No problem. I probably seem that way also.
David Hammerle
Karma: 23
I think I understand your perspective, but I think there are two different ways of looking at any particular charity opportunity, and that is only one of them. I think each applies in different circumstances to different extents, and it can be difficult to tell how much each applies, depending on circumstances.
The first way of looking at it is the one that you described, where some other organization has already paid for its part of the health intervention, and would have paid for it regardless of if the donor donated any money. In that case, it might seem reasonable to me to mostly ignore the costs from the other organization, and only look at the cost paid by the donor when doing the CEA.
One example of where I think this would be applicable is when looking at a health intervention that has diminishing returns. For example, looking at AMF, probably the places where the LLINs will be most effective and least costly to distribute tend to receive them first. This could easily result in later LLINs being less cost-effective than earlier LLINs, so it might make sense to just look at what kind of impacting the donor is adding rather than looking at the total cost and impact of AMF.
The second way of looking at it is that the costs paid by the other organization were necessary for the health intervention, so we should account for those costs, although we would also need to somehow account for any other impacts from what the other organization spent. I think this way of looking at it is particularly valid if the money from the other organization will only be spent if the donor makes the donor’s donation, but I don’t think that’s a requirement.
For example, on the AMF website, it says “100% of public donations buys long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs). An LLIN costs US$2.00.” But there are actually many other necessary costs that need to be paid in order for LLINs to be effective, like the costs of distribution and the costs of figuring out where additional LLINs are needed. So, if we assumed that $2/LLIN was the only cost being paid, we would end up with incorrect cost-effectiveness numbers.
One thing that I think can help decide which perspective to use is the relative cost-effectiveness of the other organization’s impact alone vs. the donor’s donation alone. If the cost-effectiveness of the other organization’s donations is a lot better than the one for the primary donor’s donation, then I think it might be safe not to account for the costs of the other organization’s donations. But, if not, I think it might make sense to account for the other organization’s costs.
For example, let’s say an organization spends $100 on a health intervention that saves one life. Then the donor comes along and pays another $10 to save a second life, but that donor can only do it because of the $100 that the organization already paid. In this case I think the more accurate cost-effectiveness for saving a life would be ($100 + $10) / 2 = $55, rather than just $10. However, if someone is just looking at which charity to donate to rather than trying to figure out realistically how many lives will be saved by a given donation, I could see the applicable number being $10/life. That’s because I could see someone from the charity saying, “Hey, somebody else made this $100 donation, but didn’t give us the other $10, even though it would make the intervention a lot more cost-effective, and it would be great if you could make up the difference.” That seems like a good donation to make. But if someone asked, “How many lives do your donations tend to save?”, I think the $55/life number would be more accurate.
In my case, I think the cost-effectiveness of Lafiya Nigeria is dramatically better than the cost-effectiveness of most global health interventions, even GiveWell’s top charities, so I think accounting for the overhead costs from other organizations might make sense. Although, maybe only in the context of figuring out how far the money will actually go, not necessarily in the context of trying to figure out which charity to donate to.
Also, to some extent, my cost-effectiveness number for Lafiya Nigeria just seems too low to be possible, so I’m trying to figure out what might be wrong with it. Trying to account for costs from organizations like the WHO seems like a promising path for doing that.
Thanks for all the feedback on this. I think I’ve done a lot more useful thinking regarding this as a result.
To some extent, I’m also trying to figure out a good upper limit for myself, so that I have a better idea of how much my donations are really worth. I think if I can increase my confidence that the cost is below some value, I’ll have an easier time motivating myself to avoid spending money so that I can donate more.
Going back to my original post, the only reason I’m concerned with figuring out how to factor in costs from organizations like the World Health Organization, GiveWell, and the Centre for Effective Altruism is because, from an average-based utilitarian theory, I think family planning charities in sub-Saharan Africa can save the life of a kid under 5 years old for somewhere around $275. I would normally guess that costs of organizations like those would be so tiny, that they’re not worth trying to account for. But $275 per life (which might be about $4.50 per DALY) is so cost-effective, that costs from those necessary organizations could have a pretty big impact on the overall cost.
