ACE also has a model of cage-free campaigns (actual inputs are in the bottom-right quadrant) and they conclude cage-free campaigns have a mean direct effect of 65 animals spared per dollar. This isn’t in QALYs, but since they’re all chickens and egg-laying chickens live an average of 1 year, I assume they mean ~65 QALYs per $.
These two estimates differ by an order of magnitude and I’m unsure who is right. You could both be right, since this is an estimate for MFA in particular, rather than corporate campaigns as a whole, and ACE seems to give less weight toward MFA on these campaigns.
But the more important part is that ACE’s estimate also includes a substantial risk of negative impact, which is more concerning. This comes from the fact that ACE thinks there is a substantial probability that the impact to animal welfare could be net negative, perhaps stemming from the discussion between Direct Action Everywhere and OpenPhil.
I was curious what you thought about the differences in your two models, especially with regard to the risk of cage-free being negative?
I do realize this isn’t particularly important because you ultimately do not make a cage-free donation, but it seems like food for thought. It’s also interesting to evaluate model uncertainty by comparing two independent models.
In looking over your quantitative model on cage-free campaigns, I notice that you conclude cage-free campaigns have a mean direct effect of ~204 QALYs per $.
ACE also has a model of cage-free campaigns (actual inputs are in the bottom-right quadrant) and they conclude cage-free campaigns have a mean direct effect of 65 animals spared per dollar. This isn’t in QALYs, but since they’re all chickens and egg-laying chickens live an average of 1 year, I assume they mean ~65 QALYs per $.
These two estimates differ by an order of magnitude and I’m unsure who is right. You could both be right, since this is an estimate for MFA in particular, rather than corporate campaigns as a whole, and ACE seems to give less weight toward MFA on these campaigns.
But the more important part is that ACE’s estimate also includes a substantial risk of negative impact, which is more concerning. This comes from the fact that ACE thinks there is a substantial probability that the impact to animal welfare could be net negative, perhaps stemming from the discussion between Direct Action Everywhere and OpenPhil.
I was curious what you thought about the differences in your two models, especially with regard to the risk of cage-free being negative?
I do realize this isn’t particularly important because you ultimately do not make a cage-free donation, but it seems like food for thought. It’s also interesting to evaluate model uncertainty by comparing two independent models.