{"items": [{"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931548921372", "anchor": "fb-931548921372", "service": "fb", "text": "I feel pretty much the same about most of this.", "timestamp": "1520890813"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931588766522", "anchor": "fb-931588766522", "service": "fb", "text": "You're a thoughtful person and I appreciate you sharing this.", "timestamp": "1520903108"}, {"author": "Jai", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931600423162", "anchor": "fb-931600423162", "service": "fb", "text": "> A big contribution to global inequality is that the worst suffering is far away from the richest people, and another is that the people involved are less in a position to advocate for themselves: both of these apply even more strongly to future generations.
That's a really good encapsulation of far future advocacy.", "timestamp": "1520905834"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802", "anchor": "fb-931630043802", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Good giving takes time, research, and investigation, and right now I'm not really able to put in that work.\"
Maybe concentrate your giving across worlds/periods via donor lottery? E.g. if you win and allocate a million dollars, then you would be better able to justify taking the time off to put in that work.", "timestamp": "1520919743"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931630133622", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931630133622", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Across worlds?", "timestamp": "1520920017"}, {"author": "Ajeya", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931634988892", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931634988892", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Wolf I think Carl meant concentrate giving into worlds where Jeff wins the lottery", "timestamp": "1520926609"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931674559592", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931674559592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Don't they exist anyway?", "timestamp": "1520954207"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931675437832", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931675437832", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Wolf: the idea is that if you're risk neutral with respect to giving (as I am) then \"10% chance of directing $1M in funding, 90% chance of $0\" (lottery case) is about equivalent to \"100% chance of directing $100k\" (no lottery).", "timestamp": "1520954565"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931675782142", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931675782142", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm not entirely convinced, though: finding excellent giving opportunities is hard and productively distributing 10x money seems like it would take close to 10x time once you get above say $100k. In which case the gains from the lottery are small (and could even be negative, if you have some amount of passive info that allows you to distribute small amounts effectively).", "timestamp": "1520954748"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931683596482", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931683596482", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman Indeed, you only want to use a lottery if you expect better average performance per $ of your donations (including cost of your time) at a larger scale, so it's possible to overshoot.
How much time are you spending on donation decisions per $ donated now?", "timestamp": "1520957947"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931689359932", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931689359932", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"finding excellent giving opportunities is hard and productively distributing 10x money seems like it would take close to 10x time once you get above say $100k.\"
This is definitely not true when dealing with organizations with multi-million dollar budgets. That certainly describes many of your past donations, e.g. AMF, GD, IPA, CEA, GiveWell. Often they were also receiving large funds from Good Ventures as well.
Likewise in the GCR space, Jaime Yassif is allocating millions of dollars on pandemics, Daniel Dewey on AI safety research, and even one-off grants like nuclear winter climate modeling (which Gorbachev and Reagan cited as reasons for their high interest in reducing and abolishing nuclear weapons, and could guide future cause prioritization) can be in the millions of dollars.
So if you decide X is better than Y in the space of multi-million dollar budgets then you can allocate $1MM with similar difficulty to $100k.
https://www.jefftk.com/donations
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/.../rutgers-university...", "timestamp": "1520960520"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931690143362", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931690143362", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"This is definitely not true when dealing with organizations with multi-million dollar budgets. That certainly describes many of your past donations, e.g. AMF, GD, IPA, CEA, GiveWell. Often they were also receiving large funds from Good Ventures as well.\"
I'm not that happy about the process leading to those donations. Like, I think they're much better than giving to random charities, but if I were putting substantially more time into deciding where to give it would be because I was trying to find especially good opportunities that were below the size Good Ventures / Open Phil considers.", "timestamp": "1520960896"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931691206232", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931691206232", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"How much time are you spending on donation decisions per $ donated now?\"
Embarrassingly little. Probably ~1hr/wk of keeping up with EA, mostly passively so I'd do that regardless, and ~8hr at the end of the year for deciding where to give to. Julia and I have been making donation decisions, and since she's doing EA stuff full time she's been keeping up more than I have, but still not that much.", "timestamp": "1520961477"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931691495652", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931691495652", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Right now, with the amount of time I'm putting in to where to give, I don't think small increases in time would do much to improve donation targeting. I've been giving to GiveWell's top charities and EA funds, which are about the lowest effort options.", "timestamp": "1520961683"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931691665312", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931691665312", "service": "fb", "text": "→ And the higher effort options are all much higher effort: talking to people who want to start projects, keeping up with them if we do decide to fund them, thinking about things that would be valuable but aren't happening, etc", "timestamp": "1520961764"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931713771012", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931713771012", "service": "fb", "text": "→ An alternative to donor lotteries would be making bets (in charitable contribution allocation) with people on verifiable empirical predictions relevant to your donation decision-making.", "timestamp": "1520970618"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931754344702", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931754344702", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Talking more with Carl 1:1 has convinced me that a lottery to $1M would put us in a pretty different situation, since there are a lot of mid sized opportunities.", "timestamp": "1520986373"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931754509372", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931754509372", "service": "fb", "text": "→ The main reason I wouldn't want to do a lottery at this point is us-specific: we try to make our giving pretty legible because of media coverage, and lotteries make it much less clear what's going on.", "timestamp": "1520986462"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931754878632", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931754878632", "service": "fb", "text": "→ One thing that's kind of like a lottery but clearer would be to donate to a DAF for a while until we had enough saved for more research to be worth it. I think discount rates are way lower than they were now that Open Phil is funding so many of the things I want funded and Open Phil is mostly constrained by evaluation capacity.", "timestamp": "1520986597"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931756235912", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931756235912", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman It's the other way around. Open Philanthropy is going to flood more and more of the opportunities over time as it investigates and hires more, and the EA donor pool is rapidly growing outside of Open Philanthropy as well. So the value of well-informed donations is going down fairly rapidly.
