I was using two different measures of value.
Yes. Creating arbitrary assumptions that are in opposition to each other is not necessarily outright fallacious but it is certainly something that requires some significant justification. There is a rather large 'arbitrariness' overhead for assuming two contradictory measures of value in a way that happens to be convenient for a desired agenda that is above and beyond the arbitrariness of the assumptions considered separately.
The calculations and conclusions in this post are presented as shutting up and multiplying value when they can more realistically be considered a work of creative fiction. "17x" here would be better off replaced with "Over 9000" which at least has the correct connotations of "completely arbitrary large number that indicates that I think the value is significant but is meaningless as a quantisation of anything".
Unfortunately talking about the Virtuous Cause seems to turn off people's critical reasoning capabilities but that only works when preaching to the already converted. AMF is an actually high value cause. It doesn't need sloppy and misleading calculation in order to justify it. That way people who aren't already true believers may accept the argument rather than discarding it at the first unreasonable assumption they encounter.
In my last post I wrote about how Peter Singer’s implicit past claim that [one can save a child’s life for the cost of a pair of shoes] is misleading.
Having said that, it’s important to highlight that if one ignores indirect effects, funding bed net distribution to save lives is an extremely good opportunity for people in the developed world to increase the number of valuable years of life that people experience.
The situation is probably completely different when one considers indirect effects. I’ll postpone discussion of indirect effects to a later date.
Consider the question of what the quality of life is in the developing world. The GiveWell blog post Quality of life in the developing world reads:
The reader can draw his or her own conclusion from this. It seems likely to me that the average life in the developing world is worth living, and that the value of an average year of life in the developing world is no more than 3x lower than the value of an average year of life in the developed world.
In my last post, I wrote about how the explicit estimate for Against Malaria Foundation’s marginal cost per life saved is $2k, and the fact that the actual cost could be significantly higher owing to Bayesian regression.
Note: I formerly worked as a research analyst at GiveWell. All views are my own.