Itās worth noting that CE does consider cross-cause effects in all the interventions we consider/ārecommend, including possible animal effects and WAS effects.
I have searched for āanimalā in all the 16 reports of CEās global health and development recommendations, and I did not find any discussion that extending human lives would increase the consumption of animals. In contrast, decreasing the birth rate is highlighted as being a positive externality in terms of animal welfare in 3 of the 16 reports:
āA lower birth rate is also associated with fewer CO2 emissions and a gain of welfare points due to averted consumption of animal productsā (here).
āFinally we believe this intervention could have important positive externalities on animal welfare. Increasing uptake for contraception and preventing unintended births would reduce family sizes and their overall consumption in animal products. A lifetime of consumption of these products leads to an considerable amount of suffering for animals raised in factory farms. Preventing unintended births therefore indirectly decreases demand for these products, thereby decreasing the number of animals raised for food. We have modeled these effects using CEĢs welfare points system in our CEAā (here).
āWe found that this intervention has two kinds of externalities. It positively affects climate change, with three tonnes of CO2 emissions per dollar spent. It also positively affects animal welfare, with 377 welfare points gained per dollar spentā (here).
I think CEās reports should mention the negative externalities on farmed animals due to extending human lives, considering CEās reports on family planning discuss the positive externalities on farmed animals due to decreasing fertility.
The last bullet above also illustrates your global health and development recommendations could be net harmful based on your own numbers. I think 100 welfare points (WPs) are roughly as good as averting 1 DALY (because 100 WPs is the maximum total welfare possible), so 377 WP/ā$ of positive externalities respect around 3.77 DALY/ā$. This is 379 (= 3.77/ā0.00994) times the cost-effectiveness of GiveWellās top charities of 0.00994 DALY/ā$, i.e. the effects on animals are way larger than those on humans according to CEās report. This claims the effects on animals are positive due to decreasing population size, so it directly follows that saving lives (increasing population size) has negative effects on animals, and the negative effects on animals would be much larger than those on humans (trusting the numbers of the report).
Quick response below as I am limiting my time on the EA forum nowadays. I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it. Written about 10 years ago, but still one of the better pieces on this IMO is David Roodmanās report commissioned by GiveWell. In addition, our welfare points are far less certain estimates when compared to our global health estimates. This matters a lot, e.g., I would regress weaker CEAs by over 1 order of magnitude even from the same organization using similar methods, and it could be 3+ orders of magnitude across different orgs and methods. AIM in general is pretty confident e.g. that our best animal charities are not 379x better than a top GiveWell charity even if a first pass CEA might suggest that.
I think for externalities you can get yourself pretty lost down a rabbit hole based on pretty speculative assumptions if you are not careful. We try to think of it a bit like the weight quantitative modeling described here and only include effects that we think are major (e.g. 10%+ effect after uncertainty adjustments on the total impact). We also try to take into account what effects we expect founders considering these ideas would most likely consider to be decision relevant for them.
In general I think we aim to be more modest about moral estimates (particularly when they are uncertain or hotly debated) and try to recommend the peak intervention across different cause areas without making a final verdict. I also think this call in our case does not reduce our impact as there are pretty natural caps to every cause area, e.g., I do not think the animal movement could effectively absorbed 10 new charities a year anyways.
I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it. Written about 10 years ago, but still one of the better pieces on this IMO is David Roodmanās report commissioned by GiveWell.
In places where lifetime births/āwoman has been converging to 2 or lower, saving one childās life should lead parents to avert a birth they would otherwise have. The impact of mortality drops on fertility will be nearly 1:1, so population growth will hardly change. In the increasingly exceptional locales where couples appear not to limit fertility much, such as Niger and Mali, the impact of saving a life on total births will be smaller, and may come about mainly through the biological channel of lactational amenorrhea. Here, mortality-drop-fertility-drop ratios of 1:0.5 and 1:0.33 appear more plausible.
So it looks like saving lives in low income countries decreases fertility, but still increases population size.
I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it. Written about 10 years ago, but still one of the better pieces on this IMO is David Roodmanās report commissioned by GiveWell.
Fair! From Wilde et. al (2020), whose abstract is below (emphasis mine), bednets increase fertility 1 to 3 years after their distribution, but decrease it afterwards, so population initially increases (because bednets also decrease nearterm mortality), but may decrease soon after the distribution.
We examine the extent to which recent declines in child mortality and fertility in SubSaharan Africa can be attributed to insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs). Exploiting the rapid increase in ITNs since the mid-2000s, we employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to identify the causal effect of ITNs on mortality and fertility. We show that the ITN distribution campaigns reduced all-cause child mortality, but surprisingly increased total fertility rates in the short run in spite of reduced desire for children and increased contraceptive use. We explain this paradox in two ways. First, we show evidence for an unexpected increase in fecundity and sexual activity due to the better health environment after the ITN distribution. Second, we show evidence that the effect on fertility is positive only temporarily ā lasting only 1-3 years after the beginning of the ITN distribution programs ā and then becomes negative. Taken together, these results suggest the ITN distribution campaigns may have caused fertility to increase unexpectedly and temporarily, or that these increases may just be a tempo effect ā changes in fertility timing which do not lead to increased completed fertility.
