Sorry, access provided now! I believe there is a newer version (version 3) of GiveWell’s spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B1fODKVbnGP4fejsZCVNvBm5zvI1jC7DhkaJpFk6zfo/edit#gid=1364064522
Lucas Lewit-Mendes
Hi everyone!
I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on whether it is more ethical to eat 100% grass-fed beef/lamb from trusted suppliers in Australia (i.e. CCTV in slaughter houses and minimal transport) or more tofu/beans?
The pros of tofu/beans are clearly that it does not require taking the life from a cow or lamb who wants to live (although note that it takes lots of meals to cause the death of one cow), and also that it dramatically reduces carbon emissions.
The pros of instead eating 100% grass-fed beef/lamb are that it may help me avoid causing wild animal suffering, since crop cultivation causes potentially painful animal deaths. Although, it is worth noting that these animals may counterfactually die painful deaths in the wild anyway, and eating crops could also reduce wild animal populations who may have net negative lives. Eating beef/lamb once or twice a week would make it somewhat easier to stay healthy and potentially be more productive, and would make my parents less concerned about my health.
I am assuming that cows/lamb live a net neutral life, which seems to be a reasonable assumption for trusted suppliers. In terms of monetary cost, I think the cost of buying vitamin supplements is approximately cancelled out by the cost of buying meat. Also, I wouldn’t eat any meat out of the house, so you can assume that the impact of my eating on my friends is irrelevant.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Lucas
Thanks Charles for your thoughtful response.
“Most informed people agree that beef and dairy cows live the best life of all factory farmed animals, more so than pigs, and much much more so than chickens. ”
I just wanted to note that I’m referring to 100% pasture fed lamb/beef. I think it’s very unlikely that it’s ethically permissable to eat factory farmed lamb/beef, even if it’s less bad than eating chickens, etc. I’d also caution against eating dairy since calves and mothers show signs of sadness when separated, although each dairy cow produces a lot of dairy (as you noted).
“I think you meant prevents painful deaths?”
Sorry, I probably could’ve worded this better, but my original wording was what I meant. My understanding is that crop cultivation for grains and beans causes painful wild animal deaths, but grass-fed cows/lamb do not eat crops and therefore, as far as I’m aware, do not cause wild animal deaths.
I certainly agree with your conclusion that not eating factory farmed chicken, pork, and eggs (and probably also fish) is the most important step! But I’d still like to do the very best with my own consumption.
Hi JPHoughton,
After looking at this a bit more closely, it appears that the % of funding to each country (rows 7,19) is actually purely arbitary GiveWell’s most recent cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). Hence, the 19% figure I quoted above is not meaningful. Apologies for my misleading comment.
I suspect that this new approach of using arbitrary percentages reflects the complex question of “room for more funding” outlined in GiveWell’s recent blog post. Nonetheless, my understanding is that the funding GiveWell actually allocated to AMF in 2020 was well within the $5000 cost per life saved range.
Note also that DRC’s program remains 12.7x cash in the most recent CEA (once development effects are included).
Cheers,
Lucas
Update—I just came across this article, which suggests that harvesting/pasture deaths are probably higher for beef than plants anyway, so it seems a pretty clear decision that being vegan is best in expectation!
Fantastic story! All the best :)
Thanks, these are really interesting and useful thoughts!
Thank you for raising some interesting concerns JP.
I just wanted to note that the value of a market for bednets may be small relative to the value of philanthropic funding for several reasons:
Having gone down the philanthropy path, ceasing to provide bednets philanthropically now would be unlikely to lead to a flourishing bednet market. See more on this here under “People may not purchase ITNs because they are unavailable in local markets or because they expect to be given them for free”
There are many reasons people may buy fewer bednets in a market than is socially optimal: lack of available funds, present bias, positive externalities (not internalising the societal benefit of reducing malaria transmission).
Business owners can sell other, less crucial goods and services. But in poverty stricken locations, they cannot provide and distribute thousands of life-saving/improving bednets to the poor.
Warm regards,
Lucas
Really interesting and well-written post about the Australian political context! Do you think EA grant makers should consider funding political campaigns by minor parties, or would you prefer to see EA-aligned volunteers/staff leverage other sources of funds?
Thanks, Lucas
Thanks Ren, that makes a lot of sense!
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for outlining your reasoning here, and I’m really excited about the progress EA groups are making around the world.
I could easily be missing something here, but why are we comparing the value of CEA’s community building grants to the value of Mckinsey etc?
