I'm thinking of all of his cost-effectiveness writings on this forum.

In 2011, GiveWell published the blog post Errors in DCP2 cost-effectiveness estimate for deworming, which made me lose a fair bit of confidence in DCP2 estimates (and by extension DCP3): 

we now believe that one of the key cost-effectiveness estimates for deworming is flawed, and contains several errors that overstate the cost-effectiveness of deworming by a factor of about 100. This finding has implications not just for deworming, but for cost-effectiveness analysis in general: we are now rethinking how we use published cost-effectiveness estimates for which the full calculations and methods are not public.

The cost-effectiveness estimate in question comes from the Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (DCP2), a major report funded by the Gates Foundation. This report provides an estimate of $3.41 per disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) for the cost-effectiveness of soil-transmitted-helminth (STH) treatment, implying that STH treatment is one of the most cost-effective interventions for global health. In investigating this figure, we have corresponded, over a period of months, with six scholars who had been directly or indirectly involved in the production of the estimate. Eventually, we were able to obtain the spreadsheet that was used to generate the $3.41/DALY estimate. That spreadsheet contains five separate errors that, when corrected, shift the estimated cost effectiveness of deworming from $3.41 to $326.43. We came to this conclusion a year after learning that the DCP2’s published cost-effectiveness estimate for schistosomiasis treatment – another kind of deworming – contained a crucial typo: the published figure was $3.36-$6.92 per DALY, but the correct figure is $336-$692 per DALY. (This figure appears, correctly, on page 46 of the DCP2.) ... 

I agree with their key takeaways, in particular (emphasis mine)

• We’ve previously argued for a limited role for cost-effectiveness estimates; we now think that the appropriate role may be even more limited, at least for opaque estimates (e.g., estimates published without the details necessary for others to independently examine them) like the DCP2’s.
• More generally, we see this case as a general argument for expecting transparency, rather than taking recommendations on trust – no matter how pedigreed the people making the recommendations. Note that the DCP2 was published by the Disease Control Priorities Project, a joint enterprise of The World Bank, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and the Population Reference Bureau, which was funded primarily by a $3.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation. The DCP2 chapter on helminth infections, which contains the $3.41/DALY estimate, has 18 authors, including many of the world’s foremost experts on soil-transmitted helminths.

That said, my best guess is such spreadsheet errors probably don't change your bottomline finding that charity cost-effectiveness really does follow a power law — in fact I expect the worst cases to be actively harmful (e.g. PlayPump International), i.e. negative DALYs/$. My prior essentially comes from 80K's How much do solutions to social problems differ in their effectiveness? A collection of all the studies we could find, who find: 

There appears to be a surprising amount of consistency in the shape of the distributions.

The distributions also appear to be closer to lognormal than normal — i.e. they are heavy-tailed, in agreement with Berger’s findings. However, they may also be some other heavy-tailed distribution (such as a power law), since these are hard to distinguish statistically.

Interventions were rarely negative within health (and the miscellaneous datasets), but often negative within social and education interventions (10–20%) — though not enough to make the mean and median negative. When interventions were negative, they seemed to also be heavy-tailed in negative cost effectiveness.

One way to quantify the interventions’ spread is to look at the ratio of between the mean of the top 2.5% and the overall mean and median. Roughly, we can say:

• The top 2.5% were around 20–200 times more cost effective than the median.
• The top 2.5% were around 8–20 times more cost effective than the mean.

Overall, the patterns found by Ord in the DCP2 seem to hold to a surprising degree in the other areas where we’ve found data. 

Regarding your future work I'd like to see section, maybe Vasco's corpus of cost-effectiveness estimates would be a good starting point. His quantitative modelling spans nearly every category of EA interventions, his models are all methodologically aligned (since it's just him doing them), and they're all transparent too (unlike the DCP estimates). 

This writeup by Vadim Albinsky at Founders Pledge seems related: Are education interventions as cost effective as the top health interventions? Five separate lines of evidence for the income effects of better education [Founders Pledge] 

The part that seems relevant is the charity Imagine Worldwide's use of the "adaptive software" OneBillion app to teach numeracy and literacy. Despite Vadim's several discounts and general conservatism throughout his CEA he still gets ~11x GD cost-effectiveness. (I'd honestly thought, given the upvotes and engagement on the post, that Vadim had changed some EAs' minds on the promisingness of non-deworming education interventions.) The OneBillion app doesn't seem to use AI, but they already (paraphrasing) use "software to provide a complete, research-based curriculum that adapts to each child’s pace, progress, and cultural and linguistic context", so I'm not sure how much better Copilot / Rori would be?

Quoting some parts that stood out to me (emphasis mine):

This post argues that if we look at a broad enough evidence base for the long term outcomes of education interventions we can conclude that the best ones are as cost effective as top GiveWell grants. ... 

... I will argue that the combined evidence for the income impacts of interventions that boost test scores is much stronger than the evidence GiveWell has used to value the income effects of fighting malaria, deworming, or making vaccines, vitamin A, and iodine more available. Even after applying very conservative discounts to expected effect sizes to account for the applicability of the evidence to potential funding opportunities, we find the best education interventions to be in the same range of cost-effectiveness as GiveWell’s top charities. ...

When we apply the above recommendations to our median recommended education charity, Imagine Worldwide, we estimate that it is 11x as cost effective as GiveDirectly at boosting well-being through higher income. ...

