I estimate 14.3 mosquito-days of excruciating pain neutralise the benefits of the additional human welfare from saving 1 life under GW’s moral weights.
Makes sense—just to clarify:
My previous (mis)interpretation of you suggesting 11minutes of MEP trading off 1 day of fully healthy human life would indicate a tradeoff of 11 / (24*60) = 0.0076.
Your clarification is that 14.3 mosquito-days trades off against 1 life: assuming 1 life as 50 DALYs this is 14.3 / (50*365.25) = 0.00078
So it seems like my misinterpretation was ~10x overvaluing the human side compared to your true view?
I understand that may seem very little time, but I do not think it can be dismissed just on the basis of seeming surprising. I would say one should focus on checking whether the results mechanistically follow from the inputs, and criticing these:
My view is probably something like: ”I think on the margin most people should be more willing to entertain radical seeming ideas rather than intuitions given unknown unknowns about moral catastrophes we might be contributing to, but I also think the implicit claim[1] I’m happy to back here is that if your BOTEC spits out a result of “14.3 mosquito days of excruciating pain trades off with 50 human years of fully healthy life” then I do expect on priors that some combination of your inputs / assumptions / interpretation of the evidence etc have lead to a result that is likely many factors (if not OOMs) off the true value (if we magically found out what it was (and I think such a surprising result should also prompt similar kinds of thoughts on your end!)). I’ll admit I don’t have a strong sense of how to draw a hard line here, but I can imagine for this specific case that I might expect the tradeoff for humans is closer to 3.5 hours of excruciating pain vs a life, and that I value / expect the human capacity for welfare to be >100x that of a mosquito. If you believe both of those to be true then you’d reject your conclusion.
Another thing to consider might be something like “the way you count/value excruciating pain in humans vs in animals is inconsistent in a way that systematically gives results in favour of animals”
I don’t have too much to offer here in terms of this—I just wanted to know what the implied trade-off actually was and have it spelled out.
So it seems like my misinterpretation was ~10x overvaluing the human side compared to your true view?
Yes. I should disclaim I have not reviewed your other calculations in detail, but I am confident I calculated correctly the numbers I shared in this thread.
if your BOTEC spits out a result of “14.3 mosquito days of excruciating pain trades off with 50 human years of fully healthy life” then I do expect on priors that some combination of your inputs / assumptions / interpretation of the evidence etc have lead to a result that is likely many factors (if not OOMs) off the true value (if we magically found out what it was (and I think such a surprising result should also prompt similar kinds of thoughts on your end!)).
This makes it sound like that result I got came from many calculations, but it only depends on very few inputs. Besides 51 DALYs averted per life saved under GW’s moral weights:
“I guess 1 mosquito-year of fully healthy life is 1.3 % as good as 1 human-year of fully healthy life, which is RP’s median welfare range of black soldier flies”.
My guess that excruciating pain is 100 k (= 10*10^3/0.1) times as intense as fully healthy life implies that 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain in humans neutralises 1 day of fully healthy life in humans. Examples of excruciating pain include “scalding and severe burning events [in large parts of the body]”, or “dismemberment, or extreme torture”.
Another thing to consider might be something like “the way you count/value excruciating pain in humans vs in animals is inconsistent in a way that systematically gives results in favour of animals”
Why would it be inconsistent? I assume that the ratio between the intensities of 2 categories of pain does not vary across species, as do AIM and RP.
I might expect the tradeoff for humans is closer to 3.5 hours of excruciating pain vs a life, and that I value / expect the human capacity for welfare to be >100x that of a mosquito.
You are implying excruciating pain is 128 k (= 51*365.25*24/3.5) times as intense as fully healthy life, which is 1.28 (= 128*10^3/(100*10^3)) times as intense as I assumed. If by “>100x” you mean something like 300, and you are referring to “capacity for welfare” per unit time, my ratio between the intensity of fully healthy life in mosquitoes and humans would be 3.90 (= 300*0.0130) times as high as yours. So you would value averting excruciating pain in mosquitoes 32.8 % (= 1.28/3.90) as much as I do. The harm to mosquitoes would continue to be roughly proportional to the value of averting excruciating in mosquitoes, given your intensity of excruciating pain is higher than mine. So AMF would cause 250 (= 763*0.328) times as much harm to mosquitoes as it benefits humans under your own assumptions. I guess you would want to consider other adjustments, but this illustrates you can get surprising results starting from reasonable assumptions.