Isn’t the relevant comparison CEA’s community building grants vs other EA spending, for example GiveWell’s marginally funded programs (around 5x the cost-effectiveness of cash transfers)?
If CEA is getting funding from non-EA sources, however, this query would be irrelevant.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts :)
Thanks Nathan, that would make a lot of sense, and motivates the conversation about whether CEA can realisticly attract as many people through advertising as Goldman etc.
I guess the question is then whether:
a) Goldman’s activities are actually effective at attracting students; and
b) This is a relevant baseline prior for the types of activities that local EA groups undertake with CEA’s funding (e.g. dinners for EA scholars students)
Thanks for writing this up!
This post does resonate with me, as when I was first introduced to EA, I was sceptical about the idea of “discussing the best ways to do good”. This was because I wanted to volunteer rather than just talk about doing good (this was before I realised how much more impact I could have with my career/donations) and I think I would’ve been even more deterred if I’d heard that donated funds were being spent on my dinners.
However, it sounds like my attitude might have been quite different to others, reading the comments here. Also, I suspect I would’ve ended up becoming involved in EA either way as long as I heard about the core ideas.
Thanks for writing this up Rumtin and Krystal!
Does the scope of the project allow for engagment with academics as well as policy-makers/public servants? While there obvious risks with expanding the scope too broadly, I wonder whether collaboration with academia could be valuable for research efforts. There is also the possibility that some academic work (e.g. gain-of function research) could undermine policy efforts, so perhaps coordination between EA-aligned policy-makers/public servants and academics could reduce this risk?
Thanks for writing this Caroline, really interesting post! I think it’s probably true that having talented people doing important things work really hard is higher impact than having people donate a little bit more money.
However, I am concerned about the idea that one should prioritize their impact over relationships with family, friends, romantic partners, or children, for two reasons:
I think it’s important to note that, personally, donating 10-20% of my income to effective charities literally makes zero difference to my life enjoyment.* But neglecting relationships would significantly reduce my life enjoyment. If lots of EAs are less happy (and potentially also their partners, friends, and family), that means the corresponding increase in impact from working hard would need to outweigh their reduction in happiness to provide net benefit.
If lots of EAs are less happy, it would presumably be harder to attract new people and also increase burnout. There might also be diminishing marginal returns to work in many cases (e.g. once GiveWell has analysed a charity for 100 hours, the 101st hour probably doesn’t provide that much more information). But returns to donations are probably linear, unless you are dealing with large amounts of money such that you run out of equally cost-effective opportunities.
I am unsure whether this means EAs shouldn’t work 7-day weeks and de-prioritze relationships, but I don’t think it’s clear they should. Of course, this might work for some people but not others!
* I may be in a particularly priveledged position here, as I currently live with my parents and do not pay rent or have kids, but I suspect a high proportion of EAs would make a roughly similar conclusion.
Thank you for writing this Mitra, it’s always valuable to hear critiques of current approaches in the EA community. As Peter noted above, your experiences and views would be greatly valued by the community.
I will attempt to respond to some of these questions, but note that my responses may not reflect the views of everyone in the community, and I may miss some crucial points.
Are you effective enough to notice that you could be 10x more effective if instead of selling wells to villages, you focused resources of finding and supporting local entrepreneurs to build their own businesses doing so ?
I think many EAs share this concern. You may be interested in this post, which is a critque of the current “EA” approach to global poverty.
Is your altruism effective enough to notice who is building them for $2200?
In the global poverty space, GiveWell aims to find charities who produce the most bang for buck. Of course, they may get this wrong sometimes in practice. But in theory, if someone achieves the same benefit for less cost, GiveWell would prioritise this opportunity.
Have you measured the return on impact well enough to know that $100 is the cost of the measurement, that it mostly collects meaningless numbers, and you could dig 5% more wells if you eliminated that?
I’d be interested to hear why you think measurement numbers are meaningless? Take the case of malaria control—if some areas are much more malarious than others, it seems important to spend some money to know which areas to focus on.
Have you noticed that as many as half the wells, or solar panels or toilets sit there broken waiting for the next donor? Are you measuring the right thing, would you notice if those $2000 wells fail in 5 years while $2500 wells might fail in 10 ?
GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses look at costs per treated person, so they try to account for situations where some of the treatments/materials are not used. They also account for the length of time a treatment lasts, which may resolve the second question.
