Great article, and I agree with almost everything. Some minor quibbles:
> I’m going to diverge from orthodoxy a bit here: I don’t think our brains are totally wrong to treat these two cases differently. There is a meaningful difference between saving someone from a burning building and saving them through donating money to an effective charity. In the first example, you both have greater certainty and deserve more of the credit. Charities can address the former by running evidence-based programming and measuring their work, but external work will inevitably have less certainty than change you create firsthand.
And running into a burning building may cost you your life, whereas you risk nothing by donating (which is why I personally like the "child drowning in a pond" example that Singer used a bit better).
> about $5,000 through programs that distribute malaria nets
As someone who has skipped on a lot of vacations just I could give more money to malaria bed nets, the picture is a bit more complicated. The EA/rat community has a tendency to look at interventions in terms of purely theoretic economic calculations. So an economist calculates how much QALY's sleeping under a bed net could save, then subtracts the cost of the bed net and concludes it is the most cost-effective intervention. Then a whole lot of members of the rat/economics/(and to a lesser extent, EA) community speak disparagingly about other social sciences, saying economics is the best at finding interventions to improve society because they're focused on efficiency whereas e.g. the cultural anthropologists are just writing their progressivist opinions while presenting it as science.
Now, overall bed nets were a huuuge win for poverty reduction, but we could've done *even better* if we'd had a more holistic picture of the social sciences. But (as I pointed out in my blogpost on the topic) it doesn't appear like the interest in the other social sciences is increasing in the EA community, so I think this blindspot may stay for a while.
Yeah, I agree that drowning child is a better metaphor -- I wanted to think through other alternatives here.
Re nets: It's awesome that you donate a lot! I do agree that EA can be too theoretical -- but GW does account for not all malaria nets being used! I believe in their CEA they assume a lower level of use based on what's seen in real-world use, including fishing, and that they've investigated it as an issue and don't see it as significant. But that's a fair broader point and I'll be sure to check out your essay!
Great article, and I agree with almost everything. Some minor quibbles:
> I’m going to diverge from orthodoxy a bit here: I don’t think our brains are totally wrong to treat these two cases differently. There is a meaningful difference between saving someone from a burning building and saving them through donating money to an effective charity. In the first example, you both have greater certainty and deserve more of the credit. Charities can address the former by running evidence-based programming and measuring their work, but external work will inevitably have less certainty than change you create firsthand.
And running into a burning building may cost you your life, whereas you risk nothing by donating (which is why I personally like the "child drowning in a pond" example that Singer used a bit better).
> about $5,000 through programs that distribute malaria nets
As someone who has skipped on a lot of vacations just I could give more money to malaria bed nets, the picture is a bit more complicated. The EA/rat community has a tendency to look at interventions in terms of purely theoretic economic calculations. So an economist calculates how much QALY's sleeping under a bed net could save, then subtracts the cost of the bed net and concludes it is the most cost-effective intervention. Then a whole lot of members of the rat/economics/(and to a lesser extent, EA) community speak disparagingly about other social sciences, saying economics is the best at finding interventions to improve society because they're focused on efficiency whereas e.g. the cultural anthropologists are just writing their progressivist opinions while presenting it as science.
A bit later anthropologists do some research and find... wait a minute... these bed nets are being used as fishing nets: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-use-of-mosquito-nets-for-fishing-endangering-humans-and-wildlife
Now, overall bed nets were a huuuge win for poverty reduction, but we could've done *even better* if we'd had a more holistic picture of the social sciences. But (as I pointed out in my blogpost on the topic) it doesn't appear like the interest in the other social sciences is increasing in the EA community, so I think this blindspot may stay for a while.
Yeah, I agree that drowning child is a better metaphor -- I wanted to think through other alternatives here.
Re nets: It's awesome that you donate a lot! I do agree that EA can be too theoretical -- but GW does account for not all malaria nets being used! I believe in their CEA they assume a lower level of use based on what's seen in real-world use, including fishing, and that they've investigated it as an issue and don't see it as significant. But that's a fair broader point and I'll be sure to check out your essay!