What is the role of risk aversion in your recommendations? You recommended Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB), but not Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC). However, your estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of LIC of 343suffering-adjusted days (SADs) averted per $ is 34.3 (= 343⁄10) times your estimate for SVB of 10 SADs averted per $. My understanding is that you are more uncertain about LIC’s cost-effectiveness. From your review of LIC:
However, consistent with their long-term, high-impact, low-probability strategy, transformative legal victories have not yet materialized. Therefore, while we recognize their significant potential, our recommendations favored organizations with more established track records of large-scale impact.
From your review of SVB:
Our cost-effectiveness estimate for SVB’s Institutional Meat Reduction program has limited explanatory power and should be interpreted with caution, especially because it relies on ACE’s own rough estimates of animals spared and SADs averted per meal replaced. As a result, we gave only limited weight to this cost-effectiveness analysis in our overall assessment of SVB.
However, I wonder if you would still recommend SVB, but not LIC if your best guess accounting for the considerations covered and not covered in their cost-effectiveness analyses was that donating to LIC was 34.3 times as cost-effective in expectation as donating to SVB.
If risk aversion plays a significant role (for example, if you do not value averting suffering proportionally to its probability, intensity, or duration), you may want to clarify which types of risk aversion you endorse.
ACE’s Evaluations program has a higher bar for uncertainty than Movement Grants, given that (i) the financial and non-financial benefits we direct toward recommended charities are greater, (ii) our target audiences have different expectations, and (iii) the downside risks are higher. These aversions include, but are not limited to, a lack of track record/wins/achievements, variance in possible outcomes, low probability of very high impact, and unknown probabilities.
We thought that LIC’s cost-effectiveness analysis was very promising, but it was ultimately based on hypothetical future scenarios. Unfortunately, we can’t go into further detail because it involves confidential information that, if public, could undermine their impact.
We also want to note that our understanding of a charity’s impact includes their theory of change. In LIC’s case, we considered their current track record of legal wins to be only moderate evidence that their theory of change would play out as intended, compared to SVB, where we were more convinced.
Thanks for clarifying! Should your aversion to variance in possible outcomes be a reason for not recommending the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP)? The probability of shrimps being sentient presented in Bob Fischer’s book about comparing welfare across species is 40 %. For a 75 % chance that SWP benefits shrimps conditional on their sentience, the probability of SWP benefiting shrimps is 30 % (= 0.40*0.75). However, the benefits to shrimp could be negligible even if they are sentient. Ambitious Impact’s (AIM’s) estimates of suffering-adjusted days (SADs), which you used to estimate the benefits of SWP, are proportional to the (expected) welfare range, the difference between the maximum and minimum welfare per unit time, and their welfare range of shrimps is 19.9 % (= 0.433*0.460) of that of humans for a probability of sentience of 43.3 %, and welfare range conditional on sentience of 46.0 % of that of humans (you can ask Vicky Cox for the sheet). However, I would say a much better best guess could be10^-6 of that of humans, the ratio between the number of neurons of shrimps and humans. For a probability of significant benefits conditional on their sentience lower than 1⁄3, the probability of SWP significantly benefiting shrimps would be lower than 10 % (= 0.3*1/3). I would also say the probability of SWP significantly benefiting shrimps is very uncertain, and you mentioned an aversion to unknown probabilities.
What is the role of risk aversion in your recommendations? You recommended Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB), but not Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC). However, your estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of LIC of 343 suffering-adjusted days (SADs) averted per $ is 34.3 (= 343⁄10) times your estimate for SVB of 10 SADs averted per $. My understanding is that you are more uncertain about LIC’s cost-effectiveness. From your review of LIC:
From your review of SVB:
However, I wonder if you would still recommend SVB, but not LIC if your best guess accounting for the considerations covered and not covered in their cost-effectiveness analyses was that donating to LIC was 34.3 times as cost-effective in expectation as donating to SVB.
If risk aversion plays a significant role (for example, if you do not value averting suffering proportionally to its probability, intensity, or duration), you may want to clarify which types of risk aversion you endorse.
ACE’s Evaluations program has a higher bar for uncertainty than Movement Grants, given that (i) the financial and non-financial benefits we direct toward recommended charities are greater, (ii) our target audiences have different expectations, and (iii) the downside risks are higher. These aversions include, but are not limited to, a lack of track record/wins/achievements, variance in possible outcomes, low probability of very high impact, and unknown probabilities.
We thought that LIC’s cost-effectiveness analysis was very promising, but it was ultimately based on hypothetical future scenarios. Unfortunately, we can’t go into further detail because it involves confidential information that, if public, could undermine their impact.
We also want to note that our understanding of a charity’s impact includes their theory of change. In LIC’s case, we considered their current track record of legal wins to be only moderate evidence that their theory of change would play out as intended, compared to SVB, where we were more convinced.
Thanks for clarifying! Should your aversion to variance in possible outcomes be a reason for not recommending the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP)? The probability of shrimps being sentient presented in Bob Fischer’s book about comparing welfare across species is 40 %. For a 75 % chance that SWP benefits shrimps conditional on their sentience, the probability of SWP benefiting shrimps is 30 % (= 0.40*0.75). However, the benefits to shrimp could be negligible even if they are sentient. Ambitious Impact’s (AIM’s) estimates of suffering-adjusted days (SADs), which you used to estimate the benefits of SWP, are proportional to the (expected) welfare range, the difference between the maximum and minimum welfare per unit time, and their welfare range of shrimps is 19.9 % (= 0.433*0.460) of that of humans for a probability of sentience of 43.3 %, and welfare range conditional on sentience of 46.0 % of that of humans (you can ask Vicky Cox for the sheet). However, I would say a much better best guess could be 10^-6 of that of humans, the ratio between the number of neurons of shrimps and humans. For a probability of significant benefits conditional on their sentience lower than 1⁄3, the probability of SWP significantly benefiting shrimps would be lower than 10 % (= 0.3*1/3). I would also say the probability of SWP significantly benefiting shrimps is very uncertain, and you mentioned an aversion to unknown probabilities.