I understand the sentiment but disagree. For global health interventions, cost effectiveness analysis is doable and adds value. Most CE orgs and other aspirational cost effective orgs like my own have done some form of CEA as part of making their case
For Whytham Abby and Harry potter fan fiction that may be more difficult to do.
Although I think there should be far more CEAs across all fields. Like for Harry Potter giveout I would have done something like (obviously this is full hack)...
DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying this actual BOTEC is meaningful, I’m just giving it as an in example that these kind of CEAs are possible.
650 Students given books, I assume that of these 100-300 of these students will read them, and 0-5 will change their life trajectory towards giving or altruism to a small degree counterfactually due to the book. 0 to 2 will give 50,000 to 500,000 more over their lifetime and 0 to 5 will change their life direction and save 1 more life than they would have otherwise.
So cost effectivenss might be between 0 x $50,000 = 0 raised + 0 x 1 = 0 lives saved and 500,000 x 2 = 1,000,000 dollars and 1 x 5 lives saved.
So the book handout might be somewhere between completely useless and raising $1,000,000 extra dollars for EA causes and saving 5 lives (I don’t stand by this analysis, it’s just a brief hack)
So compared with saving 6 children with nets it might be comparable-ish based on my 2 minute math. This kind of math might also have been done and not shared in the grant review!
Again, a disclaimer that I’m not trying to justify the grant here, just mocking up the basic mechanics of the kind of botec you could do.
I’m fine with CEA’s, my problem is that this seems to have been trotted out selectively in order to dismiss Anthony’s proposal in particular, even though EA discusses and sometimes funds proposals that make the supposed “16 extra deaths” look like peanuts by comparison.
The Wytham abbey project has been sold, so we know it’s overall impact was to throw something like a million pounds down the drain (when you factor in stamp duty, etc). I think it’s deeply unfair to frame Anthony’s proposal as possibly letting 16 people die, while not doing the same for Wytham, which (in this framing) definitively let 180 people die.
Also, the cost effectiveness analysis hasn’t even been done yet! I find it kind of suspect that this is getting such a hostile response when EA insiders propose ineffective projects all the time with much less pushback. There are also differing factors here worth considering, like helping EA build links with grassroots orgs, indirectly spreading EA ideas to organisers in the third world, etc. EA spends plenty of money on “community building”, would this not count?
The HPMOR thing is a side note, but I vehemently disagree with your analysis, and the initial grant, because the counterfactual in this case is not doing nothing, it’s sending them a link to the website where HPMOR is hosted for free for everybody, which costs nothing. Plus HPMOR only tangentially advocates for EA causes anyway! A huge number of people have read HPMOR, and only a small proportion have gone on to become EA members. Your numbers are absurdly overoptimistic.
Disclaimer I don’t know much about the HPMOR thing—for example I didn’t know it only tangentially plugged EA. I was just giving a 2 minute example of the kind of analysis you might do (obviously with better info then I had), and that it is possible to do that CEA. I wasn’t trying to justify the grant at all my apologies if it came across that way!
Also I don’t think this post is getting that hostile a response?
I think everyone agrees that it’s harder to do cost effectiveness analysis for speculative projects than it is to do it for disease prevention, and that any longtermist cost/benefit analysis is going to have a lot more scope for debate on the numbers. But it is also harder to do cost effectiveness analysis in terms of lives saved for other GHD measures like rural poverty alleviation (though if this project affects malnutrition it might actually be amenable to GiveWell style analysis. )
I think ultimately if every marginal dollar proposed to be spent on GHD has to demonstrate reasoning as to why its as good as or better than AMF at the margin, it’s only fair to demand similar transparency for community building and longtermist initiatives (with an acceptance of wider error bars).[1] Especially since there’s a marked tendency for the former to be outsider organizations and the latter to be organizations within the EA network...
I make no comment either way about the particular viability of this project. And I’d actually be quite interested in your more detailed thoughts on it, as whilst you’re not an expert on farming you clearly have in depth knowledge of Uganda.
At the risk of boring on about Wytham, the bar seemed to be that it was net positive given lots of OpenPhil money was being directed to conference venues, not that it was better than buying a marginally inferior venue for a lot less money and donating the rest to initiatives that could save lives
This comment shows the challenge of the agreevote/disagreevote system:
I agree with the direction toward showing more cost-effectiveness analyses in other fields versus reducing their importance in global health/development.
I do not think the fanfic CEA is plausible, even at the 2-minute level, for some of the reasons identified by @titotal. That being said, the people funding fanfic distribution were probably interested in “people drawn to AI safety / x-risk mitigation” as their outcome variable / theory of impact, not donations made or individual lives saved. So the BOTEC is simultaneous too kind to and too demanding of that project.
Perhaps then in this case you just don’t agree or disagree when it’s 50/50? Looking at it now I also don’t think my little CEA is plausible, I do think it perhaps got taken a bit too seriously though :D!
Yeah, I didn’t vote either way, which is fine. I’m just confused about how to interpret the votes of those who did! Did they agree/disagree on both parts, or vote based on which part they thought was primary?
