Bentham's Bulldog

Karma: 5,174

Bentham's Bulldog 11 Jul 2026 16:11 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Which cause area is best?
Hey Vasco, always nice to hear from you!
By growing EA, you mean growing longtermist EA? What makes a donation or career longtermist? If you think the longterm benefits of decreasing the risk of human extinction over the next few 10 years are much larger than its nearterm benefits, you should also think the longterm benefits of animal welfare and global health interventions are much larger than their nearterm benefits?
I think most efforts to grow EA grow both Longtermist and non-Longtermist elements of EA. I do agree though that the Longtermist effects of animal welfare are much bigger than near-term benefits.
If so, how do you compare the longterm benefits in a principled way? You estimated “each dollar [donated to longtermist interventions] increases the number of well-off future people in expectation by 10^26”, and GiveWell’s top charities save around 2*10^-4 lives per $ (= 1/(5*10^3)). However, I assume your best guess for the reduction in existential risks would not have to be less than 2*10^-30 (2*10^-4/10^26) times as high, i.e. less than 2*10^-32 pp (instead of your assumption of 0.01 pp), for you to prioritise global health over longtermist interventions.
Yeah, it’s rough and there’s not a perfect method. You just need to use your best judgment. Taking into account moral uncertainty + interchangeability of money, I wouldn’t be that extreme, but I have some credence that something like that extreme of a tradeoff is right.
Are you aware of any quantitative model suggesting this?
Don’t think we need one for those sorts of things, just like we don’t need a quantitative model suggesting, say, the odds of Vance being the next president are around 30%.
GWWC estimated their giving multiplier in 2025 was 7. You linked to an analysis I did of their giving multiplier in 2023-2024. GWWC estimated this was 6, and I got values of 8 to 9.
Oops, dumb, will fix.
I think we’ve talked elsewhere about why I don’t buy that soil nematodes etc make us totally clueless about which animal welfare interventions are good.

Bentham's Bulldog 11 Jul 2026 16:06 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Evan LaForge’s comment on: Which cause area is best?
Agree with the first point, was going to go into that in more detail, but thought it would just make things more confusing to a general audience. So I just threw that under the bucket of “things covered by the arbitrarily shaving off 18 OOMs.” I talk more about this here https://benthams.substack.com/p/three-mistakes-in-three-mistakes?utm_source=publication-search
Even if you think conditional on preventing a catastrophe there’s a 99.9% chance we’d still go extinct later, before achieving some vast intergalactic future, that’s still only 3 OOMs.

Bentham's Bulldog 11 Jul 2026 16:04 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: simon’s comment on: Which cause area is best?
Certainly non-zero, but less than I’d expect naively. I don’t actually agree that it’s that hard compared to other things that EAs try to make decisions about.

Bentham's Bulldog 11 Jul 2026 16:03 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: AgentMa🔸’s comment on: Which cause area is best?
:)

Bentham's Bulldog 11 Jul 2026 16:03 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 6
in reply to: huw’s comment on: Which cause area is best?
Surely having people work hard to reduce existential risks lowers existential risks relative to them not doing that in expectation. Especially when there are just a few people working on some of the biggest risks.

Which cause area is best?

Bentham's Bulldog10 Jul 2026 15:28 UTC

13 points

16 comments9 min readEA link

Bentham's Bulldog 9 Jul 2026 12:43 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: GoldenSquash’s comment on: Contra Bentham’s Bulldog on the Save Our Bacon Act
2. If it’s pennies per dollar it’s still pennies per item of product, but I’ll change.
3. Remember Craig is supported by the PAC not the 501(c)4. So your money that goes to the 501(c)4 is going wholly to direct issue advocacy (see Leah’s comment as well). Just fwiw this isn’t disputed by the people in the know who are involved.

Bentham's Bulldog 8 Jul 2026 14:19 UTC
2 points
2 ∶ 0
on: The first video from Giving What We Can’s new channel is out now!
It’s so good!

Bentham's Bulldog 7 Jul 2026 23:06 UTC
23 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Contra Bentham’s Bulldog on the Save Our Bacon Act
Re Luna amendment, there was an additional Luna amendment that was trying to remove the SOB provision that died (even though the pesticide one went through). That was what I was referring to. https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/farming-business-management/amendment-to-strike-down-save-our-bacon-act-rejected
You’re right about 2, fixed. I didn’t see the comment pointing this out as I don’t check comments on posts more than a day after posting (otherwise I’d have way too many to check as I get a lot of comments).
Re 3, Didn’t mean to use the word PAC in the comment, was an error (not sure if I was confused at time or just a typo.). But the ampa themselves—not the PAC—are the things the donation link was to, and they’re just defeating sob. Other stuff the PAC is doing is also to defeat SOB (Craig is a big opponent of it).