Skimming through this, this is great! My only bone to pick is that, skimming through this, I don’t have an easy understanding of the intuition behind the key results. For example, it would be good to know (from reading the summary?) what the intuition behind the following results are:
Why AMF is the best under deprivationism followed by TRIA (AC=5), then TRIA (AC=25), then Epicureanism.
If AMF is better under deprivationism than TRIA, is this because we tend to be saving younger rather than older people from death by giving to AMF?
Similarly, if AMF is better under TRIA (AC=5) than TRIA (AC=25), presumably this is because we are saving some young people (younger than 25 years)?
AMF is the worst under epicureanism because, quite simply, death isn’t bad under epicureanism (other than the pain of death), so you get relatively little from averting deaths due to malaria.
Why giving to AMF becomes worse if the neutral point is higher.
The higher the neutral point, the less well-off people of a given life satisfaction level are and therefore the less bad it is if they die from malaria.
Why StrongMinds is generally better than AMF (almost irregardless of what your philosophical view is).
This could be for a few reasons I guess. Maybe:
People are generally pretty sad on a life satisfaction view, or the pain of death is little. So saving lives is generally just not that good.
StrongMinds is just really cost-effective at improving life satisfaction, compared to how cost-effective AMF is at averting deaths.
Not sure what others think, but personally I like to understand intuitions like the above!
Hi Jack, thanks for the feedback! I think your suggested intuitions are about right for the first two points.
Regarding your third point, I’m inclined to phrase it slightly differently. People aren’t generally pretty sad on a life-satisfaction view, it’s more that the people AMF saves will live hard lives. That’s why we’re trying to help them. If we expected them to be considerably more satisfied with their lives, then I think the cost-effectiveness comparison would look very different.
Why AMF is the best under deprivationism followed by TRIA (AC=5), then TRIA (AC=25), then Epicureanism.
Um, because these are literally the results these views are structured to give! To me, your question is akin to asking “why does consequentialism care more about consequences than deontology?” Sorry, maybe I’ve misunderstood.
Why StrongMinds is generally better than AMF (almost irregardless of what your philosophical view is).
To be clear, there is no intuition here! These are the outputs of an empirical analysis. There’s absolutely no reason it has to be true that the purported best life-extending intervention is better, under a range of different philosophical assumptions, than the purported best life-improving one. In a nearby possible world, AMF* could have been very many times more cost-effective on the assumptions most generous to saving lives.
Is it not true that if AMF generally saved older people then giving to AMF would have been equally as good under TRIA as deprivationism?
If so I think it’s worth making this explicit. It’s an interesting and important point that for interventions that prolong the lives of older people, it isn’t nearly as consequential what moral theory you choose. It’s far more consequential for interventions that save young people.
I generally think intuitions like this are very useful as it allows your analysis to be applied to more scenarios than just the one at hand.
Skimming through this, this is great! My only bone to pick is that, skimming through this, I don’t have an easy understanding of the intuition behind the key results. For example, it would be good to know (from reading the summary?) what the intuition behind the following results are:
Why AMF is the best under deprivationism followed by TRIA (AC=5), then TRIA (AC=25), then Epicureanism.
If AMF is better under deprivationism than TRIA, is this because we tend to be saving younger rather than older people from death by giving to AMF?
Similarly, if AMF is better under TRIA (AC=5) than TRIA (AC=25), presumably this is because we are saving some young people (younger than 25 years)?
AMF is the worst under epicureanism because, quite simply, death isn’t bad under epicureanism (other than the pain of death), so you get relatively little from averting deaths due to malaria.
Why giving to AMF becomes worse if the neutral point is higher.
The higher the neutral point, the less well-off people of a given life satisfaction level are and therefore the less bad it is if they die from malaria.
Why StrongMinds is generally better than AMF (almost irregardless of what your philosophical view is).
This could be for a few reasons I guess. Maybe:
People are generally pretty sad on a life satisfaction view, or the pain of death is little. So saving lives is generally just not that good.
StrongMinds is just really cost-effective at improving life satisfaction, compared to how cost-effective AMF is at averting deaths.
Not sure what others think, but personally I like to understand intuitions like the above!
Hi Jack, thanks for the feedback! I think your suggested intuitions are about right for the first two points.
Regarding your third point, I’m inclined to phrase it slightly differently. People aren’t generally pretty sad on a life-satisfaction view, it’s more that the people AMF saves will live hard lives. That’s why we’re trying to help them. If we expected them to be considerably more satisfied with their lives, then I think the cost-effectiveness comparison would look very different.
Um, because these are literally the results these views are structured to give! To me, your question is akin to asking “why does consequentialism care more about consequences than deontology?” Sorry, maybe I’ve misunderstood.
To be clear, there is no intuition here! These are the outputs of an empirical analysis. There’s absolutely no reason it has to be true that the purported best life-extending intervention is better, under a range of different philosophical assumptions, than the purported best life-improving one. In a nearby possible world, AMF* could have been very many times more cost-effective on the assumptions most generous to saving lives.
Is it not true that if AMF generally saved older people then giving to AMF would have been equally as good under TRIA as deprivationism?
If so I think it’s worth making this explicit. It’s an interesting and important point that for interventions that prolong the lives of older people, it isn’t nearly as consequential what moral theory you choose. It’s far more consequential for interventions that save young people.
I generally think intuitions like this are very useful as it allows your analysis to be applied to more scenarios than just the one at hand.