HLI’s work is discussed on the 80k podcast: Some comments
We’re delighted that HLI’s work and the subjective wellbeing approach featured so prominently on the latest 80k podcast with Elie Hassenfeld, the CEO of GiveWell. It was a really high-quality conversation, and kudos to host Rob Wiblin for doing such an excellent job putting forward our point of view. Quite a few people have asked us what we thought, so I’ve written up some comments.
I split those into four main comments and a number of minor ones. To preview, the main comments are:
- We’re delighted, but surprised, to hear GiveWell are now so positive about the SWB approach; we’re curious to know what changed their mind.
- HLI and GiveWell disagree on what does the most good based on differences of how to interpret the evidence; we’d be open to an ‘adversarial collaboration’ to see if we can iron out those differences.
- We’d love to do more research, but we’re currently funding constrained. If you – GiveWell or anyone else – want to see it, please consider supporting us!
- Finally, Rob, we’ve love to come on the podcast!
However, before we get to that, there were some really lovely quotes about our work, and I’d like to share those:[Elie Hassenfeld] “I think the pro of subjective wellbeing measures is that it’s one more angle to use to look at the effectiveness of a programme. It seems to me it’s an important one, and I would like us to take it into consideration.”
[Elie] “…I think one of the things that HLI has done effectively is just ensure that this [using WELLBYs and how to make tradeoffs between saving and improving lives] is on people’s minds. I mean, without a doubt their work has caused us to engage with it more than we otherwise might have. […] it’s clearly an important area that we want to learn more about, and I think could eventually be more supportive of in the future.”
[Elie] “Yeah, they went extremely deep on our deworming cost-effectiveness analysis and pointed out an issue that we had glossed over, where the effect of the deworming treatment degrades over time. […] we were really grateful for that critique, and I thought it catalysed us to launch this Change Our Mind Contest. ”