Are you innovative enough to figure out that if you got the village to invest $1000, not only could you support twice as many villages but the village would be more likely to maintain it and use it, if they had skin in the game. Are you flexible enough to create a social enterprise rather than a charity, and to fund its overheads rather than expecting it to make a profit?
If you’re interested, this interview with Karen Levy of Evidence Action has sections on both “participatoriness” and “sustainability”. The issue may be too complex to cover here, but it would be valuable to understand the crux of your disagreement.
Are you innovative enough to invest in someone developing a cheaper machine, or one that reduces the cost even further, or are you demanding certainty and measurability too much to consider them anything that pays off at scale, but in the long term.
This is not precisely what you described, but Charity Entrepeneuship aims to find innovative solutions to challenging problems, such as the Lead Elimination Exposure Project, which advocates for lead paint regulation to reduce health and economic damage in the long term.
Hopefully this didn’t come across as dismissive, but I think it’s worth giving due credit to GiveWell and other members of the EA community.
All the best,
Lucas
Full disclosure: I’m the primary author of a yet to be published SoGive report on deworming, however I’m commenting here in a personal capacity.
Thanks for this thought provoking and well-written analysis!I have a query about whether the exponential decay model appropriately reflects the evidence:
If I understand the model correctly, this cell seems to imply that the annual consumption effect of deworming in the first year of adulthood is 0.006 logs.
As HLI is aware, this is based on GiveWell’s estimated annual earnings effect—GiveWell gets 0.006 by applying some adjustments to the original effect of 0.109.
However, 0.109 is not the effect for the first year of adulthood. Rather, it is the effect across the first ~11 years of adulthood (ie. pooled earnings across KLPS rounds conducted ~10-20 years after treatment). *
I think this implies that the total effect over the first 11 years of adulthood (without discounting) is 0.006*11 = 0.061.
Currently, the HLI exponential decay / no discounting model suggests the total effect over these 11 years is only 0.035. Should this instead be 0.061 to reflect the 11 years of evidence we have?
To make the total effect 0.061 over these first 11 years (without discounting), the first year annual effect would need to be 0.010 rather than 0.006 (I used the Goal Seek function to get this number).
As a result, HLI’s exponential decay model with 4% discounting produces lifetime earnings of 0.061 (coincidently the same number as above). This is still a lot lower than GiveWell’s figure (0.115), but is higher than HLI’s (0.035, also coincidently the same number as above).
Under this new approach, decaying earnings would reduce cost-effectiveness by 46%, compared to 69% in the HLI model.
As a sense check, we can set the number of years of impact in GiveWell’s model to 11 years (instead of 40 years), which gives us total earnings of 0.051. Therefore, I don’t think it would make sense if the decay model produced lifetime earnings of only 0.035.
Looking forward to hearing HLI’s thoughts on whether this approach better reflects the evidence or if I have misunderstood.
* Note that I have included both the 10th and 20th year, hence the 11 years.
As a separate note, I’m not sure if it was intentional, but it appears HLI has calculated log effects slightly differently to GiveWell.
GiveWell takes the average of earnings and consumption, and then calculates the log change.
HLI does the reverse, i.e. calculates the log of earnings and the log of consumption, and then takes the average.
If we were to follow the GiveWell method, the effect at the second follow-up would be 0.239 instead of 0.185, i.e. there would be no decay between the first and second follow-up (but the size of the decay between the first and third follow-up would be unaffected).
If the decay theory relies only on a single data point, does this place the theory on slightly shakier ground?
I don’t have a good intuition on which of these approaches is better. Was there any rationale for applying the second approach for this calculation?
Hi JPHoughton,
“Virtually all donations today to the Against Malaria Foundation will go towards long lasting insecticidal nets for the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
As far as I can tell from GiveWell’s current cost-effectiveness analysis, only 19% of donations will go to DRC? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B1fODKVbnGP4fejsZCVNvBm5zvI1jC7DhkaJpFk6zfo/edit#gid=1364064522 (row 19)
Taking a weighted average of each country’s cost-effectiveness by the % of donations, I get a cost-effectiveness of $5,636. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GdCKfSNJkp8aGDxjKlnuRook_LgkKJOJvQvzzZ5KqTw/edit#gid=1364064522&range=B223 (cell B223)
This is, of course, still outside the $3000-$5000 range (although not far off), so it would be good to hear from GiveWell whether they expect future donations opportunities to drop back into that range.
Note also that this cost per life figure does not include the development effects of preventing malaria, which are potentially quite material (these are included in the “multiples of cash transfers” calculations).
Cheers,
Lucas