Speaker 3
yes, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I guess, one of the, one of the key insides of and, and you can correct me if i'm misrepresenting e a here, but one of the insides that ce sold me on it several years ago was the idea that you can actually put a value, like a, a monetary value, on saving a life. Value very, probably the wrong word, more like cost, like it costs a certain amount of money to actually save a life. A, and i think at the time, an an estimate that i heard is that maybe about two thousand, 500 dollars, or two two thousand pounds, to save a life through giving money to the against malaria foundation. A, is that? Is that roughly accurate? That is hat how you think about the saving of lives in monetary cost as well, or other other other factors that make this morn you? Ansed,
Speaker 1
so am, i think a common punch lion in this interview is that everything is more complicated than tsually seems. A, so, yes, am, so to flush ut that a bit more. A, there's this organization called givewell, who were amazingly good charity evaluater who, im like, do a lot of research into glover health charities and goe development charities, and try to do, look at the evidence base and try to do cos effectmes calculations of how much good they do. And one of their top charities is the against malara foundation, wou give like, bednets to children in sobtar in africa to protect them from malaria. And aria is like a really big deal. Like, i think, if you look at the entire history of human civilization, malaria is one of the biggest killers ever. And even to day, it still kills like half a million people a year. And a benit's realy cheap. And an so kiv will have this calculation that it costs, i think, three thousand pounds nowadays to save a life, a and a ose. This is an average. You can't take is me literally. But, and, but i think the ye, this is useful. And i think it's useful to lik give context. Like, i'd know a, the average house in london costs like a million pounds a that's about 300 lives a it really gives context, like how we spend money. But i also find it healthful to think of this is like a lower bound a, because if you want to have a clear cot ovenous calculation like this mean to have a really robust evidence base, means to be incredibly confident that your intervention works. And a one of the like, really interesting debate in effect of autruism over the last few years is how much you should praratize having really hih, confidente somm works and like, really robust estimates, versus being open to more uncertainty if things could go away better. For example, if you're cmparing a climate change charity to a anti malaria charity, it's much harder to put, like, like, figure out how much a tin of to converts to and like, life's lost. But that doesn't mean that it's worse. And like, a common criticism of e a is the you're only doing cotafete's calculations, and you're not open to things like sytemic change. And i don't think ht's true. Just really hard to do this, am. But maye be good now to talk about, like, what mes actually care about,
Speaker 2
and how much of it is hewheltstuff like this. Before before we move on to that, i think one more more sort of philosophical note about the evering is, so i'm very sympathetic towards a. Ah, i think one thing that some people struggle with, i like ny how i struggle with this as well, is that, you know, if you take this completely utilitarian approach of, you know, trying to value ou life and then a, instead of optimizing your resources in order to save lives, you know, the assumption is that, yes, the whole, the foundation of all this is that you should care equally about everyone in the world. That's, that's what this all kind of stands on, and it's a very nice idea. Ah, but i think the, i think, like having having this foundation, f like you should actually care about everyone in the world equally. You shouldn't care about, hlp helping your family more than helping, you know, someone who's more deserving all thiskind of stuff. I think there is something, there is something lost in, ah, not having a sense of a a local community, you know. Ah, i think like a lot of people derive meaning from a close knit local communities. And even thoug it's a nice idea, ti like care about everyone equally, a, i think it feels, it feels to me like something is lost if you don't have a sense of the local community and your, you know, only ever focusing on a, doing the most kind of good globally. Like, i think, i think a lot of people would have trouble with this. And from rom what i write, i don't know if ea has a good, like, way of marrying these two things, because the thing i'm talking about, of local communities, it's completely unquantifiable. It's like, styin stuff to do with with like, meaning and and things like that, you're just just like, oh, oun he you can't contifyiyes. Yes, it's, it makes it really tricky. I mean, the way i kind of, you know, justify in my head is like, ok, i have this, like, i have this need for local community and sot of a narrow meaning.