In any case, I feel like discussions about nuclear risk funding often implicitly assume that a large relative decrease in philanthropic funding means a large increase in marginal cost-effectiveness, but this is unclear to me given it is only a small fraction of total funding. According to Founders Pledgeâs report on nuclear risk, âtotal philanthropic nuclear security funding stood at about $47 million per year [âbetween 2014 and 2020âł]â. So a 100 % reduction in philantropic funding would only be a 1.16 % (= 0.047/â4.04) relative reduction in total funding, assuming this is 4.04 G$, which I got from the mean of a lognormal distribution with 5th and 95th percentile equal to 1 and 10 G$, corresponding to the lower and upper bound guessed in 80,000 Hoursâ profile on nuclear war.
More importantly, I believe the global catastrophic risk community had better assess the cost-effectiveness of specific interventions (as GiveWell does) instead of focussing on spending. Christian Ruhl from Founders Pledge estimated doubling the spending on nuclear security would save a life for 1.55 k$, which corresponds to a cost-effectiveness around 3.23 (= 5â1.55) times that of GiveWellâs top charities. I think corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 1.44 k times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities, and therefore 446 (= 1.44*10^3/â3.23) times as cost-effective as what Christian got for doubling the spending on nuclear security.
Thanks for the comment! I commented below that:
More importantly, I believe the global catastrophic risk community had better assess the cost-effectiveness of specific interventions (as GiveWell does) instead of focussing on spending. Christian Ruhl from Founders Pledge estimated doubling the spending on nuclear security would save a life for 1.55 k$, which corresponds to a cost-effectiveness around 3.23 (= 5â1.55) times that of GiveWellâs top charities. I think corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 1.44 k times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities, and therefore 446 (= 1.44*10^3/â3.23) times as cost-effective as what Christian got for doubling the spending on nuclear security.