Vasco Grilo🔸

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 21, 2025, 1:36 PM

  4 points

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  on: How should we adapt an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy to near-term AGI?

  Hi Max,

  Have you considered pitching Ambitious Impact on running a research round with the goal of finding the best interventions leveraging AI to help animals?

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 21, 2025, 9:09 AM

  2 points

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  on: EA Sur­vey 2022: Geography

  Thanks, Jamie and David. Will there be a similar post for the 2024 survey?

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 20, 2025, 1:24 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: idea21’s comment on: An In­tro­duc­tion to the Prob­lem of Authority

  Thanks for sharing!

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 20, 2025, 9:16 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: idea21’s comment on: An In­tro­duc­tion to the Prob­lem of Authority

  Thanks for the comment! Would you be happy to share the name of the book?

An In­tro­duc­tion to the Prob­lem of Authority

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 19, 2025, 1:11 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Don’t treat prob­a­bil­ities less than 0.5 as if they’re 0

  Thanks, Michael. I agree AI risk should not be dismissed without looking into how large it is. On the other hand, there is not an obvious relationship between existential risk, and the cost-effectiveness of decreasing it. The cost-effectiveness decreases as the risk increases because this decreases the value of the future, unless the risk is concentrated in a time of perils. In addition, a higher risk of human extinction does not necessarily imply a higher existential risk because some AI systems may well be sentient.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 17, 2025, 8:00 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Pat Myron 🔸’s comment on: Break-even anal­y­sis of D3, long-chain omega-3, and mul­ti­vi­tamin-mul­ti­min­eral supplementation

  I do not discuss B12 in the post. “I also plan to continue my D3 supplementation, as I worry the non-mortality benefits, which would decrease the break-even donations, may be significant”. Do you think there is evidence that not taking a multivitamin-multimineral or long-chain omega-3, which are the 2 supplements besides D3 I mention in the post, would cause anything close to sufficient damage to “impair sustaining any income”?

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 17, 2025, 4:09 PM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Pat Myron 🔸’s comment on: Break-even anal­y­sis of D3, long-chain omega-3, and mul­ti­vi­tamin-mul­ti­min­eral supplementation

  Thanks, Pat. I have added the following to the summary (which was in the main text). “I did not cover benefits from increased future annual net income”.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 17, 2025, 11:19 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Daniela Waldhorn’s comment on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties An­i­mal Welfare Depart­ment: 2024 strat­egy up­date and 2025 goals

  Thanks for the great clarifications, Daniela!

  It is interesting RP’s work on wild animal welfare is not supported by unrestricted funds. It suggests the people at RP responsible for allocating the unrestricted funds think there is other work from RP which is more cost-effective at the margin. How are unrestricted funds allocated? I think it would be great for RP to be transparent about this considering donations become unrestricted funds by default.

  Will donations restricted to RP’s work on invertebrate welfare (including farmed, wild, and other invertebrates) also not go towards vertebrate welfare (including humans, and vertebrate animals)? Which fraction of the funds supporting invertebrate welfare are unrestricted? I asked these questions about wild animal welfare, but I am actually specially interested in invertebrate welfare.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 17, 2025, 8:51 AM

  12 points

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  on: ALLFED emer­gency ap­peal: Help us raise $800,000 to avoid cut­ting half of programs

  Thanks for all your efforts. I think donating to ALLFED saves human lives roughly as cost-effectively as GiveWell’s top charities^[1], so I would say it is a good opportunity for people supporting global health and development interventions^[2].

  1. ^

     I estimated policy advocacy to increase resilience to global catastrophic food shocks is 4.08 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.

  2. ^

     Although I believe the best animal welfare interventions are way more cost-effective, and I do not know whether saving human lives is beneficial or harmful accounting for effects on animals.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 15, 2025, 2:30 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Laura Duffy’s comment on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Welfare Range Estimates

  Thanks, Laura!

