I think these are good points, and agree that if you mainly cared about the happiness of presently existing people in the short-term, then mental health seems like one of the most promising causes.
However, I think most in the EA community – even those who don’t particularly care about xrisk –support GiveWell recommended charities partly for their short-term boosts to happiness, and partly for their medium-term (1-30 years) benefits to the community the people are based in.
For instance, (this is not my area of expertise, but understanding from reading the GiveWell blog) large scale net distribution or deworming can lead to permanent reductions in disease, producing a long-term of reduced illness (which is not usually included in cost-effectiveness estimates).
Moreover, not having malaria or worms makes it much easier to get education and work, which should make people wealthier. Then that benefits your children and people you buy good from, making them wealthier, and so on, contributing to economic growth.
GiveWell often mention the benefits on income and education as a bigger reason for funding deworming than the QALY gains.
Mental health interventions should have positive flow through effects too but they seem less well understood. Though I could easily see myself being persuaded here—I would guess depression has a pretty terrible effect on your income and so on. On the other hand, it seems much harder to eradicate once and for all, which is possible with health.
There are other reasons for supporting health interventions interventions too – such as the strong degree of evidence behind them, measurable results, ability to mobilise large numbers of people to support them, expert support, clear room for funding and so on. They look promising from many perspectives.
I think I’m substantially more pessimistic than you are about the role economic growth has in making people happier (‘happiness’ conceived either as life satisfaction or emotional experiences). So I buy the story that Give Well charities make people healthier, this allows them to get an education, this helps them become richer and so help their children, but I’m sceptical that any of this increases happiness.
For instance I came across this analysis of the Easterlin Paradox yesterday (http://bit.ly/28XXisi) which looked at GDP and life satisfaction scores of European countries over the last 40 years. I emailed the author for some clarification and he explained “if long run growth increased by 1%[per year], then life satisfaction would rise from 3 to 3.0027” (life satisfaction was measured on a 1-4 scale). So he thought economic growth was statistically significant but not interesting as far as life satisfaction is concerned.
All this seems quite surprising. As far as I know there is lots of evidence suggesting economic growth doesn’t do much/anything for happiness—including the Haushofer (2015) paper into Give Directly, but almost none indicating growth would increase happiness. If you know of any, please send it to me, because this seems strange.
As a debunking explanation for why we think money matters when it doesn’t, I think it helps to remember we’re not very good at affective forecasting. When we think about wealth it seems important (“I’d be so much happier if I were on a yacht right now”) but we forget we’ll adapt to whatever it is, focus on other things, and that our being wealthier will make other people feel comparatively less wealthy.
I agree there’s more work to be done in terms of comparing the flow-through effects (I’m still not really sure what these are—is this just about economic growth? Could you provide a link to where I can read about them?) of mental health to physical health. A quick scan suggest the former is also bad, but I’m not sure how bad. This is probably the most relevant point for those concerned about the very long run. On this one, I think I’m probably more optimistic than you about how low the low-hanging mental health fruit are. AFAIK, no one has really tried to pick them and find out.
Regarding your last paragraph I’m not sure physical health interventions do a whole lot better than mental health ones. I think physical health is a lot easier to imagine and show progress on because you can see it. One of my general concerns is I don’t think we currently do a very good job of measuring human suffering (i.e. via QALYs) and we’re relying too heavily on our intuitions about the imagined badness of various things. I’m also hopeful that, with digital technology, we may find it’s much easier to treat mental health because those often receive cognitive rather than physical interventions. Maybe at some point in the future we’re consider physical health problems, which require a real human to help you, as the complicated ones.
I think these are good points, and agree that if you mainly cared about the happiness of presently existing people in the short-term, then mental health seems like one of the most promising causes.
However, I think most in the EA community – even those who don’t particularly care about xrisk –support GiveWell recommended charities partly for their short-term boosts to happiness, and partly for their medium-term (1-30 years) benefits to the community the people are based in.
For instance, (this is not my area of expertise, but understanding from reading the GiveWell blog) large scale net distribution or deworming can lead to permanent reductions in disease, producing a long-term of reduced illness (which is not usually included in cost-effectiveness estimates).
Moreover, not having malaria or worms makes it much easier to get education and work, which should make people wealthier. Then that benefits your children and people you buy good from, making them wealthier, and so on, contributing to economic growth.
GiveWell often mention the benefits on income and education as a bigger reason for funding deworming than the QALY gains.
Mental health interventions should have positive flow through effects too but they seem less well understood. Though I could easily see myself being persuaded here—I would guess depression has a pretty terrible effect on your income and so on. On the other hand, it seems much harder to eradicate once and for all, which is possible with health.
There are other reasons for supporting health interventions interventions too – such as the strong degree of evidence behind them, measurable results, ability to mobilise large numbers of people to support them, expert support, clear room for funding and so on. They look promising from many perspectives.
Hello Ben and thanks for your comments!
I think I’m substantially more pessimistic than you are about the role economic growth has in making people happier (‘happiness’ conceived either as life satisfaction or emotional experiences). So I buy the story that Give Well charities make people healthier, this allows them to get an education, this helps them become richer and so help their children, but I’m sceptical that any of this increases happiness.
For instance I came across this analysis of the Easterlin Paradox yesterday (http://bit.ly/28XXisi) which looked at GDP and life satisfaction scores of European countries over the last 40 years. I emailed the author for some clarification and he explained “if long run growth increased by 1%[per year], then life satisfaction would rise from 3 to 3.0027” (life satisfaction was measured on a 1-4 scale). So he thought economic growth was statistically significant but not interesting as far as life satisfaction is concerned.
All this seems quite surprising. As far as I know there is lots of evidence suggesting economic growth doesn’t do much/anything for happiness—including the Haushofer (2015) paper into Give Directly, but almost none indicating growth would increase happiness. If you know of any, please send it to me, because this seems strange.
As a debunking explanation for why we think money matters when it doesn’t, I think it helps to remember we’re not very good at affective forecasting. When we think about wealth it seems important (“I’d be so much happier if I were on a yacht right now”) but we forget we’ll adapt to whatever it is, focus on other things, and that our being wealthier will make other people feel comparatively less wealthy.
I agree there’s more work to be done in terms of comparing the flow-through effects (I’m still not really sure what these are—is this just about economic growth? Could you provide a link to where I can read about them?) of mental health to physical health. A quick scan suggest the former is also bad, but I’m not sure how bad. This is probably the most relevant point for those concerned about the very long run. On this one, I think I’m probably more optimistic than you about how low the low-hanging mental health fruit are. AFAIK, no one has really tried to pick them and find out.
Regarding your last paragraph I’m not sure physical health interventions do a whole lot better than mental health ones. I think physical health is a lot easier to imagine and show progress on because you can see it. One of my general concerns is I don’t think we currently do a very good job of measuring human suffering (i.e. via QALYs) and we’re relying too heavily on our intuitions about the imagined badness of various things. I’m also hopeful that, with digital technology, we may find it’s much easier to treat mental health because those often receive cognitive rather than physical interventions. Maybe at some point in the future we’re consider physical health problems, which require a real human to help you, as the complicated ones.