.

I rejoice with you regarding the economic evolution that occurred in China during the last 30 years, and I hope like you and Zakaria that more democracy will ensue. But as awful as the situation was in China during the fifties and sixties, I think serious independent historians will agree that it was clearly less deplorable than before the turning point of 1949.

In my opinion, we all have different opinions and attempting to  reconcile them is most often futile, but we may gather and organize them in order to aim at a common goal. If you are not interested, so be it.


--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, "J. S. Greenfield" <jsg@...> wrote:
>
> Well, thanks for clarifying.  I suspected as much, but was not 
> certain from your prior posts.
> 
> Perhaps somebody else here will be interested, but I do not believe 
> anything productive will come of what you are suggesting, so I am not 
> interested.  I certainly don't believe I can gather my opinions 
> together with yours in a common framework, since based on the 
> comments below, I cannot help but conclude that the framework you 
> have chosen is completely divorced from the reality that I know.
> 
> You suggest that the Chinese revolution was a turning point in 
> alleviating or eliminating suffering.  In fact, it was exactly the 
> opposite.  Mao Tse-tung brought untold suffering upon the Chinese 
> people, a massive portion of which was precisely due to the terrible 
> poverty that accompanied the imposition of communism and central 
> planning.  And it was precisely once Mao died, when Deng Xiaoping 
> began instituting market reforms, that China began to ascend from 
> desperate poverty, and began to reduce the massive suffering that 
> went with such.
> 
> Now, some 30 years later, with nearly whole-hearted adoption of 
> market reforms, the standard of living in China has increased 
> tremendously, and the Chinese are well on their way to escaping the 
> poverty-related suffering that the Chinese revolution 
> brought/continued/made worse.
> 
> What's more, the ongoing very successful economic development in 
> China will almost certainly eventually drive out the suffering in 
> China related to government oppression and human rights abuses, by 
> driving them towards democracy.  (See my prior comments regarding the 
> compelling case Fareed Zakaria has made for such.)
> 
> If you see the situation as the opposite -- if you're seriously 
> prepared to argue that the Chinese were better off experiencing 
> famine (among other things) under Mao and his "Great Leap Forward" 
> than they are today (or were before that, for that matter!) -- then I 
> can only conclude that you are blinded by your philosophical beliefs, 
> which you have apparently made axioms in your analytical framework.
> 
> Attempting to gather and reconcile our opinions would clearly be a 
> futile and incredibly unproductive effort.
> 
> 
> At 04:01 PM 6/26/2010, Robert Daoust wrote:
> >
> >Economic activities are essential for our survival and well-being. 
> >In that sense they prevent the majority of suffering. Yet, I don't 
> >think economic development can be credited for as much as you claim. 
> >Most often, economic development occurs because it is relaying a 
> >progress that occurred in another domain than economic activities, 
> >for instance from medicine, or scientific research, or morally 
> >motivated movements, etc. I would even say that the Chinese 
> >revolution was made against the economic activities of accumulative 
> >capitalism, and it was a turning point in alleviating or eliminating 
> >the vast majority of excessive suffering in the most populated 
> >country on Earth.
> >
> >Economy is a big part of the problem in countless ways. I guess you 
> >might find thousands of those ways if you browse the Encyclopedia of 
> >World Problems and Human Potential on the website of the Union of 
> >International Association.
> >
> >In what regards the primary cause or solution concerning our 
> >predicaments, there seem to be as many opinions as heads. I suggest 
> >that we begin by gathering all our opinions in a same framework, and 
> >I submit that because algonomy is oriented toward the knowledge and 
> >management of suffering in a universally open and neutral fashion, 
> >algonomy only is able to provide a framework for organizing together 
> >those opinions in a manner that is appropriate for mastering our predicaments.
>

Hi Wai-Kwong,

Our "cost per life saved" terminology is only short-hand.  We look at
cost-effectiveness in whatever terms are available, and also consider the
cost per DALY.  For a sense of this, see
http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs#Priorityprograms

Best,
Holden


On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Wai-Kwong Sam Lee <orionlee@...>wrote:

>
>
> Here are my two cents:
>
> 1. I am sympathetic to Givewell's position on cost-effectiveness -
> my intuition is  that not only an accurate cost estimate is realistically
> difficult, but also the estimate might not necessarily apply as the program
> gets scaled up or replicated.
>
> 2. Having said that, in the event that if the cost estimate is an order of
> magnitude lower ($1000 / death), I do think it'I'd warrant to be called
> out.
>
> 3. I do have a side question though: what is the policy towards
> intervention is mainly on increasingly DALY (and less so on preventing
> death)?  E.g., for school-based deworming profiled by Poverty Action Lab, my
> impression is that while the program increases DALY and less so on
> preventing death (intestinal worms are not as fatal as diseases like
> Malaria, TB, as far as I know).
>   http://www.povertyactionlab.org/scale-ups/school-based-deworming
>
>
> - sam
> "Joy comes not to him who seeks it for himself, but to him who seeks it for
> other people."
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Below is an exchange I had with Nick Beckstead on the subject of
>> cost-effectiveness estimates (which I requested feedback on previously),
>> forwarded with permission.
>>
>> (Read from the bottom if interested)
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>
>> Hi Nick, thanks for the thoughts.  I think these are good questions, and
>> would like to forward this exchange to the list with your permission.
>>
>> *Re: the $1000 threshold.  *It would take serious effort to flesh out and
>> defend our full picture of what differences are and aren't meaningful.  The
>> short answer is that there are a substantial number of interventions that
>> are 1. Under this threshold and 2. "Best in class" in the sense that there's
>> no highly comparable intervention that seems to perform better.  The
>> differences between estimates for these "best in class" interventions seem
>> highly fragile to us (there are sometimes even conflicting estimates given
>> on different pages of the DCP report that are off by a factor of several,
>> with no clear explanation).  However, for most of the things we've seen that
>> fail the threshold, there are fairly concrete explanations for why they are
>> less cost-effective than the "best-in-class" interventions (for example, the
>> higher cost-effectiveness of TB treatment relative to ART can clearly be
>> seen in differences in how much the drugs cost and in how long they need to
>> be taken).
>> *
>> *
>> *Re: weighing confidence in the organization vs. cost-effectiveness of
>> the estimate.  I think a lot of this comes down to intuitions, especially
>> re: the proper prior for a charity's efficacy.*
>> *
>> *
>> *Our prior is pretty low for a variety of reasons, including:*
>>
>>    - *We just think the whole endeavor of helping people in the
>>    developing world seems inherently challenging, especially for organizations
>>    and people that we don't believe have functioning/healthy incentives.
>>    *
>>    - *When we look at the history of aid, we don't see anything to
>>    undermine this view; there are some striking successes, but no macro *
>>    *picture that suggests aid is usually or even often effective.  (To be
>>    clear, we also don't think the macro picture suggests aid is *ineffective* -
>>    it's mostly just unclear.)*
>>    - *And when we investigate the very best charities (in terms of giving
>>    us confidence that their activities work) we can find, we end up constantly
>>    coming up with new things to be worried about, not all of which are
>>    satisfyingly addressed even by these outstanding and highly transparent
>>    organizations.  From 10,000 feet these organizations' activities seem at
>>    least as simple and likely to succeed as any others'.  We keep this
>>    observation in mind when thinking about other organizations that also seem
>>    to have relatively straightforward activities, but haven't share information
>>    that would even let us begin to think about potential problems.*
>>
>> There are a couple of other reasons that we generally put "confidence that
>> it works" at the center of our rankings, rather than formally multiplying
>> P(it works) by (cost-effectiveness if it does work):
>>
>>    - Incentives.  Thought experiment: imagine that organizations A, B,
>>    and C are all health organizations facing similar challenges, but that C's
>>    program has 3x the theoretical cost-effectiveness of A's and B's.  Imagine
>>    that A discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely
>>    work; B discloses substantive information showing that its programs largely
>>    fail; C discloses nothing.  One might find it appropriate to expect C to
>>    perform about as well as the average of A and B (I wouldn't, since I think
>>    willingness to disclose is correlated with quality) ... but even if so, I
>>    think it would be a mistake to fund C in this case.  Doing so would create
>>    incentives for poor organizations to disclose less and therefore benefit
>>    from the fact that donors base their estimates on strong organizations.  As
>>    an evaluator, we are particularly mindful of what behavior we are rewarding,
>>    but I think a donor ought to pay some attention to this as well.
>>    - The question of how to weigh confidence in activiteis vs.
>>    theoretical cost-effectiveness of activities seems somewhat moot to us since
>>    our top charities perform well on both.  Our top-rated organizations have
>>    very high cost-effectiveness in the scheme of things, and we don't think
>>    there's good reason to expect higher cost-effectiveness from anyone else
>>    just based on what program they're running.
>>
>> Hopefully this helps clarify how we are thinking, even if I haven't given
>> the specifics/sources that would let you evaluate our thinking (as I said,
>> that would be a significant enough undertaking that I want a good sense of
>> how important it is).
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Nick Beckstead wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Holden, (cc: Elie)
>>>
>>> 1.  I would like to know more about why you do not attempt to distinguish
>>> between organizations whose cost-effectiveness falls below the $1000/death
>>> range.  Prima facie, it sounds like a strange policy.  The only
>>> justification I can think of is of the form: we just can't tell the
>>> difference between organizations that work at $250/death and $500/death with
>>> any confidence to speak of.  This answer is hard to understand from the
>>> outside, since you seem to be able to distinguish between organizations that
>>> are at $750/death and those over $1500/death.
>>>
>>> 2.  You write: "So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers
>>> you (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness
>>> estimates literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let
>>> high relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions
>>> about effectiveness), please let me know." I'm worried about this (but I
>>> don't really know what to think).  I tend to agree that many of the
>>> theoretical cost-effectiveness estimates are too optimistic, but I wouldn't
>>> want to overcorrect for this.  Some of the GWWC folks, Toby Ord in
>>> particular, make it sound like you guys go too far in "assuming the worst"
>>> when it comes to unknowns in a charity.  (I think Toby said this about SCI
>>> in particular.)  I need to understand the situation more before I agree or
>>> disagree, but I'd like to know more about your policy here.
>>>
>>> If I were in your shoes, I would work with a risk over uncertainty
>>> premium and a good bit or risk aversion, since that is important for your
>>> long term credibility.  But as an individual donor, I am less concerned
>>> about such things.  I just want to give where it maximizes expected value,
>>> so I might be willing to tolerate many unanswered questions with murky
>>> probabilities, provided the expected value calculation works out right.
>>>
>>> Not sure if you wanted me to post this to the listserv, or just send to
>>> you directly.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hello all, I'd like your thoughts on how important the following issue
>>>> is to you.
>>>> GiveWell has consistently taken the position that cost-effectiveness
>>>> estimates are "too rough to take literally."  We therefore use them in a
>>>> very non-literal way.  Specifically, any organization that comes in under
>>>> $1000/death averted is considered by us to be "highly cost-effective" and we
>>>> don't distinguish between them (instead we rate/rank organizations on
>>>> "confidence in their effectiveness" factors).  By contrast, we do put weight
>>>> on observations like "ART is several times as costly as TB control," where
>>>> we feel the estimates are directly comparable and we have more confidence in
>>>> the source of the large difference between them.
>>>>
>>>> We have never taken the effort to fully spell out the reasons we feel
>>>> this approach is appropriate.  When we stick to language like "This is too
>>>> rough to be useful," it probably sounds to some people (well, it definitely
>>>> sounds to at least one person) that we don't understand basic concepts like
>>>> "expected value."
>>>>
>>>> I believe we could mount a strong and handwaving-free defense of our
>>>> approach, but that it would be quite a bit of work.
>>>>
>>>> Currently, I have the sense that only 1-2 of our current followers
>>>> disagree with us on (and care about) this issue.  However, I'd like to check
>>>> that.  So, if the way we deal with cost-effectiveness bothers you
>>>> (specifically, if you feel that we don't take cost-effectiveness estimates
>>>> literally enough, and that we should for example be willing to let high
>>>> relative theoretical cost-effectiveness outweigh serious questions about
>>>> effectiveness), please let me know.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Nick Beckstead
>>> Ph.D. Student
>>> Department of Philosophy
>>> Rutgers University
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

This is an update on what we've learned since our previous update (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/182) and what our plans are
going forward.


