Thanks for this. I wonder roughly how many hours of "disabling pain" or "hurtful pain" we estimate are diverted by saving 1 DALY. That would help me get a better sense of the tradeoff.
Anyone have a better sense? @NickLaing ?
Laura Duffy's analyses of this comes close to my view. On the margin, the question between global health charity and animal charity is something like GiveWell top charities *e.g. AMF) vs. ACE top charity (e.g. The Humane League), which is something like "Would you rather save 1 DALY or 40 years of hens from cages to cage-free.
I'm pretty split between the two and my donation habits reflect this; however, I don't think we know how to scale effective animal interventions past the current funding gaps in the low $10ms. For Global health, we do.
Edit: Learned that Laura has posted more on this since we last talked! Her posts seem to use RP's human:animal welfare moral weight comparisons, which place less compariative weight to human suffering than I do!
Hi Aaron,
I direct EACH. Thanks for your interest - I'd be happy to have a chat anytime.
For a bit about us and our impact, you can read here, or see here for a directory of our linktree.
For Christians who have no interaction with EA, the careers website is a much better entry point, as is this excellent blog article related to effective giving.
Thanks for this. My view is the same as yours. The first two strike me as "net positive." I'm also unsure about what pigs and dairy cows need. I wouldn't be hugely surprised if they have either "net positive" or "net negative" lives, but I think it's most likely (80%+ chance) they are "net positive."
(Qualifying discussion of net value of existence with " " because I find such valuations always so fraught with uncertainty and I feel I owe other beings tremendous humility in this!)
Seems like the commenter is hung up on this "Because afterlife, evangelism dominates" view.
Saving children's lives from malaria might have much greater eternal value than preaching a sermon. That's because preaching and evangelism plausibly aren't the only thing that influence the afterlife. It's commonly held that good deeds will be rewarded in the afterlife, even if only as memories (Matt 5:12, Luke 6:23, 35). Any positive good experienced over an infinite timeframe is, of course, infinite.
Recently, philosophers like Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson have written about this in their Connection-building theodicy. Bentham's Bulldog wrote about that here.
So consequentialist-leaning Christians might not prioritize evangelism at all costs.
Most people (Christians included) don't lean heavily towards consequentialism, anyways, and take at face value the (hundreds) of biblical commands to care for the poor, sick and marginalized.