To help carve out the space where GiveWell recommendations could fit, considering flow-through effects:
Assuming some kind of total utilitarianism or similar, if you don’t give far greater intrinsic value to the interests of humans over nonhuman animals in practice, you’d need to consider flow-through effects over multiple centuries or interactions with upcoming technologies (and speculate about those) to make much difference to the value of GiveWell recommendations and for them to beat animal welfare interventions. For the average life we could save soon, it seems unlikely that the instrumental value to other people during that life (assuming a life of <120 years) is >10x greater than the value to the person whose life is saved (or to their immediate family), unless they have many descendants over their lifetime or their life becomes dramatically different from the current lives of the adults around them (dramatic increases in the productivity of their labour[1], dramatic life extension[2]).
EDIT: Maybe GiveWell charity beneficiaries will have enough children and descendants over the next 100 years to make enough difference. Even if fertility rates decrease over time, they’re still high in many low-income countries, some of which GiveWell charities work in. If you save one life, how many additional years of human life, potentially valuable in itself and with instrumental value for others, will there be over the next 100 years?
Also, you’d want to consider negative flow-through effects of GiveWell charity interventions, and positive and negative flow-through effects of animal welfare interventions.
Which could increase how much they would work over their lifetime and also directly increase the value of life-saving interventions to the person whose life is saved, because they could end up living much longer.
For example, saving a life adds 60 years to that life. Then, with an average population fertility rate of 5 per woman, we get 2.5=5/2 additional people born, each living 65 years. Then, in 15-30 years, the fertility rate reaches 4 per woman, and each of the extra 2.5 children born go on to add to 2=4/2 more, giving 5 grandchildren, each living 70 years. Then in another 20-30 years each of those 2.5*2=5 grandchildren go on to add 1.5 more (fertility rate of 3 per woman), each living 70 years. And so on.
Just the terms considered so far, up to and including grandchildren, gives a multiplier of >16=1+2.5+2.5∗2+2.5∗2∗1.5 relative to the value in the life directly saved. We can consider both the value in those lives themselves, and how they affect others.
To help carve out the space where GiveWell recommendations could fit, considering flow-through effects:
Assuming some kind of total utilitarianism or similar, if you don’t give far greater intrinsic value to the interests of humans over nonhuman animals in practice, you’d need to consider flow-through effects over multiple centuries or interactions with upcoming technologies (and speculate about those) to make much difference to the value of GiveWell recommendations and for them to beat animal welfare interventions. For the average life we could save soon, it seems unlikely that the instrumental value to other people during that life (assuming a life of <120 years) is >10x greater than the value to the person whose life is saved (or to their immediate family), unless they have many descendants over their lifetime or their life becomes dramatically different from the current lives of the adults around them (dramatic increases in the productivity of their labour[1], dramatic life extension[2]).
EDIT: Maybe GiveWell charity beneficiaries will have enough children and descendants over the next 100 years to make enough difference. Even if fertility rates decrease over time, they’re still high in many low-income countries, some of which GiveWell charities work in. If you save one life, how many additional years of human life, potentially valuable in itself and with instrumental value for others, will there be over the next 100 years?
Also, you’d want to consider negative flow-through effects of GiveWell charity interventions, and positive and negative flow-through effects of animal welfare interventions.
E.g. from rapid economic growth. However, AI could instead entirely replace their labour.
Which could increase how much they would work over their lifetime and also directly increase the value of life-saving interventions to the person whose life is saved, because they could end up living much longer.
For example, saving a life adds 60 years to that life. Then, with an average population fertility rate of 5 per woman, we get 2.5=5/2 additional people born, each living 65 years. Then, in 15-30 years, the fertility rate reaches 4 per woman, and each of the extra 2.5 children born go on to add to 2=4/2 more, giving 5 grandchildren, each living 70 years. Then in another 20-30 years each of those 2.5*2=5 grandchildren go on to add 1.5 more (fertility rate of 3 per woman), each living 70 years. And so on.
So, we added
60 years+2.5∗65 years+2.5∗2∗70 years+2.5∗2∗1.5∗70 years+...Just the terms considered so far, up to and including grandchildren, gives a multiplier of >16=1+2.5+2.5∗2+2.5∗2∗1.5 relative to the value in the life directly saved. We can consider both the value in those lives themselves, and how they affect others.