> Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers if we are not certain that an intervention has a positive effect, and it could have a negative effect, even if we think that isn’t likely. This doesn’t necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally likely to harm animals as to help them.
> Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers if we are not certain that an intervention has a positive effect, and it could have a negative effect, even if we think that isn’t likely. This doesn’t necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally likely to harm animals as to help them.
Yes, that's exactly what it means. The author's argument is entirely predicated on a confidence interval that includes 0.
Your $100 donation to The Humane League could kill 600 animals or save 1300 animals, or anything in between. Personally, that's not a compelling argument to me.
No, assuming [-6,13] is a 95% confidence interval on a normal distribution with mean of 3.5 (substitute your own reasonable assumptions about distribution and sample size), it's plausibly something like 3x more likely that the effect is positive.
> The results from several studies suggest higher levels of mortality in cage-free systems compared to battery cages and there is reason to believe that higher levels of mortality correspond to lower levels of welfare since the increased mortality may result from disease, feather pecking, and injuries. Among the nine experts interviewed in The Open Philanthropy Project’s report “How Will Hen Welfare be Impacted by the Transition to Cage-Free Housing?” there was unanimous agreement that mortality will likely be significantly higher following the transition to cage-free systems. The authors of the report express optimism that producers will be motivated to and capable of reducing mortality levels to be comparable with battery cages and maintain the view that cage-free systems will have a net positive impact on welfare in the long term.
(a link to the mentioned report is included in the footnote)
The source [0] of the article makes it sound that no actual, physical animals are being saved, but instead long-term efforts are being undertaken that the evaluators somehow converted to physical animals.
If we're talking about bang for the buck, there's more bang to going vegan than just saving animals. In particular, there's the reduced carbon footprint. I expect there are health benefits as well.
This doesn't even mention about the environmental impacts of the meat industry. The problem with meat is not just about the animal welfare, but also of the un-sustainable demands of meat industry on the environment. The logic of this article only makes sense if someone's objective of going vegan is to increase the sum-total of animal happiness in a pure mathematical sense. Even then, increasing happiness of 350 animals while eating 105 animals sourced otherwise is absurd.
I don't think the numbers scale linearly. A single dollar probably does nothing to contribute to better animal welfare. It takes a threshold of money to start being impactful, and over a long time period to inflict noticeable long-term change.
The impact of a single donation also probably doesn't have as many consequences on the individual and societal level as investing a year to change habits, learning new recipes, thinking about nutrition and health and animal welfare, and inadvertently also talking to friends and bringing up demand for restaurants to expand their vegetarian/vegan options.
Lastly, the choice doesn't have to be a binary one. It is possible to reduce consumption to bring average consumption down.
I went vegetarian last year because of this. I probably ate 1 lb of meat a day before and I loved meat. I went towards vegetarian first as I wanted to make the habit stick then as I learn more vegan cooking can make the change to veganism. It was about 9 months ago and it has been the easiest change in my life
> An estimate from Animal Charity Evaluators in 2018 has it that The Humane League “spares between -6 and 13 farmed animals per dollar spent.” If we settle on the middle of this range, we can estimate that a $1 donation to The Humane League would save around 3.5 animals, mostly chickens.
This makes most "carbon offset" purchases look like Nobel Prize winning science. This is just "lie with statistics". Yes, donating $100 to this charity probably does some good. But coming to the headline conclusion "You Can Save More Animals by Donating $100 Than Going Vegan" by using data with error bars a couple miles wide is laughable.
This is true of most charitable things. The most effective thing you can do is typically to distribute resources to where it has the most outsized impact, not yourself being nice. But you should also be nice anyway, because ultimately things still have to bottom out in choices that individuals make.
Vegan here. I intentionally don't donate to anything related to veganism. The reason is that the dollar spent on a purchasing decision has unquestionable impact, all throughout the affected market. Charities, on the other hand, are a mine field of barely legal scams and even counter-productive activity.
