Thanks for your willingness to contribute to a better world, Bob!
Have you considered not donating either of those, and instead support the best animal welfare interventions?
If donating a kidney averts 15 DALY (= (10 + 20)/2), and costs you 1 k$[1], the cost-effectiveness would be 0.015 DALY/$, which is similar to the cost-effective of GiveWell’s top charities of around 0.01 DALY/$ (50 DALY per 5 k$).
However, I think corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, like the ones supported by The Humane League (THL), have a cost-effectiveness of 15.0 DALY/$ (= 8.20*2.10*0.870). I got this assuming:
Campaigns affect 8.20 chicken-years per $ (= 41*1/5), multiplying:
Saulius Šimčikas’ estimate of 41 chicken-years per $.
An adjustment factor of 1⁄5, since OP thinks “the marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis [which is linked just above]”.
An improvement in chicken welfare per time of 2.10 times the intensity of the mean human experience, as I estimated for moving broilers from a conventional to a reformed scenario based on Rethink Priorities’ median welfare range for chickens of 0.332.
A ratio between humans’ healthy and total life expectancy at birth in 2016 of 87.0 % (= 63.1/72.5).
So it looks like:
Donating to the THL is 1.00 k (= 15.0/0.015) times as cost-effective as donating a kidney.
One could achieve the benefits of donating a kidney by donating to THL just 1.00 $ (= 15⁄15.0).
In addition, I guess you would be donating to someone in a high income country, where the consumption of animals with bad lives is high, so I would personally worry about the meat eater problem.
I estimate the scale of the suffering per time of all farmed animals is 4.64 times that of the happiness per time of all humans, which suggest saving a random human life leads to more suffering than happinness nearterm.
I think the cost will tend to be higher. From Sekercioglu 2020, “the average donation-related costs range from $900 to $19 900 over the period of predonation evaluation to the end of the first postoperative year”.
I already do work for an animal welfare organization. I looked at the study and it’s not about Belgian hospitals, so it doesn’t really apply to me. Some of the listed costs aren’t present (I don’t have a wage so no wage loss), those that are present are mostly paid for by the state (travel, accommodation, medical...) and those that aren’t are paid for by my parents (housework). The only one that applies is “Small cash payments for grocery items (eg, tissue paper)” which is negligible, so the expected DALY per dollar is extremely high.
In Belgium you can leave a message to the person you’re donating to, so I had planned to leave a message about veganism and effective altruism. I think this will be a very powerful reason to change behavior, seeing as it comes from their altruistic donor.
Also, donating will help with persuading people to be more altruistic in general. In psychology you have this concept of a costly signal, which causes people to take your (related) ideas much more seriously.
Also, donating will help with persuading people to be more altruistic in general. In psychology you have this concept of a costly signal, which causes people to take your (related) ideas much more seriously.
Are you confident about this?
Donating an organ might seem quite extreme, possibly making the average person view you as ‘very weird,’ which could have the opposite effect.
I looked at the study and it’s not about Belgian hospitals, so it doesn’t really apply to me.
Even if there is no direct nearterm financial cost, you could plausibly use the time saved by not donating a kidney to generate at least 1 $? For example, I guess the cost to your parents would be higher than this, so they might be happy to donate a few dollars to THL for you not to donate a kidney. Even if not now, the time you save may also increase your income by more than 1 $ in the next few years. For an hourly rate of 20 $/h, it would only need to increase your wages expressed as working time by 3 min (= 1/20*60).
In Belgium you can leave a message to the person you’re donating to, so I had planned to leave a message about veganism and effective altruism. I think this will be a very powerful reason to change behavior, seeing as it comes from their altruistic donor.
This sounds inspiring. At the same time, would you feel comfortable donating a kidney if it being good depended on the beneficiary having a sufficiently high chance of becoming vegan or effective altruist? Note the beneficiary would probably rather read a message which does not convey that you are expecting something in return...
If you chose to make a (possibly indirect) request in your message, you may want to consider asking for a donation instead of raising veganism:
If you trust my numbers on the scale of the suffering of farmed animals, the annual suffering caused by a random human to farmed animals is equivalent to 4.04 DALY (= 4.64*0.870).
So, for a life expectancy of the kidney recipient of 30 years, the potential gain due to becoming vegan would be 121 DALY (= 30*4.04).
The above could be averted donating 8.07 $ (= 121⁄15.0) to THL.
The kidney recipient would probably prefer to donate a few dozens of dollars to THL over becoming vegan.
As for raising effective altruism in your message:
I guess the kidney recipient would tend to have an older age than that at which people usually become engaged with effective altruism, so there would be less room to change to a more impactful career, and I assume most of the benefit would come from additional effective donations.
Giving What We Can estimated each GWWC Pledge leads to 22 k$ of effective donations. If I recall correctly, these effective donations are expressed in terms of ones to GiveWell’s top charities, which would mean each GWWC Pledge averts 220 DALY (= 22*10^3*0.01).
Only around 1 in 1 million people are quite engaged with effective altruism (8 k in 8 billion), and maybe 1 % of the global population knows about it, so only 1 in 10 k (= 10^-6/0.01) people who know about it become quite engaged.
