Thanks, Aaron. I think decreasing the uncertainty about the effects on soil animals, in particular, about whether soil nematodes have positive or negative lives, would be more cost-effective than funding HIPF. However, OP does not fund interventions targeting wild animals or invertebrates, so that is not a live option. In addition, my sense is that OP has historically found it difficult to spend as much as desired by its major funders, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, so I believe they would not want to decrease their spending.

Thanks for clarifying, Agnes!

Thanks for the post, Jesse!

Finally: If we did ultimately endorse bracketing, it wouldn't mean that we could always base our decisions on the proximal or immediately obvious consequences of our actions; it wouldn’t absolve us from thinking about knock-on effects, which unfortunately afflict the analysis of near-term interventions even under bracketing. What if saving the lives of the global poor leads to more meat-eating and thus more farmed animal suffering? What about the effects on wild animals? The answers to these questions affect the composition and recommendations of our maximal bracket-sets and so can’t be ignored.

I think it is very important to keep this in mind. I suspect even electrically stunning shrimp, which I see as one of the interventions outside research with the highest chance of being beneficial, has something like a 60 % chance of increasing welfare due to effects on soil animals^[1], and maybe 50 % accounting for microorganisms. However, very very little effort has been dedicated to understanding these. So I believe it makes all sense to remain open to the possibility of accounting for them.

An example inspired by recent Effective Altruism Forum discourse (e.g., here): Consider an intervention to reduce the consumption of animal products. This prevents the terrible suffering of a group of farmed animals, call them $F$. But, perversely, it may increase expected suffering among wild animals, call them $W$. This is because farmed animals reduce wild animal habitat, and wild animals may live net-negative lives, so that preventing their existence might be good.

The post you linked analyses the effects of chicken welfare reforms on wild animals. I have another one which looks into the effects of changing the consumption of animal-based foods.

1. ^{^}

   I estimate eating shrimp increases the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 223 times as much as it decreases the welfare of shrimp. So I believe electrically stunning shrimp would decrease welfare if it decreased the consumption of shrimp by more than 0.448 % (= 1/223) without increasing the consumption of anything else requiring agricultural land. However, the consumption of shrimp would be replaced by something else requiring agricultural land, so it would have to decrease by more than 0.448 % for effects on soil animals to dominate.

RP's moral weights and analysis of cage-free campaigns suggest that the average cost-effectiveness of cage-free campaigns is on the order of 1000x that of GiveWell's top charities.^[5] Even if the campaigns' marginal cost-effectiveness is 10x worse than the average, that would be 100x. 

[...]

[Footnote 5] Grilo, Vasco (2023). "Prioritising animal welfare over global health and development?". https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vBcT7i7AkNJ6u9BcQ/prioritising-animal-welfare-over-global-health-and

I now recommend OP to move funding from interventions targeting farmed animals to global health interventions, quite possibly to the point of gradually phasing out all funding of the former. Accounting for target beneficiaries and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes, and for my very uncertain best guess that soil animals have negative lives, I estimate GiveWell's top charities are 9.33 (= 7.50*10^3/804) times as cost-effective as cage-free corporate campaigns, and that the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) is 87.8 (= 70.6*10^3/804) times as cost-effective as such campaigns.

Thanks for the update, Agnes. Could you clarify how the Opportunities board complements the 80,000 Hours' and Probably Good's job boards? Both can be filtered in many ways for experience (including entry-level), location (including remote), and role type. I guess there are some roles which are in the Opportunities board missing from 80,000 Hours' and Probably Good's, but that they would be open to adding them in some way.

Here are 80,000 Hours' options for experience and role type.

Here are Probably Good's options for experience and role type.

Thanks for the comment, Lucius!

I guess the welfare per FLOP of current AI systems is lower than human welfare per FLOP because humans are sentient, whereas AI systems may not be, but I do not know how to estimate digital welfare in any principled way. It would be great to have some research on estimating digital welfare in QALY/FLOP, which matters much more from the point of view of increasing welfare than the probability of consciousness or sentience that are often the focus of discussion.

For my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.5, the price-performance has to double more than 29.0 times (becoming 530 M times as high), starting from the highest on 9 November 2023, for increasing digital welfare to be more cost-effective than increasing the welfare of soil animals. I think the world after so many doublings would be very different from the current one, which makes me pessimistic about our ability to influence it. It would be like trying to influence digital welfare today via interventions 60.9 years ago, which is my best guess for the time from 9 November 2023 until increasing digital welfare being as cost-effective as increasing the welfare of soil animals for price-performance doubling every 2.1 years.

Hi Martijn, Joey, and James,

I would be curious to know your thoughts on my post Saving human lives cheaply is the most cost-effective way of increasing animal welfare?. You are welcome to comment there.

Thanks for clarifying, Inés!

However, you can also quickly see that Vasco Grillo

Nitpick. It is "Grilo", with just one "l".

Are you still planning to reply to my points about soil animals?

Do you have any thoughts, @mal_graham🔸?