I understand the sentiment but disagree. For global health interventions, cost effectiveness analysis is doable and adds value. Most CE orgs and other aspirational cost effective orgs like my own have done some form of CEA as part of making their case
For Whytham Abby and Harry potter fan fiction that may be more difficult to do.
Although I think there should be far more CEAs across all fields. Like for Harry Potter giveout I would have done something like (obviously this is full hack)...
DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying this actual BOTEC is meaningful, I’m just giving it as an in example that these kind of CEAs are possible.
650 Students given books, I assume that of these 100-300 of these students will read them, and 0-5 will change their life trajectory towards giving or altruism to a small degree counterfactually due to the book. 0 to 2 will give 50,000 to 500,000 more over their lifetime and 0 to 5 will change their life direction and save 1 more life than they would have otherwise.
So cost effectivenss might be between 0 x $50,000 = 0 raised + 0 x 1 = 0 lives saved and 500,000 x 2 = 1,000,000 dollars and 1 x 5 lives saved.
So the book handout might be somewhere between completely useless and raising $1,000,000 extra dollars for EA causes and saving 5 lives (I don’t stand by this analysis, it’s just a brief hack)
So compared with saving 6 children with nets it might be comparable-ish based on my 2 minute math. This kind of math might also have been done and not shared in the grant review!
Again, a disclaimer that I’m not trying to justify the grant here, just mocking up the basic mechanics of the kind of botec you could do.
I’m fine with CEA’s, my problem is that this seems to have been trotted out selectively in order to dismiss Anthony’s proposal in particular, even though EA discusses and sometimes funds proposals that make the supposed “16 extra deaths” look like peanuts by comparison.
The Wytham abbey project has been sold, so we know it’s overall impact was to throw something like a million pounds down the drain (when you factor in stamp duty, etc). I think it’s deeply unfair to frame Anthony’s proposal as possibly letting 16 people die, while not doing the same for Wytham, which (in this framing) definitively let 180 people die.
Also, the cost effectiveness analysis hasn’t even been done yet! I find it kind of suspect that this is getting such a hostile response when EA insiders propose ineffective projects all the time with much less pushback. There are also differing factors here worth considering, like helping EA build links with grassroots orgs, indirectly spreading EA ideas to organisers in the third world, etc. EA spends plenty of money on “community building”, would this not count?
The HPMOR thing is a side note, but I vehemently disagree with your analysis, and the initial grant, because the counterfactual in this case is not doing nothing, it’s sending them a link to the website where HPMOR is hosted for free for everybody, which costs nothing. Plus HPMOR only tangentially advocates for EA causes anyway! A huge number of people have read HPMOR, and only a small proportion have gone on to become EA members. Your numbers are absurdly overoptimistic.
I also probably “disagree” with my analysis
Disclaimer I don’t know much about the HPMOR thing—for example I didn’t know it only tangentially plugged EA. I was just giving a 2 minute example of the kind of analysis you might do (obviously with better info then I had), and that it is possible to do that CEA. I wasn’t trying to justify the grant at all my apologies if it came across that way!
Also I don’t think this post is getting that hostile a response?
I think everyone agrees that it’s harder to do cost effectiveness analysis for speculative projects than it is to do it for disease prevention, and that any longtermist cost/benefit analysis is going to have a lot more scope for debate on the numbers. But it is also harder to do cost effectiveness analysis in terms of lives saved for other GHD measures like rural poverty alleviation (though if this project affects malnutrition it might actually be amenable to GiveWell style analysis. )
I think ultimately if every marginal dollar proposed to be spent on GHD has to demonstrate reasoning as to why its as good as or better than AMF at the margin, it’s only fair to demand similar transparency for community building and longtermist initiatives (with an acceptance of wider error bars).[1] Especially since there’s a marked tendency for the former to be outsider organizations and the latter to be organizations within the EA network...
I make no comment either way about the particular viability of this project. And I’d actually be quite interested in your more detailed thoughts on it, as whilst you’re not an expert on farming you clearly have in depth knowledge of Uganda.
At the risk of boring on about Wytham, the bar seemed to be that it was net positive given lots of OpenPhil money was being directed to conference venues, not that it was better than buying a marginally inferior venue for a lot less money and donating the rest to initiatives that could save lives
This comment shows the challenge of the agreevote/disagreevote system:
I agree with the direction toward showing more cost-effectiveness analyses in other fields versus reducing their importance in global health/development.
I do not think the fanfic CEA is plausible, even at the 2-minute level, for some of the reasons identified by @titotal. That being said, the people funding fanfic distribution were probably interested in “people drawn to AI safety / x-risk mitigation” as their outcome variable / theory of impact, not donations made or individual lives saved. So the BOTEC is simultaneous too kind to and too demanding of that project.
Perhaps then in this case you just don’t agree or disagree when it’s 50/50? Looking at it now I also don’t think my little CEA is plausible, I do think it perhaps got taken a bit too seriously though :D!
Yeah, I didn’t vote either way, which is fine. I’m just confused about how to interpret the votes of those who did! Did they agree/disagree on both parts, or vote based on which part they thought was primary?