Update 2021-10-06: I believe I was overconfident in my original interpretations of these Metaculus questions. Some commenters pointed out alternative interpretations of people’s answers that could allow us to draw orthogonal or opposite conclusions. For example, on question 1, Metaculus users might predict GiveWell’s top charities to drop off the list by 2031 not because better charities are discovered, but because current charities run out of room for more funding.
In the giving now vs. later debate, a conventional argument in favor of giving now is that people become better off over time, so money spent later will do less good. But some have argued the opposite: as time passes, we learn more about how to do good, and therefore we should give later. (Or, alternatively, we should use our money now to try to accelerate the learning rate.)
Metaculus provides some evidence that the second argument is the correct one: money spent later will do more good than money spent now.
This evidence comes from two Metaculus questions:
A brief explanation for each of these and why they matter:
On question 1: As of July 2021, Metaculus gives a 30% probability that one of GiveWell’s 2019 top charities will be ranked as the most cost-effective charity in 2031. That means a 70% chance that the 2031 charity will not* be one of the 2019 recommendations. This could happen for two reasons: either the 2019 recommended charities run out of room for more funding, or GiveWell finds a charity that’s better than any of the 2019 recommendations. This at least weakly suggests that Metaculus users expect GiveWell to improve its recommendations over time.
On question 2: Metaculus estimates that GiveWell’s top charity in 2031 will need to spend $430 per life saved equivalent (according to GiveWell’s own analysis). For comparison, in 2019, GiveWell estimated that its most cost-effective charity spends $592 per life saved equivalent. (These figures are adjusted for inflation.)
As with question 1, this does not unambiguously show that GiveWell top charities are expected to improve over time. Perhaps instead Metaculus expects GiveWell’s estimate is currently too pessimistic, and it will converge on the true answer by 2031. But the cost reduction could also happen because GiveWell top charities truly get more effective over time.
Some caveats:
These Metaculus answers only represent the opinions of forecasters, not any formal analysis. (Some forecasters may have incorporated formal analyses into their predictions.)
Neither question directly asks whether money spent in 2031 will do more good than money spent now. (I don’t know how to operationalize a direct question like that. Please tell me if you have any ideas.)
These questions only ask about GiveWell top charities. Even if GiveWell recommendations become more effective over time, the same might not be true for other cause areas.
It’s worth pointing out that these questions apply specifically to global health and development, but could be very different in other cause areas.
I don’t think question 1 provides evidence that money will do more good in the future. It might even suggest the opposite: As you point out, malaria prevention and deworming might run out of room for more funding, and to me this seems more likely than the discovery of a more cost-effective option that is also highly scalable (beyond >$30 million per year).
Relevant: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1332/will-global-malaria-mortality-rates-be-reduced-by-90-when-compared-with-2015-rates-by-2030/
Metaculus users give a 52% chance that global malaria deaths will be 90% lower in 2030 than they were in 2015. If that is the case, then I would expect their now highly rated malaria charities to be less cost effective than they are now.
Cool questions! I am a bit hesitant to update much:
they don’t seem to be too active, e.g. few comments, interest count at around 10 (can you see the number of unique forecasters somehow?)
the people doing the forecasts are probably EA adjacent and if they did something akin to a formal analysis, they would share it with the EA community, or at least in the comments, as it seems relatively useful to contribute this
For the first question, you can see under “community stats” the number of unique users, currently 28. For the second one you cannot see it on the page, I’m not sure why, but I’d guess its a similar ratio (I.e. approx half of the number of predictions)
Thanks!
Is there some kind of up-to-date dashboard or central source for GiveWell’s main “cost-per-expected-life” figure?
The Metaculus question mentioned in this post cites values like $890 in 2016, $823 in 2017, $617 in 2018 and $592 in 2019, and I can’t find the field they refer to in the resolve condition (?!)
This 80K article lists the value as $2300 in 2020.
This GiveWell summary sheet from 2016 has a minimum value of $901
GiveWell’s Top Charities page lists $3000-$5000 to save a life for Malaria Consortium, Against Malaria Foundation, New Incentives, and Hellen Keller International.
If such a thing does not exist, I’ll probably reach out to GiveWell and see what they think about implementing one. There are so many numbers floating around that are hard to verify and differ dramatically.
(1) The Metaculus question adjusts numbers for inflation to 2015 dollars, so they wouldn’t appear explicitly in GiveWell’s spreadsheets.
(2) Note that there’s a distinction between “outcome as good as saving a life” and “cost per life saved”. The $890 number is (GiveWell’s 2016 estimate of) the former while the $3,000 - $5,000 is the latter. The former includes good done by reducing the probability that people die as well as good done by raising peoples’ incomes, which at some point is equivalently good to averting a death.
Pablo’s comment here says: “As far as I can tell, the 2020 version of GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analysis no longer employs the category of “outcome as good as saving a life”.
I haven’t been keeping up with GiveWell’s updates in the last year or two and am merely speculating, but perhaps GiveWell no longer employs the metric “outcome as good as a saving a life” (??). Hopefully someone else can answer this with confidence.
I assume your citation of GiveWell’s Top Charities page listing $3000-$5000 to save a life is the closest they have to a an up-to-date dashboard or central source number, and they’re just choosing to advertise that number (a number in terms of cost to save a life) rather than advertise a cost to produce an “outcome as good as saving a life.”
I mistakenly submitted this as a question instead of as a post. Is there any way to convert it to a post?
Givewell charities are expected to increase local GDP, and have other effects which are expected to improve wellbeing over the long run. Starting these 2nd order effects sooner can offset the additional cost of doing them now (if that exists).