Imagine Worldwide (IW) provides adaptive software to teach numeracy and literacy in Malawi, along with the training, tablets and solar panels required to run it. They plan to fund a six-year scale-up of their currently existing program to cover all 3.5 million children in grades 1-4 by 2028. The Malawi government will provide government employees to help with implementation for the first six years, and will take over the program after 2028. Children from over 250 schools have received instruction through the OneBillion app in Malawi over the past 8 years. Five randomized controlled trials of the program have found learning gains of an average of 0.33 standard deviations.  The OneBillion app has also undergone over five additional RCTs in a broad range of contexts with comparable or better results.

That's heartbreaking. Thanks for the pointer.

I just learned that Trump signed an executive order last night withdrawing the US from the WHO; this is his second attempt to do so. 

WHO thankfully weren't caught totally unprepared. Politico reports that last year they "launched an investment round seeking some $7 billion “to mobilize predictable and flexible resources from a broader base of donors” for the WHO’s core work between 2025 and 2028. As of late last year, the WHO said it had received commitments for at least half that amount".

Full text of the executive order below: 

WITHDRAWING THE UNITED STATES FROM THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: 

Section 1.  Purpose.  The United States noticed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.  In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.  China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.  

Sec. 2.  Actions.  (a)  The United States intends to withdraw from the WHO.  The Presidential Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations signed on January 20, 2021, that retracted the United States’ July 6, 2020, notification of withdrawal is revoked.

(b)  Executive Order 13987 of January 25, 2021 (Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government to Provide a Unified and Effective Response to Combat COVID–19 and to Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security), is revoked.

(c)  The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs shall establish directorates and coordinating mechanisms within the National Security Council apparatus as he deems necessary and appropriate to safeguard public health and fortify biosecurity.

(d)  The Secretary of State and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall take appropriate measures, with all practicable speed, to:

(i)    pause the future transfer of any United States Government funds, support, or resources to the WHO;

(ii)   recall and reassign United States Government personnel or contractors working in any capacity with the WHO; and  

(iii)  identify credible and transparent United States and international partners to assume necessary activities previously undertaken by the WHO.

(e)  The Director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy shall review, rescind, and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable. 

Sec. 3.  Notification.  The Secretary of State shall immediately inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations, any other applicable depositary, and the leadership of the WHO of the withdrawal.

Sec. 4.  Global System Negotiations.  While withdrawal is in progress, the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.  

Sec. 5.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: 

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or 

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals. 

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. 

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. 

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    January 20, 2025.

Can you share them?

Many heads are more utilitarian than one by Anita Keshmirian et al is an interesting paper I found via Gwern's site. Gwern's summary of the key points: 

• Collective consensual judgments made via group interactions were more utilitarian than individual judgments.
• Group discussion did not change the individual judgments indicating a normative conformity effect.
• Individuals consented to a group judgment that they did not necessarily buy into personally.
• Collectives were less stressed than individuals after responding to moral dilemmas.
• Interactions reduced aversive emotions (eg. stressed) associated with violation of moral norms.

Abstract: 

Moral judgments have a very prominent social nature, and in everyday life, they are continually shaped by discussions with others. Psychological investigations of these judgments, however, have rarely addressed the impact of social interactions.

To examine the role of social interaction on moral judgments within small groups, we had groups of 4 to 5 participants judge moral dilemmas first individually and privately, then collectively and interactively, and finally individually a second time. We employed both real-life and sacrificial moral dilemmas in which the character’s action or inaction violated a moral principle to benefit the greatest number of people. Participants decided if these utilitarian decisions were morally acceptable or not.

In Experiment 1, we found that collective judgments in face-to-face interactions were more utilitarian than the statistical aggregate of their members compared to both first and second individual judgments. This observation supported the hypothesis that deliberation and consensus within a group transiently reduce the emotional burden of norm violation. 

In Experiment 2, we tested this hypothesis more directly: measuring participants’ state anxiety in addition to their moral judgments before, during, and after online interactions, we found again that collectives were more utilitarian than those of individuals and that state anxiety level was reduced during and after social interaction.

The utilitarian boost in collective moral judgments is probably due to the reduction of stress in the social setting.

I wonder if this means that individual EAs might find EA principles more emotionally challenging than group-level surveys might suggest. It also seems a bit concerning that group judgments may naturally skew utilitarian simply by virtue of being groups, rather than through improved moral reasoning (and I say this as someone for whom utilitarianism is the largest "party" in my moral parliament). 

I think you're not quite engaging with Johan's argument for the necessity of worldview diversification if you assume it's primarily about risk reduction or or diminishing returns. My reading of their key point is that we don't just have uncertainty about outcomes (risk), but uncertainty about the moral frameworks by which we evaluate those outcomes (moral uncertainty), combined with deep uncertainty about long-term consequences (complex cluelessness), leading to fundamental uncertainty in our ability to calculate expected value at all (even if we hypothetically want to as EV-maximisers, itself a perilous strategy), and it's these factors that make them think worldview diversification can be the right approach even at the individual level.

Much appreciated, thanks again Vasco.

I don't see why acausal trade makes infinite ethics decision-relevant for essentially the reasons Manheim & Sandberg discuss in Section 4.5 – acausal trade alone doesn't imply infinite value; footnote 41's "In mainstream cosmological theories, there is a single universe, and the extent can be large but finite even when considering the unreachable portion (e.g. in closed topologies). In that case, these alternative decision theories are useful for interaction with unreachable beings, or as ways to interact with powerful predictors, but still do not lead to infinities"; physical limits on information storage and computation would still apply to any acausal coordination. 

I'll look into Wilkinson's paper, thanks.