*Progress*

*
*

In the last month or so we've made progress to answering the following
questions, primarily through conversations with  FasterCures (
http://fastercures.org/) about their Philanthropy Advisory Service (
http://www.philanthropyadvisoryservice.org/), Chris Lipinski (
http://myprofile.cos.com/lipinskica) and John Overington (
http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n12/authors/nrd2199.html). Notes from
our conversations with Drs. Lipinski and Overington are available on the
GiveWell website at http://www.givewell.org/node/1339


   - *What can we know about total funding allocated to each disease?* The
   NIH publishes funding by disease, but we don't have a way of getting funds
   invested by other parties (i.e., for-profit industry). We've found a PLoS
   paper (
   http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007015) that
   shows total (industry + government + non-profit) funding by broad area
   (e.g., neuroscience, oncology, cardiovascular) but not by specific disease.
   John Overington (see below) told us that he does not believe that industry
   funding by disease is available.
   -  *What are the possibilities we have available for assessing an
   organization's track record? *Both John Overington and Chris Lipinski
   thought that assessing an organization's publication/citation record would
   be reasonable. Dr. Lipinski suggested that instead of doing
   citation/publication analysis for all of an organization's papers, we
   instead identify the most important/influentual papers in each disease (by
   seeing which papers are cited in major literature reviews) and see who
   funded them. Dr. Overington suggested we also look at patents an
   organization had received (on the notion that a patent implies that the
   organization created something describable and worth protecting).
   -  *What are the possibilities available for assessing the likelihood of
   a particular organization developing a new drug or treatment?* Dr.
   Overington's company "scores" company's/organization's pipelines on the
   likelihood that they will produce effective treatments. He said that his
   company works on a case by case basis and that a general assessment of
   "would this approach work" does not exist.
   -  *Are there particular approaches to research that have been
   successful/not successful?* Chris Lipinski said that there's a consensus
   that academic biology is good for basic science but doesn't translate well
   at all into outcomes for patients. Until recently NIH had a poor track
   record in the translation of basic research into real drug discovery.
   Recently, he says that the NIH appreciates the problem of the translational
   medicine gap and has for a number of years made a good faith effort to
   address this gap. Dr. Lipinski mentioned the approach of drug
   repurposing/repositioning, taking existing drugs and testing whether they
   can successfully treat other conditions.
   -  *Are there existing reports on disease research organizations that
   will point us to potentially outstanding charities?* The FasterCures PAS
   reports have a lot of useful information (and are among the meatiest sources
   of information on charities I've seen), but they don't answer all of our
   questions. (We have asked FasterCures to refer us to the advisors they
   consulted in creating these reports, so we could ask them our remaining
   questions.) The MS Society (the organization we use for the examples below)
   declined to speak with us and told us to rely on the FasterCures report.
   Examples of FasterCures' report statements and our remaining questions:
      - According to the FasterCures report, a key accomplishment for the
      National MS Society is "Contributing to research that resulted in the six
      disease-modifying drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
      (FDA) and research that contributed to the development of the current
      therapeutic pipeline." We still would ask, in what way, specifically, did
      the MS Society contribute to the development of these drugs? What other
      organizations/entities contributed to the development of these drugs and
      what role did they play?
      - FasterCures states, "PAS�s scientific advisors point out that it has
      been the single organization serving as a catalyst for new
research in MS."
      We ask, what do the advisors base this conclusion on?  What does
it mean to
      be "the catalyst" and what would have happened in the Society's absence?
      - FasterCures states, "The Society is a key source of new knowledge
      about MS. Internal tracking of publications of its grantees
indicates that a
      typical grant results in 4-6 publications, and that in 2008,
research grants
      resulted in 240 publications." We still would ask, what was the impact of
      their publications? Were any publications extremely influential?
Were they
      published in top journals? What was their citation record?

*Our plan going forward*

Learning the answers to the above questions have caused us to re-evaluate
our approach. We think it's unlikely that independent research / scanning
charities' websites will enable us to find organizations we can recommend.

Our plan now is to:

   1. Narrow our scope and focus primarily (for now) on two diseases covered
   by FasterCures Philanthropy Advisory Service (discussed above): malaria and
   multiple sclerosis.  The goal is to get a sense for what is possible by
   focusing on diseases for which a lot of information is likely to be
   available.
   2. Identify relevant people with knowledge about ongoing research in
   those areas and speak with them about what future research might accomplish
   and what benefit additional funding would yield. Also, look at papers on
   malaria and MS in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery to see what the most
   important papers have been and who has funded them.  The idea is to produce
   some content on (a) the relative merits of funding work in the two different
   areas; (b) the relative merits of different organizations with each area.
   If this approach goes well we can potentially apply it to other diseases as
   well.
   3. Talk to funders (e.g., Gates Foundation, Wellcome Turst) about how
   they choose which organizations to support.
   4. Try to determine which researchers in different fields are "top" vs
   "average" vs "below average" and talk to them about their funding needs,
   with the aim of determine whether (a) "top" have all the funding they need
   and marginal funding goes to "below average" researchers or (b) "top"
   researchers can use additional funds.

Thoughts, questions, and feedback are appreciated.

-Elie

I am out of the office until 07/12/2010.

I am out of the office until Monday July 12th and will return your message
at that time.


Note: This is an automated response to your message  "[givewell] Disease
research update" sent on 7/6/2010 10:32:06 AM.

This is the only notification you will receive while this person is away.

**************************************************************************************

This communication is intended solely for the addressee and is
confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
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Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's
been bugging me for a while. You've previously written
<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/>  that
you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
specific circumstances apply:
1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
operates2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
differentiated from past/existing projects3. Donor has strong knowledge
of and confidence in charity's leadership4. Charity is committed to
measuring its impact over time
These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
Kickstarter and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact
measurement is still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still
figuring out what to measure), in many cases the above conditions are
met for these appeals. Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my
personal donations (which will total in the low four figures this year)
will have more of an impact divided among these startup or fledgling
projects rather than a "name brand" organization, in the sense that few
other people know about these projects and my contribution is thus more
likely to be the proverbial tipping point between short-term success or
failure for them. You can also throw into the mix the fact that I write
a blog that is fairly well-read within my field, and thus have a modest
platform for encouraging others to donate to the same projects I choose.
On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
allowing for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set
of startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
geographic locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm
most familiar with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all
promising artistic endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems
to you the most appropriate allocation strategy between small, unproven
charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
projects for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
knowledge? I'd like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits
of supporting arts projects versus international aid; that's a whole
other can of worms that I believe is a distraction from the question I
want to ask. For the purposes of your response you can pretend that I'm
asking about supporting a set of social entrepreneurs interested in
poverty alleviation in Africa rather than a bunch of weirdo longhair
musicians.
Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
thought!
All best,Ian David Moss

Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we do
buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.

- Brian

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>
> It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
> donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's been
> bugging me for a while. You've previously written<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
> you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very specific
> circumstances apply:
>
> 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
> operates
> 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> differentiated from past/existing projects
> 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's leadership
> 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>
> These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
> mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter
> and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement is
> still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out what
> to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these appeals.
> Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations (which
> will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an impact
> divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name brand"
> organization, in the sense that few other people know about these projects
> and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping point
> between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw into the
> mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my field,
> and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to the same
> projects I choose.
>
> On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even allowing
> for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set of
> startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the geographic
> locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most familiar
> with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising artistic
> endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>
> My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems to
> you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
> charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven projects
> for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal knowledge? I'd
> like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting arts
> projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms that I
> believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the purposes
> of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a set of
> social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa rather than
> a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>
> Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for thought!
>
> All best,
> Ian David Moss
>
>
> 

Hi Ian,

I'm Robert, a new volunteer with GiveWell. I read what you wrote about
allocation strategy. I've felt similar confusion (and even discomfort) over
some of my donations and I thought I could offer my own two cents.

The newer projects clearly have a lot of value for you. You mention that
collegues and friends have sent you information about them, so I imagine it
would be rewarding to see your acquaintances succeed, if they themselves are
involved in the projects. Or, perhaps simply being the key reason why a
group received funding at all is meaningful for you (it certainly is to me
when I do it). You won't derive that kind of significance by donating to
larger groups--they'll probably function with or without you.

As a small caveat here, "significance" can be a little confusing in this
sense. If I donate to 20 smaller, new organizations, I'm contributing more
to the success of those charity owners than I might if I donated to a
single, large, successful organization. The large organization "needs" my
donation less in order to succeed than the smaller ones. So in that sense, I
think your intuition was right--your impact defined in such a way was
greater. But if that large organization can use my money more effectively,
and can produce greater significance in the community in which it operates,
then I might want to donate according to that definition of significance. In
the former case, we're talking about significance in terms of overcoming a
very important funding hurdle, while in the latter, significance means
something closer to community impact. These two definitions have their own
unique effects on me, so they might be worth considering separately for you,
too.

I also think you bring up a really important (often overlooked) point about
donations:
"what seems to you the most appropriate allocation strategy between small,
unproven charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
projects for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
knowledge?"

I often gravitate towards charities that do work I know about (bednets),
even if others might be doing equally essential work that I don't know much
about (vaccinations). In fact, I even get much more out of donating to
groups that do work I can follow. I can appreciate what they do, and I can
feel why they are significant, not just conceptually accept it. This makes
my giving more valuable to me, and that's important to me apart from my
impact. It encourages me to continue investing energy in the issues I care
about, which in a secondary sense actually does relate to impact. Perhaps
this is true for you too?

