Thanks, Grace. Have you (GWWC) considered highlighting your animal welfare recommendations as more cost-effective than your recommendations in other areas? From GWWCâs recommendations page:
What do we mean by âeffectiveâ?
Not all charities are equal. Your choice of where to donate can lead to significant differences in impact.
Our research team estimates that you can often do 100x more good with your dollar by donating to the best charities, and sometimes this multiplier is even greater.
If this comes as a surprise, youâre not alone. Many donors vastly underestimate the difference between âgoodâ and âgreatâ charities, which explains why many of the best charities to donate to remain underfunded.
I believe the same applies to GWWCâs recommendations, in the sense I think your animal welfare recommendations are over 100 times as cost-effective as your recommendations in other areas. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns are 168 and 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.
The Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) is 64.3 k times as cost-effectivene as GiveWellâs top charities.
I also have a sense that people working on cause prioritisation would agree that the best interventions in animal welfare are more cost-effective than the best ones in global health and development. For example, Ambitious Impactâs estimates suggest this, and so did the votes in Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week.
I understand people supporting global health and development may be a little distanced by GWWC highlighting animal welfare as more cost-effective. However, people donating to local organisations which are 1 % as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities (e.g. supporting people with low income in high income countries) are way more distanced by not even having their preferred options on GWWCâs platform, and I believe the cost-effectiveness gap between such organisations and GiveWellâs top charities may well be smaller than that between the best animal welfare organisations and GiveWellâs top charities.
Thanks for your questionâI think itâs a good one!
I was going to write up a response but then I remembered we had this nice explanation on our research and approach page:
Some other organisations in the effective giving space advocate a particular âworldviewâ; for example, they might believe it is most impactful to focus on safeguarding the long-term future and as such, recommend giving to organisations working to reduce existential risk, rather than other high-impact causes like global health. Others may believe it is best to focus on non-human animal wellbeing, because the scale of the problem (if you value all sentient beings equally) is so enormous compared to human wellbeing and the solutions are much more tractable than attempting to safeguard the long-term future.
At Giving What We Can, we believe there are compelling arguments and reasons for focusing on any of the high-impact cause areas we recommend, and that no matter which one you choose, youâll have the capacity to help solve some of the worldâs most pressing problems and prevent the suffering of many. Weâve outlined why the cause areas we recommend are particularly impactful (and why we encourage supporting these over others) but we donât currently take a view on which of our high-impact cause areas we deem most impactful as we think this is quite value-specific. Instead, we wish to provide the public with a variety of highly effective giving options, and then empower them to determine which ones best align with their own worldviews/âvalues. Some of our donors feel strongly that theyâll have more impact by prioritising one of these cause areas; others prefer to diversify their giving portfolio across several cause areas.
So I think the TL;DR of this answer is that we provide recommendations across a number of worldviews but donât currently want to weigh in on what we think is the âcorrectâ worldview. This means that weâll be unlikely to create a ranked link of recommendations across our cause areas unless we change our view on how we think about worldview diversity.
Thanks, Grace. I think this is the most relevant section of the page explaining your areas relevant to my question:
How do the high-impact cause areas we recommend differ from each other in terms of scale, neglectedness, and tractability?
Importantly, none of the high-impact cause areas we recommend above rank highest on all three attributes of the scale, neglectedness, tractability framework. Each of them excel on various of these attributes that â when taken together â lead to them being impactful options. For example:
Global health and wellbeing is large in scale compared to other causes, but is small in scale compared to animal welfare and global catastrophic risk reduction. However, global health and wellbeing is likely the most tractable of the three cause areas â there are proven, concrete interventions that we know save lives.
Animal welfare is much larger in scale and much more neglected than global health and wellbeing, but much smaller in scale than global catastrophic risk reduction. On the flip side, it is less tractable than global health and wellbeing but more tractable than global catastrophic risk reduction.
Global catastrophic risk reduction is by far the largest in scale of the three cause areas, as mitigating a threat like rogue AI could affect not just those living today but the entire future of humanity (and other species too)! However, while highly neglected relative to its potential consequences, it is much less tractable than the other two cause areas.
The bullets do not really justify the bolded claim at the top because it is unclear which effects (of scale, tractability or neglectedness) dominate, and whether they are as you described (there are no sources in the bullets). Moreover, the product between scale, tractability and neglectedness as usually defined is equal to the cost-effectiveness, and I estimate the best animal welfare (AW) interventions are way more cost-effective than the best ones in global health and development (GHD).
I think prioritising the most cost-effective causes is what distinguishes effective giving initiatives. So I would say it would be good for you (GWWC) to analyse the question in more detail instead of defaulting to recommending with the same strength the 3 cause areas linked to the founding of effective altruism.
