I think one could probably push back on whether 7.5 minutes of pain is a reasonable estimate for a person who dies from malaria
My calculation above assumed 7.56 min (= 0.126*60) of excruciating pain, not just āpainā. Examples of excruciating pain include āscalding and severe burning events [in large parts of the body]ā, or ādismemberment, or extreme tortureā.
To be clear, this isnāt a claim that one shouldnāt donate to SWP, but just that if you do bite the bullet on those numbers above then Iād be keen to see some stronger justification beyond āmy guessā for the BOTEC.
I had to guess the intensity of excruciating pain because there is basically no empirical data informing potential estimates.
We find it unlikely that the most intense pain experienced is of an Excruciating nature as defined in the Welfare Footprint framework, since this category is by definition associated with extreme and unbearable pain, not tolerated even if for a few seconds (a definition which does not coincide with the description of the patients in the studies above).
I agree my guess is speculative. However, if one wants to argue that I overestimated the cost-effectiveness of SWP, one has to provide reasons for my guess overestimating the intensity of excruciating pain. I do not think claiming the results are unintuitive is a good way of doing this. In the context of global health and development, it would not make much sense to dismiss GiveWellās conclusion that one can save a life for 5 k$ just because it is unintuitive that one can save 10 lives for the cost of a BMW. Instead, it would be better to critique the inputs that went into the cost-effectiveness analysis. I know you are doing better than this, because you are critiquing intermediate results instead of the final cost-effectiveness. However, I would say it would be better if you focussed on criticising my assumption that excruciating pain is 100 k times as intense as fully healthy life, or, equivalently, the direct implication that 1 day of fully healthy life is neutralised by 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/ā(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain.
Otherwise I could just copy your entire BOTEC, and change the bottom figure to 1000 instead of 100k, and change your topline results by 2 OOMs.
If you did that, SWP would still be 434 (= 43.4*10^3*10^3/ā(100*10^3)) times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities. I think it is also worth wondering about whether you trully believe that updated intensity. Do you think 1 day of fully healthy life plus 86.4 s (= 0.864*100*10^3/ā100) of scalding or severe burning events in large parts of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture would be neutral?
Ah my bad, I meant extreme pain above there as well, edited to clarify! I agree itās not a super important assumption for the BOTEC in the grand scheme of things though.
However, if one wants to argue that I overestimated the cost-effectiveness of SWP, one has to provide reasons for my guess overestimating the intensity of excruciating pain.
I donāt actually argue for this in either of my comments.[1] Iām just saying that it sounds like if I duplicated your BOTEC, and changed this one speculative parameter to 2 OOMs lower, an observer would have no strong reason to choose one BOTEC over another just by looking at the BOTEC alone. Expressing skepticism of an unproven claim doesnāt produce a symmetrical burden of proof on my end!
Mainly just from a reasoning transparency point of view I think itās worth fleshing out what these assumptions imply and what is grounding these best guesses[2] - in part because I personally want to know how much I should update based on your BOTEC, in part because knowing your reasoning might help me better argue why you might (or might not) have overestimated the intensity of excruciating pain if I knew where your ratio came from (and this is why I was checking the maths and seeing if these were correct, and asking if thereās stronger evidence if so, before critiquing the 100k figure), and because I think other EAF readers, as well as broader, lower-context audience of EA bloggers would benefit from this too.
If you did that, SWP would still be 434 (= 43.4*10^3*10^3/ā(100*10^3)) times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities.
Yeah, I wasnāt making any inter-charity comparisons or claiming that SWP is less cost-effective than GW top charities![3] But since you mention it, it wouldnāt be surprising to me if losing 2 OOMs might make some donors favour other animal welfare charities over SWP for exampleābut again, the primary purpose of these comments is not to litigate which charity is the best, or whether this is better or worse than GW top charities, but mainly just to explore a bit more around what is grounding the BOTEC, so observers have a good sense on how much they should update based on how compelling they find the assumptions /ā reasoning etc.