If the kidney recipient is 100 times as likely to sign the GWWC Pledge as the above, they would have a 1 % (= 100*10^-4) chance of signing it.
As a result, the expected benefit of your message would be 2.20 DALY (= 220*0.01), which corresponds to 14.7 % (= 2.20/15) of the benefits to the recipient I mentioned in the previous comment.
So it appears that raising effective altruism in your message does not significantly increase the overall benefits.
My best guess is that I had better not donate a kidney. However, I should note the calculations in this and my past comments involve a great deal of uncertainty. Yet, in my view, the uncertainty also illustrates it is unclear whether donating a kidney is good/bad if one’s marginal earnings/savings are going towards the best interventions to help animals.
I don’t think we can just equate 15 QALY’s to 15 DALY’s, these are different metrics. I tried to find a converter online but it looks like there is no consensus on how to do that.
Additional benefits of making someone an EA include: doing part-time/volunteer work (e.g. currently everyone at effectief geven is a volunteer), and them making other people EAs (spreading the generated expected QALY’s further).
Same things could be said for veganism, which is less likely with a one time donation since people don’t make that part of their identity. But the cost-effectiveness is a good point. Maybe many small donations over time could achieve those same things while being more cost-effective? But then again the funding landscape might change. I’ll think a bit more about this.
I think the recipient is much more likely than that to sign the pledge, since the average person who has heard of EA associates it with SBF-types while this person is a direct life-changing beneficiary.
I also noticed you didn’t add the ‘costly signal factor’ to your analysis. I think we EAs tend to fall for the McNamara trap of basing our decisions only on quantitative observations and ignoring the rest. A lot of the factors I’m pointing at, spreading the idea of EA, making it easier to win people over, making people change their identity/attitudes, don’t have numbers attached to them but are nonetheless very impactful.
I think downvoting comments like the above is harmful:
It disincentivises people to make honest efforts to express dissenting views, thus contributing towards creating echo chambers.
It increases polarisation.
I assume people who believe they are unfairly downvoted will tend to unfairly downvote others more.
I had initially not upvoted/downvoted the original post, but then felt like I should downvote the post given my perception that the comment above was unfairly downvoted. I do not endorse my initial retaliatory reaction, and have now upvoted the post as a way of trying to counter my bad intuitions.
For what it’s worth, I upvoted and disagree-voted, because I think I think you’re wrong and because you clearly put thought and effort into your writing, and produced the sort of content I think we should generally have more of, even though I’m annoyed locally that “don’t do either” is a much easier comment to write than “here’s the analysis you asked for”, leading to the only serious comments on the post being people stating your view.
Thanks for your willingness to contribute to a better world, Bob!
Have you considered not donating either of those, and instead support the best animal welfare interventions?
If donating a kidney averts 15 DALY (= (10 + 20)/2), and costs you 1 k$[1], the cost-effectiveness would be 0.015 DALY/$, which is similar to the cost-effective of GiveWell’s top charities of around 0.01 DALY/$ (50 DALY per 5 k$).
However, I think corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, like the ones supported by The Humane League (THL), have a cost-effectiveness of 15.0 DALY/$ (= 8.20*2.10*0.870). I got this assuming:
Campaigns affect 8.20 chicken-years per $ (= 41*1/5), multiplying:
Saulius Šimčikas’ estimate of 41 chicken-years per $.
An adjustment factor of 1⁄5, since OP thinks “the marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis [which is linked just above]”.
An improvement in chicken welfare per time of 2.10 times the intensity of the mean human experience, as I estimated for moving broilers from a conventional to a reformed scenario based on Rethink Priorities’ median welfare range for chickens of 0.332.
A ratio between humans’ healthy and total life expectancy at birth in 2016 of 87.0 % (= 63.1/72.5).
So it looks like:
Donating to the THL is 1.00 k (= 15.0/0.015) times as cost-effective as donating a kidney.
One could achieve the benefits of donating a kidney by donating to THL just 1.00 $ (= 15⁄15.0).
In addition, I guess you would be donating to someone in a high income country, where the consumption of animals with bad lives is high, so I would personally worry about the meat eater problem.
I estimate the scale of the suffering per time of all farmed animals is 4.64 times that of the happiness per time of all humans, which suggest saving a random human life leads to more suffering than happinness nearterm.
I think the cost will tend to be higher. From Sekercioglu 2020, “the average donation-related costs range from $900 to $19 900 over the period of predonation evaluation to the end of the first postoperative year”.
Hi Vasco,
I already do work for an animal welfare organization. I looked at the study and it’s not about Belgian hospitals, so it doesn’t really apply to me. Some of the listed costs aren’t present (I don’t have a wage so no wage loss), those that are present are mostly paid for by the state (travel, accommodation, medical...) and those that aren’t are paid for by my parents (housework). The only one that applies is “Small cash payments for grocery items (eg, tissue paper)” which is negligible, so the expected DALY per dollar is extremely high.
