Thank you so much for doing this! I guess I will end up using the model for my own cause prioritisation and analyses.
I agree with your conclusion that it is unclear which interventions are more cost-effective among ones decreasing extinction risk and improving animal welfare. However, you also say that:
[Building and using the CCM has confirmed some of our expectations. It has also surprised us in other ways.] The most promising animal welfare interventions have a much higher expected value than the leading global health and development interventions with a somewhat higher level of uncertainty.
I am a little surprised that you found surprising that the most promising animal welfare interventions have a much higher expected value that the leading global health and development interventions. As I commented:
From their [Open Phil’s] worldview diversification 2016 post, “if you value chicken life-years equally to human life-years, this implies that corporate campaigns do about 10,000x as much good per dollar as [GiveWell’s] top charities. If you believe that chickens do not suffer in a morally relevant way, this implies that corporate campaigns do no good”.
Following Open Phil’s 2017 report on consciousness and moral patienthood by Luke Muehlhauser, Luke guessed in 2018 a chicken life-year to be worth 0.00005 to 10 human life-years. Pairing this with the above would suggest corporate campaigns for chicken welfare to be 0.5 (= 0.00005*10000) to 100 k (= 10*10000) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
Assuming a loguniform distribution for the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare as a fraction of the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities ranging from 0.5 to 100 k, there would be 75.5 % (= (ln(10^5) - ln(10))/(ln(10^5) - ln(0.5))) chance of corporate campaigns being at least 10 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
You’re right! That wasn’t particularly surprising in light of our moral weights. Thanks for clarifying: I did a poor job of separating the confirmations from the surprising results.
Thank you so much for doing this! I guess I will end up using the model for my own cause prioritisation and analyses.
I agree with your conclusion that it is unclear which interventions are more cost-effective among ones decreasing extinction risk and improving animal welfare. However, you also say that:
I am a little surprised that you found surprising that the most promising animal welfare interventions have a much higher expected value that the leading global health and development interventions. As I commented:
Elaborating on the above, I commented:
You’re right! That wasn’t particularly surprising in light of our moral weights. Thanks for clarifying: I did a poor job of separating the confirmations from the surprising results.