I think that a lot of people in effective altruism who focus on animal welfare as a cause area have demonstrated a pattern of doing extraordinarily uncooperative and epistemically terrible things. Examples: calling people bad names for eating meat, in the hope of changing their behavior via social pressure and stigma (rather than argument); comparing meat-eating to conventional murder, in the hope of taking advantage of the noncentral fallacy; ‘direct action everywhere,’ which often translates in practice into being rude and threatening to people who disagree about various factual questions; ACE basing conclusions on bad leafletting statistics and ‘intuition’; threatening to cause public relations mayhem for the event organizers and damage the community’s future work if EA Global didn’t go vegetarian.
I wouldn’t be OK with trying to ‘kick animal welfare people out of the movement,’ because a) what would that even mean, and b) we’re supposed to be a garden of Niceness and Civilization. But it would be great if the EA community actively called out this bullshit when it happened, and demanded that people focusing on this cause met the same high epistemic standards that are demanded of poverty charities (or even the ridiculously high epistemic standards demanded of AI risk people; but that might be too much to ask).
Buck Shlegeris replied:
I think this comment is somewhat uncharitable. Here are a few minor quibbles.
One clarification:
“‘direct action everywhere,’ which often translates in practice into being rude and threatening to people who disagree about various factual questions”
Note that “Direct Action Everywhere” is the name of an animal rights org, many of whose members are associated with animal EA. (FWIW, I think most animal-focused EAs don’t agree with DxE’s methods.)
And now some reasonably minor disagreements and explanations, more in the spirit of clarification than making arguments. Note that I don’t necessarily agree entirely with all the arguments I’m about to provide.
“calling people bad names for eating meat, in the hope of changing their behavior via social pressure and stigma (rather than argument)”
One unfortunate part of the relationship between animal-focused EAs and other EAs is that many animal-focused EAs don’t really feel that co-operatively inclined towards the EA movement as a whole. They feel that many EAs are overconfident and dismiss animal suffering for really dumb reasons. They view EA more as a source of money and talent than as a community to really engage with and learn from.
Imagine if EAs decided to join some political party for some reason and advocate for stuff. The EAs there would probably not be that interested in learning about the philosophies of the party, they’re more there to use it. I think that’s a relatively reasonable metaphor for how many animal-focused EAs feel about EA. (I think this is pretty bad behavior on the part of the animal rights people.)
If you ask this kind of animal-focused EA why they do things that aren’t rational argument, they’ll say it’s because EAs aren’t actually any good at listening to rational arguments, they just think they are, and so it’s pointless trying to reason with them.
“comparing meat-eating to conventional murder, in the hope of taking advantage of the noncentral fallacy”
I don’t think people who do this are trying to take advantage of the noncentral fallacy, I think they are honestly explaining how bad they think meat-eating is.
“ACE basing conclusions on bad leafletting statistics and ‘intuition’”
This is not an accurate summary of anything which happened
“threatening to cause public relations mayhem for the event organizers and damage the community’s future work if EA Global didn’t go vegetarian.”
Only a few people proposed this, and the majority of animal EA was strongly opposed to this.
“But it would be great if the EA community actively called out this bullshit when it happened, and demanded that people focusing on this cause met the same high epistemic standards that are demanded of poverty charities (or even the ridiculously high epistemic standards demanded of AI risk people; but that might be too much to ask).”
This. As a meat-eating EA who personally does think animal suffering is a big deal, I’ve found the attitude from some animal rights EAs to be quite annoying. I personally believe that the diet I eat is A) healthier than if I was vegan and B) allows me to be more focussed and productive than if I was vegan, allowing me to do more good overall. I’m more than happy to debate that with anyone who disagrees (and most EAs who are vegan are civil and respect this view), but I have encountered some EAs who refuse to believe that there’s any possibility of either A) or B) being true, which feels quite dismissive.
Contrast that attitude to what happened recently at a Los Angeles EA meetup where we went for dinner. Before ordering, I asked around if anyone was vegan since if there was anyone who was, I didn’t want to eat meat in front of them and offend them. The person next to me said he was vegan, but that if I wanted meat I should order it since “we’re all adults and we want the community to be as inclusive as it can.” I decided to get a vegan dish anyway, but having him say that made me feel more welcome.
For what it’s worth and as an additional data point, I’m a meat eater and I didn’t feel like this was a big problem at EA Global in 2016. For a gathering in which animal advocacy/veganism is so prevalent, I would have thought it really weird if the conference served meat anyway. The vegetarian food provided was delicious, and the one time I went out to dinner with a group and ordered meat, nobody got up in my face about it.
Yes, that was my general impression of EA global. I feel like most of the people who do get upset about meat eaters in EA are only nominally in EA, and largely interact with the community via Facebook.
Anonymous #11:
Buck Shlegeris replied:
This. As a meat-eating EA who personally does think animal suffering is a big deal, I’ve found the attitude from some animal rights EAs to be quite annoying. I personally believe that the diet I eat is A) healthier than if I was vegan and B) allows me to be more focussed and productive than if I was vegan, allowing me to do more good overall. I’m more than happy to debate that with anyone who disagrees (and most EAs who are vegan are civil and respect this view), but I have encountered some EAs who refuse to believe that there’s any possibility of either A) or B) being true, which feels quite dismissive.
Contrast that attitude to what happened recently at a Los Angeles EA meetup where we went for dinner. Before ordering, I asked around if anyone was vegan since if there was anyone who was, I didn’t want to eat meat in front of them and offend them. The person next to me said he was vegan, but that if I wanted meat I should order it since “we’re all adults and we want the community to be as inclusive as it can.” I decided to get a vegan dish anyway, but having him say that made me feel more welcome.
Oh wow, thank you! That’s so awesome of you! I greatly appreciate it!
For what it’s worth and as an additional data point, I’m a meat eater and I didn’t feel like this was a big problem at EA Global in 2016. For a gathering in which animal advocacy/veganism is so prevalent, I would have thought it really weird if the conference served meat anyway. The vegetarian food provided was delicious, and the one time I went out to dinner with a group and ordered meat, nobody got up in my face about it.
Yes, that was my general impression of EA global. I feel like most of the people who do get upset about meat eaters in EA are only nominally in EA, and largely interact with the community via Facebook.