I happen to agree that promoting empathy (for animals) is probably better than promoting welfare directly, but a devil’s advocate might point out that beliefs often follow actions, and maybe directly changing people’s practices toward animals would be a more concrete way to change values.
I think whether there is a long-term society at all is relatively hard to change, except maybe in the case of AI risk. I think our expected influence through values is not obviously smaller and may be larger than our expected influence through whether there is a future, especially for non-mainstream values. This is doubly true if you’re a negative utilitarian, since for NUs there aren’t feasible ways to decrease the probability of a future ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/how-would-catastrophic-risks-affect-prospects-for-compromise/ ), and doing so isn’t nice to other value systems ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/reasons-to-be-nice-to-other-value-systems/ ), so you have to focus on improving the quality of the future. By the same token, it’s nicer for non-NUs to focus on improving the quality of the future (which is something NUs can support) than on making the future more likely (which is something NUs oppose).
I happen to agree that promoting empathy (for animals) is probably better than promoting welfare directly, but a devil’s advocate might point out that beliefs often follow actions, and maybe directly changing people’s practices toward animals would be a more concrete way to change values.
I think whether there is a long-term society at all is relatively hard to change, except maybe in the case of AI risk. I think our expected influence through values is not obviously smaller and may be larger than our expected influence through whether there is a future, especially for non-mainstream values. This is doubly true if you’re a negative utilitarian, since for NUs there aren’t feasible ways to decrease the probability of a future ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/how-would-catastrophic-risks-affect-prospects-for-compromise/ ), and doing so isn’t nice to other value systems ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/reasons-to-be-nice-to-other-value-systems/ ), so you have to focus on improving the quality of the future. By the same token, it’s nicer for non-NUs to focus on improving the quality of the future (which is something NUs can support) than on making the future more likely (which is something NUs oppose).