If I’m reading the intro correctly, it seems like while the title and framing of the object-level arguments are about abstract philosophical/institutional issues with effective altruism writ large, the actual impetus of the critique was that they did not approve of actions EAs do in the animal advocacy space.
Thus, I think a response from someone working in the (effective) animal advocacy space would be the most appropriate, to understand which of these critiques are pertinent to EAA vs. EA writ large, or alternatively useless in both scenarios.
I volunteered but didn’t work in the animal advocacy space prior to EA (starting in maybe 2012 or so), but have worked at EA-aligned animal organizations, and been on the board of non-EA aligned (but I think very effective) animal organizations in recent years. Probably someone who worked more in the space prior to ~2014 or 2015 could speak more to what changed in animal advocacy from EA showing up.
The relevant quote:
The animal policy summit I attended in February permitted time for casual conversation among a variety of activists. These included sanctuary managers, directors of non-profits dedicated to ending factory farming, vegan educators, directors of veganism-oriented, anti-racist public health and food access programs, etc. It also included some academics. As some of the activists were talking, they got on to the topic of how charitable giving on EA’s principles had either deprived them of significant funding, or, through the threat of the loss of funding, pushed them to pursue programs at variance with their missions. There was general agreement that EA was having a damaging influence on animal advocacy.
I think that EA has definitely had some negative impact on animal advocacy, but overall has been very good for the space.
The Good
There is definitely way more funding in the space due to EA, and not less—OpenPhil makes up a massive percentage of overall animal welfare donations, and gives a large amount to groups who aren’t purely dedicated to corporate welfare campaigns (though the OpenPhil gift itself might be restricted to welfare campaigns). Mercy For Animals, Animal Equality, etc., receive large gifts from OpenPhil and do vegan education / work to end factory farming, and not just reform it. ACE has probably brought in other EAs who would not have otherwise donated to animal welfare work (I’d guess at least a few million dollars a year).
I think it is plausible that over the last few years, EA-aligned donors have stopped donating to some non-EA aligned organizations. Animal advocacy charities are generally very top-heavy — a huge percentage of donations are coming from a few people. If a couple of those people change where they are donating, it might significantly impact a charity, especially a smaller one. But, overall I’d guess that this isn’t for purely EA reasons — lots of large donors in the space are investing in plant-based meat companies, for example, and might have chosen to do that independently of EA.
Also, EA has really opened up what I believe are the most promising avenues for future animal advocacy—addressing wild animal welfare (in a species-neutral way) and addressing invertebrate welfare. I think both areas would basically be impossible to fund in the short-term if EA funding wasn’t available.
The Bad
I think the compelling critique of how EA has negatively impacted animal advocacy is something similar to the institutional critique the author presents. For example, at least early on, the focus on corporate campaigns meant that activities like community building were relatively neglected. I feel uncertain about the long-term impact of this, but I’d wager that most EAA organizations in the US, for example, have a lot more trouble getting volunteers to events than they did maybe 7-10 years ago or so. I think it’s plausible that there are similar programmatic shifts away from activities that didn’t have obvious impact that will harm the effectiveness of organizations down the line. Also, as the author says, this sort of critique could be viewed as an internal critique of activities, as opposed to a critique of EA as a whole.
There are probably some highly effective animal advocacy organizations totally neglected by EA (at least compared to ACE top charities). I also think that an GiveWell-style apples-to-apples comparison of different charities doing a similar and related activity doesn’t necessarily make sense for, say, organizations doing corporate campaigns, since the organizations are highly coordinated. But again, this seems like an internal critique.
I see ending factory farming / vegan advocacy as likely deeply aligned with EA. I think that the animal advocacy space really struggled to make progress on these issues over the past few decades, but has made more progress in the last 5 years. I don’t know if this is due to plant-based meats becoming more popular, EA showing up, or something else, but broadly, we’re doing better now than we were before, I think, at helping animals.
The “remark on institutional culture” is a pretty good critique of EA, though I don’t know what to conclude from it. But, if the essay is focused on EAA specifically, I think that comment is a lot less relevant, as I’d guess as a whole, EAA is much more open to social justice / non-EA ethics, etc. than some other communities in EA.
Overall, most this critique just seems to be that the author just disagrees with many people in EA about ethics and metaethics.
As some of the activists were talking, they got on to the topic of how charitable giving on EA’s principles had either deprived them of significant funding, or, through the threat of the loss of funding, pushed them to pursue programs at variance with their missions.
