GiveWell may have made 1B dollars of bad grants due to harming animals?

Also see:

Insecticide-treated nets significantly harm mosquitoes, but one can easily offset this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940443

Looks like trolling to me, but maybe just Poe's law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Summary

- I investigate whether saving human lives globally, and in China, India and Nigeria may be harmful accounting for the meat eating problem, i.e. the nearterm increase in farmed animal suffering caused by increasing income or population. The problem is philosophically analysed in Plant (2022).

- I estimate a random person globally, and in China, India and Nigeria in 2022 caused 15.5, 34.6, 5.17 and 2.31 times as much suffering to poultry birds and farmed aquatic animals as the person’s happiness. Moreover, I expect the meat eating problem in those countries to become worse in the nearterm as their real gross domestic product (real GDP) per capita increases. So my results suggest extending human lives there is harmful in the nearterm.

- GiveWell has made 1.09 billion dollars of grants impacting people in the countries I mentioned. Ambitious Impact has incubated 8 organisations whose 1st target country was one I mentioned, and whose interventions significantly increase the nearterm consumption of farmed animals.

- Nevertheless, I am not confident that saving human lives globally, and in China, India or Nigeria is harmful to animals: -- Even if it is so for farmed animals nearterm, it can still be beneficial overall. For example, I would say at least chickens’ lives can become positive over the next few decades in some animal-friendly countries. -- Many of my modelled inputs are highly uncertain. However, this means extending human lives globally, and in China, India and Nigeria may be, in the nearterm, not only beneficial, but also hugely harmful.

- At the very least, I think GiveWell and Ambitious Impact should practice reasoning transparency, and explain in some detail why they neglect effects on farmed animals.

- In addition, I encourage people there to take uncertainty seriously, and, before significant further investigation, only support interventions which are beneficial in the nearterm accounting for effects on farmed animals. This favours interventions which mostly decrease morbidity instead of mortality, improving annual human welfare per capita without significantly affecting life expectancy, like ones in mental health.

- GiveWell and Ambitious Impact could also offset the nearterm harm caused to farmed animals by funding the best animal welfare interventions.

- I extend my recommendations to GiveWell and Ambitious Impact to all organisations and people supporting interventions significantly increasing the nearterm consumption of farmed animals.