In the abstract I think this would be good, but I’m skeptical that there are great opportunities in the animal space that can absorb this much funding right now! This is like, doubling the EA funds going to animal welfare stuff. I think I would strongly agree with claims like:
Conditional on there being several years of capacity build up, animal welfare would use the funds more effectively.
From a pure EA lens, some animal welfare spending is many times more cost-effective than the most effect global health interventions.
The current most effective $100M spent on animal welfare is more cost-effective than the current most effective $100M spend on global health.
I think something that would be closer to 50⁄50 for me (or I haven’t thought about it actually, but on its face seem closer to a midpoint):
It would be better to invest an extra $100M to spend on animal welfare in the future than spending it on global health now.
I’d strongly disagree with a claim like:
It would be better to spend an extra $100M in the next two years on animal welfare than on global health
So I listed myself as strongly agreeing, but with all these caveats.
The footnote says that the money can be spent “over any time period”, so I think this would allow for several years of more capacity buildup and research to spend this effectively.
Given this precision, I think the claim should be close to something you agree on, if I understood correctly.
I think something that would be closer to 50⁄50 for me (or I haven’t thought about it actually, but on its face seem closer to a midpoint):
It would be better to invest an extra $100M to spend on animal welfare in the future than spending it on global health now.
What do you mean by “invest” here? Like financially, or capacity building or anything? If investing includes capacity building, shouldn’t you strongly favour animal welfare (away from 50⁄50), consistent with the following claim?
Conditional on there being several years of capacity build up, animal welfare would use the funds more effectively.
(There’s also the issue of spending $100M on global health now vs spending it on global health over time or in the future, but I don’t expect this to change the marginal cost-effectiveness of grants to GiveWell recommendations by >10x, unless we’re going way out. Maybe there are better global health interventions that can absorb $100M over time than GiveWell recommendations, though.)
I meant more literally, put $100M in an investment account to save for good future animal opportunities vs spending on the best global health interventions today. I’m not certain it’s actually a 50⁄50 item, but was trying to find a mid point.
Maybe there are better global health interventions that can absorb $100M over time than GiveWell recommendations, though.)
I don’t really know enough about global health work to say—but I’d guess there are some novel medical things seem plausibly able to:
It would be better to spend an extra $100M in the next two years on animal welfare than on global health
Do any of these megaproject suggestions change your mind? Some of them could absorb amounts of funding potentially nearing or exceeding that $100M bar just by themselves, e.g. the advance market commitments for alt proteins idea (cf. the $925M carbon removal AMC Stripe led), or subsidizing alternatives to conventionally produced meat, or funding think tanks to do policy research at scale for which we (quote) “could spend £100m+ easily on this”, or funding “10+ very large RCTs/population-wide studies, especially in Asia” (many ideas in the list), or “Healthier Hens x1000” as one example of many in the list of “GiveDirectly for animals: reasonably cost-effective, massively scalable, very strong evidence-base, and almost guaranteed impact”, etc.
Not really, primarily because I don’t think the animal welfare world currently has the organizational competency to do any of them successfully at that scale, and not shoot itself in the foot while doing so, with the potential exception of the advance market commitments. I don’t think the existing groups have the organizational competency to handle the ~$200M they already receive well, and think the majority that money is already being spent in expectedly worse ways than giving to GiveWell top charities, even if the best animal stuff is incredibly cost-effective. I think that the movement could get there at some point. But if I imagine that much money going to any existing group to be spent in the next 2 years I think it would mostly be wasted.
I think many of these ideas seem feasible in the longrun, and are viable candidates for what to try, though I just generally think that farmed animal welfare is significantly less tractable than wild animal welfare or invertebrate welfare in the longrun, so would rather the funds went to scaling those fields instead of farmed animal welfare. Also, it is not obvious to me that lots of these ideas will beat out global health charities, though I think blue sky thinking is good.
Also just generally, most of those ideas are ones that don’t need to be implemented at scale? E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better? It seems like if these ideas could absorb $100M, many could be tried now. The one that hasn’t been tried at that scale is advance market commitments, but I think the track record for alternative proteins doesn’t look great in general right now, and it isn’t obvious to me that R&D is the main barrier — see the margarine issues.
