I like this idea, and I think an improved version could be helpful in clarifying people’s thinking about the importance of reducing animal suffering. But I see a few substantial problems with the existing spreadsheet, and I don’t think the results can be considered meaningful until these problems are addressed.
A person who avoids eating animals is reducing—not increasing—animal life-years, by preventing factory farm animals from being born. The same is true for most THL’s vegan outreach interventions, assuming such interventions are effective. That being said, if a factory farmed animal has a life that is not worth living (and I think that describes most factory farmed animals, though not all) then reducing the life-years of such animals is a good thing. Or alternatively, if one’s goal is to reduce the act of killing animals, then reducing the life-years of such animals may be an acceptable cost. But since these goals are very different from saving the lives of animals in the same way that donating to AMF might save the life of a child, they cannot be considered the same thing, and are not comparable without making further assumptions. This seems like a tricky problem to solve in your spreadsheet.
THL mostly conducts vegan outreach, and the evidence that vegan outreach is effective at reducing consumption of animal products is weak. The evidence for specific cost effective figures like $0.60 for a 1-year reduction in animal suffering is even weaker. I do think the evidence for THL’s cage-free campaigns is substantially better (though still very far from GiveWell-quality evidence). Given Open Philanthropy’s recent grant to THL, however, it appears THL’s cage-free program (at least in the US) has no room for funding for the time being. So I take issue with confident statements that one can reduce 1-year of animal suffering with a $0.60 donation. I think such statements should include caveats about the very weak evidence for these cost effectiveness figures.
You ask people to estimate the value of a pig’s well-being relative to a human’s well-being, but you’re presumably talking about eating animals in general when you say that going vegetarian saves 100 animal lives, or when you say donating to THL reduces one year of animal suffering for $0.60. But in terms of numbers, the vast majority of those 100 animal lives a person eats is going to be chicken and seafood, and I think most people would not give as much weight to the suffering of one chicken, fish, shrimp, etc. as they would give to the suffering of one pig. If you use chicken instead of pig in the spreadsheet, I think that would be more reasonable.
You suggest that the person should become vegetarian, but I personally don’t think this is an efficient compromise. In general, the consumption of eggs in the US causes a considerable amount of suffering, I think far more than beef. (I personally think beef cattle have lives worth living.) It certainly causes considerably more animals killed than the consumption of beef (though one might give a higher weight to killing a cow vs. a baby chick or hen). So an effective altruist with the goal of reducing animal suffering and/or killing without becoming vegan should probably limit their consumption of animal products to dairy and beef instead of dairy and eggs.
Thanks for that Avi. As I’ve said elsewhere, this was a very quick proof of concept to get a feel for whether developing this into a website or something similar would be useful—which is why there are a lot of assumptions.
You’re right. I oversimplified the language and maths to keep the message clean and simple (and in my opinion more impactful), but this seems to be proving rather unpopular.
More reasonable, but less impactful, which should be weighed carefully.
I like this idea, and I think an improved version could be helpful in clarifying people’s thinking about the importance of reducing animal suffering. But I see a few substantial problems with the existing spreadsheet, and I don’t think the results can be considered meaningful until these problems are addressed.
A person who avoids eating animals is reducing—not increasing—animal life-years, by preventing factory farm animals from being born. The same is true for most THL’s vegan outreach interventions, assuming such interventions are effective. That being said, if a factory farmed animal has a life that is not worth living (and I think that describes most factory farmed animals, though not all) then reducing the life-years of such animals is a good thing. Or alternatively, if one’s goal is to reduce the act of killing animals, then reducing the life-years of such animals may be an acceptable cost. But since these goals are very different from saving the lives of animals in the same way that donating to AMF might save the life of a child, they cannot be considered the same thing, and are not comparable without making further assumptions. This seems like a tricky problem to solve in your spreadsheet.
THL mostly conducts vegan outreach, and the evidence that vegan outreach is effective at reducing consumption of animal products is weak. The evidence for specific cost effective figures like $0.60 for a 1-year reduction in animal suffering is even weaker. I do think the evidence for THL’s cage-free campaigns is substantially better (though still very far from GiveWell-quality evidence). Given Open Philanthropy’s recent grant to THL, however, it appears THL’s cage-free program (at least in the US) has no room for funding for the time being. So I take issue with confident statements that one can reduce 1-year of animal suffering with a $0.60 donation. I think such statements should include caveats about the very weak evidence for these cost effectiveness figures.
You ask people to estimate the value of a pig’s well-being relative to a human’s well-being, but you’re presumably talking about eating animals in general when you say that going vegetarian saves 100 animal lives, or when you say donating to THL reduces one year of animal suffering for $0.60. But in terms of numbers, the vast majority of those 100 animal lives a person eats is going to be chicken and seafood, and I think most people would not give as much weight to the suffering of one chicken, fish, shrimp, etc. as they would give to the suffering of one pig. If you use chicken instead of pig in the spreadsheet, I think that would be more reasonable.
You suggest that the person should become vegetarian, but I personally don’t think this is an efficient compromise. In general, the consumption of eggs in the US causes a considerable amount of suffering, I think far more than beef. (I personally think beef cattle have lives worth living.) It certainly causes considerably more animals killed than the consumption of beef (though one might give a higher weight to killing a cow vs. a baby chick or hen). So an effective altruist with the goal of reducing animal suffering and/or killing without becoming vegan should probably limit their consumption of animal products to dairy and beef instead of dairy and eggs.
Avi
Thanks for that Avi. As I’ve said elsewhere, this was a very quick proof of concept to get a feel for whether developing this into a website or something similar would be useful—which is why there are a lot of assumptions.
You’re right. I oversimplified the language and maths to keep the message clean and simple (and in my opinion more impactful), but this seems to be proving rather unpopular.
More reasonable, but less impactful, which should be weighed carefully.