I skimmed through the website, and I’m not entirely sure how they’re calculating the dollar amounts. The comparisons also seem somewhat subjective, and some of the proposed impacts (e.g., creating more plant-based meat options) don’t obviously translate into measurable reductions in meat consumption.
I’m also not sure what they mean by this statement:
“We don’t actually think you should donate less to something because it’s more effective.”
“We don’t actually think you should donate less to something because it’s more effective.”
(All the below numbers are made up for example purposes and don’t represent the cost of chicken-related interventions)
Let’s say that I want to have chicken for dinner tonight. However, I don’t want to cause chickens to suffer. I have worked out that by donating $0.10 to Chicken Charity A I can prevent the same amount of suffering that eating a chicken dinner would cause, so I do that. Then I find out that Chicken Charity B can do the same thing for $0.05, so I do that instead for tomorrow night’s chicken dinner. A charity being 2x as effective means I donate half as much to it. This is the “offsetting” mindset.
Effective Altruists do not (usually) think this way. We don’t consider our donations as aiming to do a fixed amount of good and maximise effectiveness in order to reduce the amount we have to donate. We do it the other way around, usually: a fixed amount that is set by our life circumstances (e.g. the 10% pledge) and maximising the effectiveness of that in order to do as much good as possible.
I skimmed through the website, and I’m not entirely sure how they’re calculating the dollar amounts. The comparisons also seem somewhat subjective, and some of the proposed impacts (e.g., creating more plant-based meat options) don’t obviously translate into measurable reductions in meat consumption.
I’m also not sure what they mean by this statement:
“We don’t actually think you should donate less to something because it’s more effective.”
(All the below numbers are made up for example purposes and don’t represent the cost of chicken-related interventions)
Let’s say that I want to have chicken for dinner tonight. However, I don’t want to cause chickens to suffer. I have worked out that by donating $0.10 to Chicken Charity A I can prevent the same amount of suffering that eating a chicken dinner would cause, so I do that. Then I find out that Chicken Charity B can do the same thing for $0.05, so I do that instead for tomorrow night’s chicken dinner. A charity being 2x as effective means I donate half as much to it. This is the “offsetting” mindset.
Effective Altruists do not (usually) think this way. We don’t consider our donations as aiming to do a fixed amount of good and maximise effectiveness in order to reduce the amount we have to donate. We do it the other way around, usually: a fixed amount that is set by our life circumstances (e.g. the 10% pledge) and maximising the effectiveness of that in order to do as much good as possible.