I also generally think lots of untried ideas look good on paper, but will probably not end up being effective if tried. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try them, but I think the bar has to be higher than “beats GiveWell in expectation from current evidence,” because the uncertainty is also a lot higher.
I think that if I were allocating this funding, there is a very low chance I’d choose to allocate any significant portion of it to farmed animal welfare, given that it isn’t nearly as neglected as other larger scale animal issues, and I don’t think there are good opportunities on the horizon at scales larger than OpenPhil’s animal welfare budget. If OpenPhil stopped funding animal welfare entirely, I’d likely want to see something like $50M going to farmed animal welfare, and almost entirely to corporate campaigns for shrimp as well as some cage-free clean up work, and maybe something in the near future on fish that no one has figured out yet.
If I had to guess at “the fastest way we could spend $100M on animals extremely effectively”, I’m think it will be something like putting some research into insecticide interventions and scaling them a lot, and definitely nothing implemented by existing farmed animal groups. If there was anything in the farmed animal space, it would be research, but again—I’m skeptical there are good opportunities beyond what OpenPhil can already fund.
I feel pretty disappointed by a lot of the above—I spent several years professionally working on corporate campaigns, and am as animal friendly as they come, but I’ve just heavily decreased my confidence in the actual scale of tractable opportunities to improve farmed animal welfare as a whole over the last few years — in large part because it seems like very little has worked despite lots of money being poured into the space.
E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better?
FWIW, I thought some interventions they were exploring looked potentially pretty cost-effective, near the bar for marginal animal welfare work, and with a ratio of 7 years of disabling chicken pain prevented per year of waking human life saved by GiveWell recommendations. See here.
Ah, FWIW, the ideas that looked cost-effective were not related to keel bone fractures or based on feed fortification. Their feed trial ended up going badly for the hens.
In the abstract I think this would be good, but I’m skeptical that there are great opportunities in the animal space that can absorb this much funding right now! This is like, doubling the EA funds going to animal welfare stuff. I think I would strongly agree with claims like:
Conditional on there being several years of capacity build up, animal welfare would use the funds more effectively.
From a pure EA lens, some animal welfare spending is many times more cost-effective than the most effect global health interventions.
The current most effective $100M spent on animal welfare is more cost-effective than the current most effective $100M spend on global health.
I think something that would be closer to 50⁄50 for me (or I haven’t thought about it actually, but on its face seem closer to a midpoint):
It would be better to invest an extra $100M to spend on animal welfare in the future than spending it on global health now.
I’d strongly disagree with a claim like:
It would be better to spend an extra $100M in the next two years on animal welfare than on global health
So I listed myself as strongly agreeing, but with all these caveats.
The footnote says that the money can be spent “over any time period”, so I think this would allow for several years of more capacity buildup and research to spend this effectively.
Given this precision, I think the claim should be close to something you agree on, if I understood correctly.
Yep, I voted strongly agree from seeing that, though I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the non-footnoted version, and without all these caveats.
What do you mean by “invest” here? Like financially, or capacity building or anything? If investing includes capacity building, shouldn’t you strongly favour animal welfare (away from 50⁄50), consistent with the following claim?
(There’s also the issue of spending $100M on global health now vs spending it on global health over time or in the future, but I don’t expect this to change the marginal cost-effectiveness of grants to GiveWell recommendations by >10x, unless we’re going way out. Maybe there are better global health interventions that can absorb $100M over time than GiveWell recommendations, though.)
I meant more literally, put $100M in an investment account to save for good future animal opportunities vs spending on the best global health interventions today. I’m not certain it’s actually a 50⁄50 item, but was trying to find a mid point.
