A thoughtful post! I think about this kind of stuff a lot, and wonder what the implications are. If we’re more pessimistic about saving lives in sub-saharan africa, should we:
promote things like lead removal (similar evidence-backed, scalable intervention as bednets, but aimed more directly at human capital)?
promote things like charter cities (untested crazy longshot megaproject, but aimed squarely at transformative political / societal improvements)?
switch to bednet-style lifesaving charities in South Asia, like you mention?
keep on trucking with our original Givewell-style africa-based lifesaving charities, because even after considering all the above, the original charities still look better than any of the three ideas above?
I would love it if you cross-posted this to the EA Forum (I’m sure you’d get some more criticism there vs Lesswrong, but I think it would nevertheless be a good conversation for them to have!) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
No surprise that people on the forum seem to think #4 is the right answer (although they did acknowledge this is a valid consideration). But a lot of it was “this is so cheap that this is probably still the right answer” and “we should be humble and not violate the intuition people have that all lives are equal”.
A thoughtful post! I think about this kind of stuff a lot, and wonder what the implications are. If we’re more pessimistic about saving lives in sub-saharan africa, should we:
promote things like lead removal (similar evidence-backed, scalable intervention as bednets, but aimed more directly at human capital)?
promote things like charter cities (untested crazy longshot megaproject, but aimed squarely at transformative political / societal improvements)?
switch to bednet-style lifesaving charities in South Asia, like you mention?
keep on trucking with our original Givewell-style africa-based lifesaving charities, because even after considering all the above, the original charities still look better than any of the three ideas above?
I would love it if you cross-posted this to the EA Forum (I’m sure you’d get some more criticism there vs Lesswrong, but I think it would nevertheless be a good conversation for them to have!) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
I posted this on the EA forum a couple of weeks ago—https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7WKiW4fTvJMzJwPsk/adverse-selection-in-minimizing-cost-per-life-saved
No surprise that people on the forum seem to think #4 is the right answer (although they did acknowledge this is a valid consideration). But a lot of it was “this is so cheap that this is probably still the right answer” and “we should be humble and not violate the intuition people have that all lives are equal”.