My biggest point is, I think if you want to donate solely based on potential
impact, you should donate to a single, proven, large charity, not a set of
smaller, new organizations--but potential impact isn't the only reason we
donate. I don't think it would be particularly immoral, or philosophically
unsound, to choose some of the smaller charities. If you want, perhaps a
compromise would be satisfying. Donate only to the small organizations that
you think have the greatest chance of success, that you know the most about,
and that you feel blogging could help fund. Cut out the most risky ones and
invest that money in the larger, more successful organization. Then track
the progress of the smaller groups over time to determine your money's
significance. And try to actively note how it feels to be a big reason those
smaller groups can progress at all. If being that person matters to you a
lot, I wouldn't deny that feeling. It may at times be at odds with impact
analysis principles, but it may also be a big reason you choose to donate at
all.

Robert Mundy

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 8:43 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

>
>
> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we do
> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>
> - Brian
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>>
>> It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
>> donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's been
>> bugging me for a while. You've previously written<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>> you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very specific
>> circumstances apply:
>>
>> 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
>> operates
>> 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>> differentiated from past/existing projects
>> 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's leadership
>> 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>>
>> These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
>> mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter
>> and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement is
>> still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out what
>> to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these appeals.
>> Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations (which
>> will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an impact
>> divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name brand"
>> organization, in the sense that few other people know about these projects
>> and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping point
>> between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw into the
>> mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my field,
>> and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to the same
>> projects I choose.
>>
>> On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even allowing
>> for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>> philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set of
>> startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the geographic
>> locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most familiar
>> with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising artistic
>> endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>>
>> My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems to
>> you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
>> charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven projects
>> for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal knowledge? I'd
>> like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting arts
>> projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms that I
>> believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the purposes
>> of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a set of
>> social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa rather than
>> a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>>
>> Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for thought!
>>
>> All best,
>> Ian David Moss
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

Hi Brian,
No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again, there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only on a professional level.
Ian

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>
> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we do
> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
> 
> - Brian
> 
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
> >
> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's been
> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very specific
> > circumstances apply:
> >
> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
> > operates
> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> > differentiated from past/existing projects
> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's leadership
> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
> >
> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter
> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement is
> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out what
> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these appeals.
> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations (which
> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an impact
> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name brand"
> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these projects
> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping point
> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw into the
> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my field,
> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to the same
> > projects I choose.
> >
> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even allowing
> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set of
> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the geographic
> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most familiar
> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising artistic
> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
> >
> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems to
> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven projects
> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal knowledge? I'd
> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting arts
> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms that I
> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the purposes
> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a set of
> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa rather than
> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
> >
> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for thought!
> >
> > All best,
> > Ian David Moss
> >
> >
> >
>

Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
your professional community?

It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
is more meaningful than doing it across categories?

- Brian

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Brian,
> No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again, there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only on a professional level.
> Ian
>
> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we do
>> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>>
>> - Brian
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>> >
>> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
>> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's been
>> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very specific
>> > circumstances apply:
>> >
>> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
>> > operates
>> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>> > differentiated from past/existing projects
>> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's leadership
>> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>> >
>> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
>> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter
>> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement is
>> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out what
>> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these appeals.
>> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations (which
>> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an impact
>> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name brand"
>> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these projects
>> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping point
>> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw into the
>> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my field,
>> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to the same
>> > projects I choose.
>> >
>> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even allowing
>> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set of
>> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the geographic
>> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most familiar
>> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising artistic
>> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>> >
>> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems to
>> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
>> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven projects
>> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal knowledge? I'd
>> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting arts
>> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms that I
>> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the purposes
>> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a set of
>> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa rather than
>> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>> >
>> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for thought!
>> >
>> > All best,
>> > Ian David Moss
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net). �Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff members and other participants. �They do NOT represent official positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity.  I'm not sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a framework, but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:

1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that Givewell is focused on)
2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting someone's pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity support and true personal gifts
3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest, there's some merit in deepening community ties)

I would add a 4th:

4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so readily to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit into categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to many donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society as a whole.

Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should be.  That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without merit - they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches that don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be room for some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the latter 3, but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different organization with a different focus from Givewell).




  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Brian Slesinsky 
  To: givewell@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
  Subject: Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities vs. proven concepts


    
  Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
  mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
  local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
  deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
  to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
  impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
  you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
  your professional community?

  It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
  is more meaningful than doing it across categories?

  - Brian

  On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...> wrote:
  >
  >
  > Hi Brian,
  > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again, there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only on a professional level.
  > Ian
  >
  > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
  >>
  >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we do
  >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
  >>
  >> - Brian
  >>
  >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
  >>
  >> >
  >> >
  >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
  >> >
  >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own personal
  >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's been
  >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
  >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very specific
  >> > circumstances apply:
  >> >
  >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
  >> > operates
  >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
  >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
  >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's leadership
  >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
  >> >
  >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues of
  >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter
  >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement is
  >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out what
  >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these appeals.
  >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations (which
  >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an impact
  >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name brand"
  >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these projects
  >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping point
  >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw into the
  >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my field,
  >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to the same
  >> > projects I choose.
  >> >
  >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even allowing
  >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
  >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set of
  >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the geographic
  >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most familiar
  >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising artistic
  >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
  >> >
  >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what seems to
  >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
  >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven projects
  >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal knowledge? I'd
  >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting arts
  >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms that I
  >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the purposes
  >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a set of
  >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa rather than
  >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
  >> >
  >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for thought!
  >> >
  >> > All best,
  >> > Ian David Moss
  >> >
  >> >
  >> >
  >>
  >
  >
  >
  >
  > ------------------------------------
  >
  > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
  >
  >
  >
  >


  

Hi Ian,

Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a single
organization rather than allocating it across many different organizations.
So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I bet has the most
expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see the discussion in
comments on our blog at
http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.) Right
now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.

I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization could
offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes down to
the specifics of the organization in question and your other options: What
are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people involved
and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem they're
trying to solve?

In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the conversations
we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and the
organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)

-Elie

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@charter.net>wrote:

>
>
> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity.  I'm not
> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a framework,
> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
>
> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
> Givewell is focused on)
> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting someone's
> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity support
> and true personal gifts
> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest, there's some
> merit in deepening community ties)
>
> I would add a 4th:
>
> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so readily
> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit into
> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to many
> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society as a
> whole.
>
> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should be.
> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without merit -
> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches that
> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be room for
> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the latter 3,
> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>
> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities vs.
> proven concepts
>
>
>
> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
> your professional community?
>
> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
>
> - Brian
>
> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi Brian,
> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my thinking
> here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I was one
> of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually have a
> responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again, there are
> not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those calls.
> While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only on a
> professional level.
> > Ian
> >
> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Brian
> Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
> >>
> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we
> do
> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
> >>
> >> - Brian
> >>
> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
> >> >
> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
> personal
> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's
> been
> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
> specific
> >> > circumstances apply:
> >> >
> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
> >> > operates
> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
> leadership
> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
> >> >
> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues
> of
> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
> Kickstarter
> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement
> is
> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring out
> what
> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these
> appeals.
> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations
> (which
> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an
> impact
> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name
> brand"
> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these
> projects
> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping
> point
> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw
> into the
> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my
> field,
> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to
> the same
> >> > projects I choose.
> >> >
> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
> allowing
> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the set
> of
> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
> geographic
> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
> familiar
> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising
> artistic
> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
> >> >
> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what
> seems to
> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small, unproven
> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
> projects
> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
> knowledge? I'd
> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of supporting
> arts
> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms
> that I
> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the
> purposes
> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a
> set of
> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
> rather than
> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
> >> >
> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
> thought!
> >> >
> >> > All best,
> >> > Ian David Moss
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>  
>

Hi Elie

i just finished reading your response to Lan and learnt you wish to help
rural poor Indians with some welfare programs(s). This is why thought of
writing to you. Now, please allow me to share my views and also experience
of over 32 years of working with rural/urban poor Indians and the Indian
NGOs.

Now, first thing first. I am sorry to say that most of the NGOs here are
run/managed and operated by people who hardly have any interest in serving
the poor and lack the kind of background needed to actually run an NGO. It
is a fact therefore, that these NGOs hardly uses less than 20 percent of the
funds they receive for the cause and rest are spent for welfare of those who
own/ operate.Natuarally mst of them have no ambitions/ goals and objectives
set and so they claim they implement any program, even the one where high
level of technical/scientifical and or medical knowledge and expertise is
needed. It is a sorry state of affair but the people representing major
overseas funding agenices are reluctant to make extra efforts to identify
honest and NGOs of very high integrity and proven track record. They even
accept the manipuated/fabricated financial/ progarm progress reports from
the NGOs. Total lack of transperency and post-funding monitoring and
on-the-site/spot assessment of programs seems to be the order of the day.

Tell me how can someone like u who probably can stay for a few days identify
the right NGOs to implement your ideas/ programs? Last few years saw
millions gone down in the name of HIV/AIDS prevention programs, funded by
International charities/ organizations without even knowing the outcomes. I
am sorry for being frank and honest but if you were to invest in some
program here, in India, u better need to be fully aware of the people and
their past. you need to be careful in identifying the right NGO before u
actually release the funds and or invest. It is always good that we invest
in one program one NGO rather than giving out small and insignificant funds
to many organization. My experience tells me that if the funds are tiny, the
concerned (implementing agency) generally just dont do anything and spend
almost everything in upgrading their own infrastructure and or pay to the
people working on some other programs. The greed for money and corruption
among many owners and there agents is rampant and that is why Microfinance
Institutions in India have earned dubious name and reputation. Instead of
seeing the people's welfare, organizations involved in microfinance started
exploitibg them by charing much higher interest rates than state-owned banks
making poor more poor and made them homeless in many cases.

Today, we need to look for honest people who have good/innovative programs
that help poor lead a real normal and respectable life within shortest
period of time. We need also to have good funding partners who are equally
interested in seeing that the poor and neglected are helped to lead a normal
and healthy lives like us all. Rural poor children especially needs more
help and assistance as they lack access to good food, health care and
finally love and affection. I am sure these are the areas where your
contribution would go a long long way.

I am always there in case you need help.

