This comment is object-level, perhaps nitpicky, and I quite like your post on a high level.
Saving a life via, say, malaria nets gets you two benefits:
1. The person saved doesn’t die, meeting their preference for continuing to exist
2. The externalities of that person continuing to live, such as foregone grief by their family and community.
I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that the majority of the benefit from saving a life goes to the person whose life is saved, rather than the people who would be sad that they died. But the IDinsights survey only provides information about the latter.
Consider what would happen if beneficiary surveys find the opposite conclusion in future communities, that certain beneficiaries did not care at all about the death of children under the age of 9. It would be ridiculous and immoral to defer to that decision, and not provide any life-saving aid to those children. The reason for this is that the community being surveyed is not the primary beneficiary of aid to their children, their children are, so their preferences make up a small fraction of the aid’s value. But this also goes the other way, if the surveyed community overweights the lives of their children, that isn’t a reason for major deferral. Especially if stated preferences contradict revealed preferences, as they often do.
Yeah, and the IDinsight study only looked at #2 from your list above , which is one of the limitations and reasons more research would be good. This hits at a “collectivist culture vs individualist culture” nuance too, I suspect, because that could influence the weightings of #1 vs #2.
And they also have a note somewhere on their website about flow-on effects: GiveWell assumes the flow on effects from giving health/life-saving interventions is probably more cost effective than flow on effects from infrastructural interventions which end up improving health and lifespan.
In response to your comment about deferring to a hypothetical community who gives no life-saving intervention for people under 9 years old: if people had good access to information and resources, and their group decision was to focus a large amount of resource on saving lives of extremely old people on the community … Maybe we should do this? I say this because I can think of reasons a community might want grandparents around for another few years (e.g. to pass on language, culture, knowledge) instead of more children at the moment. I think, if a community was at massive risk of loss of culture, the donors’ insistence on saving young lives over the elders’ lives could be incredibly frustrating.
Not saying this to make any conclusions, but just as a counter-example that introduces a little more nuance than “morally wrong to let under 9yo’s die unnecessarily.”
If I had to deal with the situation as was proposed here:
In response to your comment about deferring to a hypothetical community who gives no life-saving intervention for people under 9 years old: if people had good access to information and resources, and their group decision was to focus a large amount of resource on saving lives of extremely old people on the community … Maybe we should do this? I say this because I can think of reasons a community might want grandparents around for another few years (e.g. to pass on language, culture, knowledge) instead of more children at the moment. I think, if a community was at massive risk of loss of culture, the donors’ insistence on saving young lives over the elders’ lives could be incredibly frustrating.
At the end of the day, I tend towards individual fairness over group/cultural fairness, primarily because I don’t care too much for cultural essentialism/cultural preservation efforts. Thus I would choose to try to save the children first, then move on to the elderly. Yes, it will be incredibly frustrating, but then strife will always exist between group non-discrimination and individual fairness, I just try to resolve the strife in favor of one side.
Yeah, interesting. I definitely disagree with you on whose preferences should be met in this case, and suspect there are some situations where I would agree with you, but would require a lot of context to understand exactly where the lone of agree/disagree is.
This comment is object-level, perhaps nitpicky, and I quite like your post on a high level.
Saving a life via, say, malaria nets gets you two benefits:
1. The person saved doesn’t die, meeting their preference for continuing to exist
2. The externalities of that person continuing to live, such as foregone grief by their family and community.
I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that the majority of the benefit from saving a life goes to the person whose life is saved, rather than the people who would be sad that they died. But the IDinsights survey only provides information about the latter.
Consider what would happen if beneficiary surveys find the opposite conclusion in future communities, that certain beneficiaries did not care at all about the death of children under the age of 9. It would be ridiculous and immoral to defer to that decision, and not provide any life-saving aid to those children. The reason for this is that the community being surveyed is not the primary beneficiary of aid to their children, their children are, so their preferences make up a small fraction of the aid’s value. But this also goes the other way, if the surveyed community overweights the lives of their children, that isn’t a reason for major deferral. Especially if stated preferences contradict revealed preferences, as they often do.
Yeah, and the IDinsight study only looked at #2 from your list above , which is one of the limitations and reasons more research would be good. This hits at a “collectivist culture vs individualist culture” nuance too, I suspect, because that could influence the weightings of #1 vs #2.
In a 2012 blog post Holden wrote about the GiveWell approach being purposefully health and life-based as this is possibly the best way to give agency to distant communities: https://blog.givewell.org/2012/04/12/how-not-to-be-a-white-in-shining-armor/
And they also have a note somewhere on their website about flow-on effects: GiveWell assumes the flow on effects from giving health/life-saving interventions is probably more cost effective than flow on effects from infrastructural interventions which end up improving health and lifespan.
In response to your comment about deferring to a hypothetical community who gives no life-saving intervention for people under 9 years old: if people had good access to information and resources, and their group decision was to focus a large amount of resource on saving lives of extremely old people on the community … Maybe we should do this? I say this because I can think of reasons a community might want grandparents around for another few years (e.g. to pass on language, culture, knowledge) instead of more children at the moment. I think, if a community was at massive risk of loss of culture, the donors’ insistence on saving young lives over the elders’ lives could be incredibly frustrating.
Not saying this to make any conclusions, but just as a counter-example that introduces a little more nuance than “morally wrong to let under 9yo’s die unnecessarily.”
If I had to deal with the situation as was proposed here:
At the end of the day, I tend towards individual fairness over group/cultural fairness, primarily because I don’t care too much for cultural essentialism/cultural preservation efforts. Thus I would choose to try to save the children first, then move on to the elderly. Yes, it will be incredibly frustrating, but then strife will always exist between group non-discrimination and individual fairness, I just try to resolve the strife in favor of one side.
Yeah, interesting. I definitely disagree with you on whose preferences should be met in this case, and suspect there are some situations where I would agree with you, but would require a lot of context to understand exactly where the lone of agree/disagree is.