Thanks, Joel! I guess you would recommend donating to Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL) in order to increase human-years as cost-effectively as possible.
Nuclear/āvolcanic winter famine mitigation is another candidate (CEA in the spreadsheet), though obviously thereās a strong self-defeating element from a WAW perspective.
Expanding cropland is a great way to increase food production in nuclear and volcanic winters.
I do think RTSLās salt policy work (and other salt policy projects, particularly ImagineLaw in the Philippines) are reasonably good bets for maximizing life years saved. That said, I donāt an individual donation to RTSL would help insofar as smaller donors canāt purpose restrict it (see their donation button at https://āāresolvetosavelives.org/āā).
In practice, I would suggest donating to CEARCHās GHD policy regranting budget (via https://āāexploratory-altruism.org/āāwork-with-us/āā, or just email me and Iāll put you in touch with our fiscal sponsor), making a note on purpose-restriction if you wish, and then your donation goes out as part of a broader consolidated package (e.g. that 63k grant we made on SSB tax enforcement was me personally and 5 other EA donors pulling together).
On nuclear/āvolcanic winterāwonāt the direct effect just be straightforwardly mass extinction of wild animals, which eliminates their suffering? And in contrast, a lot of currently valuable farmland may just not be usable when temperatures shift, so there may not be an offset. A lot of uncertainty regardless, and reasonable people can disagree.
āHigh Impact Philanthropy Fund @ PPFā links to CEARCHās contact page, so I suppose people always have to email you in order to make a donation, thus discouraging small donations. I wonder whether there is an easy low cost way of enabling these.
Hi Vasco, thanks for flagging out. Iāve updated our Work With Us page to include the direct donation link (additional 1-3% in fees, but more convenient; if donors prefer minimizing fees, they should feel free to reach out and we can guide them through the cheaper wire transfer)
Thanks for clarifying, Joel! I plan to recommend people donate to CEARCHās High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) in a post I am writing which I will share in this thread once it is published. Is HIPF trying to avert as many DALYs as possible in a risk neutral way? If so, I do not have to recommend restricted donations. Do you have a guess for HIPFās marginal cost-effectiveness as a fraction of that of GiveWellās top charities? I would guess 55 as implied by CEARCHās CEA of advocating for taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).
Impact, nuclear, and volcanic winters would decrease the number of wild animals a lot, but replacing forested area with cropland to produce more food would decrease them further.
Our grantmaking always aims at maximizing DALYS averted (with income and other stuff translated to DALYs too).
In terms of cost-effectiveness, itās nominally 30-50x GW, but GiveWell is more rigorous in discounting, so our figures should be inflated relative to GW. Based on some internal analysis we did of GWās greater strictness in individual line-item estimation and in the greater number of adjustments they employ, we think a more conservative estimate is that our estimates may be up to 3x inflated (i.e. something we think is 10x GW may be closer to 3x GW, which is why we use a 10x GW threshold for recommending GHD causes in the first placeāto ensure that what we recommend is genuinely >GW, and moving money to the new cause area is +EV).
So my more conservative guess for our grantmaking is that itās closer to 9-15x GW, but again I have to emphasize the high uncertainty (and riskiness, which is the inherent price we pay for these ultra high EV policy interventions).
Thanks, Joel! Do you also think your estimate that donating to Giving What We Can (GWWC) this year is 13 times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities is also 3 times as high as it should be, such that your best guess is that it is 4.33 (= 13ā3) times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities (although there is large uncertainty)? Or is the adjustment only supposed to be applicable to CEARCHās CEAs listed here?
Hey Vasco, the adjustment is specific to GiveWell vs us (or indeed, non-GW CEAs), since GiveWell probably is the most rigorous in discounting, while other organizations are less so, for various reasons (mainly timeāthatās true for us, and why we just use a rough 10x GW threshold; and itās true of FP too; Matt Lerner goes into detail here on the tradeoff between drilling down vs spending researcher time finding and supporting more high EV opportunities instead).
Relative to every other organization, I donāt find CEARCH to be systematically overoptimistic in the same way (at least for our deep/āfinal round CEAs).
For our GWWC evaluation, I think the ballpark figure (robustly positive multiplier) probably still holds, but Iām uncertain about the precise figure right now, after seeing some of GWWCās latest data (theyāll release their 2023-24 impact evaluation soon).
I plan to recommend people donate to CEARCHās High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) in a post I am writing which I will share in this thread once it is published.