Anil Mahajan
Mumbai, India

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Elie Hassenfeld <ehassenfeld@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hi Ian,
>
> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a
> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I bet
> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see the
> discussion in comments on our blog at
> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.) Right
> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
>
> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization could
> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes down to
> the specifics of the organization in question and your other options: What
> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people involved
> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem they're
> trying to solve?
>
> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
> organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the conversations
> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and the
> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)
>
> -Elie
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity.  I'm not
>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a framework,
>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
>>
>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
>> Givewell is focused on)
>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting someone's
>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity support
>> and true personal gifts
>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest, there's some
>> merit in deepening community ties)
>>
>> I would add a 4th:
>>
>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so readily
>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit into
>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to many
>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society as a
>> whole.
>>
>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should be.
>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without merit -
>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches that
>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be room for
>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the latter 3,
>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>
>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities vs.
>> proven concepts
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
>> your professional community?
>>
>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
>>
>> - Brian
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi Brian,
>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I
>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually
>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again,
>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those
>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only
>> on a professional level.
>> > Ian
>> >
>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Brian
>> Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we
>> do
>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>> >>
>> >> - Brian
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>> >> >
>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
>> personal
>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's
>> been
>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
>> specific
>> >> > circumstances apply:
>> >> >
>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
>> >> > operates
>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
>> leadership
>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>> >> >
>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues
>> of
>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
>> Kickstarter
>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement
>> is
>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring
>> out what
>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these
>> appeals.
>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations
>> (which
>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an
>> impact
>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name
>> brand"
>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these
>> projects
>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping
>> point
>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw
>> into the
>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my
>> field,
>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to
>> the same
>> >> > projects I choose.
>> >> >
>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
>> allowing
>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the
>> set of
>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
>> geographic
>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
>> familiar
>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising
>> artistic
>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>> >> >
>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what
>> seems to
>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
>> unproven
>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
>> projects
>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
>> knowledge? I'd
>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
>> supporting arts
>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms
>> that I
>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the
>> purposes
>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a
>> set of
>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
>> rather than
>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>> >> >
>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
>> thought!
>> >> >
>> >> > All best,
>> >> > Ian David Moss
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------
>> >
>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>  
>

To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations, especially
since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the value of
your own knowledge/convictions/friends.  (I'm referring to a universal bias,
not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)

In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a certain
amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to groups
that look good to me.  This kind of split is very difficult to justify in a
traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that way
because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities (b) the
threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of overconfidence
in my friends.

I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local opportunities, if
you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected impact.  As
Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue.  I also don't
see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded great
opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about comprehensiveness,
the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects got
funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor tried
individually to be comprehensive.

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <ehassenfeld@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> Hi Ian,
>
> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a
> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I bet
> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see the
> discussion in comments on our blog at
> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.) Right
> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
>
> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization could
> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes down to
> the specifics of the organization in question and your other options: What
> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people involved
> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem they're
> trying to solve?
>
> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
> organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the conversations
> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and the
> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)
>
> -Elie
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity.  I'm not
>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a framework,
>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
>>
>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
>> Givewell is focused on)
>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting someone's
>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity support
>> and true personal gifts
>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest, there's some
>> merit in deepening community ties)
>>
>> I would add a 4th:
>>
>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so readily
>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit into
>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to many
>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society as a
>> whole.
>>
>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should be.
>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without merit -
>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches that
>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be room for
>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the latter 3,
>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>
>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities vs.
>> proven concepts
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
>> your professional community?
>>
>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
>>
>> - Brian
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi Brian,
>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I
>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually
>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again,
>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those
>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only
>> on a professional level.
>> > Ian
>> >
>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Brian
>> Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we
>> do
>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>> >>
>> >> - Brian
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>> >> >
>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
>> personal
>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's
>> been
>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
>> specific
>> >> > circumstances apply:
>> >> >
>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the charity
>> >> > operates
>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
>> leadership
>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>> >> >
>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues
>> of
>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
>> Kickstarter
>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement
>> is
>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring
>> out what
>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these
>> appeals.
>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations
>> (which
>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an
>> impact
>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a "name
>> brand"
>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these
>> projects
>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping
>> point
>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw
>> into the
>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my
>> field,
>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to
>> the same
>> >> > projects I choose.
>> >> >
>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
>> allowing
>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the
>> set of
>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
>> geographic
>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
>> familiar
>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising
>> artistic
>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>> >> >
>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what
>> seems to
>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
>> unproven
>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
>> projects
>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
>> knowledge? I'd
>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
>> supporting arts
>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms
>> that I
>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the
>> purposes
>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a
>> set of
>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
>> rather than
>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>> >> >
>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
>> thought!
>> >> >
>> >> > All best,
>> >> > Ian David Moss
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------
>> >
>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>  
>

Hey Ian,

I"m in a similar position as you: background in the arts with many
artist-friends and also wanting to give ala GiveWell's recommendations.

I also like Brian's distinctions: we give sometimes to people close to us
and sometimes to people with no personal connection that achieve big impact.
 For me, I do about 1/3 close and 2/3 impact.

When it comes to how to allocate within that 1/3, I think you can't ignore
the fact that this is the arts and try to force it into an impact-focused
giving model.  For the latter, it makes sense to concentrate the giving into
one area that is achieving the most impact. However, the arts thrives best
when there are many many many ways of thinking and expressing creatively.
 Consolidating to one creative institution would be contrary to the point.
 As I've written to you before, the long tail of the arts is infinite -
that's the very nature of creative expression. The more varied the arts are,
the better.

So: I'd give to as many arts projects as you can.  And because the scope of
the projects are usually small (at least from my friends' perspectives) a
small gift can still usually have a big impact.

One other thought: if a donor didn't have the personal connections that you
have but still wanted to give to many different artists, they could consider
giving to an arts school or trade organization/policy org.  Here, a gift to
one institution will have an impact on thousands of artists and forms of
art, which is what you want.

best,
Brigid

-- 
Brigid Slipka
brigid.slipka@...
www.brigidslipka.com
(323) 702-5017

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...m> wrote:

>
>
> To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
> info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations, especially
> since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the value of
> your own knowledge/convictions/friends.  (I'm referring to a universal bias,
> not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)
>
> In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a certain
> amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to groups
> that look good to me.  This kind of split is very difficult to justify in a
> traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that way
> because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities (b) the
> threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of overconfidence
> in my friends.
>
> I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local opportunities, if
> you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected impact.  As
> Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue.  I also don't
> see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
> contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded great
> opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about comprehensiveness,
> the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects got
> funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor tried
> individually to be comprehensive.
>
> On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <ehassenfeld@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Ian,
>>
>> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a
>> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
>> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I bet
>> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see the
>> discussion in comments on our blog at
>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.) Right
>> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
>>
>> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization could
>> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes down to
>> the specifics of the organization in question and your other options: What
>> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people involved
>> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem they're
>> trying to solve?
>>
>> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
>> organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
>> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the conversations
>> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and the
>> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)
>>
>> -Elie
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity.  I'm not
>>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a framework,
>>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
>>>
>>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
>>> Givewell is focused on)
>>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting someone's
>>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity support
>>> and true personal gifts
>>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
>>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest, there's some
>>> merit in deepening community ties)
>>>
>>> I would add a 4th:
>>>
>>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so readily
>>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit into
>>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to many
>>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society as a
>>> whole.
>>>
>>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should be.
>>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without merit -
>>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches that
>>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be room for
>>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the latter 3,
>>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
>>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>
>>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
>>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
>>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities vs.
>>> proven concepts
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
>>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives, to
>>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
>>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or otherwise),
>>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
>>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
>>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation in
>>> your professional community?
>>>
>>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
>>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
>>>
>>> - Brian
>>>
>>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Hi Brian,
>>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
>>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my field (I
>>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I actually
>>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since again,
>>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to make those
>>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases it's only
>>> on a professional level.
>>> > Ian
>>> >
>>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>, Brian
>>> Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After all, we
>>> do
>>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>>> >>
>>> >> - Brian
>>> >>
>>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>>> >> >
>>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
>>> personal
>>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question that's
>>> been
>>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
>>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
>>> specific
>>> >> > circumstances apply:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the
>>> charity
>>> >> > operates
>>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
>>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
>>> leadership
>>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>>> >> >
>>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and colleagues
>>> of
>>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
>>> Kickstarter
>>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact measurement
>>> is
>>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still figuring
>>> out what
>>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for these
>>> appeals.
>>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal donations
>>> (which
>>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of an
>>> impact
>>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a
>>> "name brand"
>>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about these
>>> projects
>>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial tipping
>>> point
>>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also throw
>>> into the
>>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within my
>>> field,
>>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate to
>>> the same
>>> >> > projects I choose.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
>>> allowing
>>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that the
>>> set of
>>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
>>> geographic
>>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
>>> familiar
>>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all promising
>>> artistic
>>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances, what
>>> seems to
>>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
>>> unproven
>>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger, proven
>>> projects
>>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
>>> knowledge? I'd
>>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
>>> supporting arts
>>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of worms
>>> that I
>>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For the
>>> purposes
>>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about supporting a
>>> set of
>>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
>>> rather than
>>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
>>> thought!
>>> >> >
>>> >> > All best,
>>> >> > Ian David Moss
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > ------------------------------------
>>> >
>>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of
>>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official
>>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