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 15, 2025, 2:27 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: William McAuliffe’s comment on: What hurts shrimp the most? (Quan­tify­ing and pri­ori­tiz­ing shrimp welfare threats)

  Thanks, William. I asked because such analysis would inform whether farmed insects have positive or negative lives^[1], which is relevant to know whether curbing the growth of the industry is beneficial or harmful.

  1. ^

     I estimate chicken welfare reforms almost make their lives positive.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 15, 2025, 7:37 AM

  2 points

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  on: What hurts shrimp the most? (Quan­tify­ing and pri­ori­tiz­ing shrimp welfare threats)

  Hi Hannah and William,

  Have you considered doing a similar analysis for farmed insects?

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 15, 2025, 6:58 AM

  2 points

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  on: An­i­mal Welfare Fund: Pay­out recom­men­da­tions from Jan­uary to March 2025

  Thanks for the update! Which fraction of the marginal donations to AWF go to invertebrate or wild animal welfare?

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 14, 2025, 7:13 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Carolina Galvani - Sinergia Animal’s comment on: Sin­er­gia An­i­mal helps 113 mil­lion farmed an­i­mals ev­ery year.

  Thanks, Carolina! Just one note, you do not have to tag me, as I receive email notifications even if you do not.

  If I understand correctly, of your spending of 248 k$ on Nourishing Tomorrow in 2023, 80 k$ was unrestricted, and 168 k$ (= (248 − 80)*10^3) was restricted to that program. I think you are saying the program as a whole caused 100 k$ of additional unrestricted donations that year. If so, the program caused 0.403 $ (= 100*10^3/​(248*10^3)) of additional unrestricted donations per $ spent (in reality, it is lower due to overhead^[1]). That is less than 1 $, and I think the multiplier for the unrestricted funds is even lower due to diminishing returns^[2], so it looks like you should not be spending unrestricted funds on the program. Am I missing something?

  1. ^

     I suppose some of the spending on people, operations, finance and management is related to the program.

  2. ^

     I guess decreasing the spending on the program by 1 % would decrease the additional donations by less than 1 %.

Break-even anal­y­sis of D3, long-chain omega-3, and mul­ti­vi­tamin-mul­ti­min­eral supplementation

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 14, 2025, 4:19 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Carolina Galvani - Sinergia Animal’s comment on: Sin­er­gia An­i­mal helps 113 mil­lion farmed an­i­mals ev­ery year.

  Regarding prioritization: You can find details on how we allocate funding across programmatic areas in our financial statements.

  I have checked your financial statements for 2023. It would be great if you added how much restricted and unrestricted funds you spend on each program.

  

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 14, 2025, 8:58 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027

  I don’t follow this comment. You’re saying Vasco gives you X now, 2X to be paid back after k years. You plan to spend X/​2 now, and lock up X/​2, but somehow borrow 3/​(2X) money now, such that you can pay the full amount back in k years?

  Nitpick. (3/​2) X, not 3/​(2 X).

  If one expects investments to grow more (in real terms) than the product “cost-effectiveness of altruistic spending conditional on survival”*”probability of survival” will decrease, it makes sense to invest as much as possible now, and then donate as much as possible later. Funders of altruistic interventions should try to equalise the product I just mentioned across years (otherwise, they should move their spending from the worst to the best years).

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 14, 2025, 8:25 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027

  Nice points, Sasha!

  On the 1st point, I think one should borrow money from banks until the conditions for borrowing additional money become as good as those of the available bets, and then get money both ways afterwards. Refusing a bet which is beneficial relative to nothing because there are loans with better conditions suggests one should be asking for more loans.

  On the 2nd point, I wondered about the possibility of Greg not fulfilling the bet in order to decrease AI risk further, but I believe the world will look roughly the same way as now in terms of risk. So I expect Greg will not be much more worried than now, and therefore will fulfill the bet.

• Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 13, 2025, 5:27 PM

  2 points

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  on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Welfare Range Estimates

  Hi @Laura Duffy,

  In the quantitative model, you calculated the ratio between values for humans and animals. Should you have calculated the ratio between values for animals and humans, considering you are estimating the welfare range of animals relative to that of humans?