Category: Effective Altruism

Why you should NOT leave USA

By all accounts, it looks like a pretty sure bet that Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States of America. This has a lot of people worried. I don’t know what to make of such stories, but there are reports of the Canadian immigration site crashing and the borders of Mexico seeing increased traffic.

This article assumes that Trump being president is an overwhelmingly bad thing, relative to other candidates. This is not the topic of the article, and I won’t spend any time clarifying why this is the case, but a lot of clever people seem to agree. In any case, if you think Trump being president is a good thing, this article isn’t targeted at you.

I write to you – the worried individual and defender of a good world that is wondering if you should leave America or no longer visit.

I urge you – Don’t leave USA.

If you are the type of individual who would consider leaving or not going to USA because of the values held by its new president, then you are exactly the sort of person that America needs more of right now. How will we counter the insanity if all the good people leave? Now is not the time to leave USA full of Trump supporters.

These aren’t idle words written from afar – I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I have no intention of cancelling my extended research trip to California in 2017.

Do you think Trump will care or notice if you leave? What difference will that actually make? Instead, think about the impact you will have by increasing your involvement in civics.

What’s scarier than Trump being president? Trump being president twice. Leaving USA now literally increases the chances of Trump winning a second term. Don’t let that happen.

Edit: A good point was raised to me that I was overlooking concerns people have about their safety. I think this is very valid. I would just ask you to seriously weigh the added safety concerns against the reduced ability to make a difference by leaving.

Is Ben & Jerry’s an ethical company?

A video version of this article is available here, though it is largely out of date.

See also the end of the post for updates from 2020.

Recently I saw a talk by one of the staff at B Corporation Australia. I’d sort of heard of the B Corp certification, and knew a few companies that had achieved it, and was vaguely convinced that it was a good thing (with a small level of skepticism). After seeing the talk, however, I was almost totally convinced that it meant not very much.

If you aren’t already aware, to become a certified B Corp, your company is compared to others in the same industry, and must achieve a certain score across a number of criteria (80 out of 200), including governance, employees, community and the environment. Apparently, despite sounding low, this is actually very hard to achieve.

The benefits of being a certified B Corp are that your brand is seen as being ethical and becomes one that people want to buy, and also people will want to work for you.

My first main point of skepticism was at the end of the talk when I realised the speaker had not mentioned animals as being part of the criteria, both in terms of animal welfare and in terms of environmental impact. My worry was confirmed when she said that neither of these factors were taken into consideration during the evaluation process.

This means that implementing a company cafeteria program that encourages a plant-based diet, which is significantly more environmentally friendly than an omnivorous one, does not get counted. On the other hand, less effective ways of reducing environmental damage, like having solar panels, are rated relatively highly.

Also, it leads us to the obvious conclusion that a company can participate in as much animal cruelty as it likes and still become a certified B Corp, as long as it treats its employees well.

In particular, it’s worth noting that Ben & Jerry’s, a company which produces ice cream primarily from dairy (cow exploitation and cruelty) is a certified B Corp. In my mind, the certification at this point becomes almost meaningless, given the scale of suffering experienced by the cows probably outweighs the happiness of the employees of Ben & Jerry’s.

Does this photo (not shown here due to extreme graphic content) look like the source of milk used by an ethical company? This could very well be from the floor of a factory farm producing dairy cows which B & J’s eventually source their milk from.

To their credit, B & J’s do have a vegan product line slowly being released (not in Australia yet!), but until 100% of their products are vegan, I would argue that they shouldn’t be able to achieve the certification.

I was recommended to contact the B Corporation headquarters and suggest that they add animal related factors as a requirement, however haven’t heard back yet. I hope that they will do so, to make the criteria more meaningful in terms of actually producing positive outcomes for the wellbeing of individuals.

I also have other concerns about the criteria not covering the most important considerations for the wellbeing of employees and stakeholders, though I haven’t done enough research to determine whether this is a problem.

I’ve added this at the end, as the article was starting to look like an attack on Ben & Jerry’s specifically. I do want to make it clear that I think they are just one example of a company that probably shouldn’t get to call itself ethical.

It irks me that Ben & Jerry’s tweet things like “Black Lives Matter. Choosing to be silent in the face of such injustice is not an option.” without recognising that they are also contributing (in a big way) to another injustice to another species.