Thanks to all for your responses. I've found them quite
thought-provoking and they've honestly forced me to go back to the
drawing board a bit with this process.
I have to say that the implication that the types of donations I've
proposed are somehow divorced from "impact" or "effectiveness,"
something I detected in several responses, concerns me. I probably
shouldn't have framed them in the context of fundraising appeals from
friends and colleagues, because any personal relationships here are
truly irrelevant to my question except insofar as they might give me
insight into how impactfully my money might be used. What I'm really
asking about is how to compare expected impact between experimental and
proven opportunities. I think Holden's framework of "local" versus
"external" recipients is most helpful in this respect.
At the same time, I've realized I've made a boo-boo in that I can only
really make such a comparison if the "local" vs. "external" recipients
are in the same cause category. Otherwise, I will be forced to weigh the
merits of disparate causes, something I already ruled out in my initial
question. Since the external opportunities I'm considering are in
international aid and the local ones are in the arts, that condition is
clearly not met. Accordingly, I think I'm just going to have to make a
judgment call with regard to my allocation between arts recipients and
GiveWell-recommended recipients. Right now, at least for this year, I'm
leaning towards 50/50, with some of that money going to GiveWell itself
as a token of my appreciation for both the intellectual stimulation and
entertainment you all have provided me the past few years.
This conversation has also been helpful for me in thinking about how I
might divide my contributions within the local realm. (You can skip this
part unless you're interested in arts stuff.) Regarding the
"non-comprehensiveness" issue, I realize that I have been framing the
specialized knowledge that I bring to the table too broadly. With the
exception of experimental jazz (especially in New York and Philadelphia)
and contemporary classical music, I have very little expertise (or
interest in gaining that expertise) to offer donors looking to support
directly the creation, performance, or presentation of art. Where I can
offer meaningful recommendations is in the realm of organizations that
engage the arts from an ecosystem perspective -- i.e., service
organizations, arts councils, research shops, and the like -- steering
donors toward those that show a deep understanding of the context in
which they operate and advance the public conversation in progressive
and innovative ways. For me, then, the impact-focused questions I would
ask would be more like those listed under "think tanks" and "research"
in the DIY section of your website
<http://www.givewell.org/your-charity>  (just discovered this today!)
than the "arts" section.
With due respect to Elie, I think I will divide my donation among
several recipients rather than funneling it all to one. For one thing, I
believe that a diversified portfolio is as appropriate in a charitable
investment context as it would be in a financial investment context --
if not more so, since in my opinion uncertainties about expected return
are greater in charity than in financial markets. For another, the arts
are different from many other cause areas in that diversity and variety
are important values and scale is relatively less important (and can
even be an impediment to impact). Besides, we Geminis like having lots
of choices available to us. :)
Thanks again for the spirited discussion. If you're interested in my
eventual choices, please feel free to check http://createquity.com
<http://createquity.com>  for a post in the next few days on the
subject.
Over and out,Ian
--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brigid Slipka <brigid.slipka@...>
wrote:
>
> Hey Ian,
>
> I"m in a similar position as you: background in the arts with many
> artist-friends and also wanting to give ala GiveWell's
recommendations.
>
> I also like Brian's distinctions: we give sometimes to people close to
us
> and sometimes to people with no personal connection that achieve big
impact.
>  For me, I do about 1/3 close and 2/3 impact.
>
> When it comes to how to allocate within that 1/3, I think you can't
ignore
> the fact that this is the arts and try to force it into an
impact-focused
> giving model.  For the latter, it makes sense to concentrate the
giving into
> one area that is achieving the most impact. However, the arts thrives
best
> when there are many many many ways of thinking and expressing
creatively.
>  Consolidating to one creative institution would be contrary to the
point.
>  As I've written to you before, the long tail of the arts is infinite
-
> that's the very nature of creative expression. The more varied the
arts are,
> the better.
>
> So: I'd give to as many arts projects as you can.  And because the
scope of
> the projects are usually small (at least from my friends'
perspectives) a
> small gift can still usually have a big impact.
>
> One other thought: if a donor didn't have the personal connections
that you
> have but still wanted to give to many different artists, they could
consider
> giving to an arts school or trade organization/policy org.  Here, a
gift to
> one institution will have an impact on thousands of artists and forms
of
> art, which is what you want.
>
> best,
> Brigid
>
> --
> Brigid Slipka
> brigid.slipka@...
> www.brigidslipka.com
> (323) 702-5017
>
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Holden Karnofsky holden0@... wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
> > info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations,
especially
> > since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the
value of
> > your own knowledge/convictions/friends.  (I'm referring to a
universal bias,
> > not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)
> >
> > In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a
certain
> > amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to
groups
> > that look good to me.  This kind of split is very difficult to
justify in a
> > traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that
way
> > because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities
(b) the
> > threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of
overconfidence
> > in my friends.
> >
> > I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local
opportunities, if
> > you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected
impact.  As
> > Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue.  I
also don't
> > see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
> > contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded
great
> > opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about
comprehensiveness,
> > the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects
got
> > funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor
tried
> > individually to be comprehensive.
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld
ehassenfeld@...wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi Ian,
> >>
> >> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to
a
> >> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
> >> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that
I bet
> >> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion,
see the
> >> discussion in comments on our blog at
> >>
http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.)
Right
> >> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
> >>
> >> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up
organization could
> >> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes
down to
> >> the specifics of the organization in question and your other
options: What
> >> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people
involved
> >> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem
they're
> >> trying to solve?
> >>
> >> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
> >> organizations serving street children -- that made me question
whether
> >> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the
conversations
> >> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause
and the
> >> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India
soon.)
> >>
> >> -Elie
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer psteinmeyer@...
> >> > wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity. 
I'm not
> >>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a
framework,
> >>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
> >>>
> >>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type
that
> >>> Givewell is focused on)
> >>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting
someone's
> >>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true
charity support
> >>> and true personal gifts
> >>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than
similar
> >>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest,
there's some
> >>> merit in deepening community ties)
> >>>
> >>> I would add a 4th:
> >>>
> >>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so
readily
> >>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really
fit into
> >>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to
many
> >>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for
society as a
> >>> whole.
> >>>
> >>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should
be.
> >>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without
merit -
> >>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and
approaches that
> >>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be
room for
> >>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the
latter 3,
> >>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a
different
> >>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky bslesinsky@...
> >>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> >>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
> >>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental"
charities vs.
> >>> proven concepts
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
> >>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and
relatives, to
> >>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating
and
> >>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or
otherwise),
> >>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
> >>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by
people
> >>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under
participation in
> >>> your professional community?
> >>>
> >>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those
categories
> >>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
> >>>
> >>> - Brian
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic
ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > Hi Brian,
> >>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
> >>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my
field (I
> >>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I
actually
> >>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since
again,
> >>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to
make those
> >>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases
it's only
> >>> on a professional level.
> >>> > Ian
> >>> >
> >>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>,
Brian
> >>> Slesinsky bslesinsky@ wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After
all, we
> >>> do
> >>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> - Brian
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my
own
> >>> personal
> >>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question
that's
> >>> been
> >>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
> >>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/>
that
> >>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when
very
> >>> specific
> >>> >> > circumstances apply:
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the
> >>> charity
> >>> >> > operates
> >>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> >>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
> >>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
> >>> leadership
> >>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and
colleagues
> >>> of
> >>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such
as
> >>> Kickstarter
> >>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact
measurement
> >>> is
> >>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still
figuring
> >>> out what
> >>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for
these
> >>> appeals.
> >>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal
donations
> >>> (which
> >>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more
of an
> >>> impact
> >>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than
a
> >>> "name brand"
> >>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about
these
> >>> projects
> >>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial
tipping
> >>> point
> >>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also
throw
> >>> into the
> >>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read
within my
> >>> field,
> >>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to
donate to
> >>> the same
> >>> >> > projects I choose.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk
even
> >>> allowing
> >>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> >>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it,
that the
> >>> set of
> >>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by
the
> >>> geographic
> >>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm
most
> >>> familiar
> >>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all
promising
> >>> artistic
> >>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances,
what
> >>> seems to
> >>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
> >>> unproven
> >>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger,
proven
> >>> projects
> >>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
> >>> knowledge? I'd
> >>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
> >>> supporting arts
> >>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can
of worms
> >>> that I
> >>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For
the
> >>> purposes
> >>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about
supporting a
> >>> set of
> >>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in
Africa
> >>> rather than
> >>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food
for
> >>> thought!
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > All best,
> >>> >> > Ian David Moss
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >>
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > ------------------------------------
> >>> >
> >>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell
(www.givewell.net).
> >>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and
notes of
> >>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent
official
> >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>

Thanks to all for your responses. I've found them quite
thought-provoking and they've honestly forced me to go back to the
drawing board a bit with this process.
I have to say that the implication that the types of donations I've
proposed are somehow divorced from "impact" or "effectiveness,"
something I detected in several responses, concerns me. I probably
shouldn't have framed them in the context of fundraising appeals from
friends and colleagues, because any personal relationships here are
truly irrelevant to my question except insofar as they might give me
insight into how impactfully my money might be used. What I'm really
asking about is how to compare expected impact between experimental and
proven opportunities. I think Holden's framework of "local" versus
"external" recipients is most helpful in this respect.
At the same time, I've realized I've made a boo-boo in that I can only
really make such a comparison if the "local" vs. "external" recipients
are in the same cause category. Otherwise, I will be forced to weigh the
merits of disparate causes, something I already ruled out in my initial
question. Since the external opportunities I'm considering are in
international aid and the local ones are in the arts, that condition is
clearly not met. Accordingly, I think I'm just going to have to make a
judgment call with regard to my allocation between arts recipients and
GiveWell-recommended recipients. Right now, at least for this year, I'm
leaning towards 50/50, with some of that money going to GiveWell itself
as a token of my appreciation for both the intellectual stimulation and
entertainment you all have provided me the past few years.
This conversation has also been helpful for me in thinking about how I
might divide my contributions within the local realm. (You can skip this
part unless you're interested in arts stuff.) Regarding the
"non-comprehensiveness" issue, I realize that I have been framing the
specialized knowledge that I bring to the table too broadly. With the
exception of experimental jazz (especially in New York and Philadelphia)
and contemporary classical music, I have very little expertise (or
interest in gaining that expertise) to offer donors looking to support
directly the creation, performance, or presentation of art. Where I can
offer meaningful recommendations is in the realm of organizations that
engage the arts from an ecosystem perspective -- i.e., service
organizations, arts councils, research shops, and the like -- steering
donors toward those that show a deep understanding of the context in
which they operate and advance the public conversation in progressive
and innovative ways. For me, then, the impact-focused questions I would
ask would be more like those listed under "think tanks" and "research"
in the DIY section of your website
<http://www.givewell.org/your-charity>  (just discovered this today!)
than the "arts" section.
With due respect to Elie, I think I will divide my donation among
several recipients rather than funneling it all to one. For one thing, I
believe that a diversified portfolio is as appropriate in a charitable
investment context as it would be in a financial investment context --
if not more so, since in my opinion uncertainties about expected return
are greater in charity than in financial markets. For another, the arts
are different from many other cause areas in that diversity and variety
are important values and scale is relatively less important (and can
even be an impediment to impact). Besides, we Geminis like having lots
of choices available to us. :)
Thanks again for the spirited discussion. If you're interested in my
eventual choices, please feel free to check http://createquity.com
<http://createquity.com>  for a post in the next few days on the
subject.
Over and out,Ian --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brigid Slipka
<brigid.slipka@...> wrote:
>
> Hey Ian,
>
> I"m in a similar position as you: background in the arts with many
> artist-friends and also wanting to give ala GiveWell's
recommendations.
>
> I also like Brian's distinctions: we give sometimes to people close to
us
> and sometimes to people with no personal connection that achieve big
impact.
>  For me, I do about 1/3 close and 2/3 impact.
>
> When it comes to how to allocate within that 1/3, I think you can't
ignore
> the fact that this is the arts and try to force it into an
impact-focused
> giving model.  For the latter, it makes sense to concentrate the
giving into
> one area that is achieving the most impact. However, the arts thrives
best
> when there are many many many ways of thinking and expressing
creatively.
>  Consolidating to one creative institution would be contrary to the
point.
>  As I've written to you before, the long tail of the arts is infinite
-
> that's the very nature of creative expression. The more varied the
arts are,
> the better.
>
> So: I'd give to as many arts projects as you can.  And because the
scope of
> the projects are usually small (at least from my friends'
perspectives) a
> small gift can still usually have a big impact.
>
> One other thought: if a donor didn't have the personal connections
that you
> have but still wanted to give to many different artists, they could
consider
> giving to an arts school or trade organization/policy org.  Here, a
gift to
> one institution will have an impact on thousands of artists and forms
of
> art, which is what you want.
>
> best,
> Brigid
>
> --
> Brigid Slipka
> brigid.slipka@...
> www.brigidslipka.com
> (323) 702-5017
>
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Holden Karnofsky holden0@... wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
> > info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations,
especially
> > since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the
value of
> > your own knowledge/convictions/friends.  (I'm referring to a
universal bias,
> > not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)
> >
> > In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a
certain
> > amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to
groups
> > that look good to me.  This kind of split is very difficult to
justify in a
> > traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that
way
> > because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities
(b) the
> > threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of
overconfidence
> > in my friends.
> >
> > I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local
opportunities, if
> > you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected
impact.  As
> > Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue.  I
also don't
> > see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
> > contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded
great
> > opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about
comprehensiveness,
> > the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects
got
> > funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor
tried
> > individually to be comprehensive.
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld
ehassenfeld@...wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi Ian,
> >>
> >> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to
a
> >> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
> >> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that
I bet
> >> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion,
see the
> >> discussion in comments on our blog at
> >>
http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.)
Right
> >> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
> >>
> >> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up
organization could
> >> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes
down to
> >> the specifics of the organization in question and your other
options: What
> >> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people
involved
> >> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem
they're
> >> trying to solve?
> >>
> >> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
> >> organizations serving street children -- that made me question
whether
> >> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the
conversations
> >> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause
and the
> >> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India
soon.)
> >>
> >> -Elie
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer psteinmeyer@...
> >> > wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity. 
I'm not
> >>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a
framework,
> >>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
> >>>
> >>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type
that
> >>> Givewell is focused on)
> >>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting
someone's
> >>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true
charity support
> >>> and true personal gifts
> >>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than
similar
> >>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest,
there's some
> >>> merit in deepening community ties)
> >>>
> >>> I would add a 4th:
> >>>
> >>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity.  Doesn't lend itself quite so
readily
> >>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really
fit into
> >>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to
many
> >>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for
society as a
> >>> whole.
> >>>
> >>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should
be.
> >>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without
merit -
> >>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and
approaches that
> >>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell.  (I think there would be
room for
> >>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the
latter 3,
> >>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a
different
> >>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky bslesinsky@...
> >>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> >>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
> >>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental"
charities vs.
> >>> proven concepts
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
> >>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and
relatives, to
> >>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating
and
> >>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or
otherwise),
> >>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
> >>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by
people
> >>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under
participation in
> >>> your professional community?
> >>>
> >>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those
categories
> >>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
> >>>
> >>> - Brian
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic
ian.moss@...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > Hi Brian,
> >>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
> >>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my
field (I
> >>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I
actually
> >>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since
again,
> >>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to
make those
> >>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases
it's only
> >>> on a professional level.
> >>> > Ian
> >>> >
> >>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>,
Brian
> >>> Slesinsky bslesinsky@ wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After
all, we
> >>> do
> >>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> - Brian
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my
own
> >>> personal
> >>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question
that's
> >>> been
> >>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
> >>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/>
that
> >>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when
very
> >>> specific
> >>> >> > circumstances apply:
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the
> >>> charity
> >>> >> > operates
> >>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> >>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
> >>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
> >>> leadership
> >>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and
colleagues
> >>> of
> >>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such
as
> >>> Kickstarter
> >>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact
measurement
> >>> is
> >>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still
figuring
> >>> out what
> >>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for
these
> >>> appeals.
> >>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal
donations
> >>> (which
> >>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more
of an
> >>> impact
> >>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than
a
> >>> "name brand"
> >>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about
these
> >>> projects
> >>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial
tipping
> >>> point
> >>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also
throw
> >>> into the
> >>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read
within my
> >>> field,
> >>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to
donate to
> >>> the same
> >>> >> > projects I choose.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk
even
> >>> allowing
> >>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> >>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it,
that the
> >>> set of
> >>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by
the
> >>> geographic
> >>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm
most
> >>> familiar
> >>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all
promising
> >>> artistic
> >>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances,
what
> >>> seems to
> >>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
> >>> unproven
> >>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger,
proven
> >>> projects
> >>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
> >>> knowledge? I'd
> >>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
> >>> supporting arts
> >>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can
of worms
> >>> that I
> >>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For
the
> >>> purposes
> >>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about
supporting a
> >>> set of
> >>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in
Africa
> >>> rather than
> >>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food
for
> >>> thought!
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> > All best,
> >>> >> > Ian David Moss
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >> >
> >>> >>
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > ------------------------------------
> >>> >
> >>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell
(www.givewell.net).
> >>>  Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and
notes of
> >>> staff members and other participants.  They do NOT represent
official
> >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>