The values I provide are not my personal best guesses for point estimates, but conservative estimates that are sufficient to meaningfully weaken your topline conclusions. In practice, even the assumptions I just listed would be unintuitive to most if used as the bar!
I agree “what fits intuition” is often a bad way of evaluating claims, but this is in context of me saying “I don’t know where exactly to draw the line here, but 14.3 mosquito days of excruciating suffering for one happy human life seems clearly beyond it.” It seems entirely plausible that a human might take a tradeoff of 100x less duration (3.5 hours * 100 is ~14.5 days), and also value human:mosquito tradeoff at >100x. It wouldn’t be difficult to suggest another OOM in both directions for the same conclusion.
The main thing I’m gesturing at is that for a conclusion as unintuitive as “2 mosquito weeks of excruciating suffering cancels out 1 happy human life”, I think it’s reasonable to consider that there might be other explanations, including e.g. underlying methodological flaws (and in retrospect perhaps inconsistent isn’t the right word, maybe ‘inaccurate’ is better).
For example, by your preferred working definition of excruciating pain, it definitionally can’t exist for more than a few minutes at a time before neurological shutdown. I think this isn’t necessarily unreasonable, but there might be failure modes in your approach when basically all of your BOTECs come down to “which organisms have more aggregate seconds of species-adjusted excruciating pain”.
For example, by your preferred working definition of excruciating pain, it definitionally can’t exist for more than a few minutes at a time before neurological shutdown. I think this isn’t necessarily unreasonable, but there might be failure modes in your approach when basically all of your BOTECs come down to “which organisms have more aggregate seconds of species-adjusted excruciating pain”.
I estimate each mosquito affected by ITNs experiences 1.98 min (= 119/60) of excruciating pain, which is in line with the definition.
The claim isn’t that your answers don’t fit your definitions/methdologies, but that given highly unintuitive conclusions, one should more strongly consider questioning the methodology / definitions you use.
For example, the worst death imaginable for a human is, to a first approximation, capped at a couple of minutes of excruciating pain (or a couple of factors of this), since you value excruciating pain at 10,000 times as bad as the next category, and say that by definition excruciating pain can’t exist for more than a few minutes. But this methodology will be unlikely to accurately capture a lot of extremely bad states of suffering that humans can have. On the other hand, it is much easier to scale even short periods of excruciating suffering with high numbers of animals, especially when you’re happy to consider ~8 million mosquitos killed per human life saved by a bednet—I don’t have empirical evidence to the contrary, but this seems rather high.
This means it requires approximately 100 bednets over the course of 1 year to save 1 life/~50 DALYs.
At your preferred rate of 1 mosquito death per hour per net[1] this comes to approximately 880,000 mosquito deaths per life saved,[2] which is 3 OOMs 1 OOM lower than the ~8 million you would reach if you do the “excruciating pain” calculation, assuming your 763x claim is correct.[3]
(I may not continue engaging on this thread due to capacity constraints, but appreciate the responses!)
Here I make no claims about the reasonableness of 1 mosquito per hour killed by the net as I don’t have any empirical data on this / I’m more uncertain than Nick is but also note that he has more relevant experience than I do here.
Assuming 763x GiveWell is correct, a tradeoff of 14.3 days of mosquito excruciating pain (MEP) for 1 happy human life, 2 minutes of MEP per mosquito, this requires a tradeoff of 7.9 million mosquitos killed for one human life saved.
On the other hand, it is much easier to scale even short periods of excruciating suffering with high numbers of animals, especially when you’re happy to consider ~8 million mosquitos killed per human life saved by a bednet—I don’t have empirical evidence to the contrary, but this seems wildly high.
Great point! It makes sense that harm is proportional to the number of individuals holding the pain caused to each individual constant. So my numbers would only be off if there was a reason to think mosquitoes cannot experience excruciating pain for as much time as humans.
This means it requires approximately 100 bednets over the course of 1 year to save 1 life/~50 DALYs.
“GW calculates a cost per distributed net and life saved of 6.78 $ and 5.10 k$ [in DRC]. These imply AMF has to distribute 752 nets [= 5.10*10^3/6.78] to save a life in DRC”.
