I think the bubble framing is a useful and accurate description of welfare tech excitement. I just don’t think that’s a bad thing. From a longer post on this topic I’m publishing tomorrow:
From the outside, it might seem like the EA wing of the animal advocacy movement goes through fads. That’s because it does. In each cycle, funders get excited about a shiny new object, and put out a call for established organizations and new startup founders to rush into that space by making it clear funding will be available for anyone who does. Vegan leafleting was one such fad, followed by corporate cage-free campaigns, then cultivated meat and alternative proteins in general. Politics is the current fad, and welfare innovation will be the next one.
This can be frustrating for people working on an intervention that never gets popular. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually suboptimal. Some of our fads have worked out, and others haven’t; so it goes.
Animal advocates have limited resources, both money and people, spread thin across researchers, campaigners, and grantmakers. It’s probably the case that we needed to put all of our spare energy into cage-free campaigning to get the ball rolling there, and indeed, while the cage-free fight has been a big success, it’s hardly over despite all the energy invested. I’m glad that increasing our political capacity has been a major influence for the last few years and that it will continue to get attention.
But I’m also glad that there’s about to be a major infusion of money and attention into welfare innovation. And because of that, it’s quickly becoming clear that the pace of this innovation will be limited not by funding, but by talent.
Yes! I think we agree here, but we’re framing things differently. We would say that mass investment, even in speculative gains, is not necessarily a bad thing (though we’re also not saying it’s necessarily a good thing).
However, we would say that such a mass investment should be done with our eyes open. We define a bubble specifically as “a situation where expected impact in a given timeframe substantially exceeds realistic impact”. It is the mismatch of expectations (in both the upswing and the downswing) that we mean to point to as causing harm to the movement.
Yeah that seems correct and I think that my post tomorrow is probably guilty of this. I’d even say I’m doing it intentionally to try to pull the best new founders into this area. I think the actual outlook for helping animals is just terribly bleak across the board and that’s probably not going to inspire people to join welfare tech incubators.
Yeah, I think there is a thin line sometimes between not overwhelming newcomers and not misleading them.
Honestly, if you’d told me how hard Fish Welfare Initiative would be, I’m not sure that past Tom would have chosen to found it (though I am extremely glad I did!). Now I struggle with how to communicate with the new founders.
Though I would say it is definitely a mistake for bought-in advocates like yourself not to be clear on the realistic timelines/likelihoods of success. And I would also say that it is possible for people to get excited about longer-term pushes where milestones are smaller but realistic.
And also, there is a place for optimism and pushing for great things that others don’t think are possible. So there’s a balance to all of this.
I think the picture is (mostly) bleak if you look at the denominator (total animal suffering), and how little we can do to end suffering of all farmed animals. If you look at the numerator, there are millions and sometimes even billions of individuals whose lives you can help, even in expectation.
Vegan leafleting was one such fad, followed by corporate cage-free campaigns, then cultivated meat and alternative proteins in general. Politics is the current fad, and welfare innovation will be the next one.
1. I think it’s really telling that we independently landed on nearly the exact same examples! 2. Thank goodness we got our act together and published this before you publish yours 😅
Bubble in the sense of railroad bubbles successfully building railroads we still use, dot-com bubble laying fiber optic cable, etc. It could be a perfectly wise action for us to direct most of our spare energy/resources in this direction for a while.
I think the bubble framing is a useful and accurate description of welfare tech excitement. I just don’t think that’s a bad thing. From a longer post on this topic I’m publishing tomorrow:
Hey Aidan :)
Yes! I think we agree here, but we’re framing things differently.
We would say that mass investment, even in speculative gains, is not necessarily a bad thing (though we’re also not saying it’s necessarily a good thing).
However, we would say that such a mass investment should be done with our eyes open. We define a bubble specifically as “a situation where expected impact in a given timeframe substantially exceeds realistic impact”. It is the mismatch of expectations (in both the upswing and the downswing) that we mean to point to as causing harm to the movement.
Yeah that seems correct and I think that my post tomorrow is probably guilty of this. I’d even say I’m doing it intentionally to try to pull the best new founders into this area. I think the actual outlook for helping animals is just terribly bleak across the board and that’s probably not going to inspire people to join welfare tech incubators.
Yeah, I think there is a thin line sometimes between not overwhelming newcomers and not misleading them.
Honestly, if you’d told me how hard Fish Welfare Initiative would be, I’m not sure that past Tom would have chosen to found it (though I am extremely glad I did!). Now I struggle with how to communicate with the new founders.
Though I would say it is definitely a mistake for bought-in advocates like yourself not to be clear on the realistic timelines/likelihoods of success. And I would also say that it is possible for people to get excited about longer-term pushes where milestones are smaller but realistic.
And also, there is a place for optimism and pushing for great things that others don’t think are possible. So there’s a balance to all of this.
I think the picture is (mostly) bleak if you look at the denominator (total animal suffering), and how little we can do to end suffering of all farmed animals. If you look at the numerator, there are millions and sometimes even billions of individuals whose lives you can help, even in expectation.
If you end up reading it I’d particularly value your feedback on how I’m striking this balance.
1. I think it’s really telling that we independently landed on nearly the exact same examples!
2. Thank goodness we got our act together and published this before you publish yours 😅
lol I actually held it back a week because of some infohazard concerns and I’m kicking myself for not beating you to the punch
Bubble in the sense of railroad bubbles successfully building railroads we still use, dot-com bubble laying fiber optic cable, etc. It could be a perfectly wise action for us to direct most of our spare energy/resources in this direction for a while.