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Why Charities Usually Don't Differ Astronomically in Expected Cost-Effectiveness

reducing-suffering.org · 9,303 words · saved by 1 readers

I think some in the effective-altruism movement overestimate the extent to which charities differ in their expected marginal cost-effectiveness. This piece suggests a few reasons why we shouldn't expect most charities to differ by more than hundreds of times. In fact, I suspect many charities differ by at most ~10 to ~100 times, and within a given field, the multipliers are probably less than a factor of ~5. These multipliers may be positive or negative, i.e., some charities have negative expected net impact. I'm not claiming that charities don't differ significantly, nor that we shouldn't spend substantial resources finding good charities; indeed, I think both of those statements are true. However, I do hope to challenge black/white distinctions about effective/ineffective charities, so that effective altruists will see greater value in what many other people are doing in numerous places throughout society.

By Brian Tomasik First published: 2014 Jan 05 . Last nontrivial update: 2017 Sep 16 . Summary I think some in the effective-altruism movement overestimate the extent to which charities differ in their expected marginal cost-effectiveness. This piece suggests a few reasons why we shouldn't expect most charities to differ by more than hundreds of times. In fact, I suspect many charities differ by at most ~10 to ~100 times, and within a given field, the multipliers are probably less than a factor of ~5. These multipliers may be positive or negative, i.e., some charities have negative expected net

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