Vasco Grilo🔸

• Vasco Grilo🔸 6 Nov 2024 13:16 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Aaron Boddy🔸’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness of Shrimp Welfare Pro­ject’s Hu­mane Slaugh­ter Initiative

  Thanks, Aaron.

  Another point to emphasise though—it’s my sense that the intervention should be modelled as electrical stunning replaces air asphyxiation, rather than (perfectly implemented) ice slurry. Ice slurry slaughter is just a very difficult thing to do correctly in practice (and I’ve not seen it happen) - as even if at some point the shrimps are submerged in ice for a short period of time, it’s often not long enough to kill them (~30seconds).

  I accounted for badly implemented ice slurry slaughter. I assumed:

  All of the shrimps helped transition to electrical stunning, 62.5 % (= 1 − 0.375) from air asphyxiation, and 37.5 % from ice slurry (= 0.75*0.5). I got these fractions assuming 75 % of the targeted producers use some form of ice slurry, half of those implement it properly, and the other half improperly to the point of it being practically equivalent to air asphyxiation. I made these assumptions having in mind Aaron’s comment at the end of this section.

  In any case, based on my assumptions, it does not matter whether HSI is harmful for the 37.5 % of the affected shrimp which go from well implemented ice slurry to electrical stunning slaughter. The overall cost-effectiveness is dominated by making 62.5 % of the affected shrimp go from air asphyxiation to electrical stunning slaughter. I estimate 97.3 % (= 0.625*0.0447/​0.0287) of the benefits come from helping shrimp slaughtered via air asphyxiation, and that the increase in welfare for these is 48.6 % (= 1 − 4.85/​9.44), whereas the number of shrimp would very hardly increase by that. So the question of whether the number of shrimp increases is only relevant if a very small fraction of the helped shrimp is slaughtered via air asphyxiation (again, conditional on my assumptions).

• Vasco Grilo🔸 5 Nov 2024 13:56 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tristan Katz’s comment on: The goal isn’t ‘end fac­tory farm­ing’, but re­duce as much suffer­ing as possible

  Thanks for the comment, Tristan.

  I agree factory-farmed animals having positive lives is not sufficient to justify continuing factory-farming. If one is confident that i) wild animals have positive lives, ii) the effects of factory-farming on wild animals are much larger than those on farmed animals, and iii) factory-farming decreases the number of wild animals (as animal products usually require more land than plant-based ones), then ending factory-farming would be good to increase animal welfare when accounting for both farmed and wild animals. However, I am not arguing for reaching positive factory-farming, and then maintaining it forever. I am arguing for having the ultimate goal of increasing animal welfare, which I think is robustly good, unlike ending factory-farming or maintaining positive factory-farming forever.

  I also think that focussing on increasing the welfare of factory-farmed animals (instead of ending factory-farming) is more conducive to making people care about the welfare of wild animals. People justify ending factory-farming as a way of perserving nature, but I believe this may well backfire because wild animals may have negative lives. There is huge uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive/​negative lives, so I would say it is more prudent to have the robustly good ultimate goal of increasing welfare.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 12:30 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Joey 🔸’s comment on: Think­ing About De­ci­sions as a Weighted Fac­tor Model

  Thanks for clarifying, Joey!

  I think it depends quite a bit on the quality of the CEA. I would take a sub-5-hour WFM as more useful than a sub-5-hour CEA every time. At 50 hours, I think it becomes a lot less clear. CEAs are much more error-prone and more punishing of those errors compared to WFMs, thus the risk of weaker CEAs.

  I agree the value of CEAs relative to a WFM increases with time invested.

  I also think the assessment of GW as CEA-focused is a bit misleading. They have four criteria, two of which they do not explicitly model in their CEA, and many blog posts express their skepticism about taking CEAs literally (my favorite of these, though old).

  Elie Hassenfeld (GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO) mentioned on the Clearer Thinking podcast that (emphasis mine):

  GiveWell cost- effectiveness estimates are not the only input into our decisions to fund malaria programs and deworming programs, there are some other factors, but they’re certainly 80% plus of the case.