Their motto is ‘Peace, Love & Ice Cream’. I’m not sure they know what half of those words mean.

Edit – 04/06/2020 

I just wanted to revisit this and give a little update. Ben & Jerry’s now have a delicious vegan ice cream range and that’s great. My impression today is that they’re probably more conscious of animal and environmental than most food companies.

I want them to transition to be fully vegan, but I appreciate that won’t happen until the demand for vegan ice cream increases substantially. They are a corporation and corporations don’t do things without a profit incentive.

I want to reiterate that I singled out B&J here only because it was a useful example of a B Corp I had been thinking about at the time. There are many B Corps (and organisations more generally) that are somewhat reasonable when it comes to the treatment of humans, but atrocious when it comes to the treatment of non-humans. I will always be critical of these, though I will encourage progress in the right direction where I can.

In the same way that I don’t stop shopping at Woolworths just because they don’t only stock vegan products (instead I thank them and ask for more), I’ll do the same for companies like B&J.

I reread this and was surprised to see I had mentioned B&J’s Black Lives Matter tweet. It’s by coincidence that I am revisiting this post now when this issue has resurfaced. I checked B&J’s Twitter account and saw that they have made another BLM tweet in the last week. To my surprise, the response on Twitter was largely positive (anecdotes only from here on!).

I was surprised because I’ve seen people being critical of companies in the last week speaking out in support of the movement. The message can seem hollow and there only to capitalise on the issue and show how great corporate citizens they are. For B&J, people seemed to suggest that they are always speaking in support of social justice issues, and so they feel more inclined to believe the sincerity of B&J’s. 

Am I too harsh on B&J’s? Let’s consider this from the perspective of their CEO. They are bound to the board of directors, who are bound to the shareholders, who are bound to their bottom line. Within this frame, what can the CEO do, even if they are the staunchest human/non-human rights advocate in the world? Consistently speaking in support of social justice issues and creating more vegan products might be a good start.

Hmm.

Edit – 05/06/2020

I was looking in to this some more this morning and found this article on B&J from last year.

“Last month, Ben & Jerry’s revealed that it will no longer claim on its product packaging that its ice cream comes from “happy cows.” The company’s statement comes after being sued twice for deceiving consumers about its animal welfare policies.”

“Although companies state in court that consumers are not misled by their advertisements, the reality is that industrial food producers are knowingly exploiting animals and deceiving consumers.” [it’s unclear here whether or not this refers to B&J as several companies are mentioned]

Hmm.

Edit – 10/06/2020

I’ve updated the title from ‘Why do people think Ben & Jerry’s is an ethical company?’ to ‘Is Ben & Jerry’s an ethical company?’ to more accurately represent my current views on the organisation, which is to say, I’m just not really sure.

This edit was prompted by a claim I’ve seen on Facebook that B&J’s hire ex-convicts. “the reason their ice cream is so overpriced is because they hire ex-cons and pay them $16+ which is OVER the minimum wage.” – source of claim.

I checked, and couldn’t find any direct evidence that B&J’s hire ex-convicts. However, I did find that the bakery that makes the brownies that go in their ice cream does hire ex-convicts. From this article:

“Greyston, which is located in Yonkers, New York, has made it their mission to hire ex-convicts, the homeless, recovering addicts, and anyone else with a rough past who has had trouble finding work.“

I couldn’t find anything about them being payed over the minimum wage, but it may well be the case.

The person also claimed that the founders of B&J’s (Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield) were arrested in a protest. This seems to be true (they were apparently arrested in 2016 and 2018 at protests about money in politics and F-35 jets due to noise pollution respectively), however it should be noted that Ben and Jerry do not own B&J’s as of 2000. I’m unsure what involvement they have had with the organisation since then – possibly none.

Why is fair trade worse than free trade?

Recently I’ve been asked this question a lot after casually mentioning in conversation that fair trade is actually worse than free trade. I decided to write out my thoughts here in full so I can refer back to it in the future. Feel free to use this to do the same!

Full credit for the original work is to Will MacAskill – many of the points here are originally from his book Doing Good Better.

