All of GeorgeBridgwater's Comments + Replies
From the main body of the text: "Plant-based products represented 0·011 % of product unit sales in the pre-intervention period. This increased to 0·016 % during the intervention period and 0·012 % in the post-intervention period. Meat products represented 26·52 % of sales in the pre-intervention period, 26·51 % during the intervention period and 26·32 % in the post-intervention period. The remainder of sales were represented by non-meat products (73·47 % in pre-intervention and intervention periods, 73·67 % in the post-intervention period)."
One thing to fl...
That seems like the 80/20 of this would be appropriate for a lot of candidates. I guess I assume that a lot of EA candidates have a higher bar for claims made in typical fundraising material so would benefit from delving deeper into the numbers. This depends on how much trust you already have in organisaions. Where if you think groups are already assessed with enough rigor by funders, e.g they have a GiveWell recommendation, then the time cost of going through the numbers makes less sense. I think this would work best for meta-groups like the organisaion I work for Animal Ask or others like Animal Advocacy Careers, Charity Entrepreneurship, 80,000 hours, Rethink Priorities, Global Priorities Insitute etc.
Hey Sofia, Great idea. Groups have usually indicated they would spend <10% of the time we spend researching without our involvement, so this seems like a more viable idea than one may expect. There are some reasons this may not entirely cross-apply to the rest of our work. Such as concerns with groups anchoring too much to their more shallow research, which usually results in more optimistic assessments (Optimizer's Curse). Or possibly a selection effect with the groups that are willing to do this being more likely to make better decisions. We are track...
Hello Joel,
I agree that in hindsight a summary of each indicator would probably have been useful to provide the reader with an overall assessment given the information I reviewed in the report.
wellbeingmeasured=accuracy∗importance= (reliability∗cardinality)∗(validity∗wellbeingaccount)
That model is roughly the way I was thinking of this assessment, with validity and interpersonal comparisons being how much I would update on a perfectly accurate measure, and reliability giving some sense how wide the confidence interval would be from a real world measu...
In these sorts of discussions, I don't think comparing ourselves to the rest of the population is a great guide. It should probably be our base rate but many other factors can affect how income impacts our happiness.
If we look at the overall population the income level required to get the maximum benefit from consumption is pretty high. However, there is some evidence that for people who adopt voluntary simplicity can achieve greater life satisfaction on less income. Boujbel (2012) explanation for this is 'that the control of one’s consum...
Excellent point, I was considering this when writing the report as it would be possible to use remote volunteers. This would make it a great way for EA university groups to volunteer their time and encourage additional engagement from members. Beyond a pure commitment device volunteers will need to be able to answer some basic questions about the from of psychotherapy they are delivering. However, the skill requirement for providing support is still very low and training would be short. One of the groups in the incubation program is looking into this more and I think it could be a really great model for giving more people an effective way to donate their time.
Something that could explain the public backlash is the large percentage of people who are so called 'non-traders' or 'zero traders' when asked to do time trade offs when weighting QALYs. About 57% of respondents don't trade off any length of life for quality increases. As you note the public revealed preferences show they will trade off quality for quantity but when asked to actual think about this a lot of people refuse to do this. Which explain why a large proportion of the public would view an argument for an improved qualit...
I would disagree with two steps in your reasoning one the relative importance of different animals but Cameron_Meyer_Shorb comment already covers this point. Although your conclusion would probably not change if you valued animals more highly making the combined effect of an american diet equal to one or up to maybe ten equivalent years of human life per year ( $430 dollars of enjoyment).
Instead, I think your argument breaks down when accounting for moral uncertainty where if you are not 100% certain in consequentialist ethics then almost any other mora...
I've slowly been updating towards lower expected WP returns to improved DO based on conversations I have had with Fish Welfare Initiative. It seem likely that more fish are in the lower end of welfare benefit for DO optimization because of the natural incentives that exist for farmers in regards to DO. Low DO levels increase mortality and fluctuation in air pressure can cause DO to plummet so farmers often use extra buffer. Therefore any fish suffering -40 WP from DO levels alone would probably die , I think log-normal best captures this. Thanks for pointing this out as i did not make it explicit in the report.