The only way I can see this being true is if EAs convinced existing funding sources to switch their funding priorities along EA principles, or to (for some reason) move out of the field even though the new funding has priorities that differ from theirs. Has that happened? Otherwise, what happened to the funding that was already there?
I think it’s plausible that some major funders stopped funding some groups (like farm sanctuaries) in favor of ACE top charities, for example, but I doubt that it has happened with large numbers of smaller donors. But, it’s hard to know how much EA is responsible for this. For example, when GFI was founded, I think a lot of people found it to be really compelling, independent of it be promising from an EA lens. While it’s a fairly EA-aligned organization, in a world without EA, something like it probably would have been founded anyway, and because it compelling, lots of donors might have switched from whatever they were donating to before to donating to GFI. My impression is also that a lot of funding that has left charities is going into investing in clean / plant-based meat companies. I also expect that would have happened had EA not existed.
I’m arguing with the OP rather than you here, but this seems...straightforwardly good? Like, if a lot of other donors are switching to things more in line with EA priorities, that suggests that EA priorities (in this domain) are broadly convincing, which seems like it makes it much harder to argue that “EA was having a damaging influence on animal advocacy”.
if a lot of other donors are switching to things more in line with EA priorities, that suggests that EA priorities (in this domain) are broadly convincing, which seems like it makes it much harder to argue that “EA was having a damaging influence on animal advocacy”.
I may have misunderstood you, but I don’t think this follows. There are some additional assumptions needed to make this true, for example (non-exhaustive):
if you have a moderately strong prior that convincingness correlates with positive effects on the world. or
if you believe in the procedural justice/distributed decision-making of donors satisfying their preferences.
If something is broadly convincing – that is, convincing to altruistic donors with a range of different values and priorities – that is a pretty good sign that it is, in fact, solid. In the case of animal welfare, if a lot of non-EA donors have shifted their funding towards priorities that were originally pushed mainly by EAs, that seems like good evidence that shifting towards those priorities is good for animal welfare across a wide range of value systems, and hence (under moral uncertainty) more likely to be in fact a good thing. In that case,
There are certainly ways this could not be true, but I do think the above is the most likely / default case, and that the ways it could not be true are more complex stories requiring additional evidence. You need some mechanism by which EA funders influenced non-EA funders to change their priorities in a way that went against their values, or alternatively some mechanism by which EA funding “deprived [activists] of significant funding [etc]” despite the pre-existing non-EA funders still being around. And you need to provide evidence for that mechanism operating in this case, as opposed to (IMO the much more likely case of) people just being sad that other people think that their preferred approach is less good for animals.
If I’m reading the intro correctly, it seems like while the title and framing of the object-level arguments are about abstract philosophical/institutional issues with effective altruism writ large, the actual impetus of the critique was that they did not approve of actions EAs do in the animal advocacy space.
Thus, I think a response from someone working in the (effective) animal advocacy space would be the most appropriate, to understand which of these critiques are pertinent to EAA vs. EA writ large, or alternatively useless in both scenarios.
I volunteered but didn’t work in the animal advocacy space prior to EA (starting in maybe 2012 or so), but have worked at EA-aligned animal organizations, and been on the board of non-EA aligned (but I think very effective) animal organizations in recent years. Probably someone who worked more in the space prior to ~2014 or 2015 could speak more to what changed in animal advocacy from EA showing up.
The relevant quote:
I think that EA has definitely had some negative impact on animal advocacy, but overall has been very good for the space.
The Good
There is definitely way more funding in the space due to EA, and not less—OpenPhil makes up a massive percentage of overall animal welfare donations, and gives a large amount to groups who aren’t purely dedicated to corporate welfare campaigns (though the OpenPhil gift itself might be restricted to welfare campaigns). Mercy For Animals, Animal Equality, etc., receive large gifts from OpenPhil and do vegan education / work to end factory farming, and not just reform it. ACE has probably brought in other EAs who would not have otherwise donated to animal welfare work (I’d guess at least a few million dollars a year).
I think it is plausible that over the last few years, EA-aligned donors have stopped donating to some non-EA aligned organizations. Animal advocacy charities are generally very top-heavy — a huge percentage of donations are coming from a few people. If a couple of those people change where they are donating, it might significantly impact a charity, especially a smaller one. But, overall I’d guess that this isn’t for purely EA reasons — lots of large donors in the space are investing in plant-based meat companies, for example, and might have chosen to do that independently of EA.