In Belgium you can leave a message to the person you’re donating to, so I had planned to leave a message about veganism and effective altruism. I think this will be a very powerful reason to change behavior, seeing as it comes from their altruistic donor.
Also, donating will help with persuading people to be more altruistic in general. In psychology you have this concept of a costly signal, which causes people to take your (related) ideas much more seriously.
Are you confident about this?
Donating an organ might seem quite extreme, possibly making the average person view you as ‘very weird,’ which could have the opposite effect.
Thanks for following up!
Cool!
Even if there is no direct nearterm financial cost, you could plausibly use the time saved by not donating a kidney to generate at least 1 $? For example, I guess the cost to your parents would be higher than this, so they might be happy to donate a few dollars to THL for you not to donate a kidney. Even if not now, the time you save may also increase your income by more than 1 $ in the next few years. For an hourly rate of 20 $/h, it would only need to increase your wages expressed as working time by 3 min (= 1/20*60).
This sounds inspiring. At the same time, would you feel comfortable donating a kidney if it being good depended on the beneficiary having a sufficiently high chance of becoming vegan or effective altruist? Note the beneficiary would probably rather read a message which does not convey that you are expecting something in return...
If you chose to make a (possibly indirect) request in your message, you may want to consider asking for a donation instead of raising veganism:
If you trust my numbers on the scale of the suffering of farmed animals, the annual suffering caused by a random human to farmed animals is equivalent to 4.04 DALY (= 4.64*0.870).
So, for a life expectancy of the kidney recipient of 30 years, the potential gain due to becoming vegan would be 121 DALY (= 30*4.04).
The above could be averted donating 8.07 $ (= 121⁄15.0) to THL.
The kidney recipient would probably prefer to donate a few dozens of dollars to THL over becoming vegan.
As for raising effective altruism in your message:
I guess the kidney recipient would tend to have an older age than that at which people usually become engaged with effective altruism, so there would be less room to change to a more impactful career, and I assume most of the benefit would come from additional effective donations.
Giving What We Can estimated each GWWC Pledge leads to 22 k$ of effective donations. If I recall correctly, these effective donations are expressed in terms of ones to GiveWell’s top charities, which would mean each GWWC Pledge averts 220 DALY (= 22*10^3*0.01).
Only around 1 in 1 million people are quite engaged with effective altruism (8 k in 8 billion), and maybe 1 % of the global population knows about it, so only 1 in 10 k (= 10^-6/0.01) people who know about it become quite engaged.
If the kidney recipient is 100 times as likely to sign the GWWC Pledge as the above, they would have a 1 % (= 100*10^-4) chance of signing it.
As a result, the expected benefit of your message would be 2.20 DALY (= 220*0.01), which corresponds to 14.7 % (= 2.20/15) of the benefits to the recipient I mentioned in the previous comment.
So it appears that raising effective altruism in your message does not significantly increase the overall benefits.
My best guess is that I had better not donate a kidney. However, I should note the calculations in this and my past comments involve a great deal of uncertainty. Yet, in my view, the uncertainty also illustrates it is unclear whether donating a kidney is good/bad if one’s marginal earnings/savings are going towards the best interventions to help animals.
I don’t think we can just equate 15 QALY’s to 15 DALY’s, these are different metrics. I tried to find a converter online but it looks like there is no consensus on how to do that.
Additional benefits of making someone an EA include: doing part-time/volunteer work (e.g. currently everyone at effectief geven is a volunteer), and them making other people EAs (spreading the generated expected QALY’s further).
Same things could be said for veganism, which is less likely with a one time donation since people don’t make that part of their identity. But the cost-effectiveness is a good point. Maybe many small donations over time could achieve those same things while being more cost-effective? But then again the funding landscape might change. I’ll think a bit more about this.
I think the recipient is much more likely than that to sign the pledge, since the average person who has heard of EA associates it with SBF-types while this person is a direct life-changing beneficiary.
I also noticed you didn’t add the ‘costly signal factor’ to your analysis. I think we EAs tend to fall for the McNamara trap of basing our decisions only on quantitative observations and ignoring the rest. A lot of the factors I’m pointing at, spreading the idea of EA, making it easier to win people over, making people change their identity/attitudes, don’t have numbers attached to them but are nonetheless very impactful.
I think downvoting comments like the above is harmful:
It disincentivises people to make honest efforts to express dissenting views, thus contributing towards creating echo chambers.
It increases polarisation.
I assume people who believe they are unfairly downvoted will tend to unfairly downvote others more.
I had initially not upvoted/downvoted the original post, but then felt like I should downvote the post given my perception that the comment above was unfairly downvoted. I do not endorse my initial retaliatory reaction, and have now upvoted the post as a way of trying to counter my bad intuitions.
For what it’s worth, I upvoted and disagree-voted, because I think I think you’re wrong and because you clearly put thought and effort into your writing, and produced the sort of content I think we should generally have more of, even though I’m annoyed locally that “don’t do either” is a much easier comment to write than “here’s the analysis you asked for”, leading to the only serious comments on the post being people stating your view.
Thanks, Keller! That makes sense to me.