by I wanted to let Felicifia members know that GiveWell is asking for feedback on priorities in a 3-minute survey.
In case anyone is curious, below is the answer I gave to the question, "What charitable causes/sectors are you most interested in?" If anyone else fills out the survey, why don't you paste your own answers to this forum?
Under, "If there is an important factor you feel is missing from the above list, please list that factor here," I noted, "I personally don't care about riskiness and am willing to support speculative/low-probability-high-expected-value scenarios." Basically the only criteria that mattered to me were
* Expressing my personal values through the cause I choose to support
* High potential impact per dollar (though not demonstrated impact)
although I added "demonstrable impact" as well, because for the types of causes that GiveWell tends to study, I do care very much about outside-view statistics. But for the best causes, like meta-research on cost-effectiveness, demonstrability of that sort may not be possible. (Still, even SIAI can and does keep metrics on its achieved results over time.)
In case anyone is curious, below is the answer I gave to the question, "What charitable causes/sectors are you most interested in?" If anyone else fills out the survey, why don't you paste your own answers to this forum?
I think the single most important cause is to propagate the meme that the suffering of animals in nature matters and should be addressed by far-future technologies.
Unfortunately, I don't know of existing organizations working on that cause, although I have toyed with the idea of starting such an organization in a few years and know of some others who may do something similar.
That specific cause probably isn't something GiveWell would ever tackle, but here are two ways it could be broadened:
1. A more general cause related to "animal welfare" that focuses on total numbers of animals impacted per dollar (so that, e.g, factory farms would obviously come out ahead of, say, dog fighting). This piece of mine might be of interest.
2. Something I would appreciate even more would be a "Research Institute" cause, because I think meta-level research on the right topics by qualified people actually has more value than direct work on a topic.
Indeed, I think you agree, because that's precisely what GiveWell is! In other words, I think donating to GiveWell is better than donating to any of your recommended causes, and similar ideas apply with respect to other areas. For instance, an institute asking questions about how activists can best promote the meme of wild-animal suffering would probably be a more cost-effective cause than any of the organizations themselves. In general, meta-level research seems neglected relative to its expected returns, in part because it has less "fuzzy" value.
As I mentioned, I currently donate pretty much exclusively to a research cause, SIAI.
Under, "If there is an important factor you feel is missing from the above list, please list that factor here," I noted, "I personally don't care about riskiness and am willing to support speculative/low-probability-high-expected-value scenarios." Basically the only criteria that mattered to me were
* Expressing my personal values through the cause I choose to support
* High potential impact per dollar (though not demonstrated impact)
although I added "demonstrable impact" as well, because for the types of causes that GiveWell tends to study, I do care very much about outside-view statistics. But for the best causes, like meta-research on cost-effectiveness, demonstrability of that sort may not be possible. (Still, even SIAI can and does keep metrics on its achieved results over time.)
