This doesnât sound very politically tractable to me. The argument that PLF is harmful is essentially that animal agriculture is harmful and PLF makes itâs more efficient. If you restrict your audience to people who do not think animal agriculture is harmful, they generally do want it to be more efficient (cheaper food!), and none of the remaining reasons seem very compelling.
I think it would be different if you could show that PLF would lead to worse conditions for individual animals: the success of cage-free campaigns has demonstrated that there is some appetite for restrictions that prohibit more harmful ways of farming animals.
I agree that thereâs a mixed case for political tractability. Iâm curious why you donât find the argument compelling about the particular people who have influence on AI policy being more amenable to animal-related concerns? (To put it bluntly, EAs care about animals and are influential in AI, and animal ag industry lobbying hasnât really touched this issue yet.)
I like the analogy to cage-free campaigns, although I think I would draw different lessons from the analogy. I donât really think that the support for cage-free campaigns comes from support for restrictions that help individual animals rather than support for restrictions that restrict the total number of farmed animals. Instead, I think it comes for support for traditional and ânaturalâ ways of farming (where the chickens are imagined to roam free) rather than industrialised, modern, and intensive farming methods. On this view, cage-free campaigns succeed because they target only the farming methods that the public disapproves of. This theory can also explain why people express disapproval of factory farming, but a strong approval of farming and farmers.
I think PLF is a politically tractable target for regulation because, like cage-free campaigns, it targets only the type of farming people already dislike. When I say âEnd AI-run factory farms!â, the slogan makes inherently salient the technological, non-natural, industrial nature of the farming method. Restrictions here might not be perceived as restrictions on farming, theyâll be perceived only as restrictions on a certain sinister form of unnatural industrialised farming. (The general public mostly doesnât realise that most farming is industrialised.) To put this another way: I think the most politically tractable pro-animal movements are the ones that explicitly restrict their focus to Big Evil Factory Farms, and leave Friendly Farmer Joe alone. I think PLF restrictions share this character with cage-free campaigns.
And we know from cage-free campaigns that people are sometimes willing to tolerate restrictions of this sort even if they are personally costly.
This doesnât sound very politically tractable to me. The argument that PLF is harmful is essentially that animal agriculture is harmful and PLF makes itâs more efficient. If you restrict your audience to people who do not think animal agriculture is harmful, they generally do want it to be more efficient (cheaper food!), and none of the remaining reasons seem very compelling.
I think it would be different if you could show that PLF would lead to worse conditions for individual animals: the success of cage-free campaigns has demonstrated that there is some appetite for restrictions that prohibit more harmful ways of farming animals.
Thanks for the comment!
I agree that thereâs a mixed case for political tractability. Iâm curious why you donât find the argument compelling about the particular people who have influence on AI policy being more amenable to animal-related concerns? (To put it bluntly, EAs care about animals and are influential in AI, and animal ag industry lobbying hasnât really touched this issue yet.)
I like the analogy to cage-free campaigns, although I think I would draw different lessons from the analogy. I donât really think that the support for cage-free campaigns comes from support for restrictions that help individual animals rather than support for restrictions that restrict the total number of farmed animals. Instead, I think it comes for support for traditional and ânaturalâ ways of farming (where the chickens are imagined to roam free) rather than industrialised, modern, and intensive farming methods. On this view, cage-free campaigns succeed because they target only the farming methods that the public disapproves of. This theory can also explain why people express disapproval of factory farming, but a strong approval of farming and farmers.
I think PLF is a politically tractable target for regulation because, like cage-free campaigns, it targets only the type of farming people already dislike. When I say âEnd AI-run factory farms!â, the slogan makes inherently salient the technological, non-natural, industrial nature of the farming method. Restrictions here might not be perceived as restrictions on farming, theyâll be perceived only as restrictions on a certain sinister form of unnatural industrialised farming. (The general public mostly doesnât realise that most farming is industrialised.) To put this another way: I think the most politically tractable pro-animal movements are the ones that explicitly restrict their focus to Big Evil Factory Farms, and leave Friendly Farmer Joe alone. I think PLF restrictions share this character with cage-free campaigns.
And we know from cage-free campaigns that people are sometimes willing to tolerate restrictions of this sort even if they are personally costly.