Animal welfare is (even) more neglected than global health. My sense is that $100M being spent in a coordinated manner would have an outsized effect on the field. It would help catalyze future organizations and future funding to a greater extent than it would if spent on global health.
Luke Eure
Karma: 981
Very helpful to learn from your perspective here—thanks so much for taking the time to write it up. Best of luck in what comes next!
Hey! I’ve paused my work on this project—still think it’s very important just had to prioritize other things in my life. Very happy to talk though. I’ll DM you
Hi Bella,
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Updated the form so people can give qualitative feedback there. Will make the google sheet clearer, and see if I can make the title and copy more compelling. Appreciate it!
I found that ACE estimates that the Humane League an estimate of between −6 and 13 farmed animals spared per dollar donated. If anyone has other sources or perspectives to share on this, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Echoing themes of what some other people have said, I think it’s important to have space in your life where you are not always optimizing for effectiveness. You were on vacation! Choosing to use some of your vacation time and a significant chunk of money is admirable.
The ONLY worry I would have if I were in your shoes from an EA perspective is “this $1000 I spent, would I have otherwise donated it to a super effective charity?” If the answer is yes then maybe there’s some reflection to do about how you are approaching effectiveness. But if—as I’m guessing—that $1000 came out of money that you would have spent to make yourself happy I’m some other way, then it’s admirable you decided to use it to help this dog.
How I think about it: I have a effective giving budget, and a guilt-free spending on myself budget. I spend $1000+ per year on things like movies, going out to eat, etc., and don’t feel bad about it because I have budgeted for it and can’t do an effectiveness calculation every time I make a decision about how to spend my time or money.
Thanks—maybe I’m giving them too much trust.
In their impact report they say “We’ve granted out $14.89m in total and we estimate that it will avert 102m tonnes in CO2-equivalent emissions.”
I would not give too much credence to that from a non-EA aligned org, but I’ve been giving them decent credence with regards to counterfactual impact reporting since they’re EA aligned.
You’re saying I should treat their reports less like givewell reports, and more like I would treat a random non EA charity. Any particular arguments for why? Or is it just that you wouldn’t take the prior of assuming that they are at the evaluation quality of givewell? (Or maybe you don’t trust givewell on this either)
I have actually been thinking of creating a tool to help people do exactly what you are trying to do! I will DM you after I make my first version to get your input
Were in a little bit of a tangent but an interesting one I think. I’ve heard that idea before about special obligation towards christians, but I’ve never found it very compelling—less for strict theological reasons and more for emotional, philosophical, and commonsense morality reasons (my common sense may differ from others’ of course).
I’m much more moved by the story of the Good Samaritan or Jesus’ instruction to care for the least of these than Paul’s exhortations.
But I also don’t put that much stock in what Paul says relative to other Christians (https://www.modelsandmorality.com/blog/st-paul-was-just-some-guy-so-hes-not-always-right).
Fixed—thanks!
I’m so glad to hear it
That’s awesome to hear—it was worth the effort of me writing it up then!
Agreed with harfe’s comment—if your goal is just to offset your own emissions then you would probably want to donate a bit less. If you don’t fly more than the average American, then probably $20. Veganism might push the number down a little bit too, but like harfe said, the intercontinental flights are a bigger factor.
Of course I wouldn’t discourage anyone from donating above and beyond the amount needed to offset their own emissions!
Thanks a lot for writing this up—motivated me to donate to do offsets this year!
thank you! Exactly what I was looking for
I don’t think it’s taking it off course! Thanks for your perspective
I disagree that the problem of nuclear war is wildly intractable—people have been dealing with the issue more-or-less successfully for 80 years. And based on the Vox article, we are in a time where nuclear issues are relatively more important and more neglected than they were say 20 years ago.
To think that there’s no organization that can have a meaningful impact on in this time seems unlikely to me. To believe that I think you’d have to believe that no organization in the past 80 years has had much impact on nuclear issues (maybe you do think that and could convince me).
I think that a group of EA’s thinking about the field from the ground up certainly could help—but don’t agree with what I take to be your implication that the only practical way for EAs to have impact on the issue approach the issue afresh. There are so many organizations, academics, and parts of government already focused on nuclear issues. It is a topic that is directly related to national security, which is arguably the most important thing to every government in the world.I love the EA framework, but I do think there’s a tendency for us to think “well nobody has really thought about this issue sensibly until we came along. Good think we’re here now.” Some amount of arrogance/confidence can be good, but I don’t think nuclear security is an issue where this applies.
For sure! Let me know if you want to chat.
On “why high skill immigration”, I wrote another blog post on my decision to focus on it:
“I have a strong belief in the importance of immigrants to the US, both as a matter of fact (economically/ culturally/ scientifically) and as a matter of what the US should aspire to be.
Living in Kenya makes this especially salient—it was so easy for me to move here and I think I am doing good. There are so many people here who can’t move to the US, and I think that they would do good.
I think allowing immigration of skilled workers is pretty indisputably good for the US, those individuals, and (more disputably) for the world. This article captures arguments for high-skill immigration quite well.
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I personally would be much more in favor of lots more immigration of all kinds—low-skill and refugee as well. But I’m focusing on high-skill immigration since those are politically much tougher issues, high-skill immigration is more important from a scientific / economic progress perspective, and the fact that it seems likely that increased high-skill immigration makes countries more receptive to immigration of all kinds.
A further clarification that I’m saying “immigration” here for simplicity, but I am including temporary residence status that enables people to work (e.g., H1B visas) in the scope of what I am working on.”
wow, very poor link-wrangling by me. thank you for catching—fixed now!
I think this is a hugely important issue, and am excited someone else is thinking about it too!
I did a bit of thinking on this last year, and tried for a few months in my spare time to take some action on high-skilled immigration specifically. Ultimately I wasn’t able to find anything super tractable for me to work on since I currently live in Kenya (but I was more focused volunteer/part time things, not full time).
I wrote up my conclusions in a blog post here.
In Germany there’s this organization Malengo that you could potentially volunteer with. For full-time jobs, Formally and the Institute for Progress seem great. But other than those, I couldn’t find much. Institute for Progress has great articles on immigration reform in the US.
I also looked into bothering the US embassy in Kenya to increase their visa processing capacity—I wrote that up here.
I’m happy to chat if you want to talk more over what I saw when I looked into this, or if you find anything worth working on! I’m excited about the potential for progress in this space and am happy to collaborate.
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen is the book in this genre that has influenced my thinking most. Very conceptual.
love the idea! I just glanced over it quickly, and I would say the website didn’t really give me confidence in your calculations.
Here are two quick examples:
On the carbon offsets 101 page, question 11. has a clear typo: “Sure thing! Here’s a human rewrite of your text; Certainly! Carbon offsets are...” → my guess is the entire FAQ was written by an AI and then not proofread very well
On the lifestyle calculator, the “commute” question is about “Your primary mode of transportation and its frequency”. But there is no place to input frequency. The only thing I can put in is a mode, not a frequency. I guess you are asking about my daily commute, and assuming I am doing it 5 days a week, but you aren’t making it clear.
These might seem like small details, but your users will think “if the site gets these details wrong, then why should I trust their calculations?” There is a lot of charlatanry among people making tools like this—people claiming totally unrealistic numbers without good justification. So you really have to go out of your way to prove your rigor.
You have to be demonstrably rigorous, but you also have to make the tool easy to use which is a very tough balance. But that’s the reality of making a tool like this. I started trying to make a similar tool but gave up because I realized getting the balance right would be much harder than I originally anticipated.