I think it is also worth wondering about whether you trully believe that updated intensity. Do you think 1 day of fully healthy life plus 86.4 s (= 0.864*100*10^3/ā100) of scalding or severe burning events in large parts of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture would be neutral?
Nope! I would rather give up 1 day of healthy life than 86 seconds of this description. But this varies depending on the timeframe in question.
For example, Iād probably be willing to endure 0.86 seconds of this for 14 minutes of healthy life, and I would definitely endure 0.086 seconds of this than give up 86 seconds of healthy life.
And using your assumptions (ratio of 100k), I would easily rather have 0.8 seconds of this than give up 1 day of healthy life, but if I had to endure many hours of this I could imagine my tradeoffs approaching, or even exceeding 100k.
I do want to mention that I think itās useful that someone is trying to quantify these comparisons, Iām grateful for this work, and I want to emphasise that these are about making the underlying reasoning more transparent /ā understanding the methodology that leads to the assumptions in the BOTEC, rather than any kind of personal criticism!
Thanks, Bruce! Makes sense. I have now clarified in the post that the guesses for the pain intensities come from my personal time trade-offs:
My assumptions for the pain intensities are guesses for my personal time trade-offs, and imply each of the following individually neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life:
Nope! I would rather give up 1 day of healthy life than 86 seconds of this description. But this varies depending on the timeframe in question.
For example, Iād probably be willing to endure 0.86 seconds of this for 14 minutes of healthy life, and I would definitely endure 0.086 seconds of this than give up 86 seconds of healthy life.
0.1 s of excruciating pain intuitively passes very quickly, so I can easily imagine it being less than 100 times as bad as 10 s (= 0.1*100) of excruciating pain. However, I think intuitions like this are misguided holding the intensity of pain constant (i.e. only varying duration). For example, if 1 min in strong pain is 100 times as bad as 1 min in weak pain, and strong and weak pain have each a constant intensity (instead of referring to ranges of intensities), N min in strong pain should be 100 times as bad as N min in weak pain. Saying otherwise implies that the badness of 1 min in strong pain depends on how many minutes of strong pain preceded that 1 min, which contradicts the assumption that strong pain has a constant intensity.
I think 0.1 s of excruciating pain does not feel bad because one wrongly imagines the memory of the pain afterwards, which may not be so bad because 0.1 s is too little time to form memories. In addition, one may imagine that some time is needed to reach the intensity of excruciating pain, such that only a small fraction of the 0.1 s are actually excruciating pain, but the thought experiment requires 0.1 s of actual excruciating pain.
Thanks, Bruce.
My calculation above assumed 7.56 min (= 0.126*60) of excruciating pain, not just āpainā. Examples of excruciating pain include āscalding and severe burning events [in large parts of the body]ā, or ādismemberment, or extreme tortureā.
I had to guess the intensity of excruciating pain because there is basically no empirical data informing potential estimates.
I agree my guess is speculative. However, if one wants to argue that I overestimated the cost-effectiveness of SWP, one has to provide reasons for my guess overestimating the intensity of excruciating pain. I do not think claiming the results are unintuitive is a good way of doing this. In the context of global health and development, it would not make much sense to dismiss GiveWellās conclusion that one can save a life for 5 k$ just because it is unintuitive that one can save 10 lives for the cost of a BMW. Instead, it would be better to critique the inputs that went into the cost-effectiveness analysis. I know you are doing better than this, because you are critiquing intermediate results instead of the final cost-effectiveness. However, I would say it would be better if you focussed on criticising my assumption that excruciating pain is 100 k times as intense as fully healthy life, or, equivalently, the direct implication that 1 day of fully healthy life is neutralised by 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/ā(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain.