The ‘Fairtrade’ licence is given to producers that have met specific criteria, for example meeting certain safety requirements and paying workers a minimum wage. People assume that this means it is better overall for the world’s most poor and exploited workers. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Because Fairtrade standards are so rigorous and difficult to meet, producers in the poorest developing nations are often unable to fulfil them and get the certification. Much of the Fairtrade production comes from moderately affluent nations (by relative standards at least), and so the money from purchasing Fairtrade is typically not going to the countries  and individuals that need it most.

Also, Fairtrade products cost more, but very little of the extra money ends up in the hands of the actual farmers. Most of it is taken by middlemen. To quote some independent estimates provided in Doing Good Better:

Dr Peter Griffiths, an economic consultant for the World Bank, worked out that for one British cafe chain, less than 1% of the additional price of their Fairtrade coffee reached coffee exporters in poor countries. finnish Professors Joni Valkila, Pertti Haaparanta and Niina Niemi found out that, of Fairtrade coffee sold in Finland, only 11% of the additional price reached the coffee-producing countries.

The list goes on.

In addition, the small amount of money that actually reaches the producers doesn’t necessarily result in greater wages for the employees. One study showed that Fairtrade workers in Ethiopia and Uganda consistently had lower wages and less desirable working conditions that those working in similar non-Fairtrade companies.

Finally, MacAskill concludes by saying:

Even a review commissioned by the Fairtrade Foundation itself concluded that ‘there is limited evidence of the impact on workers of participation in Fairtrade’.

A much more effective way to improve the lives of the most poor would be to buy the cheaper, non-Fairtrade products and donating the savings to an effective poverty charity.

In short, buying fair trade instead of free trade redistributes money from the most poor to the moderately poor, it is a very ineffective means of getting money and positive outcomes to the poor in the first place.

Check out Doing Good Better for a lot more research on counterintuitive ways to do more (or less!) good in the world.

Why isn’t palm oil vegan?

I made a video version of this article here.

Today I discovered that many people don’t consider palm oil to be vegan. The short version of this story is that palm oil production is generally associated with a lot of rainforest deforestation, and therefore destruction of orangutan habitats, often resulting in the death of orangutans.

Fair enough.

But the average vegan still contributes to 0.3 animal deaths per year (not including insects!) as the result of food production (based on a simplified calculation by Matheny). Obviously, there are some foods that are worse than others. I’m going out on a limb here, but I daresay something like wheat is going to result in more deforestation, land use and animal death than something like apples (I could of course be very wrong, but the point is that some vegan foods are going to kill more animals than others).

However, I typically don’t see/hear vegans avoiding certain foods like wheat because of the animals killed. In fact, most vegans seem to blissfully ignore the fact that they contribute to animal death. Obviously, it’s impossible to eliminate your impact because you’re bound to accidentally step on an ant at some point in your life, but reducing your bread intake seems like a reasonably easy thing to do.

But why avoid palm oil and not wheat? One anonymous comment on Facebook seemed to sum it up.

“Yeah I think it’s because of the immediate danger of extinction the species faces.”

Interesting. Why is risk of extinction a key factor, but pain and death isn’t? Unless it plays a crucial role in the ecosystem, it seems like extinction wouldn’t really be that bad beyond the individual deaths. Why does a species as a whole get consideration?

I would argue that, if you’re going to avoid palm oil because it hurts orangutans, you should probably consider optimising your entire diet, not just avoiding one thing (beyond not eating animals, that is). If what you value is the wellbeing of animals, there are many ways to do that, and probably more efficient ways than just avoiding palm oil.

Of course, this is all complicated by the fact most animals in the wild have lives full of suffering. Do orangutans have natural lives in the wild that are not worth living? I don’t know, but I’m open to the idea. If that’s true, we would have to face the frustrating reality that maybe keeping orangutans alive is bad.

Morality is more complicated than you want it to be.

The need for convergence on an ethical theory

For this post, I’m going to use the scenario outlined in the science fiction book Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. It’s a far-fetched scenario (and I leave out a lot of detail), but it sets up my point nicely, so bear with me. Full credit for the intro, of course, to Stephenson.

This is cross-posted to the Effective Altruism Forum. Please post your comments there to keep them all in one place.

Introduction

Humanity is in a near future state. Technology is slightly more advanced than it is today, and the International Space Station (ISS) is somewhat larger and more sophisticated. Long story short, the Moon blows up, and scientists determine humanity has two years before the surface of the Earth becomes uninhabitable for 5,000 years due to rubble bombardment.