Thanks for the discussion, Ian.  A couple of quick comments on
diversification:

1. I agree that "returns" are very uncertain in charity.  However, unlike in
investing, I see no particular reason to minimize risk rather than simply
maximizing return.  When it comes to my finances, I'd rather keep what I
have than have an equal chance of doubling my money or losing it ... but
when it comes to helping people, it's unclear to me why I should prefer (for
example) saving one life to an equal chance of saving two or zero.

2. I agree that scale can reduce impact.  The size of your donation is key
here.  If you're funding $50,000 organizations and you have $10,000 to give,
you can probably have more impact by dividing your money up than by giving
it all to one, since you start to be in danger of closing their "room for
more funding gap" all by yourself.  However, if you're funding $1 million
organizations and you have $25 (or even $1000) total to give, I don't think
there's any argument that splitting your money up increases your impact -
even if the organizations have limited needs, those limits aren't anywhere
near your gift.  I'm not saying you fall in one camp or the other - just
saying how I see the issue.

Best,
Holden

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:04 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:

>
>
> Thanks to all for your responses. I've found them quite thought-provoking
> and they've honestly forced me to go back to the drawing board a bit with
> this process.
>
> I have to say that the implication that the types of donations I've
> proposed are somehow divorced from "impact" or "effectiveness," something I
> detected in several responses, concerns me. I probably shouldn't have framed
> them in the context of fundraising appeals from friends and colleagues,
> because any personal relationships here are truly irrelevant to my question
> except insofar as they might give me insight into how impactfully my money
> might be used. What I'm really asking about is how to compare expected
> impact between experimental and proven opportunities. I think Holden's
> framework of "local" versus "external" recipients is most helpful in this
> respect.
>
> At the same time, I've realized I've made a boo-boo in that I can only
> really make such a comparison if the "local" vs. "external" recipients are
> in the same cause category. Otherwise, I will be forced to weigh the merits
> of disparate causes, something I already ruled out in my initial question.
> Since the external opportunities I'm considering are in international aid
> and the local ones are in the arts, that condition is clearly not met.
> Accordingly, I think I'm just going to have to make a judgment call with
> regard to my allocation between arts recipients and GiveWell-recommended
> recipients. Right now, at least for this year, I'm leaning towards 50/50,
> with some of that money going to GiveWell itself as a token of my
> appreciation for both the intellectual stimulation and entertainment you all
> have provided me the past few years.
>
> This conversation has also been helpful for me in thinking about how I
> might divide my contributions within the local realm. (You can skip this
> part unless you're interested in arts stuff.) Regarding the
> "non-comprehensiveness" issue, I realize that I have been framing the
> specialized knowledge that I bring to the table too broadly. With the
> exception of experimental jazz (especially in New York and Philadelphia) and
> contemporary classical music, I have very little expertise (or interest in
> gaining that expertise) to offer donors looking to support directly the *
> creation*, *performance*, or *presentation* of art. Where I can offer
> meaningful recommendations is in the realm of organizations that engage the
> arts from an ecosystem perspective -- i.e., service organizations, arts
> councils, research shops, and the like -- steering donors toward those that
> show a deep understanding of the context in which they operate and advance
> the public conversation in progressive and innovative ways. For me, then,
> the impact-focused questions I would ask would be more like those listed
> under "think tanks" and "research" in the DIY section of your website<http://www.givewell.org/your-charity> (just
> discovered this today!) than the "arts" section.
>
> With due respect to Elie, I think I will divide my donation among several
> recipients rather than funneling it all to one. For one thing, I believe
> that a diversified portfolio is as appropriate in a charitable investment
> context as it would be in a financial investment context -- if not more so,
> since in my opinion uncertainties about expected return are greater in
> charity than in financial markets. For another, the arts are different from
> many other cause areas in that diversity and variety are important values
> and scale is relatively less important (and can even be an impediment to
> impact). Besides, we Geminis like having lots of choices available to us. :)
>
> Thanks again for the spirited discussion. If you're interested in my
> eventual choices, please feel free to check http://createquity.com for a
> post in the next few days on the subject.
>
> Over and out,
> Ian
> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brigid Slipka <brigid.slipka@...> wrote:
> >
> > Hey Ian,
> >
> > I"m in a similar position as you: background in the arts with many
> > artist-friends and also wanting to give ala GiveWell's recommendations.
> >
> > I also like Brian's distinctions: we give sometimes to people close to us
> > and sometimes to people with no personal connection that achieve big
> impact.
> > For me, I do about 1/3 close and 2/3 impact.
> >
> > When it comes to how to allocate within that 1/3, I think you can't
> ignore
> > the fact that this is the arts and try to force it into an impact-focused
> > giving model. For the latter, it makes sense to concentrate the giving
> into
> > one area that is achieving the most impact. However, the arts thrives
> best
> > when there are many many many ways of thinking and expressing creatively.
> > Consolidating to one creative institution would be contrary to the point.
> > As I've written to you before, the long tail of the arts is infinite -
> > that's the very nature of creative expression. The more varied the arts
> are,
> > the better.
> >
> > So: I'd give to as many arts projects as you can. And because the scope
> of
> > the projects are usually small (at least from my friends' perspectives) a
> > small gift can still usually have a big impact.
> >
> > One other thought: if a donor didn't have the personal connections that
> you
> > have but still wanted to give to many different artists, they could
> consider
> > giving to an arts school or trade organization/policy org. Here, a gift
> to
> > one institution will have an impact on thousands of artists and forms of
> > art, which is what you want.
> >
> > best,
> > Brigid
> >
> > --
> > Brigid Slipka
> > brigid.slipka@...
>
> > www.brigidslipka.com
> > (323) 702-5017
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Holden Karnofsky holden0@... wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
> > > info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations,
> especially
> > > since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the
> value of
> > > your own knowledge/convictions/friends. (I'm referring to a universal
> bias,
> > > not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)
> > >
> > > In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a certain
> > > amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to
> groups
> > > that look good to me. This kind of split is very difficult to justify
> in a
> > > traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that way
> > > because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities
> (b) the
> > > threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of
> overconfidence
> > > in my friends.
> > >
> > > I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local
> opportunities, if
> > > you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected impact.
> As
> > > Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue. I also
> don't
> > > see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
> > > contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded great
> > > opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about
> comprehensiveness,
> > > the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects got
> > > funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor
> tried
> > > individually to be comprehensive.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld ehassenfeld@...wrote:
>
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Hi Ian,
> > >>
> > >> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a
> > >> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
> > >> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I
> bet
> > >> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see
> the
> > >> discussion in comments on our blog at
> > >> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.)
> Right
> > >> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
> > >>
> > >> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization
> could
> > >> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes
> down to
> > >> the specifics of the organization in question and your other options:
> What
> > >> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people
> involved
> > >> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem
> they're
> > >> trying to solve?
> > >>
> > >> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
> > >> organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
> > >> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the
> conversations
> > >> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and
> the
> > >> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)
> > >>
> > >> -Elie
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer psteinmeyer@...
>
> > >> > wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity. I'm
> not
> > >>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a
> framework,
> > >>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
> > >>>
> > >>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
> > >>> Givewell is focused on)
> > >>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting
> someone's
> > >>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity
> support
> > >>> and true personal gifts
> > >>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
> > >>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest,
> there's some
> > >>> merit in deepening community ties)
> > >>>
> > >>> I would add a 4th:
> > >>>
> > >>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity. Doesn't lend itself quite so
> readily
> > >>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit
> into
> > >>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to
> many
> > >>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society
> as a
> > >>> whole.
> > >>>
> > >>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should
> be.
> > >>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without
> merit -
> > >>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches
> that
> > >>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell. (I think there would be room
> for
> > >>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the
> latter 3,
> > >>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
> > >>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> ----- Original Message -----
> > >>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky bslesinsky@...
> > >>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> > >>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
> > >>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities
> vs.
> > >>> proven concepts
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
> > >>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives,
> to
> > >>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
> > >>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or
> otherwise),
> > >>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
> > >>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
> > >>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation
> in
> > >>> your professional community?
> > >>>
> > >>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
> > >>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
> > >>>
> > >>> - Brian
> > >>>
> > >>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@
> ...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
>
> > >>> wrote:
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > Hi Brian,
> > >>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
> > >>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my
> field (I
> > >>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I
> actually
> > >>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since
> again,
> > >>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to
> make those
> > >>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases
> it's only
> > >>> on a professional level.
> > >>> > Ian
> > >>> >
> > >>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Brian
>
> > >>> Slesinsky bslesinsky@ wrote:
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After
> all, we
> > >>> do
> > >>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >> - Brian
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@wrote:
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
> > >>> personal
> > >>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question
> that's
> > >>> been
> > >>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
> > >>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
> > >>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
> > >>> specific
> > >>> >> > circumstances apply:
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the
> > >>> charity
> > >>> >> > operates
> > >>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
> > >>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
> > >>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
> > >>> leadership
> > >>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and
> colleagues
> > >>> of
> > >>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
> > >>> Kickstarter
> > >>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact
> measurement
> > >>> is
> > >>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still
> figuring
> > >>> out what
> > >>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for
> these
> > >>> appeals.
> > >>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal
> donations
> > >>> (which
> > >>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of
> an
> > >>> impact
> > >>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a
> > >>> "name brand"
> > >>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about
> these
> > >>> projects
> > >>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial
> tipping
> > >>> point
> > >>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also
> throw
> > >>> into the
> > >>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within
> my
> > >>> field,
> > >>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate
> to
> > >>> the same
> > >>> >> > projects I choose.
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
> > >>> allowing
> > >>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
> > >>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that
> the
> > >>> set of
> > >>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
> > >>> geographic
> > >>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
> > >>> familiar
> > >>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all
> promising
> > >>> artistic
> > >>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances,
> what
> > >>> seems to
> > >>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
> > >>> unproven
> > >>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger,
> proven
> > >>> projects
> > >>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
> > >>> knowledge? I'd
> > >>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
> > >>> supporting arts
> > >>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of
> worms
> > >>> that I
> > >>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For
> the
> > >>> purposes
> > >>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about
> supporting a
> > >>> set of
> > >>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
> > >>> rather than
> > >>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
> > >>> thought!
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> > All best,
> > >>> >> > Ian David Moss
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >> >
> > >>> >>
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> > ------------------------------------
> > >>> >
> > >>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes
> of
> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent official
> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>> >
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>  
>