  Isabel Arjmand (GiveWell’s special projects officer at the time) also said (Isabel’s emphasis):

  The numerical cost-effectiveness estimate in the spreadsheet is nearly always the most important factor in our recommendations, but not the only factor. That is, we don’t solely rely on our spreadsheet-based analysis of cost-effectiveness when making grants.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 12:15 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  Interesting question, David!

  I think it is very unclear whether wild animals have positive/​negative lives, so I guess it is fine to neglect the effects on wild animals of interventions aiming to improve the welfare of farmed animals or humans. I have posted about these effects, and I believe their discussion can still be useful as a way of raising awareness for wild animal welfare.

  In addition, as with the meat-eater problem, I suspect the effects on wild animals are mostly a distraction for cause prioritisation. If one is confident the effects on wild animals are positive/​negative, and that their magnitude is significant, then I would expect interventions explicitly aiming to improve the welfare of wild animals to be more cost-effective than those targetting farmed animals or humans.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 11:42 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: jordanve🔸’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  To clarify for certain readers, I think that the right of the woman to family planning comes first and shouldn’t be restricted. I think that foregone positive lives only has implications for prioritising among our positive obligations, not negative rights or liberties. I’m sure you agree.

  My views are pretty close to Ariel Simnegar’s.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 11:33 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Think­ing About De­ci­sions as a Weighted Fac­tor Model

  Thanks, Joey and Ben.

  • Number of meaningfully different heuristics considered (the criteria in the columns of a WFM)

  • Number of meaningfully different solutions considered (the options to be evaluated in the rows of a WFM)

  For cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) and a WFM covering the same variables and options, would the CEAs be preferable? I think so. For example, I like that GiveWell uses cost-effectiveness analyses of the most promising countries instead of a WFM.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 10:39 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Nithin Ravi’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  You are welcome!

  we should still be considering flow-through effects in questions of cause prioritization and which GHD interventions to support. I think there are also reasonable edge cases where we may be able to influence GHD interventions to have better positive flow-through effects, if the donor is not onboard with AW.

  Agreed. By “I worry the meat-eater problem is mostly a distraction”, I meant a distraction for cause prioritisation. My sense is that people (like me) who consider the meat-eater problem to be a relevant consideration for prioritising within global health and development value 1 unit welfare in humans sufficiently similarly to 1 unit of welfare in animals to conclude that the best animal welfare interventions are much more cost-effective than the best human welfare interventions.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 1 Nov 2024 10:24 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: Ap­peal­ing to the Public

  Thanks for the good context, Jeff.

  I don’t think that would work very well

  I think a good part of the appeal is that it is low cost strategy (relative to one where lots of context is provided).

  Our main funders have a lot of context on our work, and so our grant applications are missing a lot of information that a typical Forum reader would need. This includes basic stuff like ” what problem are you trying to solve?”

  Note the target audience will be more familiar with the work than a random EA Forum reader. For example, if you were raising funds for the Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO), your target audience would be more familiar with bio and more likely to have read other posts about NAO.

  There is a lot of information you can share in a private grant request that you can’t make public.

  Fair! Some information would have to be removed.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 31 Oct 2024 16:16 UTC

  0 points

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Nithin Ravi’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  Thanks for the comment, Nithin.

  This may negate any decrease in human welfare, but I haven’t seen a BOTEC of this that models the income increase on the meat eating problem.

  As suggested by the graph below, the increased income of the helped families will tend to increase their consumption of animals, which is harmful if animals have negative lives.

  However, since I think family planning interventions decrease human population, I believe they decrease the consumption of animals. Yet, I am not sure this is good because farmed animals’ lives may become net positive in the next few decades, and the children who would be born from unwanted pregancies would live longer than that.