I don’t really know enough about global health work to say—but I’d guess there are some novel medical things seem plausibly able to:
Appear over the next few decades
Require a lot of cash to scale up
Could be really cost-effective
Do any of these megaproject suggestions change your mind? Some of them could absorb amounts of funding potentially nearing or exceeding that $100M bar just by themselves, e.g. the advance market commitments for alt proteins idea (cf. the $925M carbon removal AMC Stripe led), or subsidizing alternatives to conventionally produced meat, or funding think tanks to do policy research at scale for which we (quote) “could spend £100m+ easily on this”, or funding “10+ very large RCTs/population-wide studies, especially in Asia” (many ideas in the list), or “Healthier Hens x1000” as one example of many in the list of “GiveDirectly for animals: reasonably cost-effective, massively scalable, very strong evidence-base, and almost guaranteed impact”, etc.
Not really, primarily because I don’t think the animal welfare world currently has the organizational competency to do any of them successfully at that scale, and not shoot itself in the foot while doing so, with the potential exception of the advance market commitments. I don’t think the existing groups have the organizational competency to handle the ~$200M they already receive well, and think the majority that money is already being spent in expectedly worse ways than giving to GiveWell top charities, even if the best animal stuff is incredibly cost-effective. I think that the movement could get there at some point. But if I imagine that much money going to any existing group to be spent in the next 2 years I think it would mostly be wasted.
I think many of these ideas seem feasible in the longrun, and are viable candidates for what to try, though I just generally think that farmed animal welfare is significantly less tractable than wild animal welfare or invertebrate welfare in the longrun, so would rather the funds went to scaling those fields instead of farmed animal welfare. Also, it is not obvious to me that lots of these ideas will beat out global health charities, though I think blue sky thinking is good.
Also just generally, most of those ideas are ones that don’t need to be implemented at scale? E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better? It seems like if these ideas could absorb $100M, many could be tried now. The one that hasn’t been tried at that scale is advance market commitments, but I think the track record for alternative proteins doesn’t look great in general right now, and it isn’t obvious to me that R&D is the main barrier — see the margarine issues.
I also generally think lots of untried ideas look good on paper, but will probably not end up being effective if tried. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try them, but I think the bar has to be higher than “beats GiveWell in expectation from current evidence,” because the uncertainty is also a lot higher.
I think that if I were allocating this funding, there is a very low chance I’d choose to allocate any significant portion of it to farmed animal welfare, given that it isn’t nearly as neglected as other larger scale animal issues, and I don’t think there are good opportunities on the horizon at scales larger than OpenPhil’s animal welfare budget. If OpenPhil stopped funding animal welfare entirely, I’d likely want to see something like $50M going to farmed animal welfare, and almost entirely to corporate campaigns for shrimp as well as some cage-free clean up work, and maybe something in the near future on fish that no one has figured out yet.
If I had to guess at “the fastest way we could spend $100M on animals extremely effectively”, I’m think it will be something like putting some research into insecticide interventions and scaling them a lot, and definitely nothing implemented by existing farmed animal groups. If there was anything in the farmed animal space, it would be research, but again—I’m skeptical there are good opportunities beyond what OpenPhil can already fund.
I feel pretty disappointed by a lot of the above—I spent several years professionally working on corporate campaigns, and am as animal friendly as they come, but I’ve just heavily decreased my confidence in the actual scale of tractable opportunities to improve farmed animal welfare as a whole over the last few years — in large part because it seems like very little has worked despite lots of money being poured into the space.
FWIW, I thought some interventions they were exploring looked potentially pretty cost-effective, near the bar for marginal animal welfare work, and with a ratio of 7 years of disabling chicken pain prevented per year of waking human life saved by GiveWell recommendations. See here.
Healthier Hens has since shut down, though, and CE/AIM is looking to start a keel bone fracture charity with a different and much higher leverage strategy: certifier outreach. This probably can’t absorb nearly as much funding, though.
Nice—that’s good to know—I was under the impression that it was a good idea, but didn’t get much traction.
Ah, FWIW, the ideas that looked cost-effective were not related to keel bone fractures or based on feed fortification. Their feed trial ended up going badly for the hens.
I think there is much room for more funding of alternative protein R&D, and that is very cost-effective to reduce farmed animal suffering