Yes, unless what donors really want is to think no further than the cost of a DALY. Sure, GiveWell donors care about “actually having an impact” in that they’re doing more than most donors to understand who to best delegate resource allocation to, but how many would actually change their allocation based on this information? I don’t really know, but i’m not confident it’s a high proportion.
This is pretty classic Goodhart, right? The metric DALY is misaligned with what donors actually want (some other calculation about value).
Yes, unless what donors really want is to think no further than the cost of a DALY. Sure, GiveWell donors care about “actually having an impact” in that they’re doing more than most donors to understand who to best delegate resource allocation to, but how many would actually change their allocation based on this information? I don’t really know, but i’m not confident it’s a high proportion.