I guess the above partly generalises to other interventions. If saving lives decreases population, it may well decrease welfare (if the increase in welfare per capita is not sufficiently large), thus being harmful under many moral views. Likewise for family planning interventions. CEās theories of change for the family planning interventions of the 3 reports I mentioned above have as outcome decreasing unwanted pregnancies. Are you assuming this is intrinsically valuable, or are you super confident that it leads to higher human welfare (because the increase in human welfare per capita exceeds the decrease in population)? I think the outcome should at least be increasing human welfare (and, ideally, increasing welfare accounting for both humans and animals).
I think for externalities you can get yourself pretty lost down a rabbit hole based on pretty speculative assumptions if you are not careful. We try to think of it a bit like the weight quantitative modeling described here and only include effects that we think are major (e.g. 10%+ effect after uncertainty adjustments on the total impact).
I agree, but I think it is at least worth mentioning the potential negative externalities on animals (without getting lost into rabbit holes). I also think it would be good to justify that the regression of the potential negative externalities is so large that they become negligible, especially if a direct interpretation leads one to conclude they overwhelm the direct effects (as in the report I discussed in the previous comment).
Hi Joey,
I have searched for āanimalā in all the 16 reports of CEās global health and development recommendations, and I did not find any discussion that extending human lives would increase the consumption of animals. In contrast, decreasing the birth rate is highlighted as being a positive externality in terms of animal welfare in 3 of the 16 reports:
āA lower birth rate is also associated with fewer CO2 emissions and a gain of welfare
points due to averted consumption of animal productsā (here).
āFinally we believe this intervention could have important positive externalities on animal welfare. Increasing uptake for contraception and preventing unintended births would reduce family sizes and their overall consumption in animal products.
A lifetime of consumption of these products leads to an considerable amount of suffering for animals raised in factory farms. Preventing unintended births therefore indirectly decreases demand for these products, thereby decreasing the number of animals raised for food. We have modeled these effects using CEĢs welfare points system in our CEAā (here).
āWe found that this intervention has two kinds of externalities. It positively affects climate change, with three tonnes of CO2 emissions per dollar spent. It also positively affects animal welfare, with 377 welfare points gained per dollar spentā (here).
I think CEās reports should mention the negative externalities on farmed animals due to extending human lives, considering CEās reports on family planning discuss the positive externalities on farmed animals due to decreasing fertility.
The last bullet above also illustrates your global health and development recommendations could be net harmful based on your own numbers. I think 100 welfare points (WPs) are roughly as good as averting 1 DALY (because 100 WPs is the maximum total welfare possible), so 377 WP/ā$ of positive externalities respect around 3.77 DALY/ā$. This is 379 (= 3.77/ā0.00994) times the cost-effectiveness of GiveWellās top charities of 0.00994 DALY/ā$, i.e. the effects on animals are way larger than those on humans according to CEās report. This claims the effects on animals are positive due to decreasing population size, so it directly follows that saving lives (increasing population size) has negative effects on animals, and the negative effects on animals would be much larger than those on humans (trusting the numbers of the report).
Hey Vasco,
Quick response below as I am limiting my time on the EA forum nowadays. I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it. Written about 10 years ago, but still one of the better pieces on this IMO is David Roodmanās report commissioned by GiveWell.
In addition, our welfare points are far less certain estimates when compared to our global health estimates. This matters a lot, e.g., I would regress weaker CEAs by over 1 order of magnitude even from the same organization using similar methods, and it could be 3+ orders of magnitude across different orgs and methods. AIM in general is pretty confident e.g. that our best animal charities are not 379x better than a top GiveWell charity even if a first pass CEA might suggest that.
I think for externalities you can get yourself pretty lost down a rabbit hole based on pretty speculative assumptions if you are not careful. We try to think of it a bit like the weight quantitative modeling described here and only include effects that we think are major (e.g. 10%+ effect after uncertainty adjustments on the total impact). We also try to take into account what effects we expect founders considering these ideas would most likely consider to be decision relevant for them.
In general I think we aim to be more modest about moral estimates (particularly when they are uncertain or hotly debated) and try to recommend the peak intervention across different cause areas without making a final verdict. I also think this call in our case does not reduce our impact as there are pretty natural caps to every cause area, e.g., I do not think the animal movement could effectively absorbed 10 new charities a year anyways.
I hope this is helpful!
Best,
Joey
From the abstract of David Roodmanās paper on The Impact of Life-Saving Interventions on Fertility (written in 2014):
So it looks like saving lives in low income countries decreases fertility, but still increases population size.
Thanks, Joey!
Fair! From Wilde et. al (2020), whose abstract is below (emphasis mine), bednets increase fertility 1 to 3 years after their distribution, but decrease it afterwards, so population initially increases (because bednets also decrease nearterm mortality), but may decrease soon after the distribution.
I guess the above partly generalises to other interventions. If saving lives decreases population, it may well decrease welfare (if the increase in welfare per capita is not sufficiently large), thus being harmful under many moral views. Likewise for family planning interventions. CEās theories of change for the family planning interventions of the 3 reports I mentioned above have as outcome decreasing unwanted pregnancies. Are you assuming this is intrinsically valuable, or are you super confident that it leads to higher human welfare (because the increase in human welfare per capita exceeds the decrease in population)? I think the outcome should at least be increasing human welfare (and, ideally, increasing welfare accounting for both humans and animals).
I agree, but I think it is at least worth mentioning the potential negative externalities on animals (without getting lost into rabbit holes). I also think it would be good to justify that the regression of the potential negative externalities is so large that they become negligible, especially if a direct interpretation leads one to conclude they overwhelm the direct effects (as in the report I discussed in the previous comment).