This makes sense, thanks Nick! I suspect the larger positive/negative externality is the long-run effect on the strength of government health systems, which seems likely to be positive for most GW-funded programs (since those programs usually leverage government staff and funding).
Lucas Lewit-Mendes
Karma: 539
This is somewhat troubling. Do you think this makes some of GiveWell’s grants potentially net negative?
Thank you Angelina, glad to hear it wasn’t just me 😊
Thank you Milena 😊
Today is R U OK? Day
I think this post does a great and important job of highlighting the harms of alcohol.
However, I would like to push back on the idea that we should necessarily abstain from doing something when there is a slight risk of harm (even if that potential harm is significant).
I think there are a quite a few things we do that have some risk of harm, and maybe the harm even outweighs the benefits in isolation. But I also think that the mental burden of restricting ourselves from more and more things can accumulate, to the extent that the accumulated costs might outweigh the benefits. In other words, I think we have a limited budget of “doing this is harmful” things before it starts to become too much of a burden.
This seems like an area where the risk of harm is relatively low, and I think sometimes drinking socially does bring people joy (above and beyond just the socialising component). If we can each only pick a handful of “doing this is harmful” things, I’m not sure alcohol would be in my top 5 priorities.
However, perhaps the trade-off would be different if you happen to have someone in your life who you know is at risk of alcoholism.
Thank you for sharing your story in this post, and congratulations on taking the pledge :)
I think it very natural to consider whether it’s possible to do even more, but I encourage you to celebrate what you’ve achieved already. There is nothing wrong with giving yourself a pat on the back, and it’s important to remember that the people you’re listening to on 80,000 Hours are the top 0.01% - we don’t all have to be as impressive as them!
Hi Brad,
I’m really glad to hear that your walks have been helping with your mental health :)
That all makes sense, and it sounds like this is a really exciting moment. Hopefully there is an opportunity for you to move into this full-time in future, especially now that you’ve set up all the infrastructure, so that you don’t need to juggle this on top of your other job.
All the best
Hi Brad,
Firstly, I’m really sorry to hear you’ve been struggling with depression. It goes without saying—but I would encourage you to consider therapy and medication as these can often help. I also hope you have a community/friendship group you feel you can reach out to if you are struggling. You may also like to consider joining an Action for Happiness community if you have one in your city, which focuses on applying the science of happineess.
Secondly, congratulations on all your success so far—it’s really amazing what you’ve already been able to achieve despite working full-time.
Thirdly, I too have always felt the pull towards trying to have impact while working full-time in an unrelated job, because it can be really hard not to do this when the world in on fire. However, I’ve recently transitioned away from this as I no longer feel it is sustainable for me or even the best thing for the world (see my post here). It seems like the work you are doing is more valuable than mine was, but either way I encourage you to consider taking a step back and prioritising your wellbeing, for the following reasons:
Your wellbeing matters and you deserve to be happy and healthy
Relationships with friends and family are very important, and it is hard to maintain these without much leisure time
It can be hard to do things well if you are tired—things like exercise, social activities, and games can rejuvinate the mind. A fresh and focused mind can do a lot more with less time.
Impact is a long haul, and burnout is a risk for people who are very ambitious (which can undermine future potential for impact)
If others see that you can have a whole lot of impact while also living a well-rounded and happy life, it may encourage them to do more good themselves
Having more leisure time gives us opportunities to reflect, understand our priorities, and do more planning (e.g. I found that it was hard to find time and mental capacity to think about changing my main job while spending time on side projects)
It could be helpful to adopt a two-budget strategy for your time to avoid the daily dilemma of choosing between your project and your loved ones. This allows you to choose how much of your non-work time to spend on your “doing good” budget (say 10%), and then the remainder (say 90%) can be spent on whatever is best for you—spending time with friends, exercising, knitting, etc.
In saying all that, obviously this is a personal decision for you, but I just wanted to share my perspective. Please feel free to message me if you want to chat about any of this :)
+1 on panels! I think you can get much more out of a series of short talks / fireside chats (or even just stick to one person)
A reflection: I worked too much
Excited to vote on this! I’ll also share it with my local EA group. Is there any strategy involved in voting? (e.g. is it better if we don’t split our vote?)
Hey Elliot, sorry for the slow response on this.
Yeah for sure, it’s hard to know how the EV calculation pans out. Using my made-up numbers, the interventions that end factory farming would need to have >10% as much chance of success to be better—I think that is plausible but there’s so much uncertainty here.
Agree these are big questions that are hard to discuss online, but let’s chat when we get a chance in person!
Thanks for writing this Elliot!
I really enjoyed reading this, and I really appreciate you pointing out that each animal helped matters, because I think that’s a very important point that people often forget. I also agree it’s important to be honest about what is feasible in the foreseeable future.
I am, however, more optimistic than you about ending factory farming. I think society has gradually been becoming more conscious of animal welfare issues and most people support ending factory farming. It might take 50 years, 100 years, but I think eventually this will translate into people caring enough to fight against powerful systemic forces. I’d be interested to hear what you think are the big differences to past social movements (the fact that animals can’t speak for themselves is obviously one!)
I think we also need to be careful about celebrating small wins too much. My understanding is that cage-free or something similar is like going from −100 to −90 on a welfare scale. That’s still good, but the bigger difference is between −90 and 0. That’s one reason I think our goal should still be to end factory farming, at least in regions where there is growing support for animal welfare.
In practice, I’m not sure whether that would change which actions we take, but maybe it should push us more towards building the democratic institutions that allow people to raise their voice about animal welfare (eg. Australian Alliance for Animals reforms), over say corporate campaigns. I’d also be keen to hear what other interventions you’re less pessimistic about (the “many more” from your post).
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
Sorry it didn’t work out, but congrats on getting all those meetings and thank you for trying! :)
Thank you, that makes sense! Keen to hear what comes from it.
This looks super cool Ren and KvPelt! Curious—do you plan to advocate for electrical stunning after the six months of investigation? I’m wondering if the theory of change would be similar to FWI and SWP, or if it’s still to be determined based on this initial investigation work?
Thanks so much! :)
Thanks Nick, what do you mean by issues with dependency? Is that the government becoming dependent on an NGO?