#37 - GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.

What’s the value of preventing the death of a 5-year-old child, compared to a 20-year-old, or an 80-year-old?<br><br> The global health community has generally regarded the value as proportional to the number of health-adjusted life-years the person has remaining - but GiveWell, one of the world’s foremost charity evaluators, no longer uses that approach.<p> They found that contrary to the years-remaining’ method, many of their staff actually value preventing the death of an adult more than preventing the death of a young child. However there’s plenty of disagreement: the team’s estimates of the relative v...