The new GiveWell recommendations are out: here's a summary of the charities

[-]Lumifer11y120

I find it... weird that DMI made the list. I've scanned through the GiveWell review -- it consists mostly of caveats and qualifications attached to a single study run by the charity itself with explicit goal of making the study produce the required results at any cost. Moreover, the data deals mostly with "desirable behaviors" and not with actual changes in mortality.

I don't want to second-guess GiveWell, but is that really one of the best charities available?

[-]AABoyles11y30

They're self reporting, which is to say they have an incentive to represent their results as better than they really are. Until someone else performs that research, this is the highest-quality source of data available. If GiveWell thinks it checks out, I'm strongly inclined to believe it.
Changes in mortality are really difficult to disentangle, even over very long timespans (which DMI doesn't have yet). Accepting their decision to study changes in self-reported behaviors, they've structured their research in the best way possible (RCT).

Also, doesn't their approach have an intuitive appeal? Figure out what sickens/kills people in a place, find the cheapest behavior-change-based intervention, and tell everyone to do it using conventional advertising channels. I'd be surprised if it didn't have some measurable effect (which I won't say about the vast majority of charities).

[-]Lumifer11y30

they have an incentive to represent their results as better than they really are

That's only part of it -- the other part is Goodhart's Law and the fact that they are trying really hard to produce good metrics.

Changes in mortality are really difficult to disentangle

That's not a good reason to search for your keys under a streetlight.

doesn't their approach have an intuitive appeal?

No, not to me. Telling people via mass media that they should behave better doesn't have a great track record :-/

[-]AABoyles11y10

Do you believe samples of self-reported behavior can't be an informative proxy for harder population metrics, like morbidity or mortality?

[-]Lumifer11y10

They could be after you establish the relationship through empirical data.

[-]owencb11y00

Telling people via mass media that they should behave better doesn't have a great track record :-/

I think at least the prevailing view in public health is that it does. This report is a decade old, but was the clearest summary I could find on a quick search. They do emphasise that media campaigns are more likely to be effective when awareness is a major issue and when the desired behaviour change is not that large (both seem true in the case of DMI).

[-]Lumifer11y00

I don't think the report you link to supports your claim. In particular, while it shows some evidence that mass-media campaigns can raise the awareness of an issue, there is no conclusive evidence that they make anyone actually change their behaviour. And that's before we look at the cost-effectiveness of the whole thing.

[-]owencb11y00

They do give a few examples of changing behaviour. For instance:

However, a controlled trial of a TV advertising campaign in central and northern England provides evidence that mass media campaigns may be able to change behaviour. The campaign was effective in reducing smoking prevalence by about 1.2% over 18 months.

However I agree that it doesn't have fantastic evidence of that. But most of my impressions of this come from talking to people who work in public health; my understanding is that at least in rich countries, properly targeted public health campaigns are actually very cost-effective. How this carries over to poor countries is another question, but as a baseline I'd at least assume it's plausible.

[-]Lumifer11y00

They do give a few examples of changing behaviour.

One -- which you quoted -- and which they offset by the immediately following paragraph which says (emphasis mine):

A study found that the proportion of people who were knowledgeable about the new recommendations increased significantly after the campaign, although it was unclear whether it was TV advertising or other elements of the campaign that made the difference (Hillsdon et al., 2001). However, there was no evidence that the campaign raised levels of physical activity.

Negative evidence is evidence, too.

[-]owencb11y00

There are more examples on the following page (although they are all time series rather than controlled trials, the effect sizes are large enough that it is implausible that they all represent natural background shifts).

I certainly don't think that all public health campaigns are effective, or that awareness always translates into action. I just thought that your statements sounded surprisingly negative about the possibility of them being cost-effective.

[-]Metus11y60

Thank you for your work.

On the Giving What We Can website (or some other from the same memespace) there is (or was, as I can't find it anymore) an extremely powerful calculator that upon input of your income calculates what your current relative position in the world is, how much it would be reduced by their recommended donation and what good this money could do in terms of physical action (like 23 people dewormed) and expected lifes saved. All the long discussion is extremely valuable but should be put aside to make these kind of visualisations more visible.

