It sounds to me like we’re largely on the same page, and that my original post may have somewhat overstated the differences between at least some ‘human progress’ proponents and the longtermist EA perspective.
On the other hand, looking at just the priorities revealed by what these communities focus on in practice, it does seem like there must be some disagreements.
FWIW, I would guess that one of the main ways in which what you say would lead to pushback from EAs is that at times it sounds somewhat anthropocentric—i.e. considering the well-being of humans, but not non-human animals.
Many if not most EAs believe that nonhuman animals have the capacity to suffer in a morally relevant way, and so consider factory farming to be a moral catastrophe not just because of its adverse effects on the human population or the climate, but for the sake of farmed animals having bad lives under cruel conditions (whether these animals are raised and slaughtered in the US or in China—less intensive animal farming is much more widespread outside of the US, but even globally the vast majority of farmed animals live in factory farms because these have so much larger animal populations).
On the other hand, I do think there may be a fair amount of convergence between EA and ‘human progress proponents’ on how to address this problem. In particular, I think it’s fair to say that EAs tend to be less ideologically committed to particular strategies such as vegan outreach and instead, as they try to do in any cause, adopt an open-minded approach in order to identify whatever works best. E.g. they’re at least open to and have funded welfare reforms, tend to be interested in clean meat and other animal product alternatives—e.g. the Good Food Institute is one of the very few top charities recommended by the EA-aligned Animal Charity Evaluators.
EAs have also pushed the envelope on which cause areas may merit consideration if one cares about the suffering of non-human animals. For instance, they’re aware that many more marine than land animals are directly killed for human consumption, and have helped launch new organizations in this area such as the Fish Welfare Initiative. In terms of even more “out there” topics, EAs have considered the well-being of wild animals (taking them seriously as individuals we care about rather than at the species level for the sake of biodiversity), including whether insects and other invertebrates may have the capacity to suffer (which is relevant both because most animals alive are invertebrates and for evaluating insect farming as another reaction to the issues of factory farming).
To be clear, I think we may well agree on most of this. And it’s not directly relevant to the future-related issues we’ve been discussing (though see e.g. here and here). I’m partly mentioning this because the ideal communication strategy for engaging EAs in this particular area probably looks a bit different since EA has such an unusually large fraction of people who are unusually sympathetic to, and open about, farmed and wild animal welfare being globally important considerations.
Thanks Tony, I appreciate you engaging here.
It sounds to me like we’re largely on the same page, and that my original post may have somewhat overstated the differences between at least some ‘human progress’ proponents and the longtermist EA perspective.
On the other hand, looking at just the priorities revealed by what these communities focus on in practice, it does seem like there must be some disagreements.
FWIW, I would guess that one of the main ways in which what you say would lead to pushback from EAs is that at times it sounds somewhat anthropocentric—i.e. considering the well-being of humans, but not non-human animals.
Many if not most EAs believe that nonhuman animals have the capacity to suffer in a morally relevant way, and so consider factory farming to be a moral catastrophe not just because of its adverse effects on the human population or the climate, but for the sake of farmed animals having bad lives under cruel conditions (whether these animals are raised and slaughtered in the US or in China—less intensive animal farming is much more widespread outside of the US, but even globally the vast majority of farmed animals live in factory farms because these have so much larger animal populations).
On the other hand, I do think there may be a fair amount of convergence between EA and ‘human progress proponents’ on how to address this problem. In particular, I think it’s fair to say that EAs tend to be less ideologically committed to particular strategies such as vegan outreach and instead, as they try to do in any cause, adopt an open-minded approach in order to identify whatever works best. E.g. they’re at least open to and have funded welfare reforms, tend to be interested in clean meat and other animal product alternatives—e.g. the Good Food Institute is one of the very few top charities recommended by the EA-aligned Animal Charity Evaluators.
EAs have also pushed the envelope on which cause areas may merit consideration if one cares about the suffering of non-human animals. For instance, they’re aware that many more marine than land animals are directly killed for human consumption, and have helped launch new organizations in this area such as the Fish Welfare Initiative. In terms of even more “out there” topics, EAs have considered the well-being of wild animals (taking them seriously as individuals we care about rather than at the species level for the sake of biodiversity), including whether insects and other invertebrates may have the capacity to suffer (which is relevant both because most animals alive are invertebrates and for evaluating insect farming as another reaction to the issues of factory farming).
To be clear, I think we may well agree on most of this. And it’s not directly relevant to the future-related issues we’ve been discussing (though see e.g. here and here). I’m partly mentioning this because the ideal communication strategy for engaging EAs in this particular area probably looks a bit different since EA has such an unusually large fraction of people who are unusually sympathetic to, and open about, farmed and wild animal welfare being globally important considerations.