I would quickly add to what Nick said by saying that donating to charities that save kids’ lives (e.g. AMF) likely improves all of your bullets. - Families become happier if they receive the health interventions they need (and they almost certainly don’t rate themselves 4⁄10 on the happiness scale, your quoting the wrong thing as Nick mentioned) - I think it’s also unfair to single out the Burkina Faso alone, when you donate to these effective charities they cover dozens of countries, most with far lower FGM rates - You say they will spend their lives in ‘extreme boredom’, but your link doesn’t really state any evidence for that
It’s true that the lives we can save might still be ones full of hardship, but the evidence suggests that they will be happier and healthier lives. The counterfactual is death, and even in your bullets (that seem a bunch of pick and choose to bolster your argument) I don’t see strong evidence that suggests we shouldn’t be funding these charities.
As I said on my final para, I do see global health interventions as probably being net positive, despite potentially saving more net negative lives, so my argument definitely wasn’t to “defund GiveWell”. It was more that “saving lives” is a bad metric and bad thing to feel good about.
My cherry picking of negative phenomena was in response to the cherry picking of the original post. I think boring/ useless school (I didn’t quote anything but… most African rural schools are boring and useless...), unpleasant labour, hunger/ stunting and poor mental health are very relevant variables, as they define a lot of the waking hours of the poorest people in the world.
FGM and child marriage are probably less representative of general welfare—I was responding to the “first kiss” idea in the post.
I chose Burkina Faso at random. For central African countries I might have stressed sexual violence, which seems to be lower in Burkina Faso.
I would quickly add to what Nick said by saying that donating to charities that save kids’ lives (e.g. AMF) likely improves all of your bullets.
- Families become happier if they receive the health interventions they need (and they almost certainly don’t rate themselves 4⁄10 on the happiness scale, your quoting the wrong thing as Nick mentioned)
- I think it’s also unfair to single out the Burkina Faso alone, when you donate to these effective charities they cover dozens of countries, most with far lower FGM rates
- You say they will spend their lives in ‘extreme boredom’, but your link doesn’t really state any evidence for that
It’s true that the lives we can save might still be ones full of hardship, but the evidence suggests that they will be happier and healthier lives. The counterfactual is death, and even in your bullets (that seem a bunch of pick and choose to bolster your argument) I don’t see strong evidence that suggests we shouldn’t be funding these charities.
As I said on my final para, I do see global health interventions as probably being net positive, despite potentially saving more net negative lives, so my argument definitely wasn’t to “defund GiveWell”. It was more that “saving lives” is a bad metric and bad thing to feel good about.
My cherry picking of negative phenomena was in response to the cherry picking of the original post. I think boring/ useless school (I didn’t quote anything but… most African rural schools are boring and useless...), unpleasant labour, hunger/ stunting and poor mental health are very relevant variables, as they define a lot of the waking hours of the poorest people in the world.
FGM and child marriage are probably less representative of general welfare—I was responding to the “first kiss” idea in the post.
I chose Burkina Faso at random. For central African countries I might have stressed sexual violence, which seems to be lower in Burkina Faso.