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(e.g. it seems plausible to me that EA should make climate change our standard 'mainstream' cause rather than global health).

This is really interesting to hear from you. I wonder if community builders and people leading fundraising organizations should think about this more, and if they are willing to shift their focus and marketing to effective climate change charities than GiveWell charities.

Some fundraising-focused EA organizations still focus on global health ones only (i.e. Ayuda Efectiva from Spain and EA Norway's initiative, gieffektivt.no).

If you have time to answer, what further work do you think has to be done in this area before more EAs decide that climate change donations should be our "mainstream cause"? Or do you think more EAs should already be mainstreaming effective climate change charities more than GiveWell's already?

Are you willing to share your views Ben of whether a longtermist should donate to a top biorisk organization (i.e. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) versus a top AI safety organization (i.e. the Centre for Human Compatible AI)? 

Both of the sample organizations I mentioned above are recommended by Founders Pledge, although I don't know how much to trust their recommendations in the x-risk space (I have read more about their research into climate change than x-risk organizations).

Given that Toby Ord thinks that the chance of an existential catastrophe from unaligned AI is 10% and from biorisk is 3.33%, then I might reasonably conclude that as long as CHAI is not 3x worse than JHU CHS, it would be more effective to donate to CHAI. I'm not sure how to trade off the efforts of organizations between those two spaces though, or if people should even do that - maybe it's just robustly good to donate to either, and that there's not much point trading off between the two causes. What do you think?

Thanks for pointing out that the donor could still give to EA funds if they win the donor lottery - I forgot about that. So yeah I would agree now that the donor lottery can't be worse than giving to EA Funds directly.

I guess a question I have is how much time should a donor who wins the donor lottery invest if they win it, and how many hours would be considered more than what an EA fund manager would spend? 

Also,  I do see that donors could possess idiosyncratic knowledge that fund managers don't have, or know funding opportunities that fund managers don't. Thanks for illustrating the example on biosecurity policy work in the Philippines. Unfortunately I don't think that biosecurity policy work in the Philippines is that effective to work on, given that it's probably better to do biosecurity policy work in countries with more developed research fields in biotechnology/biosecurity. I haven't looked into or thought about it that much but those would be my views currently.

Thanks so much for writing this answer Ben! And yes thanks for clarifying that Hauke's post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective. I didn't know that because I didn't read the full thing yet (and I think it would be quite difficult for me to fully understand).

Also, I'm not sure how the donation lottery is a good opportunity from a long-term impact perspective. If I were a pure longtermist I would just trust the EA LTFF

I agree that asking whether oneself expects to make higher-impact grants than EA Funds is a key question here.

However, note that you retain the option to give to EA Funds if you win the donor lottery. So in this sense the donor lottery can't be worse than giving to EA Funds directly, unless you think that winning itself impairs your judgment or similar (or causes you to waste time searching for alternatives, or ...).

Also, I do think that at least some donors will be able to make better grants than EA Funds. Yes, EA Fund managers have more grantmaking experience. However, they are also quite time-constrained, and so a donor lottery winner may be able to invest more time per grant/money granted. 

In addition, donors may possess idiosyncratic knowledge that would be too costly to transfer to fund managers. For example, suppose there was a great opportunity to fund biosecurity policy work in the Philippines - it might be more likely that a member of EA Philippines hears about, and is able to evaluate, this opportunity than an EA Funds member (e.g. because this requires a lot of background knowledge on the country). [This is a hypothetical example to illustrate the idea, I don't want to make a claim that this specifically is likely.]

These points are also explained in more detail in the post on donor lotteries I linked to.

Hey Brian,

Just a very quick answer from me to your first question.

At 80k we rate climate change ahead of global health since it seems more pressing from a longtermist perspective (e.g. Toby Ord thinks it's a significant existential risk factor).

• https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/
• https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/

So, I would say that longtermists should donate to climate change over global health from an impact perspective, if choosing equally good charities from each cause (though I think it would be even better to donate to GCBRs of AI safety).

One might think that GiveWell is better at selecting charities than FP (and they've certainly done more research), but I think the edge on charity selection is unlikely to be big enough to offset the difference in cause area.

Another difference is that GiveWell focuses on evidence-backed interventions, whereas FP takes more of a hits based approach, but that seems like another advantage of the FP picks to me.

Finally, I'm focusing more on direct impact above. There could be other reasons to donate to global health (e.g. for advocacy reasons - since lots of great people have entered EA via global health), though I'm pretty unsure those factors would tell in favour of global health going forward (e.g. it seems plausible to me that EA should make climate change our standard 'mainstream' cause rather than global health).

PS Hauke's post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective, so doesn't answer your question.

Could you clarify what you mean by "narrow impact perspective"?

That was unclear, sorry. I again meant impact from just the funded charity's work. As opposed to effects on the motivation or ability to acquire resources of the donor, etc.

Hey Max, thanks for this. Could you clarify what you mean by "narrow impact perspective"? Do you mean from a purely long-term impact perspective?

However, I'd also guess there are other options that are even better from just a narrow impact perspective. Examples include:

• Donation lotteries [EA · GW]
• The EA Long-Term Future Fund

Also, I'm not sure how the donation lottery is a good opportunity from a long-term impact perspective. If I were a pure longtermist I would just trust the EA LTFF and I think that they are better suited to pick longtermist grant opportunities (given that they have more experience vetting organizations and people in this space) than me spending time myself evaluating longtermist opportunities.

Thanks for this post! I just want to tell others that I had to read this part in order to understand the value of a donor lottery (and answer my initial objection to it):

"Your decision whether to participate should not depend on what others plan to do if they win.

Some people think that they should only participate in the donor lottery if other lottery participants would make their donations wisely. The intuition is that you want your money to go somewhere good, and that this might not happen if there are other donors who would allocate their winnings poorly. However, whether you participate or not, others will have the same odds of winning, and will be able to make the same decision if they win. Your decision can’t change that – neither for better, nor for worse [2] [EA(p) · GW(p)]. 

This means that you can simply evaluate the lottery from your personal perspective: Would it be helpful to trade your donation for a smaller chance of winning a larger amount, so you can think more carefully about it? If so, you can safely assume that participating is helpful for you, and won’t change the expected outcomes for anyone else.

I was initially worried that my money would be going to an EA cause  that I don't prioritize as much, or an organization that I think is less effective (or one that I trust less), but basically I would be trading the chance of that for a chance to win a large amount that I could then grant to an organization I think is more effective (and/or would trust more). 

I still won't be donating to a donor lottery because I don't think I would like the pressure and responsibility of granting lots of other people's money yet in a way that they may disagree with. Being anonymous could  slightly circumvent this, but the responsibility would still feel like a lot. People who would be interested to become grantmakers though could consider donating here so they have a chance to be what it's like to be a large grantmaker.

Interesting. Aside from a microphone, are there any other things part of that starter pack? I don't have RSI yet but I think I could be at risk of developing it, so maybe I want to take some preventive measures.