If weāre not something like robustly certain that factory farming increases animal welfare then weāre not robustly certain anything increases animal welfare.
I think you meant āstopping factory-farmingā. I would say research on the welfare of soil animals has a much lower risk of decreasing welfare in expectation.
Trading can happen second to second. Real work on real issues requires years of planning and many years of carrying out.
Making āTiny shiftsā in a charity portfolio isnāt super practical.
I do not know what you mean by this. However, what I meant is that it makes sense to recommend Y over X if Y is more cost-effective at the margin than X, and the recommendation is not expected to change the marginal cost-effectiveness of X and Y much as a result of changes in their funding caused by the recommendation (which I believe applies to my post).
In terms of direct work, I think interventions with smaller effects on soil animals as a fraction of those on the target beneficiaries have a lower risk of decreasing animal welfare in expectation. For example, I believe cage-free corporate campaigns have a lower risk of decreasing animal welfare in expectation than decreasing the consumption of chicken meat. For my preferred way of comparing welfare across species (where individual welfare per animal-year is proportional to ānumber of neuronsā^0.5), Iestimate decreasing the consumption of chicken meat changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 83.7 k times as much as it increaes the welfare of chickens, whereas Icalculate cage-free corporate campaigns change the welfare of such soil animals 1.15 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens. On the other hand, in practice, I expect the effects on soil animals to be sufficiently large in both cases for me to be basically agnostic about whether they increase or decrease welfare in expectation.
I think you meant āstopping factory-farmingā. I would say research on the welfare of soil animals has a much lower risk of decreasing welfare in expectation.
Here is how I think about this.
I do not know what you mean by this. However, what I meant is that it makes sense to recommend Y over X if Y is more cost-effective at the margin than X, and the recommendation is not expected to change the marginal cost-effectiveness of X and Y much as a result of changes in their funding caused by the recommendation (which I believe applies to my post).
yes i missed the word stopping!
yes we can always do research for sure thatās great. I was considering direct work though not including research.
In terms of direct work, I think interventions with smaller effects on soil animals as a fraction of those on the target beneficiaries have a lower risk of decreasing animal welfare in expectation. For example, I believe cage-free corporate campaigns have a lower risk of decreasing animal welfare in expectation than decreasing the consumption of chicken meat. For my preferred way of comparing welfare across species (where individual welfare per animal-year is proportional to ānumber of neuronsā^0.5), I estimate decreasing the consumption of chicken meat changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 83.7 k times as much as it increaes the welfare of chickens, whereas I calculate cage-free corporate campaigns change the welfare of such soil animals 1.15 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens. On the other hand, in practice, I expect the effects on soil animals to be sufficiently large in both cases for me to be basically agnostic about whether they increase or decrease welfare in expectation.