My two cents in this discussion:

One way to think of it that would lead you toward maximizing the  
expected utility of your giving is to think of what you want everyone,  
across time, to do.  You'd want everyone to gamble on the giving with  
the highest expected utility, because in the long run, that would  
result in the most good being done.  In fact if people don't follow  
this strategy, less good will be done, which can also be framed as  
harm being done.

It is different for an individual, because of the declining marginal  
utility of money.  It really would be foolish to flip a coin with  
heads doubling your net worth and tails reducing you to zero, but only  
because the loss of going down to zero would do much more harm than  
you'd gain if you doubled your wealth.  But with giving to  
organzations declining marignal utlitily shouldn't apply.

I've tried to follow my own advice, but haven't perfectly.  I feel the  
emotinal tug to diversify, mainly from wanting to avoid a feeling of  
regret.  What if I made the best bet on one charity, only to find out  
giving all my donations to them for years, that I'd made a mistake and  
they'd actually done no good at all?  Even though I view deviating  
from the highest expected utility of my giving as irrational, I have  
to realize I'm not a completely rational being, and if a bit of  
irrationality keeps me giving, that might be better in the long run.

Ron


Quoting Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...>:

> Thanks for the discussion, Ian.  A couple of quick comments on
> diversification:
>
> 1. I agree that "returns" are very uncertain in charity.  However, unlike in
> investing, I see no particular reason to minimize risk rather than simply
> maximizing return.  When it comes to my finances, I'd rather keep what I
> have than have an equal chance of doubling my money or losing it ... but
> when it comes to helping people, it's unclear to me why I should prefer (for
> example) saving one life to an equal chance of saving two or zero.
>
> 2. I agree that scale can reduce impact.  The size of your donation is key
> here.  If you're funding $50,000 organizations and you have $10,000 to give,
> you can probably have more impact by dividing your money up than by giving
> it all to one, since you start to be in danger of closing their "room for
> more funding gap" all by yourself.  However, if you're funding $1 million
> organizations and you have $25 (or even $1000) total to give, I don't think
> there's any argument that splitting your money up increases your impact -
> even if the organizations have limited needs, those limits aren't anywhere
> near your gift.  I'm not saying you fall in one camp or the other - just
> saying how I see the issue.
>
> Best,
> Holden
>
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:04 AM, crazynewmusic <ian.moss@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Thanks to all for your responses. I've found them quite thought-provoking
>> and they've honestly forced me to go back to the drawing board a bit with
>> this process.
>>
>> I have to say that the implication that the types of donations I've
>> proposed are somehow divorced from "impact" or "effectiveness," something I
>> detected in several responses, concerns me. I probably shouldn't have framed
>> them in the context of fundraising appeals from friends and colleagues,
>> because any personal relationships here are truly irrelevant to my question
>> except insofar as they might give me insight into how impactfully my money
>> might be used. What I'm really asking about is how to compare expected
>> impact between experimental and proven opportunities. I think Holden's
>> framework of "local" versus "external" recipients is most helpful in this
>> respect.
>>
>> At the same time, I've realized I've made a boo-boo in that I can only
>> really make such a comparison if the "local" vs. "external" recipients are
>> in the same cause category. Otherwise, I will be forced to weigh the merits
>> of disparate causes, something I already ruled out in my initial question.
>> Since the external opportunities I'm considering are in international aid
>> and the local ones are in the arts, that condition is clearly not met.
>> Accordingly, I think I'm just going to have to make a judgment call with
>> regard to my allocation between arts recipients and GiveWell-recommended
>> recipients. Right now, at least for this year, I'm leaning towards 50/50,
>> with some of that money going to GiveWell itself as a token of my
>> appreciation for both the intellectual stimulation and entertainment you all
>> have provided me the past few years.
>>
>> This conversation has also been helpful for me in thinking about how I
>> might divide my contributions within the local realm. (You can skip this
>> part unless you're interested in arts stuff.) Regarding the
>> "non-comprehensiveness" issue, I realize that I have been framing the
>> specialized knowledge that I bring to the table too broadly. With the
>> exception of experimental jazz (especially in New York and Philadelphia) and
>> contemporary classical music, I have very little expertise (or interest in
>> gaining that expertise) to offer donors looking to support directly the *
>> creation*, *performance*, or *presentation* of art. Where I can offer
>> meaningful recommendations is in the realm of organizations that engage the
>> arts from an ecosystem perspective -- i.e., service organizations, arts
>> councils, research shops, and the like -- steering donors toward those that
>> show a deep understanding of the context in which they operate and advance
>> the public conversation in progressive and innovative ways. For me, then,
>> the impact-focused questions I would ask would be more like those listed
>> under "think tanks" and "research" in the DIY section of your  
>> website<http://www.givewell.org/your-charity> (just
>> discovered this today!) than the "arts" section.
>>
>> With due respect to Elie, I think I will divide my donation among several
>> recipients rather than funneling it all to one. For one thing, I believe
>> that a diversified portfolio is as appropriate in a charitable investment
>> context as it would be in a financial investment context -- if not more so,
>> since in my opinion uncertainties about expected return are greater in
>> charity than in financial markets. For another, the arts are different from
>> many other cause areas in that diversity and variety are important values
>> and scale is relatively less important (and can even be an impediment to
>> impact). Besides, we Geminis like having lots of choices available to us. :)
>>
>> Thanks again for the spirited discussion. If you're interested in my
>> eventual choices, please feel free to check http://createquity.com for a
>> post in the next few days on the subject.
>>
>> Over and out,
>> Ian
>> --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Brigid Slipka <brigid.slipka@...> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hey Ian,
>> >
>> > I"m in a similar position as you: background in the arts with many
>> > artist-friends and also wanting to give ala GiveWell's recommendations.
>> >
>> > I also like Brian's distinctions: we give sometimes to people close to us
>> > and sometimes to people with no personal connection that achieve big
>> impact.
>> > For me, I do about 1/3 close and 2/3 impact.
>> >
>> > When it comes to how to allocate within that 1/3, I think you can't
>> ignore
>> > the fact that this is the arts and try to force it into an impact-focused
>> > giving model. For the latter, it makes sense to concentrate the giving
>> into
>> > one area that is achieving the most impact. However, the arts thrives
>> best
>> > when there are many many many ways of thinking and expressing creatively.
>> > Consolidating to one creative institution would be contrary to the point.
>> > As I've written to you before, the long tail of the arts is infinite -
>> > that's the very nature of creative expression. The more varied the arts
>> are,
>> > the better.
>> >
>> > So: I'd give to as many arts projects as you can. And because the scope
>> of
>> > the projects are usually small (at least from my friends' perspectives) a
>> > small gift can still usually have a big impact.
>> >
>> > One other thought: if a donor didn't have the personal connections that
>> you
>> > have but still wanted to give to many different artists, they could
>> consider
>> > giving to an arts school or trade organization/policy org. Here, a gift
>> to
>> > one institution will have an impact on thousands of artists and forms of
>> > art, which is what you want.
>> >
>> > best,
>> > Brigid
>> >
>> > --
>> > Brigid Slipka
>> > brigid.slipka@...
>>
>> > www.brigidslipka.com
>> > (323) 702-5017
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Holden Karnofsky holden0@... wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > To me the trickiest part of this decision is weighing your own
>> > > info/confidence vs. external information/expert recommendations,
>> especially
>> > > since you have to account for your natural bias to overestimate the
>> value of
>> > > your own knowledge/convictions/friends. (I'm referring to a universal
>> bias,
>> > > not trying to make a statement about you in particular.)
>> > >
>> > > In your shoes, I might do some kind of split where I allocate a certain
>> > > amount to "externally recommended" groups and a certain amount to
>> groups
>> > > that look good to me. This kind of split is very difficult to justify
>> in a
>> > > traditional expected-value framework, yet I would feel better that way
>> > > because I would avoid (a) entirely passing up my local opportunities
>> (b) the
>> > > threat of giving all my money to bad projects on account of
>> overconfidence
>> > > in my friends.
>> > >
>> > > I think it's entirely defensible to stick 100% with local
>> opportunities, if
>> > > you're convinced that these opportunities have higher expected impact.
>> As
>> > > Elie states, I don't think the "riskiness" should be an issue. I also
>> don't
>> > > see why non-comprehensiveness should bother you given how small your
>> > > contributions are in the overall picture ... if everyone funded great
>> > > opportunities they saw locally, without worrying about
>> comprehensiveness,
>> > > the overall outcome would be that a comprehensive set of projects got
>> > > funded, and it would probably be a better outcome than if each donor
>> tried
>> > > individually to be comprehensive.
>> > >
>> > > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Elie Hassenfeld ehassenfeld@...wrote:
>>