At your preferred rate of 1 mosquito death per hour per net[1] this comes to approximately 880,000 mosquito deaths per life saved,[2] which is 3 OOMs lower than the ~8 million you would reach if you do the “excruciating pain” calculation, assuming your 763x claim is correct.[3]
There are 2 issues here:
880 k is 1 order of magniture lower than 8 M, not 3.
I got 7.91 M (= 1*24*365.25*1.20*752) with the 1st approach, which practically matches the 8 M you got with the 2nd approach, multiplying:
1 mosquito killed per net-hour.
24 net-hours per net-day.
365.25 net-days per net-year.
1.20 net-years per net in DRC, as estimated by GW.
752 nets per life saved in DRC, as estimated by GW (see above).
So I think it would be better if you edited the claim below you make at the start of your 1st comment in this thread.
I think you are probably at least a few OOMs off with these figures, even granting most of your assumptions, as this implies (iiuc) ~8 million mosquito deaths per human death averted.
I do not think you uncovered any errors in my calculations.
Makes sense—just to clarify:
My previous (mis)interpretation of you suggesting 11minutes of MEP trading off 1 day of fully healthy human life would indicate a tradeoff of 11 / (24*60) = 0.0076.
Your clarification is that 14.3 mosquito-days trades off against 1 life:
assuming 1 life as 50 DALYs this is 14.3 / (50*365.25) = 0.00078
So it seems like my misinterpretation was ~10x overvaluing the human side compared to your true view?
My view is probably something like:
”I think on the margin most people should be more willing to entertain radical seeming ideas rather than intuitions given unknown unknowns about moral catastrophes we might be contributing to, but I also think the implicit claim[1] I’m happy to back here is that if your BOTEC spits out a result of “14.3 mosquito days of excruciating pain trades off with 50 human years of fully healthy life” then I do expect on priors that some combination of your inputs / assumptions / interpretation of the evidence etc have lead to a result that is likely many factors (if not OOMs) off the true value (if we magically found out what it was (and I think such a surprising result should also prompt similar kinds of thoughts on your end!)). I’ll admit I don’t have a strong sense of how to draw a hard line here, but I can imagine for this specific case that I might expect the tradeoff for humans is closer to 3.5 hours of excruciating pain vs a life, and that I value / expect the human capacity for welfare to be >100x that of a mosquito. If you believe both of those to be true then you’d reject your conclusion.
Another thing to consider might be something like “the way you count/value excruciating pain in humans vs in animals is inconsistent in a way that systematically gives results in favour of animals”
I don’t have too much to offer here in terms of this—I just wanted to know what the implied trade-off actually was and have it spelled out.
Referring only to this specific example, not necessarily other posts of yours I’ve commented on
Yes. I should disclaim I have not reviewed your other calculations in detail, but I am confident I calculated correctly the numbers I shared in this thread.
This makes it sound like that result I got came from many calculations, but it only depends on very few inputs. Besides 51 DALYs averted per life saved under GW’s moral weights:
Why would it be inconsistent? I assume that the ratio between the intensities of 2 categories of pain does not vary across species, as do AIM and RP.
You are implying excruciating pain is 128 k (= 51*365.25*24/3.5) times as intense as fully healthy life, which is 1.28 (= 128*10^3/(100*10^3)) times as intense as I assumed. If by “>100x” you mean something like 300, and you are referring to “capacity for welfare” per unit time, my ratio between the intensity of fully healthy life in mosquitoes and humans would be 3.90 (= 300*0.0130) times as high as yours. So you would value averting excruciating pain in mosquitoes 32.8 % (= 1.28/3.90) as much as I do. The harm to mosquitoes would continue to be roughly proportional to the value of averting excruciating in mosquitoes, given your intensity of excruciating pain is higher than mine. So AMF would cause 250 (= 763*0.328) times as much harm to mosquitoes as it benefits humans under your own assumptions. I guess you would want to consider other adjustments, but this illustrates you can get surprising results starting from reasonable assumptions.
The values I provide are not my personal best guesses for point estimates, but conservative estimates that are sufficient to meaningfully weaken your topline conclusions. In practice, even the assumptions I just listed would be unintuitive to most if used as the bar!