I am willing to bet that more people would be convinced by reading something along the lines of "$100 of your annual income would knock you down only by 0.1% on the income distribution, but it would help educate 63 people about basic hygiene and prevent 12 expected child deaths" than by anything else.

[-]gjm11y80

an extremely powerful calculator

Here it is.

(If your after-tax family income is $100k, for a 2-adult 0-child family in the US then you're in the top 0.8% before giving 10% and the top 1.0% after, and this is alleged to be equivalent to saving 3 lives per year. Make it $50k/year and it's top 3.9% -> top 4.7% and 1 life per year. In the other direction, at $200k/year it's top 0.1% -> top 0.1% and 6 lives. I don't know how compelling those numbers would be to the people they're relevant to. For the avoidance of doubt, I am able to halve and double the number 3, but rounding could have affected the figures a little.)

I have a bit of an uneasy feeling about comparing your wealth percentile before and after. It rather gives the impression that your reason for wanting to earn more is to be ahead of as much of the population as possible. Which I suppose it is, to some extent for most people, but it seems like it shouldn't and it's unfortunate to be encouraging that mode of thinking.

(I guess that the actual intended thought process is less "well, OK, I'll still be in the top 0.6%, which is good enough for me, so I'll go ahead and donate" but "well, I suppose it's kinda indecent to begrudge a bit of my income when even after donating I'll be in such a privileged position in global terms" -- which isn't quite so bad, but still doesn't seem like how anyone ought to be thinking about their income.)

[-]eved11y10

Does anyone know of a "calculator" similar to the one linked above that shows your worldwide rank in terms of net worth AND allows negative net worth? (I will gladly accept a table instead of a calculator.)

Bafflingly, http://www.globalrichlist.com/wealth silently converts negative numbers into their absolute values, resulting in ridiculous claims. (For example, an underwater home equity of -100000 USD is interpreted as 100000 USD.)

[-]eved11y10

I have found one at http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-distribution-of-net-worth-in-united.html that is for household net worth in the United States.

[-]Metus11y10

Thank you.

Which I suppose it is, to some extent for most people, but it seems like it shouldn't and it's unfortunate to be encouraging that mode of thinking.

You don't encourage it, you use it. It will be there no matter what you do as humans are social creatures under heavy competition. We can speculate about the reasons but it is what it is.

Would be happier with a calculator that instead suggests an equivalent of the money to be donated considering tax-deductibility? I am imagining something like "You can donate $10k per year to do X, equivalent to about Y1 number of coffees, Y2 movie tickets, Y3 beers, ..." The point of htese calculators is to visualise the stark contrast in life between first world countries and target nations.

[-]gjm11y10

You don't encourage it, you use it. It will be there no matter what you do

It will, I'm sure, but I think the boundary between using and encouraging is a fuzzy one. (So, I guess, is the boundary between discouraging and denying. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying we shouldn't pretend people don't care about relative status. Just that we shouldn't prompt them to think in those terms.)

a calculator that instead suggests an equivalent of the money to be donated

Yes, I think that would be healthier.

[-]casebash11y00

I can't understand how Living Goods can cause a 25% reduction in child mortality, but cost $10000 per life saved given that they are selling goods. More benefits are listed further down, but not in the summary of what each dollar achieves.

They also don't include any research projects. I guess that makes sense - no-one can really predict which research projects will be successful or not.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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The new GiveWell recommendations are out: here's a summary of the charities

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GiveWell's newly-added charities

Boost health and cognitive development with salt fortification

Educate millions in life-saving practices with Development Media International

Bring badly-needed goods and health services to the poor with Living Goods

GiveWell's old and returning charities

Treat hundreds of people for parasitic worms

Make unconditional cash transfers with GiveDirectly

Save lives and prevent infections with the Against Malaria Foundation

How to donate