“Basically all cost-effectiveness/cost-benefit discussion in animal advocacy is close to the EA community”
Wow that’s super interesting and surprises me a bit. How then does an animal advocacy org try to decide whether it tries to target a pig or a chicken corporate farm? I would have thought cost-effectiveness comparisons would have been easier in the animal welfare space given clearer (often) final outcomes and faster feedback loops.
This however I strongly disagree with
“Within global health, it’s hard to predictably beat GiveWell charities, and cruxes in global health are mostly pretty technical and kind of boring/tedious for most people, like checking studies and calculations in sheets. Many cruxes in animal advocacy are more accessible or interesting, like consciousness, moral weights, indirect effects, backfire risks. That drives more engagement among animal advocates.”
The complexities and range of global health interventions are fascinating and exciting, with new weird ideas almost infinite (cause ideas lists grow and grow every year, look at orgs like CEARCH). There’s enormous discussion between how to value and compare tricky things like income, suffering and now new measures like subjective wellbeing.
Also how are cruxes in animal advocacy more accessible? Consciousness and moral weights are less accessible and harder to comprehend than human variables where we can rely on direct reports of our own and others experience even triangulate e.g. DALYs vs WELLBYs.Think how much (fantastic) effort had to go into the moral weights project to generate meaningful numbers like that. It took me a long time digging to even partially comprehend what those numbers mean, wheras the makeup of human DALYs and QALYs are far easier to understand.
I don’t even think its so hard to beat top GiveWell charities really, its just hard to beat them within the narrow-ish error bars GiveWell requires (which I love that they require). Things like Lead exposure charities aren’t even on their top list!
And on Animal advocates are more activisty—I agree with this statement, and maybe also that it measns more engagement on the forum here. Are they more “doey” though? My very uncertain bet would be that Global health EA people are out running orgs and doing direct work more than animal welfare EA people and so have less time to pontificate on the forum, but I could easily be wrong about that. I’m a bit of a weird exception I think.
(I’m going to commit to not replying further, except maybe to quickly clarify, because I’ve already spent way too long on this comment.)
EAA = effective animal advocacy, basically the intersection of EA and animal advocacy.
Wow that’s super interesting and surprises me a bit. How then does an animal advocacy org try to decide whether it tries to target a pig or a chicken corporate farm? I would have thought cost-effectiveness comparisons would have been easier in the animal welfare space given clearer (often) final outcomes and faster feedback loops.
Several animal orgs do make decisions based on cost-effectiveness considerations. I’d just say the ones that do tend to be pretty close to EA. They’re likely to be funded by EA grantmakers (Open Phil, EA Funds, ACE). Org leadership and other employees come to EAGs. Other conferences they and their employees attend also have EAs and are supported by EA grantmakers. Their funding and growth have depended a lot on EA funding. EA funders have probably substantially influenced program focus, e.g. towards corporate chicken welfare campaigns.
A lot of this seems true for GiveWell-recommended charities, too, although I’d guess to a lesser extent in relative terms.
About engagement with ideas/research between global health and animal welfare, I’d say:
I think engaging with the ideas and research is probably less subjectively useful/decision-relevant to the average EA global health supporter than to the average EAA supporter:
EA global health supporters just trust and defer to GiveWell a lot, and for some good reasons. GiveWell is very careful/rigorous, publishes marginal cost-effectiveness estimates and relies on strong evidence for their recommendations. The situation is worse in EAA.
I’d guess there’s more variance in beliefs and more disagreement about EAA priorities than there are about EA global health priorities among the respective supporters, for EAA based on consciousness, moral weights, asks, tactics, region prioritization.
GiveWell recommendations don’t change very much over time, and there are few of them. There are more ACE recommendations and Open Phil and EA Animal Welfare Fund grantees, and there’s more change in them. (GiveWell All Grants Fund grantees are large in number and probably change a decent amount, though.)
EA global health research can be interesting, but I’d guess doesn’t pull in the average EA global health supporter much or even very disproportionately relative to other EAs, because they defer so much to GiveWell and are already less likely to even be on the EA Forum. A large share of the commenters on your soaking beans post seem to be people who prioritize things other than global health, including animal welfare.
Consciousness and moral weights are cruxy, interesting and can drive engagement, even if the details of the research are hard to understand. People will still talk about them.
I don’t even think its so hard to beat top GiveWell charities really, its just hard to beat them within the narrow-ish error bars GiveWell requires (which I love that they require). Things like Lead exposure charities aren’t even on their top list!
Fair, but these charities don’t beat GiveWell recommendations if you’re sufficiently difference-making ambiguity/risk averse or skeptical, which the average EA global health supporter might be. And EAs not like this have fewer barriers to prioritizing animal welfare, where things are less rigorous and the evidence is weaker.
