Thanks for the clarifying comment, Stan! I strongly upvoted it.
As a preliminary note, I think it makes a lot of sense to give feedback on analyses like yours privately, but I wonder whether it is worth for me to invest significant time in writing comments like mine above. It seems that they are often downvoted, and that I can sometimes tell before hand when this is going to be case. So, to the extent karma is a good proxy for what people value, I wonder whether I am just spending signicant time on doing something which has little value. In this particular case, I am still guessing it was worth it because, even if it had negligible value to the public, it was still relevant for my own cause prioritisation (and making it public had little cost).
For what is worth, I was already aware of the arguments you mentioned, and directionally agree with all the points you make. I just think their effect is not as strong as you do, so I maintain my adjustments are warranted.
In any case:
[...] even if not, I estimate it [ASRS policy advocacy] is only 1.61 % (= 0.242/15.0) as cost-effective as corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the ones supported by The Humane League (THL). So I think donors who value 1 unit of welfare in humans as much as 1 unit of welfare in animals (i.e. who reject speciesism) had better donate to THL instead of an organisation doing ASRS policy advocacy.
I would be curious to know CEARCH’s position on animal welfare. I noted there are 0 animal welfare causes in your long list of 588. Their absence is especially surprising given the presence of causes like sporting excellence and freedom of hobby.
Could you comment on the 2 points above?
A global 1% mortality event in 1815 may not have even been noticed.
Agreed, so I adjusted for underreporting in my calculations. I considered the actual mortality to be 13.9 (= 1⁄0.0721) times as high as the reported one.
Cooling damage is highly superlinear.
Agreed, so I adjusted less strongly your mortality rates for more severe coolings:
I wonder whether it is worth for me to invest significant time in writing comments like mine above. It seems that they are often downvoted, and that I can sometimes tell before hand when this is going to be case. So, to the extent karma is a good proxy for what people value, I wonder whether I am just spending signicant time on doing something which has little value.
I am sad to see your comment getting downvotes as I do think it contributes a lot of value to the discussion.
I can guess why you might be getting them. You often respond to cause-prio posts with “what about corporate campaigns for chicken welfare?”, and many people now probably switch off and downvote when they see this. Maybe just keep the chicken comparison to one line and link to your original post/comment?
Also, you comment is 3200 words long—about 3x longer than the actual post. I think a 200-word summary-of-the-comment with bullet points would be really useful for readers who have only read this post and are unable to pick up the finer points of your modeling critique.
On animal welfare
I think that if you adopt RP’s moral weight estimates and reject speciesism, it is almost inevitable that the most cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing will be animal welfare interventions.
My understanding is that CEARCH is not against evaluating animal welfare interventions in principle, but in practice we are not doing so while comparisons between human and animal welfare remain so shaky. Our research direction is also partly driven by the value of information, ie. how much resources we can plausibly redirect and the impact this will have. Maybe this is too deterministic of me, but I feel that banging the drum about corporate chicken campaigns will only open so many wallets.
Thanks for the clarifying comment, Stan! I strongly upvoted it.
As a preliminary note, I think it makes a lot of sense to give feedback on analyses like yours privately, but I wonder whether it is worth for me to invest significant time in writing comments like mine above. It seems that they are often downvoted, and that I can sometimes tell before hand when this is going to be case. So, to the extent karma is a good proxy for what people value, I wonder whether I am just spending signicant time on doing something which has little value. In this particular case, I am still guessing it was worth it because, even if it had negligible value to the public, it was still relevant for my own cause prioritisation (and making it public had little cost).
For what is worth, I was already aware of the arguments you mentioned, and directionally agree with all the points you make. I just think their effect is not as strong as you do, so I maintain my adjustments are warranted.
In any case:
Could you comment on the 2 points above?
Agreed, so I adjusted for underreporting in my calculations. I considered the actual mortality to be 13.9 (= 1⁄0.0721) times as high as the reported one.
Agreed, so I adjusted less strongly your mortality rates for more severe coolings:
I am sad to see your comment getting downvotes as I do think it contributes a lot of value to the discussion.
I can guess why you might be getting them. You often respond to cause-prio posts with “what about corporate campaigns for chicken welfare?”, and many people now probably switch off and downvote when they see this. Maybe just keep the chicken comparison to one line and link to your original post/comment?
Also, you comment is 3200 words long—about 3x longer than the actual post. I think a 200-word summary-of-the-comment with bullet points would be really useful for readers who have only read this post and are unable to pick up the finer points of your modeling critique.
On animal welfare
I think that if you adopt RP’s moral weight estimates and reject speciesism, it is almost inevitable that the most cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing will be animal welfare interventions.
My understanding is that CEARCH is not against evaluating animal welfare interventions in principle, but in practice we are not doing so while comparisons between human and animal welfare remain so shaky. Our research direction is also partly driven by the value of information, ie. how much resources we can plausibly redirect and the impact this will have. Maybe this is too deterministic of me, but I feel that banging the drum about corporate chicken campaigns will only open so many wallets.
Thanks for the feedback on the votes and animal welfare comparison!