Hi, James! When it comes to assessing bednets vs therapy or more generally, saving a life vs happiness improvements for people, the meat eater problem looms large for me. This immediately complicates the trade-off, but I don’t think dismissing it is justifiable on most moral theories given our current understanding that farm animals are likely conscious, feel pain, and thus deserve moral consideration. Once we include this second-order consideration, it’s hard to know the magnitude of the impact given animal consumption, income, economic growth, wild animal, etc. effects. You’ve done a lot of work evaluating mental health vs life-saving interventions (thanks for that!), how does including animals impact your thinking? Do you think it’s better that we should just ignore it (like GiveWell does)?
I think this goes back to Joey’s case for a more pluralistic perspective, but I take your point that in some cases, we may be doing too much of that. It’s just hard to know how wide a range of arguments to include when assessing this balance...
Hi Wayne, that’s fair. I hadn’t been including farmed animal welfare in the comparison because I don’t think people donating to therapy organizations are doing it for animal welfare reasons.
I don’t think it would be practical for givewell to include animal welfare in its evaluations. I think donors who care about both animal and human welfare would have more impact giving to separate projects optimising for each of those goals
Hi, James! When it comes to assessing bednets vs therapy or more generally, saving a life vs happiness improvements for people, the meat eater problem looms large for me. This immediately complicates the trade-off, but I don’t think dismissing it is justifiable on most moral theories given our current understanding that farm animals are likely conscious, feel pain, and thus deserve moral consideration. Once we include this second-order consideration, it’s hard to know the magnitude of the impact given animal consumption, income, economic growth, wild animal, etc. effects. You’ve done a lot of work evaluating mental health vs life-saving interventions (thanks for that!), how does including animals impact your thinking? Do you think it’s better that we should just ignore it (like GiveWell does)?
I think this goes back to Joey’s case for a more pluralistic perspective, but I take your point that in some cases, we may be doing too much of that. It’s just hard to know how wide a range of arguments to include when assessing this balance...
Hi Wayne, that’s fair. I hadn’t been including farmed animal welfare in the comparison because I don’t think people donating to therapy organizations are doing it for animal welfare reasons.
I don’t think it would be practical for givewell to include animal welfare in its evaluations. I think donors who care about both animal and human welfare would have more impact giving to separate projects optimising for each of those goals
Small thing. I think phrasing is the the “meat eating” problem is better here, will continue to plug this.