This isnât something that GWWC is currently planning to look into, but I think itâs a good question and Iâd like to see us develop our thinking about it further. Weâve made an internal note on this to discuss within the team!
We may also review this page mentioned next year to include sources.
For what is worth, I think keeping cause neutrality is important: the spirit of the 10% pledge is to do the most good, not choose specific causes. I would find it reasonable to highlight reasons why one may consider cause X particularly effective, but not give a final answer on this.
Hi Pablo. Cause neutrality is âthe view that causes should be prioritized based on impartial assessments of impact rather than on other considerations, such as saliency or personal attachmentâ. As far as I can tell, the best AW interventions are way more cost-effective than the best in GHD, so I would say cause neutrality would imply recommending the best AW interventions over the best ones in GHD.
What I mean is that thereâs some hard to objectively reduce uncertainty about these choices, so it is important to attach the pledge to the method or goal, not the result we get at one point in time.
It would be similar as EA becoming just about animal welfare. Even if it were the most effective use of resources, you want to keep the method, not just stick to the result, and obviate how you got there.
Thanks, Grace. Have you (GWWC) considered highlighting your animal welfare recommendations as more cost-effective than your recommendations in other areas? From GWWCâs recommendations page:
I believe the same applies to GWWCâs recommendations, in the sense I think your animal welfare recommendations are over 100 times as cost-effective as your recommendations in other areas. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns are 168 and 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.
The Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) is 64.3 k times as cost-effectivene as GiveWellâs top charities.
I also have a sense that people working on cause prioritisation would agree that the best interventions in animal welfare are more cost-effective than the best ones in global health and development. For example, Ambitious Impactâs estimates suggest this, and so did the votes in Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week.
I understand people supporting global health and development may be a little distanced by GWWC highlighting animal welfare as more cost-effective. However, people donating to local organisations which are 1 % as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities (e.g. supporting people with low income in high income countries) are way more distanced by not even having their preferred options on GWWCâs platform, and I believe the cost-effectiveness gap between such organisations and GiveWellâs top charities may well be smaller than that between the best animal welfare organisations and GiveWellâs top charities.
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for your questionâI think itâs a good one!
I was going to write up a response but then I remembered we had this nice explanation on our research and approach page:
So I think the TL;DR of this answer is that we provide recommendations across a number of worldviews but donât currently want to weigh in on what we think is the âcorrectâ worldview. This means that weâll be unlikely to create a ranked link of recommendations across our cause areas unless we change our view on how we think about worldview diversity.
Thanks, Grace. I think this is the most relevant section of the page explaining your areas relevant to my question:
The bullets do not really justify the bolded claim at the top because it is unclear which effects (of scale, tractability or neglectedness) dominate, and whether they are as you described (there are no sources in the bullets). Moreover, the product between scale, tractability and neglectedness as usually defined is equal to the cost-effectiveness, and I estimate the best animal welfare (AW) interventions are way more cost-effective than the best ones in global health and development (GHD).
I think prioritising the most cost-effective causes is what distinguishes effective giving initiatives. So I would say it would be good for you (GWWC) to analyse the question in more detail instead of defaulting to recommending with the same strength the 3 cause areas linked to the founding of effective altruism.
Hi Vasco,
This isnât something that GWWC is currently planning to look into, but I think itâs a good question and Iâd like to see us develop our thinking about it further. Weâve made an internal note on this to discuss within the team!
We may also review this page mentioned next year to include sources.
Thanks as always for your feedback :)
For what is worth, I think keeping cause neutrality is important: the spirit of the 10% pledge is to do the most good, not choose specific causes. I would find it reasonable to highlight reasons why one may consider cause X particularly effective, but not give a final answer on this.
Hi Pablo. Cause neutrality is âthe view that causes should be prioritized based on impartial assessments of impact rather than on other considerations, such as saliency or personal attachmentâ. As far as I can tell, the best AW interventions are way more cost-effective than the best in GHD, so I would say cause neutrality would imply recommending the best AW interventions over the best ones in GHD.
What I mean is that thereâs some hard to objectively reduce uncertainty about these choices, so it is important to attach the pledge to the method or goal, not the result we get at one point in time.
It would be similar as EA becoming just about animal welfare. Even if it were the most effective use of resources, you want to keep the method, not just stick to the result, and obviate how you got there.
After all, changing assumptions (for example in the tools provided by rethink priorities, https://âârethinkpriorities.org/ââour-research-areas/ââworldview-investigations/ââ) you can get different answers of what you should prioritise.