{"items": [{"author": "Sasha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622844287932", "anchor": "fb-622844287932", "service": "fb", "text": "Yeah, it's unfortunate that it makes for bad PR, but it seems like the best path for most fully committed EAs. Assuming the exceptions would be the very best researchers, statisticians etc, the Lake Wobegon Effect also implies that if in doubt, we should lean towards E2G.", "timestamp": "1375539371"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622855156152", "anchor": "fb-622855156152", "service": "fb", "text": "But you're not a startup founder.  The expected earnings if you were would be $1 per year as per Carl's 80000 hours blog posts, even before you posit any advantage that you might have from being more rational. Add to that that more speculative causes require novel, abstract research more than global health...", "timestamp": "1375545241"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622855430602", "anchor": "fb-622855430602", "service": "fb", "text": "Also, and although this is my least significant criticism, how do you fit people who work for ea organizations as fundraisers into this model?", "timestamp": "1375545460"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622860525392", "anchor": "fb-622860525392", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman I think 10K per giver is a more realistic number, as a tax preparer is see about 1K per giver. I have one client who gave 30% and those were all religious based charities to which the client is close. You are an outlier among outliers. I think the 10K number making the assumption of a well to do giver making north of 100K is a more rational expectation on which to base a model. That would be a dedicated giver (order of magnitude above what I see as the norm), but can see making compelling moral arguments to create that behavior. 50K either means your are going after the top 2% of households or you are asking for things that significantly impact lifestyle the top 20%. I suggest that both of these are low yield strategies. That said, I am convinced that most people will have more impact by working and giving effectively than working for charitable organizations that will be run with varying degrees of effectiveness.", "timestamp": "1375548965"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622862501432", "anchor": "fb-622862501432", "service": "fb", "text": "\"The expected earnings if you were would be $1 per year \"<br><br>I *definitely* didn't say $1 per year. And do note that the reference class there is people with reasonably good starting features (it's not all startup founders, it's founders with interaction with the VC industry), and there is a lot of heterogeneity (some are predictably well above the average, others less). But a good number of EAers fit that profile, and entrepreneurship is a very good option for many such if they are interested in earning to give.", "timestamp": "1375550119"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622865265892", "anchor": "fb-622865265892", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ryan: are you referring to this post of Carl's? http://80000hours.org/blog/12", "timestamp": "1375551708"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622865829762", "anchor": "fb-622865829762", "service": "fb", "text": "@Phillip: most people don't go work for GiveWell either.  But if $50K is more than most people earning to give are willing to donate it actually makes the argument stronger.", "timestamp": "1375551976"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622888728872", "anchor": "fb-622888728872", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman I concur with your argument that earning to give is more leveraged, than working for a charity. I think using realistic (if tough to achieve) giving numbers to help them hit their goal also strengthens your argument.", "timestamp": "1375558346"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622901094092", "anchor": "fb-622901094092", "service": "fb", "text": "Bednets, deworming drugs, and GiveDirectly's cash transfers are based around distributing easily transferable goods to people. So naturally they have less demand for employees relative to cash (most crazy extreme for GiveDirectly).<br><br>Other causes and interventions like scientific research may require much more human capital relative to cash.", "timestamp": "1375563416"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622951687702", "anchor": "fb-622951687702", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, Yup that's the one I had in mind. Carl, yesyou're right, we're talking about a select group that makes 1.4m/yr. still this would be a better estimate of an entrepreneur-etg's salary than 50k/yr.", "timestamp": "1375607550"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622956587882", "anchor": "fb-622956587882", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ryan: I think I would have understood you better if you'd written \"$1M\" instead of \"$1\".", "timestamp": "1375618909"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622959182682", "anchor": "fb-622959182682", "service": "fb", "text": "Yeah, I made that mistake because I was using my phone (I write slowly on it), it's the same reason I didn't provide the reference to Carl's