Military Strikes Are An Extremely Cheap Way To Help Foreigners

A numerate rebuttal to a Slate/Yglesias piece ('Military Strikes Are An Extremely EXPENSIVE Way To Help Foreigners') that opposed Syria intervention by comparing it to GiveWell donations. Scott's two charges: (1) WRONG IN DESIGN — 'less effective than GiveWell's #1 charity' is damning by faint praise (tautologically true of everything, including the preschools/PBS/libraries Yglesias likes), and the saved money wouldn't reach GiveWell anyway. (2) WRONG IN EXECUTION — actually running the numbers on Libya (~$1B; ~25,000 casualties averted + 6M lives improved ~0.1 QALY/yr x 25yr ~ 16M QALYs) gives ~$65/QALY, comparable to the Against Malaria Foundation's ~$75 and far under the $25,000/QALY 'excellent value' line. So a superpower's interventions CAN be cost-effective (caveated: they often fail/backfire; he's neutral on Syria itself). Tags it 'fake consequentialism.'

Quality 69 · Strong. 69 — high-Strong. A sharp, numerate, memorable rebuttal that does real work — the 'damning by faint praise' design critique plus an actual QALY calculation — and names a reusable failure mode ('fake consequentialism': selectively wielding GiveWell-comparisons against things you dislike). The hand-waved utility weights keep the specific numbers loose, but the argument lands.

Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. 50 — Moderate. The 'fake consequentialism' critique and the cost-effective-intervention calculation are fresh, generative moves.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. 2 — a within-discourse EA-reasoning critique; mildly memetic, no material reach.