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> Hi Ian,
>> > >>
>> > >> Personally, I prefer to allocate the vast majority of my charity to a
>> > >> single organization rather than allocating it across many different
>> > >> organizations. So, my strategy is to identify the organization that I
>> bet
>> > >> has the most expected impact and give there (For some discussion, see
>> the
>> > >> discussion in comments on our blog at
>> > >> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/11/19/denying-the-choice/#comment-88655.)
>> Right
>> > >> now, for me, that charity is VillageReach.
>> > >>
>> > >> I think it's certainly possible for a small or start-up organization
>> could
>> > >> offer me the best option, but I think making that assessment comes
>> down to
>> > >> the specifics of the organization in question and your other options:
>> What
>> > >> are they trying to accomplish? What do you know about the people
>> involved
>> > >> and how likely they are to succeed? How important is the problem
>> they're
>> > >> trying to solve?
>> > >>
>> > >> In India, we visited several small organizations -- orphanages or
>> > >> organizations serving street children -- that made me question whether
>> > >> VillageReach was my best option. But, those questions and the
>> conversations
>> > >> we had as a group always came down to the specifics of the cause and
>> the
>> > >> organization. (We'll be sharing notes and thoughts from India soon.)
>> > >>
>> > >> -Elie
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Phil Steinmeyer psteinmeyer@...
>>
>> > >> > wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Brian, I really like your classification of 3 types of charity. I'm
>> not
>> > >>> sure you are limiting yourself to 3 or suggesting those 3 as a
>> framework,
>> > >>> but in any case, I think that's a good way to view it:
>> > >>>
>> > >>> 1) Most bang for the buck (national/global charity of the type that
>> > >>> Givewell is focused on)
>> > >>> 2) Supporting/building ties to family friends (i.e. supporting
>> someone's
>> > >>> pet project/charity) as a sort of halfway mark between true charity
>> support
>> > >>> and true personal gifts
>> > >>> 3) Local projects that help the community (perhaps less than similar
>> > >>> effort/money expended nationally/globally, but as you suggest,
>> there's some
>> > >>> merit in deepening community ties)
>> > >>>
>> > >>> I would add a 4th:
>> > >>>
>> > >>> 4) Religious (and similar) charity. Doesn't lend itself quite so
>> readily
>> > >>> to statistical or bang for the buck analysis, and doesn't really fit
>> into
>> > >>> categories 2 or 3 (maybe a little, but...) but still important to
>> many
>> > >>> donors, and obviously a major area of charitable giving for society
>> as a
>> > >>> whole.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Givewell is obviously focused on #1, which is as I think it should
>> be.
>> > >>> That doesn't mean 2-4 are wrong for individuals to do or without
>> merit -
>> > >>> they're just somewhat different approaches to charity and approaches
>> that
>> > >>> don't lend themselves well to Givewell. (I think there would be room
>> for
>> > >>> some analytical thinking, writing, and research for each of the
>> latter 3,
>> > >>> but doing it to a significant extent would likely fall to a different
>> > >>> organization with a different focus from Givewell).
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > >>> *From:* Brian Slesinsky bslesinsky@...
>> > >>> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
>> > >>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 04, 2010 11:59 PM
>> > >>> *Subject:* Re: [givewell] Re: Allocation to "experimental" charities
>> vs.
>> > >>> proven concepts
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Well, more broadly, there's a continuum, from gifts that are meant
>> > >>> mostly as a way of building social ties with friends and relatives,
>> to
>> > >>> local charity work intended partially as a way of participating and
>> > >>> deepening ties within a community (local, professional, or
>> otherwise),
>> > >>> to donations of money to global causes that are almost entirely
>> > >>> impersonal. Perhaps supporting projects well-known to you by people
>> > >>> you might meet, and maybe even work with, falls under participation
>> in
>> > >>> your professional community?
>> > >>>
>> > >>> It seems like comparing effectiveness within each of those categories
>> > >>> is more meaningful than doing it across categories?
>> > >>>
>> > >>> - Brian
>> > >>>
>> > >>> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@
>> ...<ian.moss%40aya.yale.edu>>
>>
>> > >>> wrote:
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > Hi Brian,
>> > >>> > No, I wouldn't put this into the category of "gifts." Part of my
>> > >>> thinking here is that, as someone with specialized knowledge of my
>> field (I
>> > >>> was one of Philanthropedia's experts for arts & culture, e.g.), I
>> actually
>> > >>> have a responsibility to support promising startup projects, since
>> again,
>> > >>> there are not too many people out there who would be qualified to
>> make those
>> > >>> calls. While I do know some of the people involved, in most cases
>> it's only
>> > >>> on a professional level.
>> > >>> > Ian
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > --- In givewell@yahoogroups.com <givewell%40yahoogroups.com>,
>> Brian
>>
>> > >>> Slesinsky bslesinsky@ wrote:
>> > >>> >>
>> > >>> >> Perhaps treat them more like gifts, rather than charity? After
>> all, we
>> > >>> do
>> > >>> >> buy gifts for people we know without considering global impact.
>> > >>> >>
>> > >>> >> - Brian
>> > >>> >>
>> > >>> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:21 AM, crazynewmusic ian.moss@wrote:
>> > >>> >>
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > Hi Holden, Elie, and Natalie,
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > It's getting to be the time of year when I'm considering my own
>> > >>> personal
>> > >>> >> > donations, and I wanted to get your perspective on a question
>> that's
>> > >>> been
>> > >>> >> > bugging me for a while. You've previously written<
>> > >>> http://blog.givewell.org/2009/05/07/small-unproven-charities/> that
>> > >>> >> > you only recommend funding "small, unproven charities" when very
>> > >>> specific
>> > >>> >> > circumstances apply:
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > 1. Donor has significant knowledge of the domain in which the
>> > >>> charity
>> > >>> >> > operates
>> > >>> >> > 2. Donor understands how charity's efforts expand upon or are
>> > >>> >> > differentiated from past/existing projects
>> > >>> >> > 3. Donor has strong knowledge of and confidence in charity's
>> > >>> leadership
>> > >>> >> > 4. Charity is committed to measuring its impact over time
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > These days, I'm getting a lot of appeals from friends and
>> colleagues
>> > >>> of
>> > >>> >> > mine for creative projects using crowdfunding platforms such as
>> > >>> Kickstarter
>> > >>> >> > and Indiegogo. With the possible exception of #4 (impact
>> measurement
>> > >>> is
>> > >>> >> > still quite a nascent concept in the arts, as we're still
>> figuring
>> > >>> out what
>> > >>> >> > to measure), in many cases the above conditions are met for
>> these
>> > >>> appeals.
>> > >>> >> > Furthermore, it seems to me intuitively that my personal
>> donations
>> > >>> (which
>> > >>> >> > will total in the low four figures this year) will have more of
>> an
>> > >>> impact
>> > >>> >> > divided among these startup or fledgling projects rather than a
>> > >>> "name brand"
>> > >>> >> > organization, in the sense that few other people know about
>> these
>> > >>> projects
>> > >>> >> > and my contribution is thus more likely to be the proverbial
>> tipping
>> > >>> point
>> > >>> >> > between short-term success or failure for them. You can also
>> throw
>> > >>> into the
>> > >>> >> > mix the fact that I write a blog that is fairly well-read within
>> my
>> > >>> field,
>> > >>> >> > and thus have a modest platform for encouraging others to donate
>> to
>> > >>> the same
>> > >>> >> > projects I choose.
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > On the other hand, these donations likely carry higher risk even
>> > >>> allowing
>> > >>> >> > for my personal knowledge of the projects. It also bothers me
>> > >>> >> > philosophically, not that there's much I can do about it, that
>> the
>> > >>> set of
>> > >>> >> > startup organizations with which I am familiar is shaped by the
>> > >>> geographic
>> > >>> >> > locations in which I've lived and the disciplines that I'm most
>> > >>> familiar
>> > >>> >> > with, and in no way represents a comprehensive set of all
>> promising
>> > >>> artistic
>> > >>> >> > endeavors that I could conceivably fund.
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > My question to you is this: Given this set of circumstances,
>> what
>> > >>> seems to
>> > >>> >> > you the most appropriate *allocation strategy *between small,
>> > >>> unproven
>> > >>> >> > charities of which I have specialized knowledge, and larger,
>> proven
>> > >>> projects
>> > >>> >> > for which I have your expert recommendations but no personal
>> > >>> knowledge? I'd
>> > >>> >> > like to leave out of this discussion the relative merits of
>> > >>> supporting arts
>> > >>> >> > projects versus international aid; that's a whole other can of
>> worms
>> > >>> that I
>> > >>> >> > believe is a distraction from the question I want to ask. For
>> the
>> > >>> purposes
>> > >>> >> > of your response you can pretend that I'm asking about
>> supporting a
>> > >>> set of
>> > >>> >> > social entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation in Africa
>> > >>> rather than
>> > >>> >> > a bunch of weirdo longhair musicians.
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > Very interested in your response. Hope it provides some food for
>> > >>> thought!
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> > All best,
>> > >>> >> > Ian David Moss
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >> >
>> > >>> >>
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > ------------------------------------
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> > This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).
>> > >>> Emails sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes
>> of
>> > >>> staff members and other participants. They do NOT represent official
>> > >>> positions of GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>> >
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>