Ya, the analyses explicitly include spillover effects on some individuals who aren’t directly affected by the interventions (i.e. household family members), but ignore potentially important predictable nearterm indirect effects (those on nonhuman animals) and all of the far future effects. And it doesn’t explain why.
However, ignoring effects on nonhuman animals and the far future is typical for analyses of global health and poverty interventions. And this is discussed in other places where cause prioritization is the main topic. I’d guess, based on comments elsewhere on the EA Forum and other EA-related spaces, nonhuman animal effects are ignored because the authors don’t agree with giving nonhuman animals so much moral weight relative to humans, or are doing worldview diversification and they aren’t confident in such high moral weights. I don’t think we’d want a comment like Vasco’s on many global health and poverty intervention posts, because we don’t want to have the same discussion scattered and repeated this way, especially when there are better places to have it. Instead, Vasco’s own posts, posts about moral weight and posts about cause prioritization would be better places.
When people bring up effects on wild fish, I often point out that they’re thinking about it the wrong way (getting the supply responses wrong) and ignoring population effects. But I’m pretty sure this is something they would care about if informed, and there aren’t that many posts about wild fish. I also suspect we should be more worried about animal product reduction backfiring in the near term because of wild animal effects, but I think this is more controversial and animal product reduction is covered much more on the EA Forum than fishing in particular, so passing comments on posts about diet change and substitutes doesn’t seem like a good way to have this discussion.
I guess there’s a question of whether a comment like Vasco’s would be welcome every now and then on global health and poverty posts, but it could be a slippery slope.
Ya, the analyses explicitly include spillover effects on some individuals who aren’t directly affected by the interventions (i.e. household family members), but ignore potentially important predictable nearterm indirect effects (those on nonhuman animals) and all of the far future effects. And it doesn’t explain why.
However, ignoring effects on nonhuman animals and the far future is typical for analyses of global health and poverty interventions. And this is discussed in other places where cause prioritization is the main topic. I’d guess, based on comments elsewhere on the EA Forum and other EA-related spaces, nonhuman animal effects are ignored because the authors don’t agree with giving nonhuman animals so much moral weight relative to humans, or are doing worldview diversification and they aren’t confident in such high moral weights. I don’t think we’d want a comment like Vasco’s on many global health and poverty intervention posts, because we don’t want to have the same discussion scattered and repeated this way, especially when there are better places to have it. Instead, Vasco’s own posts, posts about moral weight and posts about cause prioritization would be better places.
When people bring up effects on wild fish, I often point out that they’re thinking about it the wrong way (getting the supply responses wrong) and ignoring population effects. But I’m pretty sure this is something they would care about if informed, and there aren’t that many posts about wild fish. I also suspect we should be more worried about animal product reduction backfiring in the near term because of wild animal effects, but I think this is more controversial and animal product reduction is covered much more on the EA Forum than fishing in particular, so passing comments on posts about diet change and substitutes doesn’t seem like a good way to have this discussion.
I guess there’s a question of whether a comment like Vasco’s would be welcome every now and then on global health and poverty posts, but it could be a slippery slope.