Person-affecting views may be dominated by possibilities of large future populations of necessary people

On symmetric person-affecting views (PAV), in choosing between actions only necessary people, those who will exist regardless of our immediate choice, count while those whose existence is contingent on our choices are ignored. Chaotic 'butterfly effects' mean that almost any terrestrial action will shortly scramble the genetic makeup and identities of future terrestrial births. Thus philosopher Michael Plant invokes symmetric PAV to say that '[o]n this, roughly speaking, the well-being of future entities, human or non-human, does not count" and to argue in favor of a focus on short-run impacts on long-lived existing creatures (humans and dogs, but not chickens or ants) rather than long-run consequences of altruistic interventions, since vast future populations would be composed of contingent rather than necessary people. However, the empirical underpinnings of this move are questionable: there are reasonable possibilities on which astronomically large populations of necessary people will exist, and credence in such possibilities will mean that they account for the bulk of expected impact on necessary people. I raise three such possibilities: technological life extension, contact with distant aliens, and fission cases.

Flow-through effects of innovation through the ages

Summary: Per the previous post, it appears that growth impacts of saving lives have historically dwarfed the immediate effects, by increasing technological innovation that eventually led to the rich and populous modern world. Active work on technological innovation contributes more to technology than the average of all activity in society, and so might be expected to have larger growth effects. Moreover, in ancient times not only did society have smaller population and output, it also invested much less of those resources into R&D. The greater neglectedness raised the marginal impact of ancient R&D enormously, so that past altruists who contributed to innovation could have had multiple orders of magnitude more impact on long-run living standards and years of life lived than those who saved lives or provided direct aid. The strength of this preference increases enormously as we consider earlier periods in history.

Flow-through effects of saving a life through the ages on life-years lived

Summary: Historically, human populations were much smaller, and humans have long contributed to a process of technological accumulation that lead to current enormous human populations. Thus, saving a drowning child 10,000 years ago would have, by increasing economic output and technological advance, lead to hundreds of additional human lives by today, and potentially far more in the future. Because past populations were smaller by a greater factor than they were poorer, the ancients' opportunities to bring about QALYs may be much greater and closer to those of moderns than is sometimes thought, at least within the field of local direct life-saving. Impacts were also enormously greater in comparatively non-Malthusian periods, when a saved life could compound at high local population growth rates. In some ways, this is a historical analog to Nick Bostrom's 'Astronomical Waste' argument, showing that the basic logic of longtermism has held in the past in at least some domains. However, expediting growth is a relatively easy change to transmit over long periods, whereas trajectory changes that attempt to shape the character or actions of society at future technology levels (rather than when they are reached) face the problem of decaying influence.

Annual 'splitting' of funding gaps can be partial funging when gaps carry over across years

In a 2015 blog post, the Open Philanthropy Project contrasted several strategies for coordinating Good Ventures' donations with those of smaller donors. One was 'splitting,' in which a large donor commits to funding only a fixed percentage of a funding gap (between two thresholds of efficacy) in a given year. The advantage of this is said to be that a $1 marginal donation by a small donor will increase funding to the recipient charity by $1, in contrast to 'funging' where the large donor reduces its donation in response to the small donor, so that funding to the recipient charity increases by substantially less than $1. However, this distinction does not hold when funding gaps can substantially carry over from year to year. In the limit of perfect carryover, funging of small donors could approach 100%. With substantial stochastic carryover funging could be likewise substantial, while 'one-time' opportunities may suffer minimal funging. I suggest that some accounting for carryover across periods must accompany 'splitting' to avoid donor illusion.

Creating a donor-advised fund lottery

Summary: In a previous post I discussed the construction of charity lotteries, which let donors who think that the effectiveness of their donations has increasing returns to scale convert small donations into a small chance of donations large enough to exploit scale economies. However, transaction and coordination costs pose a barrier to individual users: there are scale economies to setting up charity lotteries. Effective altruists looking for projects could set up a charity lottery with low transaction costs using a donor-advised fund to provide easy access to small donors.