Immediately, humanity works together to increase the size and sustainability of the ISS to ensure that humanity and its heritage (e.g. history, culture, animals and plants stored in a genetic format) can survive for 5,000 years to eventually repopulate the Earth. That this is a good thing to do is not once questioned. Humanity simply accepts as its duty that the diversity of life that exists today will continue at some point in the future. This is done with the acceptance that the inhabitants and descendants of the ISS will not have any easy life by any stretch of the imagination. But it is apparently their ‘duty’ to persevere.

The problem

It is taken as a given that stopping humanity from going extinct is a good thing, and I tend to agree, though not as strongly as some (I hold uncertainty about the expected value of the future assuming humanity/life in general survive). However, if we consider different ethical theories, we find that many come up with different answers to the question of what we ought to do in this case. Below I outline some of these possible differences. I say ‘might’ instead of ‘will’ because I’ve oversimplified things and if you tweak the specifics you might come up wit ha different answer. Take this as illustrative only.

Classical hedonistic utilitarian

If you think the chances of there being more wellbeing in the future are greater than there being more suffering (or put another way, you think the expected value of the future is positive), you might want to support the ISS.

Negative utilitarian

If you think all life on Earth and therefore suffering will cease to exist if the ISS plan fails, you might want to actively disrupt the project to increase the probability that happens. At the very least, you probably won’t want to support it.

Deontologist

I’m not really sure what a deontologist would think of this, but I suspect that they would at least be motivated to a different extent than a classical utilitarian.

Person affecting view

Depending on how you see the specifics of the scenario, the ‘ISS survives’ case is roughly as good as the ‘ISS fails’ case.

Each of these ethical frameworks have significantly different answers to the question of ‘what ought we do in this one specific case?’ They also have very different answers to many current and future ethical dilemmas that are much more likely. This is worrying.

And yet, to my knowledge, there does not seem to be a concerted push towards convergence on a single ethical theory (and I’m not just talking about compromise). Perhaps if you’re not a moral realist, this isn’t so important to you. But I would argue that getting society at large to converge on a single ethical theory is very important, and not just for thinking about the great questions, like what to do about existential risk and the far future. It also possibly results in a lot of zero-sum games and a lot of wasted effort. Even Effective Altruists disagree on certain aspects of ethics, or hold entirely different ethical codes. At some point, this is going to result in a major misalignment of objectives, if it hasn’t already.

I’d like to propose that simply seeking convergence on ethics is a highly neglected and important cause. To date, most of this seems to involve advocates for each ethical theory promoting their view, resulting in another zero-sum game. Perhaps we need to agree on another way to do this.

If ethics were a game of soccer, we’d all be kicking the ball in different directions. Sometimes, we happen to kick in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. What could be more important than agreeing on what direction to kick the ball and kicking it to the best possible world.

Is it selfish to not give to existential risk or far future organisations for reasons of risk aversion?

Cross-posted from the Effective Altruism forum. If you have comments or feedback I’d prefer you post them there for continuity.

I have this idea which I haven’t fully fleshed out yet, but I’m looking to get some feedback. To simplify this, I’ll embody the idea in a single, hypothetical Effective Altruist called Alex. I’ll assume silly things like no inflation for simplicity. I also use ‘lives saved’ as a proxy for ‘good done’; although this is grossly oversimplified it doesn’t affect the argument.

Alex is earning to give, and estimates that they will be able to give $1 million over their lifetime. They have thought a lot about existential risk, and agree that reducing existential risk would be a good thing, and also agree that the problem is at least partially tractable. Alex also accepts things like the notion that future lives are equally as valuable as lives today. However, Alex is somewhat risk averse.

After careful modelling, Alex estimates that they could save a life for $4,000, and thus could save 250 lives over their own lifetime. Alex also thinks that their $1 million might slightly reduce the risk of some catastrophic event, but it probably won’t. On expected value terms, they estimate that donating to an X-risk organisation is about ten times as good as donating to a poverty charity (they estimate ‘saving’ 2,500 lives on average).

However, all things considered, Alex still decides to donate to the poverty organisation, because they are risk averse, and the chances of them making a difference by donating to the X-risk organisation are very low indeed.

