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CarlShulman comments on Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test - Less Wrong
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This is an implicit rate of $500 per life. GiveWell claims less efficiency than that for their top charities now, more like $1,600 to $4,000 (not including example effects of promoting efficiency or transparency and distant indirect effects).
Their number is probably better than Yvain's for talking about available marginal opportunities.
Are you nitpicking for nitpicking's sake, or do you really think that what the SIAI does with $500,000 is more worthwhile than 125 or 312 Africans but not as worthwhile as 1000 Africans, so that being off by a factor of 3 to 8 makes that part of Xachariah's argument invalid?
Mainly, I think it's bad news for probably mistaken estimates to spread, and then disillusion the readers or make the writers look biased. If people interested in effective philanthropy go around trumpeting likely wrong (over-optimistic) figures and don't correct them, then the community's credibility will fall, and bad models and epistemic practices may be strengthened. This is why GiveWell goes ballistic on people who go around quoting its old cost-effectiveness estimates rather than more recent ones (revisions tend to be towards less cost-effectiveness).
There has to be some factor where money sent to SIAI stops being worth more than money sent to Africans, no? If you don't like a 0-10x range, what is your interval?
I don't know, but I think it's unlikely a priori to be within an order of magnitude of the actual present-day effectiveness of the AMF. So I thought it was more likely that there was another reason for pointing that out, and indeed CarlShulman confirmed that.
Both reasons were present in my mind.
I noted this in my post, but it's so long it's understandable if one missed it.
I'm not sure if malarial nets were never at 500/life efficiency, or if they were at 500/life at the start of their operation, then the charity got so much funding that all the low hanging fruit was picked and the price increased to 2000/life. My source was based on 'things I sorta half-remember from a newer Givewell interview' whereas Yvain had a concrete number written down, so I used that.