I only read up to this quote in the Summary, but wanted to offer my reaction to it in case it’s useful:
These findings suggest that XR has abated 16 tonnes of GHGs per pound spent on advocacy, using the median estimates for cost-effectiveness. Relative to the top Effective Altruist (EA) recommended climate change charity, Clean Air Task Force (CATF), this is more effective by a factor of 12x.
This sounds like you’re comparing the average cost-effectiveness of one intervention with the marginal cost-effectiveness of another, which is problematic.
Naively I’d guess the average cost-effectiveness of XR is much higher than the marginal cost-effectiveness of XR. E.g. If you increased funding of XR by 10%, I would think that that would lead to a much smaller than 10% greater effect of XR on the carbon metric. (I don’t know anything about XR, so hopefully you can tell me if that sounds right. E.g. Does a significant amount of XR impact come from volunteers? If you increased the budget of XR by 10%, would volunteer impact increase by 10% too? I’m highly skeptical.)
I also glanced at your CEA spreadsheet briefly and saw some “pessimistic” impact numbers which were positive. If I interpret you correctly, that “pessimistic” scenario is supposed to represent a 5th percentile outcome. If that’s right, I’d note that my naive impression is that >95% confidence that XR helps reduce carbon is overconfident. Of course you’re much better informed, but that still seems to me like it would be hard to justify being that confident.
I only read up to this quote in the Summary, but wanted to offer my reaction to it in case it’s useful:
This sounds like you’re comparing the average cost-effectiveness of one intervention with the marginal cost-effectiveness of another, which is problematic.
Naively I’d guess the average cost-effectiveness of XR is much higher than the marginal cost-effectiveness of XR. E.g. If you increased funding of XR by 10%, I would think that that would lead to a much smaller than 10% greater effect of XR on the carbon metric. (I don’t know anything about XR, so hopefully you can tell me if that sounds right. E.g. Does a significant amount of XR impact come from volunteers? If you increased the budget of XR by 10%, would volunteer impact increase by 10% too? I’m highly skeptical.)
I also glanced at your CEA spreadsheet briefly and saw some “pessimistic” impact numbers which were positive. If I interpret you correctly, that “pessimistic” scenario is supposed to represent a 5th percentile outcome. If that’s right, I’d note that my naive impression is that >95% confidence that XR helps reduce carbon is overconfident. Of course you’re much better informed, but that still seems to me like it would be hard to justify being that confident.