This seems to embody the attitude of many EAs I know. However, the question I’d like to pose is: is this selfish?

It seems like some kind of moral narcissism to say that one would prefer to increase their chances of their personal actions making a difference at the expense of overall wellbeing in expectation. If a world where everyone gave to X-risk meant a meaningful reduction in the probability of a catastrophe, shouldn’t we all be working towards that instead of trying to maximise the chances that our personal dollars make a difference?

As I said, I’m still thinking this through, and don’t mean to imply that anyone donating to a poverty charity instead of an X-risk organisation is selfish. I’m very keen on criticism and feedback here.

Things that would imply I’m wrong include existential risk reduction not being tractable or not being good, some argument for risk aversion that I’m overlooking, an argument for discounting future life, or something that doesn’t assume a hardline classical hedonistic utilitarian take on ethics (or anything else I’ve overlooked).

For what it’s worth, my donations to date have been overwhelmingly to poverty charities, so to date at least, I am Alex.

Donation pledge update

As of the 31st of August, 2016, I have pledged to donate all of my income each year over $45,000 Australian for the rest of my life to what I believe is the most effective charity/cause. That’s the short version, but I’d like to say a few more things.

Why are you making this public?

I recently heard a quote (and sadly I can’t remember where so I can’t give due credit – edit: found it) that it’s more selfish to donate and not tell anyone than to donate and tell everyone. By telling people you donate, you encourage giving norms, which encourages other people to donate. Imagine if, over the course of my life, I encourage just 1 other person to do the same. I’ll have doubled my impact.

Also, there is the very real possibility that, if I kept this as a pledge internally, or didn’t pledge at all, my values will drift over my life, and eventually I’ll stop caring to donate.

I keep a very transparent list of my donations here, and encourage others to do the same.

That’s a lot of money! Aren’t you worried?

Not really. As I’ll discuss below I think this would make me much happier than spending the money on myself. Plus $45,000 probably gets you further than you think once you take out excessive holidays, fancy houses, cars, clothes, restaurants, movies etc. And on an income of $45,000, I’d still be in the richest 1.3% of the planet.

Anyway, about $4,000 saves a life at the Against Malaria Foundation, 60 cents reduces one year of animal suffering if donated to an Animal Charity Evaluators recommended charity, and a donation to an existential risk organisation like the Future of Humanity Institute has a meaningful chance at reducing the risk of human extinction. It’s pretty hard to spend too much money on myself once I realised that.

Where do you think that money will go?

I think the answer to this question will change very often, so I won’t answer it in full here. At least in the near future it will probably just go to whichever charity I think is the most effective at reducing the suffering and maximising the pleasure experienced by conscious minds (including non-human animals, insects, and even AI if it turns out to be sentient). In the future I might decide that, say, political lobbying is more effective, so I remain open-minded.

What’s the catch?

Well, if the cost of living dramatically increases, I probably won’t make large sacrifices to maintain the pledge. There are practical and selfish reasons for doing this. The practical reasons are that, sometimes you have to spend money to make (and donate) money. If I were going for a job interview and thought I’d need a suit to land the job but I was about to go over, I’d probably buy the suit.

Also, there’s the risk of burnout. I don’t feel like I’m in any danger of burning out because I’m so motivated to make a difference, but a lot of smart people have told me that living a certain way is difficult to maintain. Donating a medium amount over a life is certainly better than donating everything for 3 years then giving up.

My current living costs are about $20,000 per year, so I really don’t see this happening any time soon. Plus I’m going to allow the cap to grow with inflation.

Wait, $20,000 a year? So you plan to blow $25,000 on yourself each year?

Not quite. I still donate as much as I can, the $25,000 is just to allow for changing circumstances.

Should I do the same?

Maybe. I guess you should ask yourself what you want in life. If it’s to make a positive difference, this is probably one of the best ways of doing so. If it’s for yourself to be happy, I’d actually argue you should still make a pledge. Anecdotally, I am much more happy after I first made a smaller pledge last year, and I feel no regret or worry about doing this today. I feel like I’m making a real difference, and that feels good.

Also, someone earning $100,000 a year is only marginally more satisfied than someone earning $50,000 a year. An individual earning $100,000 but giving half would arguably be quite a bit happier than someone who just earned $50,000 a year too. At about $40,000, other factors, such as health, relationships and a sense of purpose contribute more to happiness than income.