Also, EA has really opened up what I believe are the most promising avenues for future animal advocacy—addressing wild animal welfare (in a species-neutral way) and addressing invertebrate welfare. I think both areas would basically be impossible to fund in the short-term if EA funding wasn’t available.
The Bad
I think the compelling critique of how EA has negatively impacted animal advocacy is something similar to the institutional critique the author presents. For example, at least early on, the focus on corporate campaigns meant that activities like community building were relatively neglected. I feel uncertain about the long-term impact of this, but I’d wager that most EAA organizations in the US, for example, have a lot more trouble getting volunteers to events than they did maybe 7-10 years ago or so. I think it’s plausible that there are similar programmatic shifts away from activities that didn’t have obvious impact that will harm the effectiveness of organizations down the line. Also, as the author says, this sort of critique could be viewed as an internal critique of activities, as opposed to a critique of EA as a whole.
There are probably some highly effective animal advocacy organizations totally neglected by EA (at least compared to ACE top charities). I also think that an GiveWell-style apples-to-apples comparison of different charities doing a similar and related activity doesn’t necessarily make sense for, say, organizations doing corporate campaigns, since the organizations are highly coordinated. But again, this seems like an internal critique.
I see ending factory farming / vegan advocacy as likely deeply aligned with EA. I think that the animal advocacy space really struggled to make progress on these issues over the past few decades, but has made more progress in the last 5 years. I don’t know if this is due to plant-based meats becoming more popular, EA showing up, or something else, but broadly, we’re doing better now than we were before, I think, at helping animals.
The “remark on institutional culture” is a pretty good critique of EA, though I don’t know what to conclude from it. But, if the essay is focused on EAA specifically, I think that comment is a lot less relevant, as I’d guess as a whole, EAA is much more open to social justice / non-EA ethics, etc. than some other communities in EA.
Overall, most this critique just seems to be that the author just disagrees with many people in EA about ethics and metaethics.
The only way I can see this being true is if EAs convinced existing funding sources to switch their funding priorities along EA principles, or to (for some reason) move out of the field even though the new funding has priorities that differ from theirs. Has that happened? Otherwise, what happened to the funding that was already there?
I think it’s plausible that some major funders stopped funding some groups (like farm sanctuaries) in favor of ACE top charities, for example, but I doubt that it has happened with large numbers of smaller donors. But, it’s hard to know how much EA is responsible for this. For example, when GFI was founded, I think a lot of people found it to be really compelling, independent of it be promising from an EA lens. While it’s a fairly EA-aligned organization, in a world without EA, something like it probably would have been founded anyway, and because it compelling, lots of donors might have switched from whatever they were donating to before to donating to GFI. My impression is also that a lot of funding that has left charities is going into investing in clean / plant-based meat companies. I also expect that would have happened had EA not existed.
Thanks for this perspective.
I’m arguing with the OP rather than you here, but this seems...straightforwardly good? Like, if a lot of other donors are switching to things more in line with EA priorities, that suggests that EA priorities (in this domain) are broadly convincing, which seems like it makes it much harder to argue that “EA was having a damaging influence on animal advocacy”.
I may have misunderstood you, but I don’t think this follows. There are some additional assumptions needed to make this true, for example (non-exhaustive):
if you have a moderately strong prior that convincingness correlates with positive effects on the world. or
if you believe in the procedural justice/distributed decision-making of donors satisfying their preferences.
Presumably the OP does not believe either.
If something is broadly convincing – that is, convincing to altruistic donors with a range of different values and priorities – that is a pretty good sign that it is, in fact, solid. In the case of animal welfare, if a lot of non-EA donors have shifted their funding towards priorities that were originally pushed mainly by EAs, that seems like good evidence that shifting towards those priorities is good for animal welfare across a wide range of value systems, and hence (under moral uncertainty) more likely to be in fact a good thing. In that case,
There are certainly ways this could not be true, but I do think the above is the most likely / default case, and that the ways it could not be true are more complex stories requiring additional evidence. You need some mechanism by which EA funders influenced non-EA funders to change their priorities in a way that went against their values, or alternatively some mechanism by which EA funding “deprived [activists] of significant funding [etc]” despite the pre-existing non-EA funders still being around. And you need to provide evidence for that mechanism operating in this case, as opposed to (IMO the much more likely case of) people just being sad that other people think that their preferred approach is less good for animals.