Thanks very much for all these great hypotheses. I think there is a reasonable chance that these effects will be true, but also that we don't have strong evidence for any of them yet. I've split your comment into the following hypotheses, and tests that can be run to determine whether they are true:

Hypothesis 1: Spread rate will be similar to GWWC 10% pledge, at 10,000 members over 15 years of activity. GWWC currently have 15 employees, with a time averaged number of c. 10 employees. This puts the spread rate per employee at around 0.2 promisers per day, compared to the model's current estimate of 3. This would lower the QALYs per dollar from 915 to 123.
Test for hypothesis 1: monitor the spread rate per employee

Hypothesis 2: People gaming the system by becoming aware of the promise, but only taking the promise once they are in need, will be a significant effect.
Test A for hypothesis 2: Employees record interactions with potential promisers and indicate what proportion of them seem likely to engage in this behaviour
Test B for hypothesis 2: Monitor the spread rate by employees and by promisers directly, ignoring this intermediate variable

Hypothesis 3: There will be an overwhelming number of promisers without access to food, water, peace and shelter, which will lead to a high defection rate (above the 0.5% per day predicted in the model)
Test A for hypothesis 3: Record the defection rate from the promise by running trials
Test B for hypothesis 3: Observe the ratio of promisers who are able to give and promisers who are making requests for support

If you or anybody else would be interested in supporting the running any of these tests, please let me know.

 

Could you suggest an alternative title? Maybe you're thinking something like: "we should set up a pilot charity to formalise the promise - predicted to save 915 QALYs per dollar"?

There is no website as far as I have seen. It is not a formal organisation, but rather a text. There is, because of this, no centralised register of who has taken the promise, though I'm sure that would be welcomed, and could be one of the activities that the created charity does. So far, the promise has been working via word of mouth - if you need help, you ask Promisers that you know, and they ask Promisers that they know.
Cool about the notion page. Maybe you could link it?

Great! What questions do you have? What makes you feel skeptical? 

Would anyone be up for reading and responding to this article? I find myself agreeing with a lot of it.

"Effective altruism is a movement that excludes poor people"

Ah thanks for pointing out my mistake! And yes, I read this paragraph in the article, but still couldn't work out how they could provide such a precise range

3. I really encourage you to read The Divide - it might change your mind

4. I really encourage you to read the linked resources, given that you are not yet familiar with the idea

5. Could you say a little more about your views on degrowth? And what do you think about the anti-apartheid movement and LGBT rights movement? Would you agree that these have been successful? How about the overthrowing of various dictators around the world? Most of these movements had small anarchist funders that enabled their growth.

6. I really encourage you to understand the concept before disagreeing with it

7. I agree that these conclusions are not obvious from the simple overview I gave. Maybe you would be open to investigating them further? The Guerrilla Foundation's website have outlines of their relationship-based approach to funding and bringing funders into a movement.
 

It seems in a lot of cases you have disagreed with concepts before understanding them fully. Would you agree? And if so, why do you think this happened here, where I'm sure that you are great at making evidence-based judgements in other areas?

Thanks for the suggestions in your first three paragraphs! Looking forward to checking these out:)

The types of radical feminism you are mentioning in your first three bullet points are not types that I or the people or organisations I am mentioning would associate with. These groups are often labelled as Trans- or Sex worker- exclusionary radical feminists. It is a shame that they use this label too. They are generally funded by far right groups and instrumentalised to make it seem that they represent the feminist movement as a whole, or women's interests more broadly. The fourth bullet point I hadn't heard about, and that Contrapoints video has been on my watch list for a long time now- I should really watch it!
 

In my experience, people who have radical leftist economic views are generally hostile to the idea of people in high-income countries donating to charities that provide medicine or anti-malarial bednets or cash to poor people in low-income countries. It's hard for me to imagine much cooperation or overlap between effective altruism and the radical left.

I agree with this, though maybe I would use a less strong word than hostile, such as 'frustrated' or 'confused'.  I also think that the frustration and confusion goes both ways. This post series is meant to be an attempt the help each group understand what causes the divide, and to facilitate cooperation and mutual learning. I also plan to share it with feminist groups.

The adrienne maree brown Vampire thing you are referring to is, I believe, from this 2009 blog post. I think that you have overinterpreted a whimsical remark. Or maybe I am missing another source? Either way most movements don't stand up well to anecdotal ad-hominem attacks.

What is pleasure activism? After reading this, I don't know. I'm not sure if adrienne marie brown knows, either.

Could you give a little more context on what you don't understand? I'm not sure I can see the same issues, at least at the moment
 

But a lot of the radical left, to borrow a bon mot from Noam Chomsky, want to "live in some abstract seminar somewhere". They have no ideas about how to actually make the world better in specific, actionable ways

This is a super interesting point. I'll write about it in a future post in this series. The article you link to is really nice. One thing I'll say for now is that there are certainly parts of the feminist movements that you will strongly disagree with, and that disagreement is welcome. I'd like to remind you that you feel the same about parts of the EA movement, as we have discussed elsewhere.

I agree that authoritarian communism is bad, but I have a lot more belief in degrowth. Could you give some more specifics on what your issues are with it?

Your concluding comments seem like rage-bait and might be an unnecessary addition to your otherwise very thoughtful reply.

This is a very interesting comment. I think a lot of the disagreement relates to a difference in what evidence is regarded as valuable within each field. I think this is a tension that both groups can learn from. I'll write more about this, but I believe that EA ascribes too low value to non-numerical ways of knowing and radical feminists are reluctant to corroborate qualitative understanding using numbers.

I'd like to hear why you chose to label radical feminism as an 'extremist group'. This has a lot of negative connotations carried, vs using a term like 'radical'. 

On epistemic sacrifices, this is not something that I have suggested. I suggest being curious about and open to learning from radical feminism. This allows you to discard ideas that you would like to discard, and take in ideas that you would not.

Your final comment indicates that perhaps you are not that familiar with radical feminism, and perhaps such a strongly weighted opinion would be best kept until after a little more research?