I’m running a session on ‘writing on the EA Forum’ at EAG London at this moment, and participants are going to reply to this quick take with ideas for Forum posts. Please encourage any ideas you’d like to see written up as full posts!
[edit: the forum went down halfway through the activity, there were many more great ideas in the session]
How Human Rights Experience Can Strengthen Animal Advocacy in the Effective Altruism Movement
As someone who transitioned from a career in human rights law to animal advocacy, I’ve seen first-hand how much untapped potential exists at the intersection of these two fields. This post would reflect on that transition, why I made it, what I’ve learned, and how others from similar backgrounds might contribute to improving animal welfare in high-impact ways.
Why this feels important: The EA community values neglected and cross-cutting cause areas, and I believe the human rights–animal welfare nexus is both. Skills from human rights law, such as litigation, policy reform, and strategic advocacy, are highly relevant to advancing animal interests but are underutilised in current animal advocacy work.
How to write in a communications /​ marketing plan into your funding application and know how to attribute your marketing activities to your objectives
A proposal for a third way for animal advocacy. In animal advocacy I broadly see two groups: (1) people who strongly want to end animal farming, but whose actions are unlikely to make that happen; (2) people who prioritise reducing animal suffering in the short term within existing systems. The interesting thing is, BOTH of these groups want to end animal farming (or at least factory farming), but neither group is going to make that happen. What would happen if more people embodied a third way: Visionary Pragmatism. An approach which starts with our end goal (e.g. end animal farming), and then gets into the hard work of figuring out the incremental steps needed to get there. What could this approach look like?
The role of guilt and perfectionism in EA, and how EA as an environment focused on efficiency and doing the very best we can can lead to difficult mental hangups, and be more demanding than more traditional ways of doing good. (Traditional ways of doing good are often more focused in feeling good and feeling altruistic, which is useful for the good-doers wellbeing but suboptimal for actual amount of good done.)
General idea: people have been asking for my takes on AI alignment topics, and much of what I’m replying has never been written anywhere. That ought to be fixed.
Specific idea: I consider that the landscape of AI alignment outreach is shifting for a specific reason I’d like to expand on.
Defensive Democracy (democracy that has laws and institutions in place to defend itself against antidemocratic movements), why the idea is great, and why it doesn’t work
Positivity focused ethics! The inbalance between negativity-biased vs. positively biased versions of utilitarianism, and implications of this on evaluating policy ideas and the medium-term future.
I’m running a session on ‘writing on the EA Forum’ at EAG London at this moment, and participants are going to reply to this quick take with ideas for Forum posts.
Please encourage any ideas you’d like to see written up as full posts!
[edit: the forum went down halfway through the activity, there were many more great ideas in the session]
Applying Systems Thinking to EAG 1-on-1 Scheduling: My Triage & Prioritization Method
How Human Rights Experience Can Strengthen Animal Advocacy in the Effective Altruism Movement
As someone who transitioned from a career in human rights law to animal advocacy, I’ve seen first-hand how much untapped potential exists at the intersection of these two fields. This post would reflect on that transition, why I made it, what I’ve learned, and how others from similar backgrounds might contribute to improving animal welfare in high-impact ways.
Why this feels important:
The EA community values neglected and cross-cutting cause areas, and I believe the human rights–animal welfare nexus is both. Skills from human rights law, such as litigation, policy reform, and strategic advocacy, are highly relevant to advancing animal interests but are underutilised in current animal advocacy work.
How to write in a communications /​ marketing plan into your funding application and know how to attribute your marketing activities to your objectives
A proposal for a third way for animal advocacy. In animal advocacy I broadly see two groups: (1) people who strongly want to end animal farming, but whose actions are unlikely to make that happen; (2) people who prioritise reducing animal suffering in the short term within existing systems. The interesting thing is, BOTH of these groups want to end animal farming (or at least factory farming), but neither group is going to make that happen. What would happen if more people embodied a third way: Visionary Pragmatism. An approach which starts with our end goal (e.g. end animal farming), and then gets into the hard work of figuring out the incremental steps needed to get there. What could this approach look like?
The role of guilt and perfectionism in EA, and how EA as an environment focused on efficiency and doing the very best we can can lead to difficult mental hangups, and be more demanding than more traditional ways of doing good. (Traditional ways of doing good are often more focused in feeling good and feeling altruistic, which is useful for the good-doers wellbeing but suboptimal for actual amount of good done.)
might be good reading to refer to previous contexts
https://​​en.m.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Scrupulosity
Hi from the session! Thank you for running it.
General idea: people have been asking for my takes on AI alignment topics, and much of what I’m replying has never been written anywhere. That ought to be fixed.
Specific idea: I consider that the landscape of AI alignment outreach is shifting for a specific reason I’d like to expand on.
Defensive Democracy (democracy that has laws and institutions in place to defend itself against antidemocratic movements), why the idea is great, and why it doesn’t work
Positivity focused ethics! The inbalance between negativity-biased vs. positively biased versions of utilitarianism, and implications of this on evaluating policy ideas and the medium-term future.