Do you get asked the first two a lot?

I'm curious if you tracked career changes and/or relevant researched published by the people you had calls with over time?

Yes! The overview/title captures what I've seen as well, esp from newer community members. I spend a lot of my time telling people that they know their situation better than I do (and have probably infuriated people by not answering questions directly :)).

One point I'd highlight: I find that people often lack confidence in the plans they make, and that makes them more uncertain, less likely to act, and maybe have less motivation or drive.

This is often caused by imposter syndrome, or chasing a unrealistic sense of certainty or assurance that doesn't exist. (More speculative) I think people also may not want to come off as overconfident/arrogant/uncalibrated, and the norm is to trend too much in the opposite direction.

(Even writing this, I feel like confidence is a loaded term in this community and I feel the urge to qualify it, but I won't give in!)

What groups of people do you see this most commonly with?

On priors, I would expect most ea aligned donors (or researchers / evaluators) to take things like this into account because they seem pretty fundamental.

Oh interesting. I want to dig into this more now, but my impression is that an individual's giving portfolio - both major donors & retail donors, but more so people who aren't serious philanthropists and/or haven't reflected a lot on their giving - is that they are malleable and not as zero-sum. 

i think with donors likely to give to ea causes, a lot of them haven't really been stewarded & cultivated and there probably is a lot of room for them to increase their giving. 

The total funding pie is pretty fixed; I expect it to be quite rare to grow it.

Could you say more on how you came to this conclusion?  

Hey Sebastian! Very curious how you calculated that amount?

Ah sorry I should have just said "3 main / larger scale funders" (op, eaif + meta funding circle). Funders from those groups include individuals.

But I was also unclear in my comment - I'll clarify this soon.

There actually is a lot stopping people from doing this independently - if you would ever want to scale and get funding you basically have 3 sources of funders, and if they don't approve what you are doing you won't get to become a serious competitor

I agree he's not offering alternatives, as I mentioned previously. It would be good if Leif gave examples of better tradeoffs. 

I still think your claim is too strongly stated. I don't think Leif criticizing GW orgs means he is discouraging life saving aid as a whole, or that people will predictably die as a result. The counterfactual is not clear (and it's very difficult to measure). 

More defensible claims would be :

• People are less likely to donate to GW recommended orgs
• People will be more skeptical of bednets / (any intervention he critiques) and less likely to support organization implementing them
• People will be less likely to donate to AMF / New Incentives / (any other org he specifically discussed or critiqued)
• People may be more skeptical of LMIC philanthropy more generally because they feel overwhelmed by the possible risks, and donate less to it (this statement is closest to your original claim. For what it's worth, this is his least original claim and people already have many reasons to be skeptical, so I'd be wary of attributing too much credit to Leif here)