Comments
First, I don't think that's the best "current" definition. More recently (2 years ago,) Will proposed the following:
Effective altruism is:
(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize the good with a given unit of resources, tentatively understanding ‘the good’ in impartial welfarist terms, and
(ii) the use of the findings from (i) to try to improve the world.
But Will said he's "making CEA’s definition a little more rigorous," rather than replacing it. I think the key reason to allow hits-based giving in both cases is the word "and" in the phrase "...evidence and careful reasoning." (Note that Will omits "high quality" from evidence, I'd suspect for the reason you suggested. I would argue that for a Bayesian, high-quality evidence doesn't require an RCT, but that's not the colloquial usage, so I agree Will's phrasing is less likely to mislead.)
And to be fair to the original definition, careful reasoning is exactly the justification for expected value thinking. Specifically, careful reasoning leads to favoring making 20 "hits based" donations to high-risk-of-failure potential causes, where in expectation 10% of them end up with a cost per QALY of $5, and the others end up useless, rather than a single donation 20x as large to an organization we are nearly certain has a cost per QALY of $200.
One, I'd argue that hits-based giving is a natural consequence of working through what using "high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help others as much as possible" reallying means, since that statement doesn't say anything about excluding high-variance strategies. For example, many would say there's high-quality evidence about AI risk, lots of careful reasoning has been done to assess its impact on the long term future, and many have concluded that working on such things is likely to help others as much as possible, though we may not be able to measure that help for a long time and we may make mistakes.
Two, it's likely a strategic choice to not be in-your-face about high variance giving strategies since they are pretty weird to most people. EA orgs have chosen to develop a public brand that is broadly appealing and not controversial on the surface (even if EA ends up courting controversy anyway because of its consequences for opportunities we judge to be relatively less effective than others). The definitions of EA you point to seem in line with this.
Googling, I primarily find the term "high-quality evidence" in association with randomised controlled trials. I think many would say there isn't any high-quality evidence regarding, e.g. AI risk.
Agreed - see my answer which notes that Will suggested a phrasing that omits "high-quality."
The point about "working through what it really means" is very interesting. (more on this below) But when I read, "high-quality evidence and careful reasoning", it doesn't really engage the curious part of my brain to work out what that really means. All of those are words I have already heard and it feels like standard phrasing. When one isn't encouraged to actually work through that definition, it does feel like it is excluding high variance strategies. I am not sure if you feel this way but "high-quality evidence" to my brain just says empirical evidence. Maybe that is why I am sensing this exclusion of high variance strategies.
You are probably right. But I am worried if that is really a good strategy? By not openly saying that we do things we are uncertain about we could end up coming off as a know-it-all who has it all figured out with evidence! There were some discussions along these lines in another recent post. Maybe having a definition that kind of gives a subtle nod to hits-based giving could help with that?
Your point about 'working through the definition' actually gave me an idea: What if we rephrased to "high-quality evidence and/or careful reasoning". That non-standard phrasing of 'and/or' sows some curiosity to actually work things out, doesn't it? I am making the assumption that the phrase "high-quality evidence" is empirical evidence (as I already said) and the phrase "careful reasoning" includes Expected Value thinking, making Fermi estimates and all the other reasoning tools that EAs use. Also, this small phrasing change is not that radically different from what we already have so the cost of changing shouldn't be that high. Of course the question is, is it actually that much more effective than what we have. Would love to hear thoughts on that and of course other suggestions for a better definition...