  In any case, I worry the meat-eater problem is mostly a distraction. If one values 1 unit of welfare in animals as much as 1 unit of welfare in humans, and does not think Rethink Priorities’ welfare ranges are wildly off, the best animal welfare interventions will be much more cost-effective than the best global health and development interventions. I estimate the cost-effectiveness of Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) is 43.4 k times that of GiveWell’s top charities.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 31 Oct 2024 14:34 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: ElliotTep’s comment on: The goal isn’t ‘end fac­tory farm­ing’, but re­duce as much suffer­ing as possible

  it does seem like some cows probably have net-positive lives right now

  Agreed. I guess farmed animals have positive lives under the conditions required by the Naturland standard.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 31 Oct 2024 13:37 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 2

  on: Ap­peal­ing to the Public

  Thanks for the post, Jeff. Sharing lots of relevant information would take time, and I think applying to EA Funds and Open Philanthropy would raise funds more cost-effectively. However, orgs can simply share their applications to larger funders on EA Forum, and then add info about what they would do with marginal funding on top of funds received from the larger funders.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 31 Oct 2024 11:22 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: jordanve🔸’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  Thanks for the comment. Joey Savoie, the director of strategy of Charity Entrepreneurship, which incubated Lafiya Nigeria, said:

  I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it.

  It looks like life saving interventions decrease fertility, but still increae population. So the above suggests family planning interventions do decrease population.

  The section “How Many People Have Positive Wellbeing?” of Chapter 9 of What We Owe the Future mentions a few data points about neutral life satisfaction:

  The relative nature of the scale means that it is difficult to interpret where the neutral point should be, and unfortunately, there have been only two small studies directly addressing this question. Respondents from Ghana and Kenya put the neutral point at 0.6, while one British study places it between 1 and 2.

  I think Nigeria is more like Ghana and Kenya than the United Kingdom, so people in Nigeria may put the neutral point at around 0.6. From the 2024 World Happiness Report, Nigeria had a mean life satisfaction from 2021 to 2023 of 4.88, which is significantly higher than 0.6. I assume unwanted pregnancies will be more frequent in families with life satisfaction below the mean, but 4.88 is 8.13 times (= 4.88/​0.6) as large as 0.6, so I expect a random child that would have been born from a prevented unwanted pregnancy to have a positive life.

  My low confidence best guess is that Lafiya Nigeria decreases human welfare after accounting for the effect above. Difference assumptions may lead to different conclusions, but I believe one should at least discuss the potential loss of welfare of the children whose lives are prevented.

  I would be curious to know your thoughts, @Klau Chmielowska. Thanks anyway for your hardwork.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 30 Oct 2024 22:50 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 1

  on: Cost-effec­tive­ness anal­y­sis of Lafiya Nige­ria intervention

  Thanks for sharing. Do you think children born from unwanted pregnancies have positive lives? If so, would the family planning intervention still be beneficial accounting for the welfare loss of the children who would have been born from the prevented unwanted pregnancies? This seems like a crucial consideration.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 30 Oct 2024 22:34 UTC

  3 points

  3 ∶ 2

  on: The goal isn’t ‘end fac­tory farm­ing’, but re­duce as much suffer­ing as possible

  Thanks, Elliot.

  • Many animal advocates frame the goal of the movement as “ending factory farming”.

    • I see why it’s a tempting message, both to hold onto internally, and when pitching to people new to the movement.

    • Yet, I think the reality is that we might never get there.

  • I think the framing therefore leads to the following problems:

    • Unrealistic hope leads to disillusionment and burnout.

    • You should count counterfactual wins, not the absolute numbers.

    • A lack of strategic clarity when developing a theory of change.

    • Leads to a poor allocation of resources.

  There is another point which makes me especially in favour of focussing on reducing suffering, and also increasing happiness. Ending factory-farming only increases animal welfare if factory-farmed animals continue to have negative lives forever, whereas I would say they may become positive in the next few decades at least in some animal-friendly countries.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 30 Oct 2024 15:47 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Aaron Boddy🔸’s comment on: Cost-effec­tive­ness of Shrimp Welfare Pro­ject’s Hu­mane Slaugh­ter Initiative

  Thanks for the great context, Aaron!

  Is there any chance HSI may increase the number of shrimp? I guess it would tend to increase costs, and therefore decrease the number of shrimp. I ask because I estimate that moving from ice slurry to electrical stunning only increases welfare by 4.34 % (= 1 − 4.85/​5.07). In this case, since I think farmed shrimp have negative lives (for any slaughter method), an increase of more than 4.34 % in the number of shrimp would make HSI harmful.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 29 Oct 2024 10:44 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: CB🔸’s comment on: Farmed an­i­mals may have pos­i­tive lives now or in a few decades?

