Laura’s numbers already take into account the number of chickens affected. The 0.23 figure is a total effect to all chickens covered per dollar per year. To get the effect per $1000, we need to multiply by the number of years the effect will last and by 1000. Laura assumes a log normal distribution for the length of the effect that averages to about 14 years. So roughly, 0.23 * 14 * 1000 = 3220 hen DALYs per 1000 dollars.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. You can look at the field for "annual CC DALYs per bird per year" here (with the 0.2 value), it does not include Saulius's estimates. (I managed to replicate the value and checked it against the fields here, they match). 

Saulius’s estimates already factor in the 14 year effect of the intervention. You’ll note that the “chickens affected per dollar” is multiplied by the mean years of impact when giving out the "12 to 160" result.  

Saulius is saying that each dollar affects 54 chicken years of life, equivalent to moving 54 chickens from caged to cage free environments for a year. The DALY conversion is saying that, in that year, each chicken will be 0.23 DALY’s better off. So in total, 54*0.23 = 12.43 DALYs are averted per dollar, or 12430 DALYS per thousand, as I said in the last comment. However, I did notice in here that the result was deweighted by 20%-60% because they expected future campaigns to be less effective, which would bring it down to around 7458.

I didn't factor in the moral conversions because those are seperate fields in the site. If I use P(sentience) of 0.8 and moral weight of 0.44 as the site defaults to, the final DALy per thousand should be 7458*0.8*0.44= 2386 DALYs/thousand dollars, about three times more than the default value on the site. 

I'm sympathetic, but to make the counterpoint: EA needs some way to protect against bullshit. 

Scientists gatekeep publication behind peer review. Wikipedia requires that every claim be backed up with a source. Journalists employ fact checkers. None of these are in any way perfect (and are often deeply flawed), but the point is that theoretically, at least one qualified person with expertise in the subject has checked over what has been written for errors. 

In contrast, how does EA ensure that the claims made here are actually accurate? Well, we first hope that people are honest and get everything right initially, but of course that can never ensure anything. The main mechanism relied upon is that some random reader will bother to read an article closely enough to spot errors in it, and then write a criticism calling the error out in the comments, or write up their own post calling out said error. Of course this is sometimes acrimonious. But if we don't put up the criticism, the BS claims will cement themselves, and start influencing actual real world decisions that affect millions of dollars and peoples lives. 

If we stop "sanctifying" criticism, then what exactly is stopping BS from taking over the entire movement (if it hasn't already)? I've certainly seen actually good criticism dismissed as bad criticism because the author misunderstood their critique, or differed in assumptions. If you're going to rely on criticism as the imperfect hammer to root out bullshit nails, you kinda have to give it a special place. 

I list exactly 2 criticisms. One of them was proven correct, the other I believe to be correct also but am waiting on a response. 

I agree with the asymettry in the cost of waiting, but the other way. If these errors are corrected a week from now, after the debate week has wrapped up, then everybody will have stopped paying attention to the debate, and it will become much harder to correct any BS arising from the faulty tool. 

Do you truly not care that people are accidentally spreading misinformation here? 

In the linked thread, the website owners have confirmed that there is indeed an error in the website. If you try to make calculations using their site as currently made you will be off by a factor of a thousand. They have confirmed this and have stated that this will be fixed soon. When it is fixed I will edit the shortform. 

Would you prefer that for the next couple of days, during the heavily publicised AW vs GHD debate week, in which this tool has been cited multiple times, people continue to use it as is despite it being bugged and giving massively wrong results?  Why are you not more concerned about flawed calculations being spread than about me pointing out that flawed calculations are being spread?

Thanks, hope the typos will be fixed. I think I've almost worked through everything to replicate the results, but the default values still seem off.

If I take sallius's median result of 54 chicken years life affected per dollar, and then multiply by Laura's conversion number of 0.23 DALYs per $ per year, I get a result of 12.4 chicken years life affected per dollar. If I convert to DALY's per thousand dollars, this would result in a number of 12,420. 

This is outside the 90% confidence interval for the defaults given on the site, which gives it as "between 160 and 3.6K suffering-years per dollar". If I convert this to the default constant value, it gives the suggested value of 1,900, which is roughly ten time lower than the value if I take Sallius's median and laura's conversion factor. 

