Holden Karnofsky
Co-founder of GiveWell, the charity evaluator that ranks giving opportunities by how much good a dollar does, and later of Open Philanthropy. Wrote the blog Cold Takes from 2021 to 2023 on ethics, forecasting and the long-run future.
Holden Karnofsky did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThey weren't infallible oracles, but they weren't blindly casting about either.
- 4 months earlier
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Their wordsThese ideas can be disturbing and off-putting, but I think there is also a strong case for them, for those who wish their ethics to be principled and focused on the interests of others.
- 13 days earlier
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Our reading
Ethics based on common sense and the conventions of the time has a horrible track record.
Their wordsEthics based on "common sense" seems to have a horrible track record.
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Their wordsIndeed, I think some of the best opportunities to do good in the world come from working on issues that aren't yet widely recognized as huge moral issues of our time.
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Their wordsCombining these three pillars yields a number of unusual, even uncomfortable views about ethics. I feel this discomfort and don't unreservedly endorse this approach to ethics.
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Their wordsIn theory, any harm can be outweighed by something that benefits a large enough number of persons, even if it benefits them in a minor way.
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsI think it's completely reasonable to form the vast majority of one's beliefs based on trust like this. I don't really think there's any alternative.
↗Minimal-trust investigationscold-takes.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsMinimal-trust investigation is probably the single activity that's been most formative for the way I think.
↗Minimal-trust investigationscold-takes.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 10 years earlier
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Their wordsAnd we generally prefer to give where we have strong evidence that donations can do a lot of good rather than where we have weak evidence that donations can do far more good
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 1st of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsIn such a world, it seems that nearly all altruists would put nearly all of their resources toward helping people they knew little about, rather than helping themselves, their families and their communities. I believe that the world would be worse off if people behaved in this way, or at least if they took it to an extreme.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 2nd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsYet it seems that when people are valuing one action far above others, based on thin information, this is the time when skeptical inquiry is needed most.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 3rd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsEEV doesn’t seem to allow rewarding charities for transparency or penalizing them for opacity: it simply recommends giving to the charity with the highest estimated expected value, regardless of how well-grounded the estimate is.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 4th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsAn ungrounded estimate making an extravagant claim ought to be more or less discarded in the face of the “prior distribution” of life experience.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 5th of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
The more an argument asks you to do, the more evidence you should require before doing it.
Their wordsThe more action is asked of me, the more evidence I require.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 6th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsGiving well seems conceptually quite difficult to me, and it’s been my experience over time that the more we dig on a cost-effectiveness estimate, the more unwarranted optimism we uncover.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 7th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsI feel that any giving approach that relies only on estimated expected-value – and does not incorporate preferences for better-grounded estimates over shakier estimates – is flawed.
↗Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased)blog.givewell.org 8th of 8 in this piece