I think the third option is best to try to test. Apps like SmartMood could track the effect on your mood. I suppose the problem with this though is that something like eating a marginal apple will probably have very small effects (if any) and so practically you won't actual be able to measure it with the method. Things like meditation and a 10 min walk I would guess would be measurable though.
I think the reason summing counterfactual impact of multiple people leads to weird results is not a problem with counterfactual impact but with how you are summing it. Adding together each individual's counterfactual impact by summing is adding the difference between world A where they both act and world B and C where each of them act alone. In your calculus, you then assume this is the same as the difference between world A and D where nobody acts.
The true issue in maximising counterfactual impact seems to arise when actors act cooperatively but thi...
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I have thought about this, and I'm actually biting the bullet. I think that a lot of people get impact for a lot of things, and that even smallish projects depend on a lot of other moving parts, in the direction of You didn't build that.
I don't agree with some of your examples when taken literally, but I agree with the nuanced thing you're pointing at with them, e.g., building good roads seems very valuable precisely because it helps other projects, if there is high nurse absenteeism then the nurses who show up take some of the impact...
I think that if
...The openness of the EA movement to omnivores is a good point I had not considered before. Although this could probably be accomplished by not being in peoples face about it. I understand the reasoning that concludes that the strength of obligations to give to charity and for veganism are the same. However, I think there is one important distinction, we are causing harm. If we use the classic example of the child drowning in the pool. Not giving to charity is analogous to allowing the child to drown. Eating meat is analogous to drowning the child (or at lea...
I think creating distinctions between directly causing harm vs allowing harm to be caused is likely to reduce a person's effectiveness at doing good in the world. I think causing harm in an abstract way that doesn't violate social norms is basically OK if it leads to something more good. For instance, if I advocate to a funder to cut funding to a less effective program and use that funding for a more effective program, I am causing harm to the recipients of the program that got cut. I think that's fine and a good thing to do.
I started out in EA as an omnivore who cared primarily about global poverty/health. Over time, indirect exposure to more vegans/vegetarians and the good arguments in favor of helping animals. I became pescatarian in Jan 2018 and vegetarian about a year later. But if people had been in my face about it/made me feel unwelcome for being an omnivore at the beginning, it's possible I wouldn't have stuck around and gone veggie. It's for this reason that I'm very careful about talking about the issue. It's not that I don't think we h...
I think another potential cause I have at least observed in my self is risk aversion. EA organisations are widely thought of as good career paths which does make it easier to justify to others but also to your self. If I pursue more niche roles I am less certain that they will be high impact because I am relying on only my own judgment. This does justify some preference for EA organisations but I agree there is probably an over emphasis on them in the community.
Some pretty unintuitive results for some of these. I would not have assumed that a dairy cow would have a worse estimate for welfare score than a beef cow. The method seems pretty logical so I think it is more accurate than just my intuition. I guess my concern would still be with inter-species comparisons of utility, given their possible varying levels of sentience. How is CE approaching this problem? With the usual neuron amount or is there a better way of doing it? I suppose that would just have to be something you have to concede a large margin of error for when comparing between species.
Thought this blog and the surrounding community would be a useful resource for EA's. I have already shared it with a few people.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/
I definitely agree with Raemon that having your own resources allows you greater flexibility but I would go one step further in the aim to amass enough money that I do not need paid work. This allows you complete flexibility with your time over your remaining lifespan and can, therefore, work on any project that seems valuable, or t...
At Animal Ask we did later hear some of that feedback ourselves and one of our early projects failed for similar reasons. Our programs are very group-led, as in we select our research priorities based on groups looking to pursue new campaigns. This means the majority of our projects tend to focus on policy rather than corporate work, given more groups consider new country-specific campaigns and want research to inform this decision.
In the original report from CE, they do account for the consolidation of corporate work behind a few asks. They expected the r... (read more)