Have you ever felt like you have to work harder so you can buy more ‘stuff’? This is a concept called the ‘hedonic treadmill’. You can keep buying stuff and not really increase your happiness.

As I say, it did take me 18 months between hearing about such pledges and making this one. I would definitely encourage making a smaller pledge (Giving What We Can have suggested 1% for the first year), and increasing that if (or when) you’re convinced it’s manageable/makes you happier.

Any tips for saving money?

Totally. Toast sandwiches are delicious and are one of the cheapest meals per calorie (don’t use dairy butter though folks).

But seriously, Mr. Money Mustache is a great blog on reducing your spending in creative ways and investing wisely.

Budget yourself, and just don’t spend money on crap you don’t need.

I still think you’re kind of weird

Perhaps, but I think it’s a good weird. Plus, more and more people are doing this!

Why this failed pregnancy intervention highlights the need for charity evaluators

Cross-posted from LinkedIn.

From 2003, almost 3,000 school girls in Western Australia have participated in an unusual social intervention. They were given electronic baby dolls to create the experience of being a mother. The study team hoped that it would reduce teenage pregnancy rates. If you’re skeptical as to whether this would work, you’d be right, but you might be surprised by just how ineffective it was. According to a recent study published in The Lancet, not only did this intervention not have a positive effect on pregnancy rates, it actually increased them.

Australians gave over $6.8 billion to charity in 2014. We should be proud of this. Our country is built on the pillars of mateship and giving everyone a fair go – values reflected in Australians giving 6.5% more this year than last. We live this culture during Easter and Christmas appeals, when we sit down across the nation for Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea, and when we step into our local Salvation Army to help those in need.

While few would challenge the importance of giving to help others, we don’t tend to pore over the annual statements and fiscal returns of our most beloved charities. Rather, the majority of Australians base their giving choices on identity and respect for an organisation’s mission. Many charities we support aren’t always transparent about their methods, simply reiterating terms like ‘community’ and ‘support’ to encourage donations.

Surveys show that duplication and wastage of resources by non-profit organisations is our biggest concern when it comes to giving. Our concern should not only be administrative costs, but rather whether the programs they operate actually help people. Are they using evidence-backed strategies shown to work? Do they rigorously check that their programs are helping people at low cost? Sometimes the answer is yes, but too often it is no.

Unfortunately, most social programs simply aren’t that effective. David Anderson, previously Assistant Director at the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy (now working at the Arnold Foundation) said:

…75% [of social programs] or more turn out to produce small or no effects… [or] negative effects.

This is worrying, and it highlights the need for more research into the effectiveness of charities and social interventions. Luckily, GiveWell and other charity evaluators exists to undertake in-depth charity research to find out which programs are having the greatest impact on poverty.

‘Effective Altruism’ is a growing worldwide social movement which applies rigorous evidence and analysis to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for highly effective charities. This philosophy of acting with the head and the heart is gathering steam with growing think tanks conducting research in San Francisco and Oxford. Its supporters range from Australian philosopher Peter Singer to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

Helping is not straightforward. But this is no excuse not to give. A minority of programs are found to be incredibly effective, saving and transforming lives at a very low cost per person.

By providing a growing literature on how to give effectively and make a difference with our careers, Effective Altruism promises to empower people around the world to make a real difference with their donations and their time. Aussies can now make tax-deductible donations to some of the most proven effective charities across the globe by visiting Effective Altruism Australia’s website.

Yes, giving from the heart is important. But our feelings need to be guided by facts. We now have the opportunity to be better informed about how, where and to whom we give. It has never been more possible for Australians to have a meaningful and positive impact on a massive scale.

On funerals and death

“Imagine at the next funeral you go to, you hear in the eulogy that they died because people at a previous funeral didn’t donate their time or money instead.”

I just returned from a funeral where I thought some long thoughts. This essay is them, and also serves as an informal will, seeing as I don’t have one.

As I sat in the pew of that church, I couldn’t help but wonder at how many people were present; it must have been at least 200. My thoughts quickly turned to what I would want if it were my funeral. And I realised that I don’t want a funeral at all, and not just because I’m not religious.

