Note: It looks like the shrimp welfare project does not currently have a good number for QALY's/lives saved in expectation, but they are likely to soon.

@RobertCousineau their site says $1 = 1,400 shrimps helped so I assumed that's the number we're going on?

That number is shrimps helped, not saved. I'd want to see how many happy shrimp life equivalents they are adding to the world per dollar spent (not just how many shimps they helped at all).

I'm interested to see, then, whether that's even their aim. as far as I can tell they're not looking to save shrimps from death but rather increasing their quality of life and killing them more humanely. but I'll stay tuned.

@shankypanky I'm not explaining myself right. Essentially - I think there is an amount of suffering reduction that is equivalent to a whole new happy life being added to the world. I'm used to seeing these numbers/expected them to be published already by the SWP.

Once they publish these numbers, I'll use their estimate of happy shrimp life equivalents added to the world (through suffering reduction in already existing shrimps) to resolve this.

@RobertCousineau gotcha 👊

@shankypanky he said in a DM, that he donated $5000 USD to this charity, meaning he is the benefactor to 7,000,000 shrimp. Which is the population of Bulgaria. So here he is the king of the sea, ruler of 7m happy citizens of Shrinp Bulgra

@VAPOR firstly I think the Bulgarian people deserve a ruler like this regal Marcus, King of Shrimps 🦐

I left the Discord but before I did there was a conversation about the $5,000 donation. I had a look on their site to find they 'help' 1,400 shrimp per dollar. the conversation/clarifying point is more about the difference between helping and saving - since the charity looks to increase quality of life and decrease suffering in death, afaik Robert is looking for a reliable QALY measurement to track before this can resolve as it's not as cut and dried as 7,000,000 added shrimp in the world

@shankypanky he's a king not a god, he doesn't have any sway over the birth and death of his subjects, only that they live in peace and comfort before The Regal Harvest.

Didn't king mufasa, have no sway over the circle of life, he just ruled with honour and provided his subjects with dignity, before the Regal Reaping.

This market seeks a Shrimp God.

@RobertCousineau That's an interesting take on negative utilitarianism, but I think "averting suffering" and "saving lives" are meaningfully not the same thing. You can assign a value to each of them and make comparisons between them, but they're not the same thing. SWP, as far as I know, saves ~zero shrimp lives in expectation. (That doesn't mean that it's a bad thing or should not be funded).

@Sailfish I did not assume it was an interesting take of my own - I thought it was a relatively standard view (e.g. QALY's). Am I misunderstanding something there? I'd happily send you some mana if you clear up my confusion/convince me I am wrong/non-standard.

@RobertCousineau I'm certainly not an expert so I 'm not too sure how common this view is in general.

I think QALYs are a useful symbol that we can map reality to in order to make expected value comparisons between different things. I'm not really sure about going the other way, mapping QALYs back to reality and saying that the different things are actually the same thing. In this specific example, my understanding is that on the object level it's true that ~zero shrimp lives will be saved, that we don't expect a marginal dollar to increase the amount of shrimp that are alive and having any sort of experience. I agree that we can compare the two, and say that increasing the welfare of some number of shrimp above a baseline of suffering is equivalent to creating some number of happy shrimp lives and that we should value the two the same amount. I'm not sure I agree that valuing the two the same amount means that they are the same thing.