Many creatures in both classes of farm animals and lab testing animals probably suffer “greater than X”, where “X” is a level of suffering above what is acceptable for “content warning” or social discussion, including on the EA forum.
Much of the suffering in farms is probably due to predictable neglect (e.g. running out of air, suffocated and crushed or cannibalized alive).
Some animals in labs suffer much less (e.g. checking that there are no long term side effects) and live in clinical environments where neglect is far lower.
Farmed animals usually get killed in a way that’s designed to be quick and minimize suffering.
Unfortunately, this isn’t even close to true. As one example, see ventilator shutdowns.
This kind of suffering is normalized, like literally the American Vet Association is struggling to try to remove it from “not recommended”.
Unfortunately, this form of killing is not at all the limit of suffering from killing on factory farms, and in turn, killing is not even the main source of suffering in factory farms.
“greater than X”, where “X” is a level of suffering above what is acceptable for “content warning” or social discussion, including on the EA forum.
From the triple perspectives of basic logic/social reality/actual practice, “understanding suffering”, especially past the bounds of “X”, seems to me to be an obvious requirement for EA activity; i.e. no matter what your cause area or activity, it’s important. Certainly if someone is a leader in EA and doesn’t understand it, that person is not an EA.
Also,
It seems implausible/dubious for people to talk about cause prioritization or pretty much anything important, if they are censored or grow up in an environment that doesn’t talk about it
Solving this is hard, but people that grow up online and on “meta EA” seem particularly disfavored, I feel bad for them
Several classes of people/cause areas consistently have much more understanding/awareness of suffering. From the perspective of leadership and governance, this seems to have implications for the future of EA (e.g. if you think truth, rightness, ethics, virtue should dominate governance more than money or shinyness).
There’s a lot going on here but quick thoughts:
Many creatures in both classes of farm animals and lab testing animals probably suffer “greater than X”, where “X” is a level of suffering above what is acceptable for “content warning” or social discussion, including on the EA forum.
Much of the suffering in farms is probably due to predictable neglect (e.g. running out of air, suffocated and crushed or cannibalized alive).
Some animals in labs suffer much less (e.g. checking that there are no long term side effects) and live in clinical environments where neglect is far lower.
Unfortunately, this isn’t even close to true. As one example, see ventilator shutdowns.
This kind of suffering is normalized, like literally the American Vet Association is struggling to try to remove it from “not recommended”.
Unfortunately, this form of killing is not at all the limit of suffering from killing on factory farms, and in turn, killing is not even the main source of suffering in factory farms.
As a digression, following up on this:
From the triple perspectives of basic logic/social reality/actual practice, “understanding suffering”, especially past the bounds of “X”, seems to me to be an obvious requirement for EA activity; i.e. no matter what your cause area or activity, it’s important. Certainly if someone is a leader in EA and doesn’t understand it, that person is not an EA.
Also,
It seems implausible/dubious for people to talk about cause prioritization or pretty much anything important, if they are censored or grow up in an environment that doesn’t talk about it
Solving this is hard, but people that grow up online and on “meta EA” seem particularly disfavored, I feel bad for them
Several classes of people/cause areas consistently have much more understanding/awareness of suffering. From the perspective of leadership and governance, this seems to have implications for the future of EA (e.g. if you think truth, rightness, ethics, virtue should dominate governance more than money or shinyness).