From what I’ve read, health interventions in sub-Saharan Africa often have a cost-effectiveness of about $150 per DALY, or about $50-$80 for one of GiveWell’s top charities. And I think the costs for all of those organizations together might add up to about 5-10% of the money that goes to health interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. If we assume a normal cost per DALY is about $100 and add 5-10% of that to my estimate of Lafiya Nigeria’s cost-effectiveness of $4.50 per DALY, that results in about $10-$15 per DALY, approximately doubling or tripling the cost per DALY.
And it seems like GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses doesn’t account for these kinds of costs. I understand why they wouldn’t want to, since most people looking at their cost-effectiveness analyses are trying to compare one charity to another, not trying to figure out the total cost. But, still I want to try to account for it in my calculations.
I’m not very worried about the moral risk argument, because I’m not so much looking at the question of if the world should become vegan and stop farming animals or not. If society decided to do that, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I think if we decided to include animals in our altruistic goals, I think we would be responsible for all of them, and we may even need to count the welfare of each of them as being as important as each of us, and that seems like it would very expensive in many ways. I think if we really wanted to follow through with that, we would have to basically enslave humanity to that cause, because there are so many more of them than us. To be willing to go along with that, I would want to see much better evidence that animals have consciousness.
And I think there is a good chance that there could be useful research into animal consciousness. I don’t think it’s necessarily easy and it might not happen soon, but I think humanity will figure it out eventually, even if it takes decades. And I think if we wanted to include animals in our altruistic goals, pursuing that more completely (rather than just ending the farming of animals) could have so much more of a positive impact on the welfare of animals that it would be worth waiting.
When it comes to the nature of consciousness, I have fairly specific opinions. I don’t think consciousness is a continuum. I think it’s like an input or output channel. Either it’s connected or not. I think either something has consciousness or it doesn’t. It seems like my perspective on consciousness is one of the major things that separates my perspective on animal welfare from other people’s.
I can appreciate that humans are animals, but I think if an animal doesn’t have consciousness, we don’t need to worry about its welfare because there’s nobody home. Nothing is actually experiencing things from the perspective of that animal. So I think the major question is if they have consciousness or not, and which species.
Thank you for the response.
I’m not looking for absolute certainty regarding animal consciousness, but currently I feel like I still really don’t know if some animals have consciousness or not. Part of the issue is that I have a fairly specific perspective on the nature of consciousness. My perspective suggests that animals could easily lack consciousness while still reacting negatively to physical pain, and showing signs of emotions like happiness and sadness. I think consciousness is something more specific than all of that. I think it means something that a lot of scientists think animals have consciousness, but I’d need a lot more specific information about human brains and animal brains in order to decide that I think it is likely that animals have consciousness. However, if you happen to know of any books, or anything else that I could read or watch, that might give me more information on the subject of animal consciousness, and how the human brain experiences consciousness, I would be interested in that.
I also think you and I might be asking somewhat different questions regarding this.
My main question is if we should include animals in our altruistic goals. And, I think, if we were to do that, we would be responsible for all of them. And, since there are so many more of them than us, I think it would be extremely costly, possibly almost to the point of effectively enslaving humanity to the cause. In order for me to support humanity doing that, I would definitely want to see a lot more proof that animals have consciousness.
On the other hand, if the majority of the society that I live in were to decide to ban farming of animals, because they thought humans shouldn’t harm animals, because they might have consciousness, I would have no problem with going along with that, because it doesn’t seem very costly to me. It might even help the environment and improve nutrition.
If the question were if an altruist should donate money to an animal welfare charity, rather than a charity that helps humans, I would encourage that person to donate to the charity for humans instead, because I don’t think there is clear enough evidence that animals have consciousness. And also because I think we’ll likely get better information in the future that will help us decide that, and also let us more effectively help the animals, if needed.
Do you have any opinions on the other parts of my post?
Do you think if we wanted to include animals, we should consider ourselves responsible for all of them, or do you think maybe we should focus on just not harming them?
Do you think it would be as costly as I think it would be to include the animals in our altruistic goals?
Do you think in order to help them most effectively, it would be useful to figure out which species have consciousness, and how happy or unhappy they tend to be, or not really?
Do you think it might be reasonable to try to change the numbers of animals of different species so that there are more of longer-living, happier species? Or do you think that’s not a good way to improve the welfare of animals?
