Thanks for this post, Stijn! I strongly upvoted it.
based on a few hundred deep questioning conversations I had over the past 10 years
Wow. Thanks for your efforts to contribute to a better world!
For an older example of a deep questioning conversation (2017), see here
This links to the present post.
You can do it at times when you are not able to earn some extra money (which you can donate to top-effective charities), for example on a free day or when you go shopping in town, so it has a low opportunity cost.
I do not think there are exactly such times during which one is not able to earn extra money. Even if one’s income does not directly depend on workload, in expectation, working more or resting will tend to increase the chance of having a higher income in the future.
The extent to which the outreach trades off with working time can be important because the best animal welfare interventions are super cost-effective. I estimated one can neutralise the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person donating 0.269 $ to The Humane League (THL). Assuming for simplicity that the harm is proportional to the consumption per capita of chicken, which is 2.15 (= 36.6/17.0) times as high in high income countries as globally, one would have to donate 0.578 $ (= 0.269*2.15) to THL to neutralise the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person in high income countries. The mean net income in the European Union in 2023 was 31.4 k$/year (= 28.2*10^3*1.08*1.03), or 17.3 $/h (= 31.4*10^3/(50*36.4)). If the counterfactual of the outreach was earning this, and one donates marginal earnings to THL, each 2.00 min (= 0.578/17.3*60) of outreach would have to reduce harm by as much as no consumption of farmed animals for 1 year.
That said, I can actually see myself trying your approach in meetups I would have anyway.
Please let me know how I could have earned extra money at those times when I do deep questioning ;-) I think it’s really difficult, if you have some spare time today, to say: I’m going to earn some extra money. But I can imagine spending that spare time to learn some new skills and then use those acquired skill to switch career to a higher paying job. But to me, that’s a difficult strategy. So to me, deep questioning public outreach seems to have a low opportunity cost.
That 0.6$ seems to me very low. The annual revenue of THL is almost $20M, so THL neutralizes the harm caused by 30 million people?
One conservative estimate of the effectiveness of deep questioning
-10% of people reduce meat consumption after the conversation
-for those reducers: 10% reduction of animal products (especially from the small animals)
-reduction fades out after 10 years.
So 10 conversations reduces the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person.
That 0.6$ seems to me very low. The annual revenue of THL is almost $20M, so THL neutralizes the harm caused by 30 million people?
It is supposedly more than 30 M people in high income countries, because I used the marginal cost-effectiveness (of 15.0 DALY/$), which will tend to be lower than the ratio between impact and cost due to diminishing returns. Are there any factors going into my estimate which seem especially off to you?
So 10 conversations reduces the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person.
Thanks for the Fermi estimate! If each conversation optimistically takes 6 min (I am trying to cancel out your supposedly pessimistic assumption), 10 would take 60 min. So the the corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 30.0 (= 60⁄2.00) times as cost-effective if the outreach costed 17.3 $/h.
Please let me know how I could have earned extra money at those times when I do deep questioning ;-) I think it’s really difficult
To clarify, I think it is worth having the opportunity cost in mind, but I am not claiming it is sufficiently high for you to decrease your outreach.
Thanks for this post, Stijn! I strongly upvoted it.
Wow. Thanks for your efforts to contribute to a better world!
This links to the present post.
I do not think there are exactly such times during which one is not able to earn extra money. Even if one’s income does not directly depend on workload, in expectation, working more or resting will tend to increase the chance of having a higher income in the future.
The extent to which the outreach trades off with working time can be important because the best animal welfare interventions are super cost-effective. I estimated one can neutralise the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person donating 0.269 $ to The Humane League (THL). Assuming for simplicity that the harm is proportional to the consumption per capita of chicken, which is 2.15 (= 36.6/17.0) times as high in high income countries as globally, one would have to donate 0.578 $ (= 0.269*2.15) to THL to neutralise the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person in high income countries. The mean net income in the European Union in 2023 was 31.4 k$/year (= 28.2*10^3*1.08*1.03), or 17.3 $/h (= 31.4*10^3/(50*36.4)). If the counterfactual of the outreach was earning this, and one donates marginal earnings to THL, each 2.00 min (= 0.578/17.3*60) of outreach would have to reduce harm by as much as no consumption of farmed animals for 1 year.
That said, I can actually see myself trying your approach in meetups I would have anyway.
Please let me know how I could have earned extra money at those times when I do deep questioning ;-) I think it’s really difficult, if you have some spare time today, to say: I’m going to earn some extra money. But I can imagine spending that spare time to learn some new skills and then use those acquired skill to switch career to a higher paying job. But to me, that’s a difficult strategy. So to me, deep questioning public outreach seems to have a low opportunity cost.
That 0.6$ seems to me very low. The annual revenue of THL is almost $20M, so THL neutralizes the harm caused by 30 million people?
One conservative estimate of the effectiveness of deep questioning
-10% of people reduce meat consumption after the conversation
-for those reducers: 10% reduction of animal products (especially from the small animals)
-reduction fades out after 10 years.
So 10 conversations reduces the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person.
It is supposedly more than 30 M people in high income countries, because I used the marginal cost-effectiveness (of 15.0 DALY/$), which will tend to be lower than the ratio between impact and cost due to diminishing returns. Are there any factors going into my estimate which seem especially off to you?
Thanks for the Fermi estimate! If each conversation optimistically takes 6 min (I am trying to cancel out your supposedly pessimistic assumption), 10 would take 60 min. So the the corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 30.0 (= 60⁄2.00) times as cost-effective if the outreach costed 17.3 $/h.
To clarify, I think it is worth having the opportunity cost in mind, but I am not claiming it is sufficiently high for you to decrease your outreach.