Why would an effective altruist (or anyone wanting their donations to have a genuine beneficial effect) consider donating to animal charities? Isn’t the whole premise of EA that everyone should donate to the highest utilon/$ charities, all of which happen to be directed at helping humans?
Just curiosity from someone uninterested in altruism. Why even bring this up here?
We don’t all agree on what a utilon is. I think a year of human suffering is very bad, while a year of animal suffering is nearly irrelevant by comparison, so I think charities aimed at helping humans are where we get the most utility for our money. Other people’s sense of the relative weight of humans and animals is different, however, and some value animals about the same as humans or only somewhat below.
To take a toy example, imagine there are two charities: one that averts a year of human suffering for $200 and one that averts a year of chicken suffering for $2. If I think human suffering is 1000x as bad as chicken suffering and you think human suffering is only 10x as bad, then even though we both agree on the facts of what will happen in response to our donations, we’ll give to different charities because of our disagreement over values.
In reality, however, it’s more complicated. The facts of what will happen in response to a donation are uncertain even in the best of times, but because a lot of people care about humans the various ways of helping them are much better researched. GiveWell’s recommendations are all human-helping charities because of a combination of “they think humans matter more” and “the research on helping humans is better”. Figuring out how to effectively help animals is hard, and while ACE has good people working on it, they’re a small organization with limited funding and their recommendations are still much less robust than GiveWell’s.
Animal Charity Evaluators have updated their top charity recommendations, adding Animal Equality to The Humane League and Mercy for Animals. Also, their donation-doubling drive is nearly over.
Why would an effective altruist (or anyone wanting their donations to have a genuine beneficial effect) consider donating to animal charities? Isn’t the whole premise of EA that everyone should donate to the highest utilon/$ charities, all of which happen to be directed at helping humans?
Just curiosity from someone uninterested in altruism. Why even bring this up here?
We don’t all agree on what a utilon is. I think a year of human suffering is very bad, while a year of animal suffering is nearly irrelevant by comparison, so I think charities aimed at helping humans are where we get the most utility for our money. Other people’s sense of the relative weight of humans and animals is different, however, and some value animals about the same as humans or only somewhat below.
To take a toy example, imagine there are two charities: one that averts a year of human suffering for $200 and one that averts a year of chicken suffering for $2. If I think human suffering is 1000x as bad as chicken suffering and you think human suffering is only 10x as bad, then even though we both agree on the facts of what will happen in response to our donations, we’ll give to different charities because of our disagreement over values.
In reality, however, it’s more complicated. The facts of what will happen in response to a donation are uncertain even in the best of times, but because a lot of people care about humans the various ways of helping them are much better researched. GiveWell’s recommendations are all human-helping charities because of a combination of “they think humans matter more” and “the research on helping humans is better”. Figuring out how to effectively help animals is hard, and while ACE has good people working on it, they’re a small organization with limited funding and their recommendations are still much less robust than GiveWell’s.