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
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