That said, Open Phil is sometimes offsetting that with implicit matching grants when it limits itself to a certain share of an organization's funding.", "timestamp": "1520987006"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931765791762", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931765791762", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think that heavy investigation could increase the expected returns of your donations faster than that rate (at least to make up for a couple of years), but it would be better to do that investigation (at least in some worlds) and donation earlier.", "timestamp": "1520990585"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931976913672", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931976913672", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I got the thing about increasing the (potential) donation volume with lotteries to make it more worth the while to do the research.
The reference to worlds has me confused.", "timestamp": "1521085370"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931977292912", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931977292912", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Wolf The worlds where you win and the worlds where you lose.", "timestamp": "1521085439"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931983929612", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931983929612", "service": "fb", "text": "→ What can an agent do about them?", "timestamp": "1521089543"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931630043802&reply_comment_id=931989673102", "anchor": "fb-931630043802_931989673102", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Spend on investigation in the worlds where you win, not in the ones that you don't.", "timestamp": "1521093913"}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931639774302", "anchor": "fb-931639774302", "service": "fb", "text": "If there aren't a lot of future people, because we wipe ourselves out in the next couple of decades, is that an argument for or against providing for them?", "timestamp": "1520931244"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931639774302&reply_comment_id=931650647512", "anchor": "fb-931639774302_931650647512", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's an argument against, say, trying to conserve natural resources for future use, but an argument in favor of trying to keep that outcome from coming to pass.", "timestamp": "1520942711"}, {"author": "Jim", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931691066512", "anchor": "fb-931691066512", "service": "fb", "text": "Out of curiosity - if you look at impact retrospectively rather than prospectively, ie, at what's happened in between when you wrote the 2011 post and now, do you think existential risk mitigation was a good choice of intervention then? (For simplicity of evaluation, it might help to look below the margin rather than above the margin - ie, what happened that wouldn'tve happened if funding was smaller, rather than what could've happened if funding was larger.)", "timestamp": "1520961430"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931691066512&reply_comment_id=931828007082", "anchor": "fb-931691066512_931828007082", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I don't know, and I think this is a very hard question.", "timestamp": "1521028973"}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931806360462", "anchor": "fb-931806360462", "service": "fb", "text": "How do you value a future person vs a current one? Are there good posts about this?", "timestamp": "1521005510"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931806360462&reply_comment_id=931827927242", "anchor": "fb-931806360462_931827927242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think future people matter about the same as current people. I haven't written arguing this, but Toby Ord's arguments in the first part of this are very good: https://80000hours.org/.../why-the-long-run-future.../", "timestamp": "1521028946"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=931915890962", "anchor": "fb-931915890962", "service": "fb", "text": "David Chudzicki", "timestamp": "1521066035"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/931546685852?comment_id=976873400752", "anchor": "fb-976873400752", "service": "fb", "text": "\"how can we know if what we're doing is helping, and how can we do as much good as we can without that? This has been my main concern since I first started thinking about x-risk\"
Given the importance of x-risk and suffering reduction, how can we know that by reducing poverty (which is a goal that does provide some immediate feedback) we are not doing the opposite of helping as far as these two branches of EA are concerned?", "timestamp": "1547433843"}]}