The IPCC already discusses some potential benefits: for example, there’s discussion increased water runoff reducing water stress in some parts of the world. My post is intended only as very high level summary, so I didn’t do research on potential benefits that are not discussed in the IPCC, but if there are some that seem especially important to you, I’ll consider adding them.
JonahS
Karma: 3,471
Can you give a reference?
The extremely dangerous effects of biodiversity cannot simply be handwaved out like this.
Why do you say extremely dangerous? The IPCC predicts that climate change will cause the extinction of 20%-30% of species by 2100. This seems bad, but not extremely dangerous.
Firstly, this is impossible since the vast majority of species are unknown to science
I don’t have subject matter knowledge, but these seems like good points.
But all of this is ignoring that we already have a zoo that houses all species and is perfectly capable of supporting all of them in the foreseeable future, and doesn’t cost anything to run. The only thing it asks is that we not destroy it.
This is easier said than done. Do you have proposals?
Edit: I hadn’t seen the article before, thanks for pointing it out
On an object level your point seems persuasive, but my prior is still that it’s not a big issue, because I haven’t seen other people highlight this forcibly before. Are you familiar with some discussion of it?
There have been many proposals where just diverting a few percent of worldwide GDP would eliminate global warming. Among them, adoption of renewables and nuclear power.
I mean actionable proposals for effective altruist types. I support adoption of renewables and nuclear power, but I don’t know what I or my friends can do to encourage it in a cost-effective way.
[Edit: I’d add that I think that what you describe falls under the category of “tail risk.” I haven’t heard this issue discussed, and It would be great if you were to write up a detailed account of your view, with citations.]
I meant “I hadn’t seen the article before, thanks for pointing it out” :-). I have a high opinion of Scott. I’ll modify my comment to alleviate ambiguity.
I don’t necessarily endorse the specific metrics cited. I have further thoughts on how to get around issues of the type that you mention, which I’ll discuss in a future post.
See the replies to Carl’s comment.
Yes, this is what I meant by regression to the mean.
(a) Note the “Do these considerations argue against donating to AMF?” section of my post.
(b) Those points not withstanding, I believe that it’s probably best to hold out on donating for now (putting money in a donor advised fund if you’re worried about not following through, and precommitting to donating to one of GiveWell’s future recommendations if you’re worried about reducing GiveWell’s money moved) rather than giving to AMF/GiveDirectly now. Quoting from this GiveWell blog post:
… we would guess that the best giving opportunities are likely to lie outside of our traditional work...Our traditional criteria apply only to a very small subset of possible giving opportunities, and it’s a subset that doesn’t seem uniquely difficult to find funders for.… While we do believe that being able to measure something is a major plus holding all else equal – and that it’s particularly important for casual donors – we no longer consider ourselves to be “casual,” and we would guess that opening ourselves up to the full set of things a funder can do will eventually lead to substantially better giving opportunities than the ones we’ve considered so far.
(c) I don’t think that x-risk reduction is the most promising philanthropic cause, even in the astronomical waste framework. More on this point in a future post.
Thanks Luke. Here I’d highlight Nick Beckstead’s response to the linked post, which I believe didn’t get enough visibility.
The nature of the evidence could be either qualitative or quantitative, and the things you mention in “implications” are generally quantitative.
Assessing the quality of the people behind a project is qualitative rather than quantitative.
Room for more funding is in principle quantitative, but my experience has been that in practice, room for more funding analysis ends up being more qualitative, as you have to make judgments about things such as who would otherwise have funded the project, which hinge heavily on knowledge of the philanthropic landscape in respects that aren’t easily quantified.
Gauging historical precedent requires many judgment calls, and so can’t be quantified.
Deciding what giving opportunities one can learn the most from can’t be quantified.
In terms of “good done per dollar”—for me that figure is still far greater than I began with (and I take it that that’s the question that EAs are concerned with, rather than “lives saved per dollar”). [...] because, in my initial analysis—and in what I’d presume are most people’s initial analyses—benefits to the long-term future weren’t taken into account, or weren’t thought to be morally relevant.
I explicitly address this in the second paragraph of the “The history of GiveWell’s estimates for lives saved per dollar” section of my post as well as the “Donating to AMF has benefits beyond saving lives” section of my post.
Building a movement of people who are aiming to do the most good with their marginal resources, and who are trying to work out how best to do that, strikes me as a good way to achieve both of these things.
I agree with this. I don’t think that my post suggests otherwise.
Thanks John!
Which kinds of qualitative analysis do you think are important, and why? Is that what you’re talking about when you later write this …
Yes. See also the first section of my response to wdcrouch.
Did you spend time looking for ways in which projects could be more effective than initially expected, or only ways in which they could be less effective?
Empirically, best guess cost-effectiveness estimates as measured in lives directly saved have consistently moved in the direction of worse cost-effectiveness. So taking the outside view, one would expect more such updates. Thus, one should expect the factors that could give rise to less cost-effectiveness as measured lives directly saved to outweigh the factors that could give rise to more cost-effectiveness as measured in lives directly saved.
I didn’t make a concerted effort to look for ways in which the cost-effectiveness as measured in lives directly saved could be better rather than worse. But I also don’t know of any compelling hypotheticals. I would welcome any suggestions here.
For example: did you think much about the ‘multiplier effects’ where making someone healthier made them better able to earn a living, support their relatives, and help other people… thus making other people healthier as well?
I agree that these could be very significant. See the second section of my response to wdcrouch’s comment.
As I said, these are very preliminary thoughts. I don’t yet have access to such data, and would welcome pointers to possible sources.
Can you give a reference?
There’s a disclaimer at the beginning :-).
Note that I wrote “Mathematicians who are motivated to learn these skills are well positioned to do so,” which is a weaker claim than that mathematicians are known to have highly transferable skills. I’m fairly confident that what I said is true in most cases, but this is based on a lot of tacit knowledge, which is difficult to externalize.
Much of what you say seems like valid counterpoint. I’m getting out of my depth, insofar as I know very little about finance :-). I hope that other more knowledgable people will step in.
A professor in his 40s once told me that the department where he got his PhD had run the numbers, and financial success was inversely correlated with grades / research skills / intellectual ability; the top people got professorships and were middle class, whereas the people who were at the bottom of the class had left academia, and several of them made millions on Wall Street.
I don’t find this at all convincing, e.g.:
It’s only one department
He may have been misremembering the situation
“Bottom of the class” could reflect motivation rather than just intellectual ability.
It’s well known that academia doesn’t pay so well.
Can you flesh out your thoughts here? Surely not everyone in a position of influence has a vested interest in seeing the analysis not acted on.
Ok. Do you have any suggestions for how I could modify my post to make it more clear in these respects?
Thanks for posting this.