post.", "timestamp": "1375621595"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=622987446042", "anchor": "fb-622987446042", "service": "fb", "text": "And some people are in a much better position than that reference class when they start, because of their abilities and skills, or a technology they have discovered (like Google's PageRank algorith, or drug companies founded after patenting a promising drug.", "timestamp": "1375637336"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=623061657322", "anchor": "fb-623061657322", "service": "fb", "text": "Ah, most EA entrpreneurs do not have a new technological discovery to bring to market. Hmm", "timestamp": "1375669765"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=623061812012", "anchor": "fb-623061812012", "service": "fb", "text": "But many are quite talented or have unusually good connections.", "timestamp": "1375669919"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=623061851932", "anchor": "fb-623061851932", "service": "fb", "text": "Right. It should still dominate other careers for earning potential for EAs who are not risk averse and are not concerned that their funds will have diminishing marginal returns? In almost all cases?", "timestamp": "1375669939"}, {"author": "David&nbsp;Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1375742752068", "service": "gp", "text": "I realize this is just meant to be a quick back of the envelope calculation, but I'm not convinced this is the right way to think about it, even for that. Maybe the right way is to say \"If each additional researcher increases giving effectiveness per dollar by X%\" (perhaps with X decreasing with more researchers). how many researchers do we want to maximize impact? Also note that researchers now can have a benefit now, and far into the future.\u00a0\n<br>\n<br>\nAnd research isn't completely separate from creating better giving opportunities (as Givewell is discovering). It's possible that effectiveness now is really much, much less than it could be.", "timestamp": 1375742752}, {"author": "David&nbsp;Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1375743006850", "service": "gp", "text": "I also strongly suspect the best opportunities are helping non-human animals, which is receiving very little research interest (leaving it very unclear what the best ways to help are).", "timestamp": 1375743006}, {"author": "David&nbsp;Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1375743121613", "service": "gp", "text": "Also, \"research\" and \"earn to give\" aren't the only options, but focusing only on those ones do you really think more than 1% of people giving \"effectively\" or researching are inclined toward research? That surprises me.", "timestamp": 1375743121}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1375744043797", "service": "gp", "text": "@David&nbsp;Chudzicki\n\u00a0You're think that there are more than 100x as many people interested in taking a job at least in part to maximize their expected earnings to people interested in researching how we should best spend money to improve the world? \u00a0Not knowing that much about what drives people I wouldn't think the number would be more than 10x.", "timestamp": 1375744043}, {"author": "Aaron", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=623186492152", "anchor": "fb-623186492152", "service": "fb", "text": "This also seems like an argument for finding out ways to make more money -- the argument is incredibly non-robust to variation in how much money people can donate.<br><br>It's also a bit weird in that it doesn't seem to be about how many giving opportunities are found per GiveWell employee per year -- though I can see why you might want to avoid the question of whether or not each employee were finding more and more opportunities to give as time goes on.<br><br>(Like, for instance did GiveWell exhaust the funding opportunities by its normal methodology, or is it getting better at research and so would find opportunities faster, etc.)", "timestamp": "1375753154"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/622842960592?comment_id=623215364292", "anchor": "fb-623215364292", "service": "fb", "text": "GiveWell's money moved $9,500,000 in 2012 last year. That's half of AMF's all time spending, and money moved is apparently on track to double again this year.<br><br>\"Since its founding in 2004, the foundation has raised $19.4 million\"<br><br>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Malaria_Foundation<br>http://blog.givewell.org/.../update-on-givewells-web.../<br><br>GiveWell reports seriously diminishing returns finding more RFMF for existing comparably effective developing world charities , and while GiveDirectly's approach may seem to have nigh-unlimited RFMF, it involves a significant drop in expected impact relative to AMF. It reports being limited by human capital, not cash: most potential employees don't work out.", "timestamp": "1375770976"}, {"author": "David&nbsp;Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1375805370966", "service": "gp", "text": "I guess I was thinking more like the number of people with large-ish incomes giving significant amounts \"effectively\", not the number of people choosing careers based on this. Maybe the latter is what matters for your reasoning, but I didn't really understand your reasoning anyway, and the former (or something like it) is what matters more for the kind of reasoning I had in mind...", "timestamp": 1375805370}]}