Why? It seems clear that you aren’t GiveWell’s target audience. You know that, and they know that. Unless someone gives me a reason to think that Animal Welfare advocates were expecting to be served by GiveWell, I don’t see any value in them clarifying something that seems fairly obvious.
Many people who donate to GiveWell’s interventions care about animal welfare, often donating to animal welfare interventions at the same time. Some of these people may want to know about harms caused to animals nearterm due to supporting GiveWell’s interventions. Some of these people may even endorse RP’s median welfare ranges, although still support GiveWell’s interventions due to not wanting to maximise impartial welfare. In general, people have complex preferences about their giving, so I think it is better to be transparent instead of assuming no one would care about the additional information.
In general, donating $100 to a charity with suboptimal impacts on human welfare but improved impacts on animal welfare is going to be strictly worse—for both human and animal welfare—than donating $90 to the best human welfare charity and $10 to the best animal welfare charity.
I agree. However, it would still be good to go from your 2nd allocation to one where the 10 $ still go to the best animal welfare organisation, but the 90 $ go to an intervention which is more cost-effective than the best human welfare intervention, which may be one global health and development intervention with improved impacts on animals.
Similar thoughts would seem to apply to also other possible side-effects of AMF donations; population growth impacts, impacts on animal welfare (wild or farmed), etc. In no case do I have reason to think that AMF is a particularly powerful lever to move those things, and so if I decide that any of them is the Most Important Thing then AMF would not even be on my list of candidate interventions
I agree with this prioritisation framing, and commented 4 months ago the meat eating problem is mostly a distraction in this sense. However, many people do not think there is a single most important thing, and so may be open to donating to a global health and development interventions with improved impacts on animals even if donating to animal welfare would be more cost-effective. In addition, it still seems worth analysing the meat eating problem to arrive to more accurate beliefs about the world, and because, in some hard to specify way, many value decreasing the probability of causing harm more than prioritising the most cost-effective interventions.
Equally, GiveWell or AIM’s donors can offset if they are worried about this. That seems much better than GiveWell making the choice for all their donors.
GiveWell has made many other choices for all of their donors, and the ones related to how much they value saving lives (as a function of age), and increasing income influence way more money than what would be needed to offset potential negative impacts on animals.
In general, people have complex preferences about their giving, so I think it is better to be transparent instead of assuming no one would care about the additional information.
I think GiveWell is sufficiently transparent here—its value proposition is that donating a few thousand dollars will, in expectancy, save the life of a child under five in the developing world. Whether or not this is a good thing is largely left as an exercise to the reader. I do not expect GiveWell to do my moral philosophy homework for me.
I also think it’s fairly obvious that people tend to eat meat and cause carbon emissions, that more children in a heavily resource-constrained country means spreading available resources more thinly across the country’s children, and so on. Because these things are fairly obvious, donors who are concerned about the sign value of the saving-lives output are free to conduct their own research.
If GiveWell dwelled a ton on the upside collateral effects of saving a life—such as harping on the possibility that the life you can save will cure cancer—then I would be more favorably inclined to a view that it was inappropriately selective in its presentation of second-order effects.
Thanks, Alex.
Many people who donate to GiveWell’s interventions care about animal welfare, often donating to animal welfare interventions at the same time. Some of these people may want to know about harms caused to animals nearterm due to supporting GiveWell’s interventions. Some of these people may even endorse RP’s median welfare ranges, although still support GiveWell’s interventions due to not wanting to maximise impartial welfare. In general, people have complex preferences about their giving, so I think it is better to be transparent instead of assuming no one would care about the additional information.
I agree. However, it would still be good to go from your 2nd allocation to one where the 10 $ still go to the best animal welfare organisation, but the 90 $ go to an intervention which is more cost-effective than the best human welfare intervention, which may be one global health and development intervention with improved impacts on animals.
I agree with this prioritisation framing, and commented 4 months ago the meat eating problem is mostly a distraction in this sense. However, many people do not think there is a single most important thing, and so may be open to donating to a global health and development interventions with improved impacts on animals even if donating to animal welfare would be more cost-effective. In addition, it still seems worth analysing the meat eating problem to arrive to more accurate beliefs about the world, and because, in some hard to specify way, many value decreasing the probability of causing harm more than prioritising the most cost-effective interventions.
GiveWell has made many other choices for all of their donors, and the ones related to how much they value saving lives (as a function of age), and increasing income influence way more money than what would be needed to offset potential negative impacts on animals.
I think GiveWell is sufficiently transparent here—its value proposition is that donating a few thousand dollars will, in expectancy, save the life of a child under five in the developing world. Whether or not this is a good thing is largely left as an exercise to the reader. I do not expect GiveWell to do my moral philosophy homework for me.
I also think it’s fairly obvious that people tend to eat meat and cause carbon emissions, that more children in a heavily resource-constrained country means spreading available resources more thinly across the country’s children, and so on. Because these things are fairly obvious, donors who are concerned about the sign value of the saving-lives output are free to conduct their own research.
If GiveWell dwelled a ton on the upside collateral effects of saving a life—such as harping on the possibility that the life you can save will cure cancer—then I would be more favorably inclined to a view that it was inappropriately selective in its presentation of second-order effects.