Thanks for the post, Amy! Another analogy. Hiking at a steady pace is usually the most efficient. This suggests one could work more efficiently via minimising working a lot on any given day, working more during weekends, and having shorter holidays. I think all of these have helped me.
Vasco Grilošø
Karma: 6,725
Cost-effecĀtiveĀness of Shrimp Welfare ProĀjectās HuĀmane SlaughĀter Initiative
Thanks for the good point, Ben. I think it is unclear whether democracy and human rights cause economic prosperity. I guess it depends on the context. In addition, democracy may cause economic prosperity due to favours from rich democratic nations instead of the institutional qualities of democracy per se, as argued in Democratic Favor Channel. Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):
A large body of literature in economics and political science examines the impact of democracy and political freedoms on various outcomes using cross-country comparisons. This paper explores the possibility that any positive impact of democracy observed in these studies might be attributed to powerful democratic nations, their allies, and international organizations treating democracies more favorably than nondemocracies, a concept I refer to as democratic favor channel. Firstly, after I control for being targeted by sanctions from G7 or the United Nations and having military confrontations and cooperation with the West, most of the positive effects of democracy on growth in cross-country panel regressions become insignificant or negatively significant. Secondly, using the same empirical specification as this literature for demonstrating intermediating forces, I show that getting sanctioned, militarily attacked, and not having defense cooperation with the West are plausible channels through which democracy causes growth. Lastly, in the pre-Soviet-collapse period, which coincides with the time when democracy promotion was less often used as a justification for sanctions, the impact of democracy on GDP per capita is already weak or negative without any additional controls, and it becomes further negative once democratic favor is controlled. These findings support the democratic favor channel and challenge the idea that the institutional qualities of democracy per se lead to desirable outcomes. The critique provided in this paper applies to the broader comparative institutions literature in social sciences and political philosophy.
Hi Florian,
Another quick note. I suspect answering the question āDoes democracy increase resilience to catastrophes?ā with āIn general, yesā is too much of an oversimplification. I expect the answer is more like āIn general, yes under X conditions, no under Y, and we do not know under Zā. Relatedly, it looks like democracy and human rights are only associated with higher welfare holding income constant in some countries, and controlling for income makes sense to me if the institutional qualities of democracy per se do not cause economic growth.
DemocĀracy and huĀman rights are only asĀsoĀciĀated with higher welfare holdĀing inĀcome conĀstant in some countries
Welcome to the EA Forum, OGTutzauer! Thanks for the interesting thought.
I currently think one should focus on improving the welfare of farmed animals despite all the effects I discuss in the post. For example, I believe way more welfare would be gained by making all farmed animals live fully healthy lives than by eliminating the risk of ASRSs:
I estimated an expected annual mortality rate from ASRSs of 1.95*10^-5 adjusting results from the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH), which corresponds to 161 k death/āyear (= 1.96*10^-5*8.2*10^9) for the current population. Assuming 29.2 DALY/ādeath (= 1.98*10^9/ā(67.9*10^6)) based on the years of life lost and deaths in 2021, the expected annual burden from ASRSs is 4.70 MDALY (= 161*10^3*29.2).
I got 180 k MDALY for farmed animals, i.e. 38.3 k (= 1.80*10^11/ā(4.70*10^6)) times as much as the above burden from ASRSs.
Interesting post, Florian! You may be interested in the paper Democratic Favor Channel, whose abstract is below (emphasis mine).
A large body of literature in economics and political science examines the impact of democracy and political freedoms on various outcomes using cross-country comparisons. This paper explores the possibility that any positive impact of democracy observed in these studies might be attributed to powerful democratic nations, their allies, and international organizations treating democracies more favorably than nondemocracies, a concept I refer to as democratic favor channel. Firstly, after I control for being targeted by sanctions from G7 or the United Nations and having military confrontations and cooperation with the West, most of the positive effects of democracy on growth in cross-country panel regressions become insignificant or negatively significant. Secondly, using the same empirical specification as this literature for demonstrating intermediating forces, I show that getting sanctioned, militarily attacked, and not having defense cooperation with the West are plausible channels through which democracy causes growth. Lastly, in the pre-Soviet-collapse period, which coincides with the time when democracy promotion was less often used as a justification for sanctions, the impact of democracy on GDP per capita is already weak or negative without any additional controls, and it becomes further negative once democratic favor is controlled. These findings support the democratic favor channel and challenge the idea that the institutional qualities of democracy per se lead to desirable outcomes. The critique provided in this paper applies to the broader comparative institutions literature in social sciences and political philosophy.