I agree “what fits intuition” is often a bad way of evaluating claims, but this is in context of me saying “I don’t know where exactly to draw the line here, but 14.3 mosquito days of excruciating suffering for one happy human life seems clearly beyond it.”
It seems entirely plausible that a human might take a tradeoff of 100x less duration (3.5 hours * 100 is ~14.5 days), and also value human:mosquito tradeoff at >100x. It wouldn’t be difficult to suggest another OOM in both directions for the same conclusion.
The main thing I’m gesturing at is that for a conclusion as unintuitive as “2 mosquito weeks of excruciating suffering cancels out 1 happy human life”, I think it’s reasonable to consider that there might be other explanations, including e.g. underlying methodological flaws (and in retrospect perhaps inconsistent isn’t the right word, maybe ‘inaccurate’ is better).
For example, by your preferred working definition of excruciating pain, it definitionally can’t exist for more than a few minutes at a time before neurological shutdown. I think this isn’t necessarily unreasonable, but there might be failure modes in your approach when basically all of your BOTECs come down to “which organisms have more aggregate seconds of species-adjusted excruciating pain”.
I estimate each mosquito affected by ITNs experiences 1.98 min (= 119/60) of excruciating pain, which is in line with the definition.
The claim isn’t that your answers don’t fit your definitions/methdologies, but that given highly unintuitive conclusions, one should more strongly consider questioning the methodology / definitions you use.
For example, the worst death imaginable for a human is, to a first approximation, capped at a couple of minutes of excruciating pain (or a couple of factors of this), since you value excruciating pain at 10,000 times as bad as the next category, and say that by definition excruciating pain can’t exist for more than a few minutes. But this methodology will be unlikely to accurately capture a lot of extremely bad states of suffering that humans can have. On the other hand, it is much easier to scale even short periods of excruciating suffering with high numbers of animals, especially when you’re happy to consider ~8 million mosquitos killed per human life saved by a bednet—I don’t have empirical evidence to the contrary, but this seems rather high.
Here’s another sense check to illustrate this (please check if I’ve got the maths right here!):
-GiveWell estimate “5.53 deaths averted per 1000 children protected per year” or 0.00553 lives saved per year of protection for a child, or 1 life saved per 180.8 children protected per year.
-They model 1.8 children under each bednet, on average.
This means it requires approximately 100 bednets over the course of 1 year to save 1 life/~50 DALYs.
At your preferred rate of 1 mosquito death per hour per net[1] this comes to approximately 880,000 mosquito deaths per life saved,[2] which is
3 OOMs1 OOM lower than the ~8 million you would reach if you do the “excruciating pain” calculation, assuming your 763x claim is correct.[3](I may not continue engaging on this thread due to capacity constraints, but appreciate the responses!)
Here I make no claims about the reasonableness of 1 mosquito per hour killed by the net as I don’t have any empirical data on this / I’m more uncertain than Nick is but also note that he has more relevant experience than I do here.
180.8/1.8 * 24* 365 = 879,893
Assuming 763x GiveWell is correct, a tradeoff of 14.3 days of mosquito excruciating pain (MEP) for 1 happy human life, 2 minutes of MEP per mosquito, this requires a tradeoff of 7.9 million mosquitos killed for one human life saved.
763*(14.3*24*60)/2 = 7,855,848
Great point! It makes sense that harm is proportional to the number of individuals holding the pain caused to each individual constant. So my numbers would only be off if there was a reason to think mosquitoes cannot experience excruciating pain for as much time as humans.
“GW calculates a cost per distributed net and life saved of 6.78 $ and 5.10 k$ [in DRC]. These imply AMF has to distribute 752 nets [= 5.10*10^3/6.78] to save a life in DRC”.
There are 2 issues here:
880 k is 1 order of magniture lower than 8 M, not 3.
I got 7.91 M (= 1*24*365.25*1.20*752) with the 1st approach, which practically matches the 8 M you got with the 2nd approach, multiplying:
1 mosquito killed per net-hour.
24 net-hours per net-day.
365.25 net-days per net-year.
1.20 net-years per net in DRC, as estimated by GW.
752 nets per life saved in DRC, as estimated by GW (see above).
So I think it would be better if you edited the claim below you make at the start of your 1st comment in this thread.
I do not think you uncovered any errors in my calculations.