I try to "vote with my dollar," focusing mainly on lower cost vegan alternatives (eschewing the higher priced stuff even though I could afford it). As it stands now, price is a barrier to veganism for some people. Ideally, I'd like to see it be the cheaper option. No amount of one-time activism will compare with the environmental impact of having an economic incentive for everyone to always choose the vegan option.
These claims sounds very bold to me, especially considering THL spends 1/3 of their budget targeting individuals to consider a plant based diet. If you want to keep eating meat it feels questionable at best to donate to an organization like this.
However, if you look at the comprehensive review of the Animal Charity Evaluators, they claim that for every dollar spent in corporate outreach, they save -10 to 40 (!) animals. The source mentions something about "proportional welfare improvements" which might skew the numbers, but even then this seems insanely high. Don't get me wrong, I believe changing how corporations handle animals will have a way bigger impact than an individual going vegan, but i don't see how saying "this chicken has a 300% better life, so we saved 3 chickens" helps. Or something like that, because I can't find the real method used here. This seems like creative juggling with numbers.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 63.6 ms ] threadI'm confused by this, does the negative 6 mean a dollar could actually result in 6 MORE animal deaths?
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-human...
> Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers if we are not certain that an intervention has a positive effect, and it could have a negative effect, even if we think that isn’t likely. This doesn’t necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally likely to harm animals as to help them.
Your $100 donation to The Humane League could kill 600 animals or save 1300 animals, or anything in between. Personally, that's not a compelling argument to me.
> The results from several studies suggest higher levels of mortality in cage-free systems compared to battery cages and there is reason to believe that higher levels of mortality correspond to lower levels of welfare since the increased mortality may result from disease, feather pecking, and injuries. Among the nine experts interviewed in The Open Philanthropy Project’s report “How Will Hen Welfare be Impacted by the Transition to Cage-Free Housing?” there was unanimous agreement that mortality will likely be significantly higher following the transition to cage-free systems. The authors of the report express optimism that producers will be motivated to and capable of reducing mortality levels to be comparable with battery cages and maintain the view that cage-free systems will have a net positive impact on welfare in the long term.
(a link to the mentioned report is included in the footnote)
[0]: https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-human...
Full disclosure: I'm not vegan.
The impact of a single donation also probably doesn't have as many consequences on the individual and societal level as investing a year to change habits, learning new recipes, thinking about nutrition and health and animal welfare, and inadvertently also talking to friends and bringing up demand for restaurants to expand their vegetarian/vegan options.
Lastly, the choice doesn't have to be a binary one. It is possible to reduce consumption to bring average consumption down.
Decreasing and regulating the meat industry needs to be done also for the impact that it's having on the climate change.
This is just another click-bait title
This makes most "carbon offset" purchases look like Nobel Prize winning science. This is just "lie with statistics". Yes, donating $100 to this charity probably does some good. But coming to the headline conclusion "You Can Save More Animals by Donating $100 Than Going Vegan" by using data with error bars a couple miles wide is laughable.
I try to "vote with my dollar," focusing mainly on lower cost vegan alternatives (eschewing the higher priced stuff even though I could afford it). As it stands now, price is a barrier to veganism for some people. Ideally, I'd like to see it be the cheaper option. No amount of one-time activism will compare with the environmental impact of having an economic incentive for everyone to always choose the vegan option.
This is often true, but Effective Altruism and its related movements that this article discuss mostly alleviate this issue with their guidance.
However, if you look at the comprehensive review of the Animal Charity Evaluators, they claim that for every dollar spent in corporate outreach, they save -10 to 40 (!) animals. The source mentions something about "proportional welfare improvements" which might skew the numbers, but even then this seems insanely high. Don't get me wrong, I believe changing how corporations handle animals will have a way bigger impact than an individual going vegan, but i don't see how saying "this chicken has a 300% better life, so we saved 3 chickens" helps. Or something like that, because I can't find the real method used here. This seems like creative juggling with numbers.