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jkaufman comments on Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015 - Less Wrong
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If someone is saying "I saved 10 lives" because they gave $500 to a charity that advertises a cost per life saved of $50, then yes, that's very different from actually saving lives. But the problem is that charities' reports of their cost effectiveness are ridiculously exaggerated, and you just shouldn't trust anything they say.
What we want are marginal costs, not average costs, and these are what organizations like GiveWell try to estimate.
Yes, this is real. But we're ok with assigning credit along longish causal chains in many domains; why exclude charity?
Oh, trust me, I don't :-D
The problem with marginal costs is that they are conditional. For example, the marginal benefit of your $1000 contribution depends on whether someone made a $1m contribution around the same time.
I don't know about that -- I'm wary of assigning credit "along longish causal chains", charity is not an exception for me.