Like most people, I care a lot about others, and I want to reduce the amount of suffering and loss in the world. One of my earliest motivations for this was when a friend’s mum passed away from cancer. When I offered my sincere condolences, they told me that there was nothing I could have done. That stopped me. Why? Perhaps there was something I could have done. I started to think about ways to stop cancer, but I quickly realised that suffering can come in many forms, and it is the suffering that I want to end, not necessarily just cancer.

So eventually I realised that I could donate $4,000 AUD to the Against Malaria Foundation and save a life. One whole life for the cost of a holiday. It suddenly seemed hard to justify ever going on a holiday again. If my reaction to death is wanting to stop it, and I have the opportunity to easily stop it, how could I possibly turn that down for some leisure?

Back to the funeral – 200 people in a room for 90 minutes. Assuming that many people would come to my funeral, that’s a lot of person hours (300 to be precise). In my funeral, they are offering my family their condolences and remembering my life, sure, but what if they could use that 300 hours to save another life. Let’s say those people are able to earn $20 an hour on average. If they each spent 90 minutes working instead of being at my funeral, they could make $6,000, enough to save 1.5 lives.

Of course, people can’t always just work at moment’s notice, so this is meant to be illustrative only. But now we’re getting at something – death is awful, but what if you could prevent a death in the time you spent mourning a life? I foresee getting some criticism at this point, so let’s try a thought experiment.

Imagine you’re on your way to a funeral and you see a person lying on the side of the road bleeding out. You stop your car and spend the next 90 minutes performing CPR until the ambulance arrives. You miss the funeral, but the paramedic tells you that you quite literally saved a life. Do you think you were justified in missing the funeral? Do you think the person who died, or their family, would forgive you?

Ah, you say, but I can’t make $4,000 in 90 minutes, so this is an unfair analogy. Ok, well let’s now ask whether you would do the same for a cat you had just driven past. Same situation, CPR until the vet rocks up, and you’re told that you saved the cats life. This is probably a trickier choice, but I imagine a number of people would still pick the cat over the funeral. As readers of this blog would know, a donation to one of the animal charities recommended as being highly effective by Animal Charity Evaluators can reduce one year of animal suffering for just 60 cents (USD). And so if you make $20 an hour, in 90 minutes you could spare 33 animals from a year of suffering.* Even if you would drive past a single cat, you probably wouldn’t drive past a truck full of 33 cats bleeding out.

Of course we can go 1 step further to organisations working to reduce the chance of existential risk where estimates of the impact of a dollar donated range from saving 1 to 1,000,000 lives at some point in the future (albeit with significantly more uncertainty – but on expected value this may check out).

So while people can’t necessarily spend 90 minutes working extra for money at will, they could do a range of other things, like doing some high impact volunteering (I don’t mean working at a local soup kitchen or handing out blankets, which wouldn’t have anywhere near the kind of impact I’m talking about). Add onto that the $5,000 that I estimate a funeral of that size to cost, and it seems quite perverse for me to ask people to come and honour my life for 90 minutes.

So in lieu of having an actual will, I formally request here that, in the event of my death, if you would have come to my funeral, please instead donate 90 minutes of your salary to [insert whatever I think is the most effective charity at the time here – at the moment I suspect it’s one of Machine Intelligence Research Institute, ACE, Foundational Research Institute or Raising for Effective Giving**] and ensure that the $5,000 that would have otherwise been spent on the funeral goes there too.

Of course, I fully accept that we don’t keep promises or go to funerals for the dead, we do it for the living (and I don’t think that not going to a funeral to make $4,000 would be anywhere near as socially acceptable as saving a life on the road, even if you donated it to AMF, and even though I think it should be***). And yet, I can’t imagine that spending 90 minutes mourning in a group is really a better thing to do than to arrange to save so many lives.

Imagine at the next funeral you go to, you hear in the eulogy that they died because people at a previous funeral didn’t donate their time or money instead.

* I use ‘year of suffering’ instead of ‘lives saved’ here because the charities tend to either reduce the amount of suffering experienced by farm animals or reduce animal product demand/create vegans to remove animals from being brought into a life of suffering. But this is still valid, and since many farm animals live for less than a year, I feel justified in using this example.