I have now published the post where I recommend HIPF. It looks into the cost-effectiveness of interventions accounting for soil nematodes, mites, and springtails.
Thanks, Joel! I guess you would recommend donating to Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL) in order to increase human-years as cost-effectively as possible.
Expanding cropland is a great way to increase food production in nuclear and volcanic winters.
I do think RTSLās salt policy work (and other salt policy projects, particularly ImagineLaw in the Philippines) are reasonably good bets for maximizing life years saved. That said, I donāt an individual donation to RTSL would help insofar as smaller donors canāt purpose restrict it (see their donation button at https://āāresolvetosavelives.org/āā).
In practice, I would suggest donating to CEARCHās GHD policy regranting budget (via https://āāexploratory-altruism.org/āāwork-with-us/āā, or just email me and Iāll put you in touch with our fiscal sponsor), making a note on purpose-restriction if you wish, and then your donation goes out as part of a broader consolidated package (e.g. that 63k grant we made on SSB tax enforcement was me personally and 5 other EA donors pulling together).
On nuclear/āvolcanic winterāwonāt the direct effect just be straightforwardly mass extinction of wild animals, which eliminates their suffering? And in contrast, a lot of currently valuable farmland may just not be usable when temperatures shift, so there may not be an offset. A lot of uncertainty regardless, and reasonable people can disagree.
āHigh Impact Philanthropy Fund @ PPFā links to CEARCHās contact page, so I suppose people always have to email you in order to make a donation, thus discouraging small donations. I wonder whether there is an easy low cost way of enabling these.
Hi Vasco, thanks for flagging out. Iāve updated our Work With Us page to include the direct donation link (additional 1-3% in fees, but more convenient; if donors prefer minimizing fees, they should feel free to reach out and we can guide them through the cheaper wire transfer)
Thanks, Joel!
Thanks for clarifying, Joel! I plan to recommend people donate to CEARCHās High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) in a post I am writing which I will share in this thread once it is published. Is HIPF trying to avert as many DALYs as possible in a risk neutral way? If so, I do not have to recommend restricted donations. Do you have a guess for HIPFās marginal cost-effectiveness as a fraction of that of GiveWellās top charities? I would guess 55 as implied by CEARCHās CEA of advocating for taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).
Impact, nuclear, and volcanic winters would decrease the number of wild animals a lot, but replacing forested area with cropland to produce more food would decrease them further.
Our grantmaking always aims at maximizing DALYS averted (with income and other stuff translated to DALYs too).
In terms of cost-effectiveness, itās nominally 30-50x GW, but GiveWell is more rigorous in discounting, so our figures should be inflated relative to GW. Based on some internal analysis we did of GWās greater strictness in individual line-item estimation and in the greater number of adjustments they employ, we think a more conservative estimate is that our estimates may be up to 3x inflated (i.e. something we think is 10x GW may be closer to 3x GW, which is why we use a 10x GW threshold for recommending GHD causes in the first placeāto ensure that what we recommend is genuinely >GW, and moving money to the new cause area is +EV).
So my more conservative guess for our grantmaking is that itās closer to 9-15x GW, but again I have to emphasize the high uncertainty (and riskiness, which is the inherent price we pay for these ultra high EV policy interventions).
Thanks, Joel! Do you also think your estimate that donating to Giving What We Can (GWWC) this year is 13 times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities is also 3 times as high as it should be, such that your best guess is that it is 4.33 (= 13ā3) times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities (although there is large uncertainty)? Or is the adjustment only supposed to be applicable to CEARCHās CEAs listed here?
Hey Vasco, the adjustment is specific to GiveWell vs us (or indeed, non-GW CEAs), since GiveWell probably is the most rigorous in discounting, while other organizations are less so, for various reasons (mainly timeāthatās true for us, and why we just use a rough 10x GW threshold; and itās true of FP too; Matt Lerner goes into detail here on the tradeoff between drilling down vs spending researcher time finding and supporting more high EV opportunities instead).
Relative to every other organization, I donāt find CEARCH to be systematically overoptimistic in the same way (at least for our deep/āfinal round CEAs).
For our GWWC evaluation, I think the ballpark figure (robustly positive multiplier) probably still holds, but Iām uncertain about the precise figure right now, after seeing some of GWWCās latest data (theyāll release their 2023-24 impact evaluation soon).
I have now published the post where I recommend HIPF. It looks into the cost-effectiveness of interventions accounting for soil nematodes, mites, and springtails.