I just took it as an assumption in this post that we’re focusing on the far future, since I think basically all the theoretical arguments for/against that have been made elsewhere. Here’s a good article on it. I personally mostly focus on the far future, though not overwhelmingly so. I’m at something like 80% far future, 20% near-term considerations for my cause prioritization decisions.
This may take a few decades, but social change might take even longer.
To clarify, the post isn’t talking about ending factory farming. And I don’t think anyone in the EA community thinks we should try to end factory farming without technology as an important component. Though I think there are good reasons for EAs to focus on the social change component, e.g. there is less for-profit interest in that component (most of the tech money is from for-profit companies, so it’s less neglected in this sense).
I just took it as an assumption in this post that we’re focusing on the far future, since I think basically all the theoretical arguments for/against that have been made elsewhere. Here’s a good article on it. I personally mostly focus on the far future, though not overwhelmingly so. I’m at something like 80% far future, 20% near-term considerations for my cause prioritization decisions.
To clarify, the post isn’t talking about ending factory farming. And I don’t think anyone in the EA community thinks we should try to end factory farming without technology as an important component. Though I think there are good reasons for EAs to focus on the social change component, e.g. there is less for-profit interest in that component (most of the tech money is from for-profit companies, so it’s less neglected in this sense).