Yes, it seems that EAs have not really addressed this issue. Especially as GiveWell have said their estimates are still likely to be overly-optimistic. At this point the ‘child in the pond’ example fails to accurately describe the trade-off involved.
How come? If someone’s given over 10% of their income for a few years, wouldn’t we still expect them to have (in expectation) saved at least one life, or achieved something of similar magnitude? GiveWell’s downgrades would only mean that they haven’t saved as many lives.
In practice all of these figures seriously underestimate the full impact because they don’t consider flow-through effects such as:
the people whose lives are saved will have more children themselves, perhaps resulting in hundreds of extra lives over the very long term (I know of people who have 100+ great grandchildren)
people for centuries or millennia into the future will be richer because the country developed economically sooner as a result of having healthier, better educated, and more productive people now (this is a version of ‘astronomical waste’).
If the direct impact is lower, the flow-through effects will also be lower, but ‘$3,000 per life saved’ is still very misleading as an indication of the absolute cost-effectiveness.
How come? If someone’s given over 10% of their income for a few years, wouldn’t we still expect them to have (in expectation) saved at least one life, or achieved something of similar magnitude? GiveWell’s downgrades would only mean that they haven’t saved as many lives.
There’s a big difference between many lives and only one life!
In practice all of these figures seriously underestimate the full impact because they don’t consider flow-through effects such as:
the people whose lives are saved will have more children themselves, perhaps resulting in hundreds of extra lives over the very long term (I know of people who have 100+ great grandchildren)
people for centuries or millennia into the future will be richer because the country developed economically sooner as a result of having healthier, better educated, and more productive people now (this is a version of ‘astronomical waste’).
If the direct impact is lower, the flow-through effects will also be lower, but ‘$3,000 per life saved’ is still very misleading as an indication of the absolute cost-effectiveness.
True, but I meant that to me saving even one life seems clearly worth giving up 10% of my income for.