If I put in the 12420 number into the field, the site gives out 4630 DALY's per thousand dollars, putting it about 10 times higher than originally stated in the post, which seems more in line with other RP claims (after all, right now the chicken campaign is presented as only 10 times more cost effective, whereas others are claiming it's 1000x more effective using RP numbers). 

This parameter is set to a normal distribution (which, unfortunately you can't control) and the normal distribution doesn't change much when you lower the lower bound. A normal distribution between 0.002 and 0.87 is about the same as a normal distribution between 0 and 0.87. (Incidentally, if the distribution were a lognormal distribution with the same range, then the average result would fall halfway between the bounds in terms of orders of magnitude. This would mean cutting the lower bound would have a significant effect. However, the effect would actually raise the effectiveness estimate because it would raise the uncertainty about the precise order of magnitude. The increase of scale outside the 90% confidence range represented by the distribution would more than make up for the lowering of the median.)

The upper end of the scale is already at " a chicken's suffering is worth 87% of a humans". I'm assuming that very few people are claiming that a chickens suffering is worth more than a humans. So wouldn't the lognormal distribution be skewed to account for this, meaning that the switch would substantially change the results?

Can I ask how you arrived at the "millionths" number?

I would advise being careful with RP's Cross-cause effectiveness tool as it currently stands, especially with regards to the chicken campaign. There appears to be a very clear conversion error which I've detailed in the edit to my comment here. I was also unable to replicate their default values from their source data, but I may be missing something. 

Thanks for clarifying! I think these numbers are the crux of the whole debate, so it's worth digging into them. 

You may want to prioritize humans in the same way that you prioritize your family over others, or citizens of the same country over others. The capacities values are not in tension with that. You may also prefer to help humans because of their capacity for art, friendship, etc. 

I am understanding correctly that none of these factors are included in the global health and development effectiveness evaluation?

To grasp the concept, I think a better example application would be: if you had to give a human or three chickens a headache for an hour (which they would otherwise spend unproductively) which choice would introduce less harm into the world? Estimating the chickens' range as half that of the human would suggest that it is less bad overall from the perspective of total suffering to give the headache to the human.

I'm not sure how this is different to my hypothetical, except in degree? 

Still, it is hard to draw direct action-relevant comparisons of the sort that you describe because there are many potential side effects that would need to be considered. 

 But the thing we are actually debating here is "should we prevent african children from dying of malaria, or prevent a lot of chickens from being confined to painful cages", which is an action. If you are using a weight of ~0.44 to make that decision, then shouldn't you similarly use it to make the "free 3 chickens or a human" decision? 

Thanks for clarifying! However, I'm still having trouble replicating the default values. I apologise for drilling down so much on this, but this calculation appears to be the crux of the whole debate. My third point is extremely important, as I seem to be getting two order of magnitude lower results? edit: also added a fourth point which is a very clear error. 

First, The google doc states that the life-years affected per dollar is 12 to 120, but Sallius report says it's range is 12 to 160. Why the difference? Is this just a typo in the google doc?

Second, the default values in the tool are given as 160 to 3600. Why is this range higher (on a percentage basis) than the life years affected? Is this due to uncertainty somehow?

Finally and most importantly, the report here seems to state that each hen is in the laying phase for approximately 1 year (40-60 weeks), and that switching from cage to cage-free averts roughly 2000 hours of hurtful pain and 250 hours of disabling pain (and that excruciating pain is largely negligible). If I take the maximum DALY conversion of 10 for disabling and 0.25 for hurtful (and convert hours to years), I get an adjusted result of (250*10 + 0.25*2000)/(365*24) = 0.34 DALYs per chicken affected per year. If I multiply this by sallius estimate, I get a lower value than the straight "life years affected", but the default values are actually around 13 time higher. Have I made a mistake here? I couldn't find the exact calculations

Edit: Also, there is clearly a bug in the website: If I set everything else to 1, and put in "exactly 120 suffering-years per dollar", the result it gives me is 120 DALYs per thousand dollars. It seems like the site is forgetting to do the one dollar to a thousand dollar conversion, and thus underestimating the impact of the chicken charity by a factor of a thousand.