Yes, because it seems like extinction or near-extinction is a major possibility.
My Perspective on Animal Welfare
I’ve only spoken to a few donors, mostly friends and family. They seemed to especially like the idea of donating to charities that are local to their communities, which most highly cost-effective charities don’t, because they are mostly in low income places, not the USA. They were also concerned with what portion of the donated money would be spent on the charity’s own overhead or administration. And they especially didn’t want to receive spam mail or email from charities as a result of donating.
I suppose my assumption is that I should start with an argument I think would work on myself, if I hadn’t studied global health as much as I have, and then try to figure out what part of that people are resistant to. If I hadn’t studied global health, and wanted to be able to donate effectively without having to study it, I would have been looking for that upper limit with a likelihood of somewhere around 95% that the cost would be below it, even if the upper limit needed to be pretty high in order to reach that level of certainty. So now I’m trying to figure out such an upper limit myself.
My Perspective on Happiness
Thanks for the response, Mo.
I have also spent a significant amount of time looking at cost-effectiveness analyses from GiveWell and I think they’re great. I even wrote a summary of GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analysis for Against Malaria Foundation similar to yours, although I think yours might be better. Mine is on this webpage (https://davehammerlecoder.com/against-malaria-foundation) on my personal website under the section ‘Appendix A: GiveWell’s Cost-Effectiveness Analysis for the Against Malaria Foundation’.
I’m not so much concerned with finding a really accurate measure of the cost per DALY averted or life saved as I am with finding an upper limit, even if the upper limit is pretty far above the estimated average. For example, looking at the Against Malaria Foundation, according to GiveWell, it looks like the upper end cost to save a life would be $14,493, specifically in Chad. If that’s the upper end of GiveWell’s estimate, then it seems like $50,000 cost per life saved might be a pretty reasonable upper limit. Meaning it seems plausible to me that someone could have a 95% confidence that AMF will save a life for less than $50,000 on average.
And if I were a normal person living in a rich country like the US, considering donating some money, saving a life for $50,000 would seem like a really good deal to me. Even if saving that life only averts 35 DALYs, that would translate into ~$1,400 per DALY or ~$4 per day of life added. So if I work an extra 1 hour for about $30/hour, I can extend someone’s life by 7 days, or 168 hours. Which means that for whatever span of time extra I spend working, somebody else gets to live for ~168 times that span time. From an altruistic perspective, that’s an amazingly good deal.
I can also definitely understand that being able to donate money and have it be as cost-effective as it probably is, is very impressive. I’m sure it takes a lot of work from a lot of different people in order to make that possible, including the people at GiveWell and many government entities, both African and not.
But it took me a lot of time and effort, including a bachelor’s degree and a trip to EA Global in Boston to attain the degree of confidence that I currently have in my donations. To me it seems like maybe we could get more normal people interested in donating if it didn’t require as much free time and effort.
I think maybe the reason most people don’t want to donate to these kinds of charities is that they don’t consider charities trustworthy enough. And that seems like a reasonable response to me, especially considering the kinds of ads from African charities pop up in my web browser. But I think if we can get a more consistent message out to more normal people who don’t want to spend as much time on this, donating money to global health charities could become more normal in rich countries like the USA.
I think in order to accomplish that, we need a message that is consistent, and that can be verified by people who decide to really look into it. This way, normal people would have more of a reason to trust highly cost-effective global health charities. And I think a fairly consistent upper limit on the cost to avert a DALY or save the life of a kid under 5 via any given charity could help with this.
I want to account for the money spent by organizations like GiveWell, the WHO, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Open Philanthropy in an attempt to improve these upper limits. I’m especially concerned about these costs because I recently started donating to family planning global health charities. These charities can be viewed as highly cost-effective just by reducing maternal mortality and from various other positive impacts.
But the thing I really like about family planning is that it can avert births.
Each averted birth avoids the 7.4% chance kids in sub-Saharan Africa have of dying before the age of 5 years old.
Looking at it this way, these charities can avert the death of a kid under 5 years old for under $1000, and probably substantially less.
The amount depends on odd things like which utilitarian theory one subscribes to. I go by an average-based utilitarian theory.