Discussing Giving Season 2014

It's giving season in the American tax year. As in previous years, some people in the effective altruism movement have been asking to talk about their giving decisions with me, and I would like to extend the offer of a sounding board to the readers of this blog. You can contact me by email, facebook, or by leaving a comment below with contact information (comments with contact info will be kept in moderation and not published).

Migration levies and unskilled labor mobility in Singapore

Summary: Several advocates of increased labor mobility have suggested taxes on migrants to compensate natives of destination countries for any inconveniences and to increase the reward of accepting more migrants, as a theoretical matter. In practice Singapore already accepts an exceptionally large number of unskilled and less skilled temporary workers, taxes them heavily, and uses the extensive net revenue to make a significant contribution to the public accounts. It appears that Singapore captures most of the economic surplus of migration, although migrants also benefit significantly. However, the system produces great local inequality and has a number of other problems that may outweigh fiscal benefits in its political appeal. While Singaporean migration policy seems much better than most developed countries', it is not first-best from a humanitarian point of view, and the model's value in promoting labor mobility elsewhere is uncertain, although intriguing.

Upward and downward biases in the "double world GDP" estimates of the gains of open borders

Summary: I discuss recent estimates that open borders could double gross world product through increases to migrant productivity. Such a doubling would be extreme, but not out of the range of our experience: it would be equivalent to raising world per capita income to the level of Greece (U.S. levels would quadruple world product), or a couple decades of continued economic growth. However, it would require the great majority of the developing world to migrate. I discuss the migration levels required for the estimates, polling and historical data bearing on migration levels, and population and economic growth trends that affect the estimates. Over several decades, the impact estimates seem too high, requiring implausible quantities and rates of migration, although potential effects remain large. Over the longer term, boosts such as population growth in poor countries and increased education for second generation migrants increase the maximum potential of migration beyond doubling world output, but development in poor countries, changes in place premium, and other changes may reduce gains over time.

What portion of a boost to global GDP goes to the poor?

Summary: How should individuals compare the impact of donations made to the world's poorest with changes in overall economic activity which are not specifically targeted at the poor, but proportionally increase incomes worldwide? World income is on the order of 30 times income for GiveDirectly recipients, so the cost of generating a similar immediate boost in log income would also be about 30 times as great. Some industries are more evenly distributed across the world than others: an economic change that delivered equal absolute dollars gain to people around the world might only need to be a few times greater. I discuss some industries that may illustrate these poles and intermediate levels. Changes in foreign aid from dollars to rich countries appear less important than growth impacts on poor countries.

Cancer vs malaria: burden, treatment spending, R&D spending, R&D results

Summary: I compare the burden, treatment spending, and R&D spending for cancer and malaria worldwide. Cancer causes somewhat more than twice the DALY burden of malaria, but has almost 14 times the global R&D budget per DALY, and almost 60 times the global treatment budget per DALY. Funding for malaria, which is controlled by donors, has a much higher share dedicated to R&D than cancer spending. That R&D also seems to produce more results, indicating diminishing returns at work in medical R&D.

A glance at the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DfID), and careers in government grantmaking

Summary: I take a quick glance at the financial statements of  the United Kingdom's foreign agency, the Department for International Development (DfID). The agency's portfolio includes many highly effective interventions, but likely has some room for improvement in its funding allocation and delivery. Its budget is more than $6.5 million per employee, suggesting that if an employee has at least a modest positive influence over DfID activities, then he or she could do more direct good there than by working in industry and donating to the most effective international health charities. I suggest looking more closely at this broader category, of careers in government grant allocation.

It's harder to favor a specific cause in more efficient charitable markets

Summary: People vary widely in their views on the relative importance of different causes, interventions, and charities. Those with strong idiosyncratic beliefs favoring one might expect they will have much greater impact by focusing on the favored cause. However, "smart money" which moves in pursuit of marginal returns, can mean that targeted support simply displaces flexible support, instead of adding to it. For example, attempts to favor one of GiveWell's recommended charities relative to others can easily be thwarted as GiveWell attends to room for more funding and diminishing returns in making its recommendations. Insofar as the effective altruist movement increases this dynamic, it will tend to link different causes and interventions together.

