I feel like this/âadjacent debates often gets framed as ânormal poverty stuff vs weird longtermist stuffâ but a lot of my confidence in the above comes from farmed animal welfare strictly dominating GiveWell in terms of any plausibly relevant criteria save for maybe PR.
I do not agree with the âany plausibly relevant criteriaâ part. However, I do think the best interventions to help farmed animals increase welfare way more cost-effectively than GiveWellâs top charities. Some examples illustrating this:
I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare increase welfare 1.71 k times as cost-effectively as GiveWellâs top charities. I used Rethink Prioritiesâ median welfare change for chickens of 0.332, which I think is the best we have.
Stephen Clare and Aidan Goth (at Founders Pledge at the time) estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 926 (= 25â0.027) times as effective as Against Malaria Foundation.
For Open Philâs bar to be consistent with the above, it has to:
Stipulate non-hedonic benefits are very poorly correlated with hedonic benefits, contra this post of Rethink Prioritiesâ moral weight project sequence. âWe argue that even if hedonic goods and bads (i.e., pleasures and pains) arenât all of welfare, theyâre a lot of it. So, probably, the choice of a theory of welfare will only have a modest (less than 10x) impact on the differences we estimate between humansâ and nonhumansâ welfare rangesâ.
I share your sense that Open Phil should ideally be commenting on the points above, as opposed to just framing the movement of their global health and wellbeing bar as a trade-off with spending on their human-centric areas (including mitigation of GCRs).
Thanks for pointing that out, Aaron!
I do not agree with the âany plausibly relevant criteriaâ part. However, I do think the best interventions to help farmed animals increase welfare way more cost-effectively than GiveWellâs top charities. Some examples illustrating this:
I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare increase welfare 1.71 k times as cost-effectively as GiveWellâs top charities. I used Rethink Prioritiesâ median welfare change for chickens of 0.332, which I think is the best we have.
Stephen Clare and Aidan Goth (at Founders Pledge at the time) estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 926 (= 25â0.027) times as effective as Against Malaria Foundation.
For Open Philâs bar to be consistent with the above, it has to:
Put very low weight on hedonism.
Stipulate non-hedonic benefits are very poorly correlated with hedonic benefits, contra this post of Rethink Prioritiesâ moral weight project sequence. âWe argue that even if hedonic goods and bads (i.e., pleasures and pains) arenât all of welfare, theyâre a lot of it. So, probably, the choice of a theory of welfare will only have a modest (less than 10x) impact on the differences we estimate between humansâ and nonhumansâ welfare rangesâ.
I share your sense that Open Phil should ideally be commenting on the points above, as opposed to just framing the movement of their global health and wellbeing bar as a trade-off with spending on their human-centric areas (including mitigation of GCRs).