If you want more info about that, my post on the EA forum about it is here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/stWZ26t9W7qi3ieJS/why-aren-t-relocated-births-accounted-for-in-costMy problem now is that, at that degree of cost-effectiveness, costs from organizations like the WHO and GiveWell become much more significant relatively. And that’s why I started trying to figure out how to estimate applicable costs from those kinds of organizations.
Estimating Global Health Overhead Costs
I see. And that IS relevant to my original question regarding family planning in settings with high child mortality.
I read the article you posted a link to, but I still think maximizing average welfare is a good policy goal. To me it seems like maximizing average welfare is entirely what altruism is about. The way I think of it is that each person, when the person is created, has an equal chance of being any one person that has ever or will ever live, so we want such possibilities to be as good as possible, on average.
The first issue that the article describes is that if there were only one person enduring a lot of suffering, the world could be improved by adding a bunch more people also enduring a lot of suffering, but a little bit less. To me that seems correct. In that world, having a chance to live a life that involves a little bit less suffering would be an improvement. Also, oddly, those people would be exist in a sort of a backwards world where the objective is not to live as long as possible, but to live as short a life as possible.
The second issue that the article describes is that adding a bunch of lives with positive welfare, but less than the average, could be worse than adding only one life with a very negative amount of welfare. Here, again, this makes sense to me. It’s less of a problem to have a very small chance of living the one really bad life than a much larger chance of living a life that is worse than the average, but not as much worse.
But thanks for the reply. I didn’t realize this was so much in contention. It’s good to know.
Regardless, could you possibly tell me which utilitarian theory you ascribe to, and how it would or wouldn’t apply to my question regarding family planning charities? To me it still seems like avoiding that 7.6% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old is a really great advantage of family planning charities in sub-Saharan Africa.
Thank you for the reply. That seems like a very relevant question.
It wouldn’t, exactly. Most directly, it would reduce the total number of people, past, present, and future, by one. So, for example, if there were 11 total people (past, present, and future) and this one birth was averted, then there would be 10 people. So if we assume that the average total overall welfare of those 10 people are at an ’11′ and the average welfare of the one averted birth was at a ‘1’, the total average welfare with the birth would be a ‘10’ and the total average welfare without the birth would be an ‘11’. So, as long as the total welfare of the person’s birth that wss averted is lower than the average welfare of a person overall excluding the birth, the resulting average would move closer to the average of all those other people and improve.
So, the next question would be what the average welfare of a person is, and if it is higher or lower than the person who’s birth might be averted and by how much. My best guess regarding that would be that technology will continue to advance over time, improving the quality of life and longevity of people as we move into the future, and I think that improvement will continue for a very long time. And, if that is correct, that would bring up the average welfare of people quite a lot, making it useful to avert births in the present in general, and especially births of people that have ~7.3% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old, like people do in sub-Saharan Africa.
What do you think?
I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in my theory of why the average welfare of a person, past, present, and future would be a lot greater than the welfare of a person in sub-Saharan Africa who’s birth might be averted, but I do have a fair amount of confidence that the welfare of a person in sub-Saharan Africa is a lot lower than the average. Do you agree or no?
I also think it’s fairly likely that reducing the current population of the world would be beneficial by default, and that especially reducing population growth in sub-Saharan Africa would be beneficial, both because the population growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa is so much higher than the average for the rest of the world, and because it’s a very low income area where it’s more difficult to economically support a larger population.
Or, if I try to look at it more simply, if the person is never born, then the person doesn’t have that 7.3% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old, which seems good.
I suppose one reason this factor doesn’t tend to be included in cost-effectiveness analyses for family planning charities could just be that it is difficult to explain.
[Question] Why aren’t relocated births accounted for in cost-effectiveness analyses of family planning charities?
MSI Reproductive Choices.
Because through family planning it can shift births from sub-Saharan Africa to circumstances with lower child mortality, probably saving the life of a kid under 5 years old for less than $1,000.
I like charities that facilitate the use of contraceptives in sub-Saharan Africa because it’s a good way to reduce child mortality. And also because I have an average-based utilitarian outlook and I think there will be many people with long lives and high quality of life in the future, so I think reducing population growth in the present will improve the average welfare of humans, past, present, and future.