  Thanks for another relevant question too! I do not think that alone would make dairy production net negative:

  • According to CIWF, “Dairy cows must give birth to one calf per year in order to continue producing milk”.

  • From Animal Australia, “both mother and calf can often be heard calling out for each other for hours [after they are separated]”.

  • Assuming disabling pain of 3 h/​year for each the mother and child based on the above, one gets 6 h/​year (= 2*3) of disabling pain. For my intensity of disabling pain, that corresponds to a loss of 0.00684 AQALY/​year (= 6/​24/​365.25*10).

  • The above is quite small in comparison with the magnitude of the values I got for chickens and shrimp. So, in the absence of longer term effects from the separation, I do not think it would bring dairy production from positive to negative.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 27 Oct 2024 17:09 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Tejas Subramaniam’s comment on: Where would you donate $100 to an­i­mal welfare?

  Hi Tejas,

  The guesses from Laura Duffy you link to say exruciating pain is 60 to 150 times as intense as fully healthy life (“1 year of excruciating pain = 60 to 150 DALYs”). These imply 9.6 min (= 24*60/​150) to 24 min (= 24*60/​60) of excruciating pain would be needed to neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life. Do you think this is reasonable? Excruciating pain is defined as follows by Welfare Footprint Project (WFP; emphasis mine):

  All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible.

  Some more clarification from Cynthia Schuck-Paim, WFP’s scientific director:

  Examples [of excruciating pain] would include severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture.

  Intuitively, I feel like 1 s of excruciating pain per day every day would make my (roughly fully healthy) life neutral, supposing it did not have any effects outside that second. As I say in my cost-effectiveness analysis of HSI:

  My assumptions for the pain intensities imply each of the following individually neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life:

  • 10 days (= ¹⁄₀.1) of annoying pain.

  • 1 day of hurtful pain.

  • 2.40 h (= ²⁴⁄₁₀) of disabling pain.

  • 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/​(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 27 Oct 2024 12:37 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JamesÖz’s comment on: Why start a fam­ily plan­ning char­ity? (Founders needed)

  Hi James,

  I did a short analysis on this where I conclude around 6 % of people have negative lives.

  Summary

  • I estimated the global life satisfaction distribution in this Sheet and this Colab based on the mean and standard deviation of the life satisfaction distribution of 142 countries.

  • For the neutral life satisfaction of 0.949 (on a scale from 0 to 10) I supposed [mean between 0.6 and 1.5; see below], the distribution I obtained implies the fraction of people with negative lives is 6.37 %.

  The above neutral point is based on section “How Many People Have Positive Wellbeing?” of Chapter 9 of What We Owe the Future (WWOF) from William MacAskill:

  The relative nature of the scale means that it is difficult to interpret where the neutral point should be, and unfortunately, there have been only two small studies directly addressing this question. Respondents from Ghana and Kenya put the neutral point at 0.6, while one British study places it between 1 and 2 [which I parsed as 1.5 (= (1 + 2)/​2)].

• Vasco Grilo🔸 27 Oct 2024 10:59 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joey 🔸’s comment on: Where would you donate $100 to an­i­mal welfare?

  Agreed, Joey:

  I Fermi estimate the past cost-effectiveness of Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) is 431 DALY/​$, which is:

  • 28.7 times my estimate for the (marginal) cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the one supported by The Humane League (THL).

  • 43.4 k times my estimate for the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities.

• Vasco Grilo🔸 26 Oct 2024 16:58 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Christoph Hartmann 🔸’s comment on: Are Or­gan­i­cally Farmed An­i­mals Already Liv­ing a Net-Pos­i­tive Life?

  I guess farmed animals have positive lives under the conditions required by the Naturland standard. So I certainly agree they are better than those of hens in cage-free aviaries and broilers in a reformed scenario, which I guess respect negative lives.