tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post8006346844547031489..comments2024-02-15T06:35:18.238-05:00Comments on *Reflective Disequilibrium*: It's harder to favor a specific cause in more efficient charitable marketsCarlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-78333428166893712014-06-24T09:20:22.459-04:002014-06-24T09:20:22.459-04:00I'm the second or third largest funder of a ch...I'm the second or third largest funder of a charity which is too controversial to get any of these big multi-charity or foundation grants, *and* has been consistently underfunded.<br /><br />So. You want impact? Do that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-16403885218622183252014-01-20T18:36:19.275-05:002014-01-20T18:36:19.275-05:00Hi Brian
Here's what I had in mind after read...Hi Brian<br /><br /><a href="http://www.directupload.net/file/d/3509/5rwzvdh8_jpg.htm" rel="nofollow">Here</a>'s what I had in mind after reading Carl's post.<br /><br />The linear curve simply shows the fact that each donor is able to donate 1$ either to X or to Y, so the funding X receives is proportional to the number of donors that donate to X. The decreasing curve shows the number of potential donors who think that X should receive at least a certain amount ("before its marginal returns equalize with Y"). The intersection of the two curves is what X actually receives. <br /><br />Now new X-enthusiasts come along who think that X should receive much more funding than it currently does. The demand curve thus shifts upwards by an amount that is equal to the number of enthusiasts. Naïvely, one would expect that 1000 new X-enthusiasts who each donate 1$ to X increase the amount X receives by 1000$. However, the new amount X receives is given by the intersection with the new demand curve. As can readily seen from the figure, the increase in funding for X is less than the number of new enthusiasts. <br /><br />If one marginal dollar to X leads to q previous donors shifting their donation to Y, then to first order the actual increase in donations to X is given by 1000$/(1+q). ("The enthusiasts' $1,000 might deliver anywhere between nothing and $1,000 depending on the shape of the distribution of views around the marginal donor")Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-5711903650083628082014-01-17T09:59:46.820-05:002014-01-17T09:59:46.820-05:00Carl, your post mentioned a "demand curve,&qu...Carl, your post mentioned a "demand curve," and this inspired me to try drawing out what's happening here in <a href="http://utilitarian-essays.com/donation-funging.jpg" rel="nofollow">this figure</a>. I'm not sure if I got it right.<br /><br />The demand curve represents how much value the donors place on the charity's work. The enthusiastic donors are willing to pay lots of money for one unit of output from the charity, and enthusiasm decreases as you go down the demand curve. This figure also assumes increasing marginal cost by the charity (in the short run) to produce a given amount of good, reflecting diminished room for more funding.<br /><br />In the extreme example of no room for more funding, the marginal-cost curve would be a vertical line, and the funging would be complete. Since in general the marginal-cost curve shouldn't be vertical, this suggests that enthusiastic donors do make some difference (depending on elasticities) between 0% and 100% of the naive difference.<br /><br />It seems like this model doesn't require extremely smart money but might apply in general, even for uncoordinated donors who just naively evaluate whether a charity is doing enough good work to justify a donation.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-67719669778504978472014-01-16T01:00:27.281-05:002014-01-16T01:00:27.281-05:00Sorry, I didn't realize I was posting as my ol...Sorry, I didn't realize I was posting as my old blogger account, which is called Jurgen.<br /><br />The dynamic I described holds only within giving season. The goal is to avoid situations in which a donor's choice between charities ends up being "funged" by processes that are opaque to them. It is certainly true that donating to a charity brings it closer to closing its funding gap, which eventually means donations that would have gone to this charity go elsewhere. However, over that kind of time frame things can change quite a bit, and earlier donations are very meaningfully different from later ones.Holden Karnofskyhttp://www.givewell.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-82427125206312445732014-01-15T17:43:55.610-05:002014-01-15T17:43:55.610-05:00Is this true on a year-to year basis though, or ju...Is this true on a year-to year basis though, or just within a single giving season?<br /><br />We do see GiveWell dropping AMF from its recommendations as temporarily overfunded, so the basic dynamic seems to be in play.Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-18432382793822546812014-01-15T17:34:50.964-05:002014-01-15T17:34:50.964-05:00Thanks for sharing that Jurgen.Thanks for sharing that Jurgen.Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-54434373261897505352014-01-15T17:27:23.074-05:002014-01-15T17:27:23.074-05:00GiveWell and Good Ventures actively wish to avoid ...GiveWell and Good Ventures actively wish to avoid a situation in which a donation to one recommended charity is effectively a donation to all recommended charities in the proportions we prefer. We prize what we call "donor agency": the ability of each donor to make a decision about what they are supporting, effectively as well as directly. As such,<br /><br />-GiveWell has committed to grant out the "funds available for regranting" according to a set formula that is independent of what other donors do. (We haven't done so publicly but have privately emailed multiple major donors with this formula such that it can be verified that we committed to it).<br /><br />-Good Ventures announced <a href="http://www.goodventures.org/research-and-ideas/blog/our-giving-season-plans" rel="nofollow">its giving plans</a> shortly after the announcement of our top charities, without waiting to see what other donors would do; it explicitly discussed donor agency in its announcement and expressed plans not to make further donations this giving season.<br /><br />-We generally discourage major donors from "funging" other donors, and we believe that they rarely do so.<br /><br />I think Carl's broader point holds in many cases. Donating to a charity may reduce its fundraising efforts and may reduce its perceived need (though speeding its ability to plan and reducing the amount of effort it needs to put into fundraising have effects as well). However, I think his specific claim that "It's hard to support just one of GiveWell's recommended charities" is false because we have purposefully taken steps to make it false.Holdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10526675751850424303noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-4461156684823640602014-01-15T13:27:24.263-05:002014-01-15T13:27:24.263-05:00Owen, yes this is talking about the elasticity of ...Owen, yes this is talking about the elasticity of donations, and there are other factors.Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-46642505380512435852014-01-15T11:36:03.561-05:002014-01-15T11:36:03.561-05:00I think it would be useful to think of elasticitie...I think it would be useful to think of elasticities here. The thought and effort behind the smart money certainly increase the degree to which funding one area is fungible with another (within the fairly tight set where the smart money is already going), but stickiness in the system may well be a larger factor than the difference in view between consecutive marginal donors.<br /><br />If I donate a $100 to SCI, my (rather plucked from the air) guess is that will increase the amount SCI end up with relative to Give Directly by somewhere in the region of $50-$80.<br /><br />I guess you might expect more elasticity than this if you expect that the quality of our critical analyses is just going to keep increasing, but I think it's also quite likely the case that one of these charities won't be at the top of GiveWell's recommendations at all in a year or two (because of new considerations rather than just because they run out of room for funding), in which case there is likely to be less elasticity than this.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04859843425566999305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-57027144978390413852014-01-15T11:09:17.202-05:002014-01-15T11:09:17.202-05:00This is an important point! If this dynamic were h...This is an important point! If this dynamic were happening, supporters of a cause might instead aim to shift the views or preferences of these cross-cause donors, although there might be a lot of them that would have to be influenced before anything moved. Or the cause's supporters might take their money out of the donation pool and use it for things off the radar to the rest of the giving community.<br /><br />If the cause is sufficiently idiosyncratic that mainstream EA donors wouldn't give to it, this situation won't apply. Of course, the situation you describe is a good problem to have, so causes should still aim to make themselves more widely accepted in order to at least hit diminishing returns -- and benefit from the rising tides of total EA funding.<br /><br />In some ways this could help reduce competition among causes: Once everybody is on the same frontier, everybody may just aim to maximize donation pie, unless they pursue a donor-persuasion strategy as mentioned above.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.com