I think personally preventing extinction for most individuals working to do so, or having an impact on how many animals are farmed through your own diet alone have similar or lower probabilities of success.
Maybe “small” donations to some of the large animal welfare charities, too.
Maybe it’s millions-to-one if you take the end goal (e.g. x-safety or abolition of factory farming), but most people are aiming at accomplishing things in smaller increments, that overall build up to the ultimate success. This action of buying lottery tickets is not cumulative in the same way. It’s 0 or 1 (and overwhelmingly likely to be 0). Donating what would be spent on tickets to EA charities (or otherwise enabling direct work) seems better.
I think buying many lottery tickets is similar to many people working on x-risks, but if you’re passing your donations/grants through a lottery first, you might significantly decrease the probability of making any difference with that money. In some cases, you might not, if you can almost guarantee an impact with the extra money. I could imagine it not changing the probability that the money helps farmed animals too much if the alternative was donating directly to a big animal charity.
OTOH, people should worry about decreasing marginal returns with the money.
I think personally preventing extinction for most individuals working to do so, or having an impact on how many animals are farmed through your own diet alone have similar or lower probabilities of success.
Maybe “small” donations to some of the large animal welfare charities, too.
Maybe it’s millions-to-one if you take the end goal (e.g. x-safety or abolition of factory farming), but most people are aiming at accomplishing things in smaller increments, that overall build up to the ultimate success. This action of buying lottery tickets is not cumulative in the same way. It’s 0 or 1 (and overwhelmingly likely to be 0). Donating what would be spent on tickets to EA charities (or otherwise enabling direct work) seems better.
I think buying many lottery tickets is similar to many people working on x-risks, but if you’re passing your donations/grants through a lottery first, you might significantly decrease the probability of making any difference with that money. In some cases, you might not, if you can almost guarantee an impact with the extra money. I could imagine it not changing the probability that the money helps farmed animals too much if the alternative was donating directly to a big animal charity.
OTOH, people should worry about decreasing marginal returns with the money.
The choice is:
a) Donate $2000 to an EA charity of your choice.
b) Spend $2000 on lottery tickets with a 99.9% chance of losing[1], but an expected value of, at best, ~$2200.
Who is choosing b?
This is only factoring in the ≥$50k prizes, but I don’t think it changes the argument that much factoring in the lower prizes.