Your essay makes me think of a system where you have three things: a human welfare “bucket,” values that control how much flows from human to animal welfare at a given time, and another animal welfare “bucket.” And human welfare and values are long-term things, which at any given time feed into animal welfare. And you’re saying that expanding the animal welfare bucket is not the best long-term intervention for the ultimate purpose of, say, maximizing the combined human and animal welfare. Given that we assume influencing the far future is possible, I don’t see any flaw there.
but do you see practical differences between promoting animal causes in the short term and changing values to prioritize animal welfare?
I haven’t spent long enough thinking about it to draw any conclusions with confidence, but prima facie we should expect that if you’re optimising for different things you’re likely to choose different actions.
One example which at least looks plausible to me is that if you take a long term view one of the major obstacles to shifting values is cognitive dissonance over the fact that many people enjoy eating meat. Rather than trying to shift values today it might be better to get excellent meat substitutes or vat-meat and then shift values after, when it will be easier. There’s a chain of steps here, and it could involve investing at the start, or saving until you can implement one of the later steps, depending on which you think will need pushing the most:
(i) Develop technologies and production
(ii) Normalise use of meat substitutes in society
(iii) When these are widespread, build support for ending animal cruelty in farms.
It’s also possible that building the effective altruism movement is a better route, if it encourages reflection on values in a way which we think will tend to lead to improvements, or lead to good values more likely to spread further.
Your essay makes me think of a system where you have three things: a human welfare “bucket,” values that control how much flows from human to animal welfare at a given time, and another animal welfare “bucket.” And human welfare and values are long-term things, which at any given time feed into animal welfare. And you’re saying that expanding the animal welfare bucket is not the best long-term intervention for the ultimate purpose of, say, maximizing the combined human and animal welfare. Given that we assume influencing the far future is possible, I don’t see any flaw there.
but do you see practical differences between promoting animal causes in the short term and changing values to prioritize animal welfare?
I haven’t spent long enough thinking about it to draw any conclusions with confidence, but prima facie we should expect that if you’re optimising for different things you’re likely to choose different actions.
One example which at least looks plausible to me is that if you take a long term view one of the major obstacles to shifting values is cognitive dissonance over the fact that many people enjoy eating meat. Rather than trying to shift values today it might be better to get excellent meat substitutes or vat-meat and then shift values after, when it will be easier. There’s a chain of steps here, and it could involve investing at the start, or saving until you can implement one of the later steps, depending on which you think will need pushing the most: (i) Develop technologies and production (ii) Normalise use of meat substitutes in society (iii) When these are widespread, build support for ending animal cruelty in farms.
It’s also possible that building the effective altruism movement is a better route, if it encourages reflection on values in a way which we think will tend to lead to improvements, or lead to good values more likely to spread further.