Reiter (2017) seemingly convincingly argues that democracy does cause peace even after controlling for economics conditions, but I am not confident the same holds for catastrophes.
Thanks for trying this, Abraham! I suspect having a big donor commit to it would be important to make this successful, because then small donors would have an incentive to join to influence more than the size of their individual donations.
Thanks for sharing that related post, Mikolaj.
DemoĀcratic FaĀvor Channel
Thanks, James! Strongly upvoted for the transparency and willingness to share views which differ from OPās official position.
Thanks for the analysis, Joel!
We estimate that GWWCās marginal 2025 giving multiplier is around 13x ā for every additional $1 they spend on promoting pledging, around $13 will be raised for GiveWell top charities [1]. Uncertainty is high and caution in interpreting results is advised.
Open Philanthropyās (OPās) bar is around 2 times the cost-effectiveness of GiveWellās top charities. You got a multiplier of 13 which is significantly higher than 2, and therefore suggests OP is underfunding GWWC. Does OP think the multiplier is much closer to 2, or are they limiting themselves to providing at most a given fraction of GWWCās funding? @JamesSnowden may have feedback here.
Hi Tobias,
It seems important to distinguish between a) the abolition of factory farming and b) a long-term change in human attitudes towards animals (i.e. establishing antispeciesism). b) is arguably more important from a long-term perspective, and it is a legitimate concern cultivated meat (and similar technologies) would only achieve a).
There is another concern if one has the goal of increasing welfare instead of abolishing factory-farming:
I wonder whether decreasing the current consumption of farmed animals may be bad for future farmed animals (I did not mention this here). According to my calculations, an improvement in chicken welfare per time equal to 43.9 % (= 0.580/ā(-0.580 + 1.90)) of that linked to going from a conventional cage to a cage-free aviary would be enough to reach neutrality, which suggests there may be chickens with positive lives in the next few decades if corporate campaigns continue to be at least decently successful.
Efforts to reduce the consumption of animals decrease the chance of futures where there are lots of factory-farmed animals living good lives, so such efforts may decrease welfare. One can counter that animals would have to be too expensive for them to live good lives, but this does not seem true. Hens in cage-free aviaries are more expensive that ones in conventional cages, but the increase in welfare is quite large. Assuming the increase in welfare is proportional to the increase in price, the increase in price from cage-free aviaries to conditions as positive as those of cage-free aviaries are negative would be 87.8 % (= 2*0.439) the increase in price from conventional cages to cage-free aviaries. Economic growth over the next few decades, potentially boosted by transformative AI, also means consuming animals with better lives will be more affordable.
It looks like decreasing the consumption of animals is only robustly good (in terms of increasing welfare) if one is confident that factory-farmed animals will continue to have negative lives?
Great post, James!
I wonder whether decreasing the current consumption of farmed animals may be bad for future farmed animals (I did not mention this here). According to my calculations, an improvement in chicken welfare per time equal to 43.9 % (= 0.580/ā(-0.580 + 1.90)) of that linked to going from a conventional cage to a cage-free aviary would be enough to reach neutrality, which suggests there may be chickens with positive lives in the next few decades if corporate campaigns continue to be at least decently successful.
Efforts to reduce the consumption of animals decrease the chance of futures where there are lots of factory-farmed animals living good lives, so such efforts may decrease welfare. One can counter that animals would have to be too expensive for them to live good lives, but this does not seem true. Hens in cage-free aviaries are more expensive that ones in conventional cages, but the increase in welfare is quite large. Assuming the increase in welfare is proportional to the increase in price, the increase in price from cage-free aviaries to conditions as positive as those of cage-free aviaries are negative would be 87.8 % (= 2*0.439) the increase in price from conventional cages to cage-free aviaries. Economic growth over the next few decades, potentially boosted by transformative AI, also means consuming animals with better lives will be more affordable.
It looks like decreasing the consumption of animals is only robustly good (in terms of increasing welfare) if one is confident that factory-farmed animals will continue to have negative lives?
