Here’s a very long article on “effective altruism”. The idea of benchmarking charities based on how much they spend to achieve their stated objectives makes sense to me. However, some objectives are harder to quantify than others and it doesn’t make sense to assume everyone has the same values, or that they should prioritize objectives that are easiest to quantify.

I can see another use for these types of benchmarks. If you are running a charity trying to achieve a particular objective, you can compare your cost-effectiveness to the best charities in your class. If you can’t at least approach their level of performance, you might be better off just donating your money or effort to them rather than running your own charity.

The article morphs into another article talking about existential risk. I’ll talk about that another time.