On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I was having lunch with a friend and mentioned that some of my friends donated money to buy bed nets to prevent malaria. “Waste of time,” my friend said. “Do bed nets not work?” I asked.Thanks for reading Cold Button Issues! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
I like this article. I looked at the Scourge paper when I was working on my pro-life effective altruism essay. You can make a good EA case for preventing miscarriages, and abortions are a type of miscarriage which can be prevented. I looked at how GiveWell calculates the cost of a human death. They combined surveys, donor opinion, and YLL (Years of Life Lost) into one overall measurement. They acknowledged being unsure about fetuses, but this seems like a very important place to be unsure. Seems hard to imagine that abortion is welfare increasing while viewing human life as good and preventing malaria as good too.
One reason not to give to people in poor countries is that we don't care. Another reason not to give is anticolonialism: As soon as people invest in something, they tend to want to decide about that thing. We Westerners know that we are not supposed to decide things in poor countries. For that reason many people have the reflex to stay away altogether, I think.
Huh, (first time reader). I mostly think EA people are a little nuts. (No offense meant... everyone is a little nuts in some respect.) I don't know the data, but I would guess that a large fraction of miscarriages are due to some genetic mistake, or some 'sense' in the body that this pregnancy won't lead to a viable offspring. This is the brutal part of natural selection, and over ridding that selection seems like a potential mistake. I know we are not totally governed by our genes.
Brutal
I like this article. I looked at the Scourge paper when I was working on my pro-life effective altruism essay. You can make a good EA case for preventing miscarriages, and abortions are a type of miscarriage which can be prevented. I looked at how GiveWell calculates the cost of a human death. They combined surveys, donor opinion, and YLL (Years of Life Lost) into one overall measurement. They acknowledged being unsure about fetuses, but this seems like a very important place to be unsure. Seems hard to imagine that abortion is welfare increasing while viewing human life as good and preventing malaria as good too.
One reason not to give to people in poor countries is that we don't care. Another reason not to give is anticolonialism: As soon as people invest in something, they tend to want to decide about that thing. We Westerners know that we are not supposed to decide things in poor countries. For that reason many people have the reflex to stay away altogether, I think.
Huh, (first time reader). I mostly think EA people are a little nuts. (No offense meant... everyone is a little nuts in some respect.) I don't know the data, but I would guess that a large fraction of miscarriages are due to some genetic mistake, or some 'sense' in the body that this pregnancy won't lead to a viable offspring. This is the brutal part of natural selection, and over ridding that selection seems like a potential mistake. I know we are not totally governed by our genes.