If you did that, SWP would still be 434 (= 43.4*10^3*10^3/ā(100*10^3)) times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities. I think it is also worth wondering about whether you trully believe that updated intensity. Do you think 1 day of fully healthy life plus 86.4 s (= 0.864*100*10^3/ā100) of scalding or severe burning events in large parts of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture would be neutral?
Ah my bad, I meant extreme pain above there as well, edited to clarify! I agree itās not a super important assumption for the BOTEC in the grand scheme of things though.
I donāt actually argue for this in either of my comments.[1] Iām just saying that it sounds like if I duplicated your BOTEC, and changed this one speculative parameter to 2 OOMs lower, an observer would have no strong reason to choose one BOTEC over another just by looking at the BOTEC alone. Expressing skepticism of an unproven claim doesnāt produce a symmetrical burden of proof on my end!
Mainly just from a reasoning transparency point of view I think itās worth fleshing out what these assumptions imply and what is grounding these best guesses[2] - in part because I personally want to know how much I should update based on your BOTEC, in part because knowing your reasoning might help me better argue why you might (or might not) have overestimated the intensity of excruciating pain if I knew where your ratio came from (and this is why I was checking the maths and seeing if these were correct, and asking if thereās stronger evidence if so, before critiquing the 100k figure), and because I think other EAF readers, as well as broader, lower-context audience of EA bloggers would benefit from this too.
Yeah, I wasnāt making any inter-charity comparisons or claiming that SWP is less cost-effective than GW top charities![3] But since you mention it, it wouldnāt be surprising to me if losing 2 OOMs might make some donors favour other animal welfare charities over SWP for exampleābut again, the primary purpose of these comments is not to litigate which charity is the best, or whether this is better or worse than GW top charities, but mainly just to explore a bit more around what is grounding the BOTEC, so observers have a good sense on how much they should update based on how compelling they find the assumptions /ā reasoning etc.
Nope! I would rather give up 1 day of healthy life than 86 seconds of this description. But this varies depending on the timeframe in question.
For example, Iād probably be willing to endure 0.86 seconds of this for 14 minutes of healthy life, and I would definitely endure 0.086 seconds of this than give up 86 seconds of healthy life.
And using your assumptions (ratio of 100k), I would easily rather have 0.8 seconds of this than give up 1 day of healthy life, but if I had to endure many hours of this I could imagine my tradeoffs approaching, or even exceeding 100k.
I do want to mention that I think itās useful that someone is trying to quantify these comparisons, Iām grateful for this work, and I want to emphasise that these are about making the underlying reasoning more transparent /ā understanding the methodology that leads to the assumptions in the BOTEC, rather than any kind of personal criticism!
Though I am personally skeptical of a 50:1 shrimp:human tradeoff
E.g. is this the result of a personal time trade-off exercise?
I explicitly say āTo be clear, this isnāt a claim that one shouldnāt donate to SWPā. Iām a big fan of SWP!
Thanks, Bruce! Makes sense. I have now clarified in the post that the guesses for the pain intensities come from my personal time trade-offs:
0.1 s of excruciating pain intuitively passes very quickly, so I can easily imagine it being less than 100 times as bad as 10 s (= 0.1*100) of excruciating pain. However, I think intuitions like this are misguided holding the intensity of pain constant (i.e. only varying duration). For example, if 1 min in strong pain is 100 times as bad as 1 min in weak pain, and strong and weak pain have each a constant intensity (instead of referring to ranges of intensities), N min in strong pain should be 100 times as bad as N min in weak pain. Saying otherwise implies that the badness of 1 min in strong pain depends on how many minutes of strong pain preceded that 1 min, which contradicts the assumption that strong pain has a constant intensity.
I think 0.1 s of excruciating pain does not feel bad because one wrongly imagines the memory of the pain afterwards, which may not be so bad because 0.1 s is too little time to form memories. In addition, one may imagine that some time is needed to reach the intensity of excruciating pain, such that only a small fraction of the 0.1 s are actually excruciating pain, but the thought experiment requires 0.1 s of actual excruciating pain.