If big donors have much better opportunities than small donors, then small donors can go to Las Vegas, or Wall Street

Summary: For various reasons, donors giving large amounts may be able to achieve more per dollar with their donations, enjoying economies of scale. When this is true, small donors may be able to do more good by exchanging a donation for a lottery with a 1/n chance of delivering a donation n times as large. In practice, transaction costs and taxation mean the donation will be smaller, a cost which must be compared against scale economies. However, the use of randomization, casino gambling, derivatives, and other institutions can limit lottery costs to a modest factor, lowest when investments are used. So small donors who believe strong scale economies exist can take advantage of them.

Recent growth at Giving What We Can and GiveWell

Summary: For the last three years Giving What We Can's number of additional members each year has been fairly steady. The same was true of GiveWell's increases in number of donors and money moved (excluding Good Ventures) for 2010-2012. However, small donors to GiveWell have shown accelerated growth in 2013 following Peter Singer's TED talk, which may be reflected by large donors as the figures for the 2013 giving season become known.

Turning log-consumption into a [crude] measure of short-run human welfare

Summary: [This post is intended more as notes than for a general audience.] Many have praised log income as a good proxy for individual humans' welfare. While log income alone is useful for analyzing transfers within a fixed population, when spending can also change population (e.g. through saving lives, contraception, assistance for parents) log income must be supplemented to produce a measure that tracks welfare, e.g. with an estimate of the value of a life at a subsistence income compared to the value of a life at some higher income. I then take a first pass at global income distribution statistics in this light.

How to think about displacing Good Ventures in funding GiveWell Labs?

Summary: It appears likely that visibly investing funds to donate next year would be a better bet than donating to GiveWell's 2013 picks, based on expected 2014 opportunities. How does this compare to donating to GiveWell's research fundraising, i.e. substituting for dollars that would otherwise be raised by Good Ventures? Since Good Ventures is investing most of its resources (with economies of scale in investment) for use when better information is available, this can be seen as another way to invest for future donation prospects. The value of doing this, compared to a donor-advised fund, should depend on one's beliefs about possible future disagreements, economies of scale, signalling, and incentives. Those who would firmly plan to give from their donor-advised funds based on GiveWell and Good Ventures recommendations have a good case for supporting GiveWell research, even if is not expected to increase research activity. 

What proxies to use for flow-through effects?

Summary: When assessing altruistic interventions from a long-run perspective, particularly ones which do not act directly on the long-run (like averting human extinction) assessing flow-through effects is essential. In this post I raise some possible metrics to use in assessing flow-through effects. The causal relationships between them are unclear, and exogenous interventions to boost a metric may break correlations with other outcomes: they are intended as a set of candidates to reference in later discussion. Additional candidates are welcome in the comments.

Thoughts on GiveWell's 2013 recommendations

Summary: Some observations regarding GiveWell's 2013 charity recommendations.

How immigration could make AMF more cost-effective

Summary: charities that save the lives of the global poor have more economic impact than one might think because a portion of the very poor may emigrate to other countries and enormously increase their productivity, and this portion may greatly increase if some developed countries open their borders.

Open borders in (at least) one (developed) country

Over at the Open Borders Blog Vipul Naik and co-bloggers have discussed an enormous variety of arguments for and against a system of open borders. Immigrants from poor countries earn much more when they move to rich countries, a "place premium." If this place premium is unaffected by very high levels of immigration, then open borders could greatly increase world GDP and eliminate almost all absolute poverty. Refugees would be guaranteed a place to escape bad conditions, governments would face incentives to improve their policies to keep their population from leaving.

So immigration is very much worth a look for those interested in effective altruism. This post covers a point that seems to me to have been relatively neglected among open borders advocates (although it has been discussed more by advocates of charter cities): it seems most of the expected benefits do not require a global system of open borders, just open borders in one or a few countries with the right properties, a much easier goal.