** The best cause/organisation to give to will almost certainly change over time. In case I don’t update this (or get around to making an actual will), I would be comfortable with giving either Michael Dickens or Brian Tomasik the right to decide where these donations (and any leftover assets I have) end up going. I don’t know them very well, but they are two of the few people I trust to make a mostly rational decision, and to care sufficiently about both non-human animals and the far future.

*** At this point, one might reasonably ask why I go to funerals. I don’t have a great answer. I personally think that my going to funerals is more selfish than staying home and working on some problem, because by not going people would think less of me.

Should you donate to Animal Charity Evaluators even if you’re not vegan?

If you haven’t heard of Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) yet, there’s a really neat summary of them here, but in short, they are doing research on the most effective ways to help animals and reduce their suffering. They perform foundational research on a range of things from the effectiveness of various interventions, such as leafleting to encourage people to go vegan or eat less meat, to the scale of wild animal suffering (it’s huge).

They also produce recommendations on which charities to donate to in order to reduce animal suffering. Perhaps counterintuitively, they don’t recommend animal shelters. This is because the impact of creating one extra vegan on animal wellbeing is so high that it makes the impact of sheltering one extra animal look tiny in comparison. ACE estimates that Vegan Outreach, one of their standout charities which does leafleting at universities, can spare 1.87 animals from a life on a factory farm per dollar donated. By reducing the demand for meat, the animals are, in theory1, never brought into existence in the first place. If you believe like I do that a life of immense suffering is worse than no life at all, this is surely a good thing.

Let’s suppose that rescuing and sheltering one animal costs $50. I have no idea what it costs but I think this is a safe underestimate. Therefore, for the same cost that it takes to shelter an animal, Vegan Outreach can spare 93.5 animals from a life of suffering. Unless you value shelter animals much more than you do food animals, you should donate to Vegan Outreach (or better yet, ACE, to multiply your impact). I don’t think you should value shelter animals more than food animals though. They can all suffer, and in fact pigs are more intelligent than dogs, so if capacity to suffer is what you care about, you should probably care about pigs a little more than dogs.

So this is why I would argue you should donate to an effective animal charity rather than a shelter, but what about the original question? There are many great reasons to go vegan, and it’s really easy, yet many have still decided to not go vegan because they enjoy the taste of animals too much.  Even if this is you, I think you should still donate to ACE. Most people who eat animals still claim to care about animals, so if you want to be at least partially consistent with that belief, the very least you could do is donate to a charity which is reducing their suffering. Of course, I think being vegan is far easier than people think, and you should do this as well because it’s not one or the other (see this video for how to literally go vegan overnight). I’m also not saying that anything but a vegan lifestyle is ethically justified, and don’t want to make it sound like I’m supporting that. But if you can’t bring yourself to be completely vegan, at least donate a chunk of your money to ACE2. Last estimate I heard was that it costs $500 to create one vegan through Vegan Outreach, so you should donate at least that much3. But why stop there?

Let’s go one step further and say that you currently donate to charities that focus on humans. Arguably the most effective charity working on poverty and global health, the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), saves a human life for around $3,300 USD. In effect, you would have to value human life something like 3,000+ times more than the life of an animal to donate to AMF instead of a top animal charity.

Footnotes

1 I say in theory because other factors such as market elasticity are at play which dilute your effect.

2 I’m wary that such a stance will make people less likely to go vegan and to just donate a bit of money to ACE and think they’re ok. I think, on balance, this article is more likely to have a net positive effect than a net negative effect (otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it), but I want to make it doubly clear that I think you should do both.

3 An interesting conclusion comes out of this which might be uncomfortable for those who aren’t consequentialist in their ethical beliefs. If donating $1 is expected to save 1.87 animals from a life of suffering, that means that by not donating, you have confined 1.87 animals to a life of suffering, because there is no morally relevant different between an action and an inaction (think walking past a drowning child in a shallow pond when you could easily save them). By extension, if you’re vegan (or even if you’re not) and you spend $20 on a nice restaurant meal when you could have eaten for $5, having spent $15 on yourself needlessly instead of donating it to a top animal charity, you have consigned 28 animals to a life of suffering. Consider that next time you dine out. This leads to questions like ‘well where does it end then?’ Maybe it doesn’t. Living on less is easy and arguably better for your wellbeing, and you get to save a ton of lives. Why wouldn’t you?

Disclosure: While Michael has worked with ACE in the past, he has never been an employee or an official volunteer.