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I use “I” for cases where I am going into detail on thoughts of mine that don’t necessarily reflect the views of the Open Philanthropy Project as such, though they have factored into our decision-making.

 Last year, we wrote about the question:

 Once we have investigated a potential grant, how do we decide where the bar is for recommending it? With all the uncertainty about what we’ll find in future years, how do we decide when grant X is better than saving the money and giving later?

 (The full post is here; note that it is on the GiveWell website because we had not yet launched the Open Philanthropy Project website.)

 In brief, our answer was to consider both: 

An overall budget for the year, which we set at 5% of available capital. This left room to give a lot more than we gave last year. A benchmark. We determined that we would recommend giving opportunities when they seemed like a better use of money than direct cash transfers to the lowest-income people possible, as carried out by GiveDirectly, subject to some other constraints (being within the budget indicated above, having done enough investigation for an informed decision, and some other complicating factors and adjustments).This topic is particularly important when deciding how much to recommend that Good Ventures donate to GiveWell’s top charities. It is also becoming more important overall because our staff capacity and total giving has grown significantly this year. Changing the way we think about the “bar for recommending a grant” could potentially change decisions about tens of millions of dollars’ worth of giving.

 We have put some thought into this topic since last year, and our thinking has evolved noticeably. This post outlines our current views, while also noting that I believe we failed to put as much thought into this question as should have in 2016, and are hoping to do more in 2017.

        Holden Karnofsky's blog 10 comments Add new comment           Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Project Staff - 2016   by Holden Karnofsky Published December 14, 2016       Last year, we published a set of suggestions for individual donors looking for organizations to support. This year, we are repeating the practice and publishing updated suggestions from Open Philanthropy Project staff who chose to provide them.

 The same caveats as last year apply: 

        Holden Karnofsky's blog 4 comments Add new comment          Worldview Diversification   by Holden Karnofsky Published December 13, 2016       In principle, we try to find the best giving opportunities by comparing many possibilities. However, many of the comparisons we’d like to make hinge on very debatable, uncertain questions. 

 For example: 

Some people think that animals such as chickens have essentially no moral significance compared to that of humans; others think that they should be considered comparably important, or at least 1-10% as important. If you accept the latter view, farm animal welfare looks like an extraordinarily outstanding cause, potentially to the point of dominating other options: billions of chickens are treated incredibly cruelly each year on factory farms, and we estimate that corporate campaigns can spare over 200 hens from cage confinement for each dollar spent. But if you accept the former view, this work is arguably a poor use of money. Some have argued that the majority of our impact will come via its effect on the long-term future. If true, this could be an argument that reducing global catastrophic risks has overwhelming importance, or that accelerating scientific research does, or that improving the overall functioning of society via policy does. Given how difficult it is to make predictions about the long-term future, it’s very hard to compare work in any of these categories to evidence-backed interventions serving the global poor. We have additional uncertainty over how we should resolve these sorts of uncertainty. We could try to quantify our uncertainties using probabilities (e.g. “There’s a 10% chance that I should value chickens 10% as much as humans”), and arrive at a kind of expected value calculation for each of many broad approaches to giving. But most of the parameters in such a calculation would be very poorly grounded and non-robust, and it’s unclear how to weigh calculations with that property. In addition, such a calculation would run into challenges around normative uncertainty (uncertainty about morality), and it’s quite unclear how to handle such challenges.In this post, I’ll use “worldview” to refer to a set of highly debatable (and perhaps impossible to evaluate) beliefs that favor a certain kind of giving. One worldview might imply that evidence-backed charities serving the global poor are far more worthwhile than either of the types of giving discussed above; another might imply that farm animal welfare is; another might imply that global catastrophic risk reduction is. A given worldview represents a combination of views, sometimes very difficult to disentangle, such that uncertainty between worldviews is constituted by a mix of empirical uncertainty (uncertainty about facts), normative uncertainty (uncertainty about morality), and methodological uncertainty (e.g. uncertainty about how to handle uncertainty, as laid out in the third bullet point above). Some slightly more detailed descriptions of example worldviews are in a footnote.1

 A challenge we face is that we consider multiple different worldviews plausible. We’re drawn to multiple giving opportunities that some would consider outstanding and others would consider relatively low-value. We have to decide how to weigh different worldviews, as we try to do as much good as possible with limited resources.

