Maximise nearterm welfare, one had better donate to the best animal welfare interventions.
I estimate corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, like the ones promoted by The Humane League, are 1.37 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
Maximise nearterm human welfare in a robust way, one had better donate to GiveWell’s funds.
I guess the cost-effectiveness of ALLFED is of the same order of magnitude of that of GiveWell’s funds (relatedly), but it is way less robust (in the sense my best guess will change more upon further investigation).
CEARCH estimated “the cost-effectiveness of conducting a pilot study of a resilient food source to be 10,000 DALYs per USD 100,000, which is around 14× as cost-effective as giving to a GiveWell top charity”. “The result is highly uncertain. Our probabilistic model suggests a 53% chance that the intervention is less cost-effective than giving to a GiveWell top charity, and an 18% chance that it is at least 10× more cost-effective. The estimated cost-effectiveness is likely to fall if the intervention is subjected to further research, due to optimizer’s curse”. I guess CEARCH is overestimating cost-effectiveness (see my comments).
My impression is that efforts to decrease the number of nuclear detonations are more cost-effective than ones to decrease famine deaths caused by nuclear winter. This is partly informed by CEARCHestimatingthat lobbying for arsenal limitation is 5 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, although I guess the actual cost-effectivess is more like 0.5 to 50 times that of GiveWell’s top charities.
As always (unless otherwise stated), the views expressed here are my own, not those of ALLFED.
Hi Jason,
Here is why I do not recommend donating to ALLFED, for which I work as a contractor. If one wants to:
Minimise existential risk, one had better donate to the best AI safety interventions, namely the Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF).
Maximise nearterm welfare, one had better donate to the best animal welfare interventions.
I estimate corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, like the ones promoted by The Humane League, are 1.37 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
Maximise nearterm human welfare in a robust way, one had better donate to GiveWell’s funds.
I guess the cost-effectiveness of ALLFED is of the same order of magnitude of that of GiveWell’s funds (relatedly), but it is way less robust (in the sense my best guess will change more upon further investigation).
CEARCH estimated “the cost-effectiveness of conducting a pilot study of a resilient food source to be 10,000 DALYs per USD 100,000, which is around 14× as cost-effective as giving to a GiveWell top charity”. “The result is highly uncertain. Our probabilistic model suggests a 53% chance that the intervention is less cost-effective than giving to a GiveWell top charity, and an 18% chance that it is at least 10× more cost-effective. The estimated cost-effectiveness is likely to fall if the intervention is subjected to further research, due to optimizer’s curse”. I guess CEARCH is overestimating cost-effectiveness (see my comments).
Maximise nearterm human welfare supporting interventions related to nuclear risk, one had better donate to Longview’s Nuclear Weapons Policy Fund.
My impression is that efforts to decrease the number of nuclear detonations are more cost-effective than ones to decrease famine deaths caused by nuclear winter. This is partly informed by CEARCH estimating that lobbying for arsenal limitation is 5 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, although I guess the actual cost-effectivess is more like 0.5 to 50 times that of GiveWell’s top charities.
As always (unless otherwise stated), the views expressed here are my own, not those of ALLFED.