Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Thanks for the comment, and welcome to the EA Forum! I think family planning interventions increase welfare nearterm via decreasing human population nearterm when farmed animals have negative lives. However, I do not know whether this is good or bad overall because the longer term effects on animals can be harmful or beneficial.

Nevertheless, I am not confident that saving human lives in China, India or Nigeria is harmful to animals. Even if it is so for farmed animals nearterm, it can still be beneficial overall:

• I would say at least chickens’ lives can become positive over the next few decades in some animal-friendly countries. Relatedly, I would ideally determine the welfare burden per animal per year by country, although it is unclear to me whether I am over or underestimating it. Furthermore, I guess better worsening conditions now imply a longer time until reaching positive lives, and therefore a longer time until increased consumption of farmed animals being beneficial.

• I can see saving human lives being beneficial due to decreasing the number of wild animals with negative lives, although no one really knows whether this is the case or not.

• It is unclear to me whether saving lives increases or decreases person-years. It increases these nearterm via increasing population, but may decrease them longterm, as lower child mortality is associated with lower fertility, which can lead to a smaller longterm population. Note human welfare may be decreased in this case.

• I assume improved human conditions increase the success of animal welfare interventions, for example, via greater willingness to pay for higher welfare products. In any case, I expect more targeted approaches explicitly optimising for animal welfare to be much more cost-effective.

I also think family planning interventions decrease person-years, so I can easily see them decreasing human welfare (relatedly).