I agree with Ariel that OP should probably be spending more on animals (and I really appreciate all the work he’s done to push this conversation forward). I don’t know whether OP should allocate most neartermist funding to AW as I haven’t looked into lots of the relevant issues. Most obviously, while the return curves for at least some human-focused neartermist options are probably pretty flat (just think of GiveDirectly), the curves for various sorts of animal spending may drop precipitously. Ariel may well be right that, even if so, the returns probably don’t fall off so much that animal work loses to global health work, but I haven’t investigated this myself. The upshot: I have no idea whether there are good ways of spending an additional $100M on animals right now. (That being said, I’d love to see more extensive investigation into field building for animals! If EA field building in general is cost-competitive with other causes, then I’d expect animal field building to look pretty good.)
I should also say that OP’s commitment to worldview diversification complicates any conclusions about what OP should do from its own perspective. Even if it’s true that a straightforward utilitarian analysis would favor spending a lot more on animals, it’s pretty clear that some key stakeholders have deep reservations about straightforward utilitarian analyses. And because worldview diversification doesn’t include a clear procedure for generating a specific allocation, it’s hard to know what people who are committed to worldview diversification should do by their own lights.
The upshot: I have no idea whether there are good ways of spending an additional $100M on animals right now.
I haven’t read this in a ton of detail, but I liked this post from last year trying to answer this exact question (what are potentially effective ways to deploy >$10M in projects for animals).
I agree with Ariel that OP should probably be spending more on animals (and I really appreciate all the work he’s done to push this conversation forward). I don’t know whether OP should allocate most neartermist funding to AW as I haven’t looked into lots of the relevant issues. Most obviously, while the return curves for at least some human-focused neartermist options are probably pretty flat (just think of GiveDirectly), the curves for various sorts of animal spending may drop precipitously. Ariel may well be right that, even if so, the returns probably don’t fall off so much that animal work loses to global health work, but I haven’t investigated this myself. The upshot: I have no idea whether there are good ways of spending an additional $100M on animals right now. (That being said, I’d love to see more extensive investigation into field building for animals! If EA field building in general is cost-competitive with other causes, then I’d expect animal field building to look pretty good.)
I should also say that OP’s commitment to worldview diversification complicates any conclusions about what OP should do from its own perspective. Even if it’s true that a straightforward utilitarian analysis would favor spending a lot more on animals, it’s pretty clear that some key stakeholders have deep reservations about straightforward utilitarian analyses. And because worldview diversification doesn’t include a clear procedure for generating a specific allocation, it’s hard to know what people who are committed to worldview diversification should do by their own lights.
I haven’t read this in a ton of detail, but I liked this post from last year trying to answer this exact question (what are potentially effective ways to deploy >$10M in projects for animals).