I get why I and other give to Givewell rather than catastrophic risk—sometimes it’s good to know your “Impact account” is positive even if all the catastrophic risk work was useless.
But why do people not give to animal welfare in this case? Seems higher impact?
And if it’s just that we prefer humans to animals that seems like something we should be clear to ourselves about.
Also I don’t know if I like my mental model of an “impact account”. Seems like my giving has maybe once again become about me rather than impact.
This is exactly why I mostly give to animal charities. I do think there’s higher uncertainty of impact with animal charities compared to global health charities so I still give a bit to AMF. So roughly 80% animal charities, 20% global health.
Thanks for brining our convo here! As context for others, Nathan and I had a great discussion about this which was supposed to be recorded...but I managed to mess up and didn’t capture the incoming audio (i.e. everything Nathan said) 😢
Guess I’ll share a note I made about this (sounds AI written because it mostly was, generated from a separate rambly recording). A few lines are a little spicier than I’d ideally like but 🤷
Donations and Consistency in Effective Altruism
I believe that effective altruists should genuinely strive to practice effective altruism. By this, I mean that there are individuals who earnestly and seriously agree with the core arguments that animal welfare charities deserve significant financial support, both in relative and absolute terms. However, they do not always follow through on these convictions when it comes to donations.
Many, for example, will eagerly nod along with introductory presentations for university effective altruism groups often highlight the fact that a tiny fraction of all donations go toward animal welfare causes, even within EA.
And, as far as I can tell, very few if any EAs affirmatively dispute that animal welfare as a cause is simply more important and neglected, and similarly as tractable, as global poverty. But their donations do not seem to reflect this, going to GiveWell-type charities like GiveDirectly or Against Malaria Foundation instead of animal welfare organizations.
While supporting poverty alleviation efforts is commendable in its own right – after all we want poor people having more money and fewer dying from preventable diseases – it seems incongruous given their professed beliefs.
Without delving too deeply into speculation or psychoanalysis regarding individual motivations behind these donation choices; one possibility is simply an emotional preference for contributing toward human-centric causes over those focused on animals’ well-being.
To be clear: I am not claiming any personal moral superiority here; my own charitable giving record is awfully small in relative terms. Nonetheless I encourage fellow EAs who share concerns about factory farming’s abhorrent nature and have resources available for philanthropy to seriously consider allocating their donations toward animal welfare causes.
Thanks for posting this. I had branching out my giving strategy to conclude some animal-welfare organizations on the to-do list, but this motivated me to actually pull the trigger on that.
I think most of the animal welfare neglect comes from the fact that if people are deep enough into EA to accept all of its “weird” premises they will donate to AI safety instead. Animal welfare is really this weird midway spot between “doesn’t rest on controversial claims” and “maximal impact”.
Definitely part of the explanation, but my strong impression from interaction irl and on Twitter is that many (most?) AI-safety-pilled EAs donate to GiveWell and much fewer to anything animal related.
I think ~literally except for Eliezer (who doesn’t think other animals are sentient), this isn’t what you’d expect from the weirdness model implied.
Assuming I’m not badly mistaken about others’ beliefs and the gestalt (sorry) of their donations, I just don’t think they’re trying to do the most good with their money. Tbc this isn’t some damning indictment—it’s how almost all self-identified EAs’ money is spent and I’m not at all talking about ‘normal person in rich country consumption.’
Confusion
I get why I and other give to Givewell rather than catastrophic risk—sometimes it’s good to know your “Impact account” is positive even if all the catastrophic risk work was useless.
But why do people not give to animal welfare in this case? Seems higher impact?
And if it’s just that we prefer humans to animals that seems like something we should be clear to ourselves about.
Also I don’t know if I like my mental model of an “impact account”. Seems like my giving has maybe once again become about me rather than impact.
ht @Aaron Bergman for surfacing this
This is exactly why I mostly give to animal charities. I do think there’s higher uncertainty of impact with animal charities compared to global health charities so I still give a bit to AMF. So roughly 80% animal charities, 20% global health.
Thanks for brining our convo here! As context for others, Nathan and I had a great discussion about this which was supposed to be recorded...but I managed to mess up and didn’t capture the incoming audio (i.e. everything Nathan said) 😢
Guess I’ll share a note I made about this (sounds AI written because it mostly was, generated from a separate rambly recording). A few lines are a little spicier than I’d ideally like but 🤷
Thanks for posting this. I had branching out my giving strategy to conclude some animal-welfare organizations on the to-do list, but this motivated me to actually pull the trigger on that.
I think most of the animal welfare neglect comes from the fact that if people are deep enough into EA to accept all of its “weird” premises they will donate to AI safety instead. Animal welfare is really this weird midway spot between “doesn’t rest on controversial claims” and “maximal impact”.
Definitely part of the explanation, but my strong impression from interaction irl and on Twitter is that many (most?) AI-safety-pilled EAs donate to GiveWell and much fewer to anything animal related.
I think ~literally except for Eliezer (who doesn’t think other animals are sentient), this isn’t what you’d expect from the weirdness model implied.
Assuming I’m not badly mistaken about others’ beliefs and the gestalt (sorry) of their donations, I just don’t think they’re trying to do the most good with their money. Tbc this isn’t some damning indictment—it’s how almost all self-identified EAs’ money is spent and I’m not at all talking about ‘normal person in rich country consumption.’