And GiveWell has made grants to reduce lead exposure through their All Grants Fund, which they believe is more cost-effective in expectation than their recommended charities. But EA global health supporters might just donate directly to that fund, too, without engaging much, instead just trusting GiveWell. But I’m really not sure.
“Basically all cost-effectiveness/cost-benefit discussion in animal advocacy is close to the EA community”
Wow that’s super interesting and surprises me a bit. How then does an animal advocacy org try to decide whether it tries to target a pig or a chicken corporate farm? I would have thought cost-effectiveness comparisons would have been easier in the animal welfare space given clearer (often) final outcomes and faster feedback loops.
This however I strongly disagree with
“Within global health, it’s hard to predictably beat GiveWell charities, and cruxes in global health are mostly pretty technical and kind of boring/tedious for most people, like checking studies and calculations in sheets. Many cruxes in animal advocacy are more accessible or interesting, like consciousness, moral weights, indirect effects, backfire risks. That drives more engagement among animal advocates.”
The complexities and range of global health interventions are fascinating and exciting, with new weird ideas almost infinite (cause ideas lists grow and grow every year, look at orgs like CEARCH). There’s enormous discussion between how to value and compare tricky things like income, suffering and now new measures like subjective wellbeing.
Also how are cruxes in animal advocacy more accessible? Consciousness and moral weights are less accessible and harder to comprehend than human variables where we can rely on direct reports of our own and others experience even triangulate e.g. DALYs vs WELLBYs.Think how much (fantastic) effort had to go into the moral weights project to generate meaningful numbers like that. It took me a long time digging to even partially comprehend what those numbers mean, wheras the makeup of human DALYs and QALYs are far easier to understand.
I don’t even think its so hard to beat top GiveWell charities really, its just hard to beat them within the narrow-ish error bars GiveWell requires (which I love that they require). Things like Lead exposure charities aren’t even on their top list!
And on Animal advocates are more activisty—I agree with this statement, and maybe also that it measns more engagement on the forum here. Are they more “doey” though? My very uncertain bet would be that Global health EA people are out running orgs and doing direct work more than animal welfare EA people and so have less time to pontificate on the forum, but I could easily be wrong about that. I’m a bit of a weird exception I think.
Anyway I think its all very interesting :D
(I’m going to commit to not replying further, except maybe to quickly clarify, because I’ve already spent way too long on this comment.)
EAA = effective animal advocacy, basically the intersection of EA and animal advocacy.
Several animal orgs do make decisions based on cost-effectiveness considerations. I’d just say the ones that do tend to be pretty close to EA. They’re likely to be funded by EA grantmakers (Open Phil, EA Funds, ACE). Org leadership and other employees come to EAGs. Other conferences they and their employees attend also have EAs and are supported by EA grantmakers. Their funding and growth have depended a lot on EA funding. EA funders have probably substantially influenced program focus, e.g. towards corporate chicken welfare campaigns.
A lot of this seems true for GiveWell-recommended charities, too, although I’d guess to a lesser extent in relative terms.
About engagement with ideas/research between global health and animal welfare, I’d say:
I think engaging with the ideas and research is probably less subjectively useful/decision-relevant to the average EA global health supporter than to the average EAA supporter:
EA global health supporters just trust and defer to GiveWell a lot, and for some good reasons. GiveWell is very careful/rigorous, publishes marginal cost-effectiveness estimates and relies on strong evidence for their recommendations. The situation is worse in EAA.
I’d guess there’s more variance in beliefs and more disagreement about EAA priorities than there are about EA global health priorities among the respective supporters, for EAA based on consciousness, moral weights, asks, tactics, region prioritization.
GiveWell recommendations don’t change very much over time, and there are few of them. There are more ACE recommendations and Open Phil and EA Animal Welfare Fund grantees, and there’s more change in them. (GiveWell All Grants Fund grantees are large in number and probably change a decent amount, though.)
EA global health research can be interesting, but I’d guess doesn’t pull in the average EA global health supporter much or even very disproportionately relative to other EAs, because they defer so much to GiveWell and are already less likely to even be on the EA Forum. A large share of the commenters on your soaking beans post seem to be people who prioritize things other than global health, including animal welfare.
Consciousness and moral weights are cruxy, interesting and can drive engagement, even if the details of the research are hard to understand. People will still talk about them.
Fair, but these charities don’t beat GiveWell recommendations if you’re sufficiently difference-making ambiguity/risk averse or skeptical, which the average EA global health supporter might be. And EAs not like this have fewer barriers to prioritizing animal welfare, where things are less rigorous and the evidence is weaker.
And GiveWell has made grants to reduce lead exposure through their All Grants Fund, which they believe is more cost-effective in expectation than their recommended charities. But EA global health supporters might just donate directly to that fund, too, without engaging much, instead just trusting GiveWell. But I’m really not sure.