Thanks, Michael! Here are a few more posts:
Founders Pledgeās Climate Change Fund might be more cost-effective than GiveWellās top charities, but it is much less cost-effective than corporate campaigns for chicken welfare?, where I Fermi estimate corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 1.51 k times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities.
Cost-effectiveness of buying organic instead of barn eggs, where I Fermi estimate that buying organic instead of barn eggs in the European Union is 2.11 times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities.
Cost-effectiveness of School Plates, where I Fermi estimate that School Plates[1] is 60.2 times as cost-effective as GiveWellās top charities.
Farmed animals are neglected, where I conclude the annual disability of farmed animals is much larger than that of humans, whereas the annual funding helping farmed animals is much smaller than that helping humans:
- ^
Program aiming to increase the consumption of plant-based foods at schools and universities in the United Kingdom (UK).
Thanks for the comment, Johan!
How much weight do you think should one allocate to the inside and outside view respectively in order to develop a comprehensive estimate of the potential future unemployment rate?
It is hard for me to answer this. It depends on the methodology used to produce the inside view estimate. If this is just a guess from someone working on AI safety, I would put very little weight on it. If it is the output of a detailed quantitative empirical model like Epoch AIās, I could as a 1st approximation ignore the estimates from my post (although I would have to check the model to know).
Especially because I think this ignores the apparent fact that the development of intelligent systems that are more capable than humans has never occurred in history. This fundamentally changes the game.
Task automation has been happening for a long time (with the unemployment rate still being low), and one can think about advanced AI as a continuation of that trend. In addition, the definition of unemployment I used requires both not having a job and being actively looking for one. For sometime in the next few decades to centuries, I predict negligible human unemployment and roughly total AI automation (i.e. almost no human workers). I guess humans will just be happy letting the AIs do everything, and whoever wants to have a job (which will be a little bit of a fake job, as AIs would be able to perform the tasks more efficiently) will also have the chance to do it, i.e. there will be basically no humans actively looking for a job, and having no success (i.e. essentially no unemployment). More pessimistically, it is also possible to have almost total homelessness with negligible unemployment in a dystopian scenario where humans gave up looking for jobs because AIs are so much better, but still kind enough to give humans a subsistence income.
I know you are not saying that the inside view doesnāt matter, but I am concerned that a post like this anchors people toward a base rate that is a lot lower than what things will actually be like. It reinforces status quo bias.
According to Table 1 (2) of Hanson 2000, the global economy used to double once every 230 k (224 k) years in hunting and gathering period of human history. Today it doubles once every 20 years or so[1]. Despite a much higher growth rate, the unemployment rate is still relatively low. So I do not think one can predict massive unemployment solely on the basis of AI boosting economic growth. Note am discussing what could happen in the real world, not what could happen in the absence of any mitigation actions.
I think it makes a lot of sense to reason bottom-up when thinking about topics like these, and I actually disagree with you a lot.
What is your median annual unemployment rate in the US in 2025, 2026 or 2027? If much higher than now, I am happy to set up a bet with you where:
I give you 10 kā¬ if the rate is higher than your median.
You give me 10 kā¬ if the rate is lower than your median, which I would donate to animal welfare interventions.
My medians are not far from the ones suggested by historical data below, although I would want to think more about them if I was to bet 10 kā¬.
Thank you for sparking this discussion.
Thanks for engaging too!
- ^
The doubling time for 3 % annual growth is 23.4 years (= LN(2)/āLN(1.03)).
ProbĀaĀbilĀity of masĀsive unĀemĀployĀment in the United States based on hisĀtorĀiĀcal data
Interesting discussion, Linch and Zach. Relatedly, people may want to check the episode of Dwarkesh Podcast with David Reich.
Thanks for the update, Joey. I understand founder talent no longer being the limiting factor means you have potential founders above your quality bar which cannot start a charity due to lack of funding. Do you have a guess for how much money M Ambitious Impact (AIM) would have to receive to pick the marginal rejected founder over the marginal accepted founder? I think you have 2 incubation programs per year, so the marginal accepted founder had better earn to give if they could increase their donations by more than 2 M per year.
Relatedly, do you have guesses for the amount of annual donations to AIM which would make it worth it for you to hire the marginal rejections instead of the marginal acceptances for other roles at AIM (e.g. operations and research)?