 When deciding between worldviews, there is a case to be made for simply taking our best guess2 and sticking with it. If we did this, we would focus exclusively on animal welfare, or on global catastrophic risks, or global health and development, or on another category of giving, with no attention to the others. However, that’s not the approach we’re currently taking.

 Instead, we’re practicing worldview diversification: putting significant resources behind each worldview that we find highly plausible. We think it’s possible for us to be a transformative funder in each of a number of different causes, and we don’t - as of today - want to pass up that opportunity to focus exclusively on one and get rapidly diminishing returns.

        Holden Karnofsky's blog 2 comments Add new comment                 Stay Updated   Email me new blog posts Blog RSS feed More information     Recent blog posts        Explaining Our Bet on Sherlock Biosciences' Innovations in Viral Diagnostics    Our Progress in 2018 and Plans for 2019    New Staff in Operations, Programs, and Research    History of Philanthropy Literature Review: Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs    Reflections on Our 2018 Generalist Research Analyst Recruiting        Archives    2019 June 2019    June 2019   April 2019    April 2019    April 2019    April 2019   March 2019    March 2019   February 2019    February 2019  2018 December 2018    December 2018    December 2018    December 2018   October 2018    October 2018   September 2018    September 2018   May 2018    May 2018   April 2018    April 2018   March 2018    March 2018    March 2018    March 2018   February 2018    February 2018    February 2018   January 2018    January 2018    January 2018    January 2018  2017 December 2017    December 2017    December 2017    December 2017   November 2017    November 2017   October 2017    October 2017   September 2017    September 2017    September 2017    September 2017    September 2017    September 2017   June 2017    June 2017    June 2017    June 2017    June 2017   April 2017    April 2017    April 2017   March 2017    March 2017    March 2017    March 2017   February 2017    February 2017    February 2017  2016 December 2016    December 2016    December 2016    December 2016   October 2016    October 2016   September 2016    September 2016    September 2016    September 2016    September 2016   July 2016    July 2016   June 2016    June 2016    June 2016   May 2016    May 2016    May 2016    May 2016   April 2016    April 2016    April 2016   March 2016    March 2016    March 2016   February 2016    February 2016    February 2016    February 2016    February 2016  2015 December 2015    December 2015   November 2015    November 2015   October 2015    October 2015   September 2015    September 2015    September 2015    September 2015    September 2015    September 2015   August 2015    August 2015    August 2015    August 2015   July 2015    July 2015    July 2015    July 2015    July 2015    July 2015   June 2015    June 2015    June 2015    June 2015   May 2015    May 2015    May 2015    May 2015   April 2015    April 2015    April 2015    April 2015    April 2015    April 2015   March 2015    March 2015    March 2015    March 2015    March 2015   February 2015    February 2015    February 2015    February 2015  2014 October 2014    October 2014    October 2014   September 2014    September 2014    September 2014   August 2014    August 2014   July 2014    July 2014    July 2014   June 2014    June 2014   May 2014    May 2014    May 2014    May 2014    May 2014   April 2014    April 2014    April 2014   March 2014    March 2014    March 2014   January 2014    January 2014    January 2014  2013 December 2013    December 2013   November 2013    November 2013    November 2013   October 2013    October 2013    October 2013    October 2013    October 2013   September 2013    September 2013   July 2013    July 2013    July 2013    July 2013   June 2013    June 2013    June 2013   May 2013    May 2013    May 2013   April 2013    April 2013    April 2013    April 2013   March 2013    March 2013   February 2013    February 2013  2012 September 2012    September 2012    September 2012   July 2012    July 2012   June 2012    June 2012    June 2012    June 2012   May 2012    May 2012    May 2012    May 2012   March 2012    March 2012   February 2012    February 2012    February 2012    February 2012   January 2012    January 2012  2011 October 2011    October 2011   September 2011    September 2011    September 2011    September 2011                contact us jobs press kit  facebook twitter rss © Open Philanthropy Project. Except as otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. Some images may be copyrighted by others and not licensed for re-use: see image captions or footnotes. Privacy policy         try { clicky.init(100914494); }catch(e){}