I don’t have a quantitative estimate that isn’t extremely made up, but right now, I’m in favor of Wayne winning the Berkeley election. I know there were accusations of DxE being culty and fucked up in various ways, and I believe most of them, though I’m not particularly in the know. I also agree that it would have been better if Wayne had handled CEA’s reversal on serving meat at EAG more cooperatively. I don’t think DxE’s strategy is super compelling. I don’t think Wayne is a perfect candidate, but I don’t think his wrongdoings/level of uncooperativeness are out of distribution for a politician; they actually seem pretty middle-of-the-road in severity, though perhaps unusually lurid and interesting to discuss.
Those things just seem way way less important to me than his stance on farm animal welfare. It seems like one candidate is strongly against the mass torture and killing of sentient beings, and has worked hard to stop it, and as far as I can tell, the other doesn’t particularly have a stance. It feels directionally analogous to me to choosing between a vaguely sketchy candidate who is actively anti-racist before the civil rights movement, or pro women’s suffrage before women had the chance to vote, or in favor of letting in Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and one who isn’t (and who may or may not be sketchy). (I don’t expect this argument to resonate for people who don’t put a lot of moral weight on animal lives). I don’t know how he’d do good for animals as mayor (I know he wants to ban meat, don’t know how likely that is to work), and I’d be interested in arguments that it’s implausible he’d do much good, but by default it doesn’t seem crazy.
I don’t know much about the incumbent; I’d guess we know more about Wayne’s shortcomings than his, because Wayne has been more adjacent to EA. I also think Wayne has shown great energy and had some meaningful successes, e.g. in community organizing, and getting fur banned in Berkeley, that are indicative of him being an agenty person. My current silly guess based on not much at all is that electing him in expectation saves tens of thousands of farm animals from torture.
My biggest worry is that Wayne’s work will backfire and have a negative effect on efforts to help farmed animals, e.g. because he gets elected but handles things poorly.
Thank you for this answer! I liked how reflectively balanced it was on the different considerations and how it tracked the object-level sentient beings at stake.
I don’t have a quantitative estimate that isn’t extremely made up, but right now, I’m in favor of Wayne winning the Berkeley election. I know there were accusations of DxE being culty and fucked up in various ways, and I believe most of them, though I’m not particularly in the know. I also agree that it would have been better if Wayne had handled CEA’s reversal on serving meat at EAG more cooperatively. I don’t think DxE’s strategy is super compelling. I don’t think Wayne is a perfect candidate, but I don’t think his wrongdoings/level of uncooperativeness are out of distribution for a politician; they actually seem pretty middle-of-the-road in severity, though perhaps unusually lurid and interesting to discuss.
Those things just seem way way less important to me than his stance on farm animal welfare. It seems like one candidate is strongly against the mass torture and killing of sentient beings, and has worked hard to stop it, and as far as I can tell, the other doesn’t particularly have a stance. It feels directionally analogous to me to choosing between a vaguely sketchy candidate who is actively anti-racist before the civil rights movement, or pro women’s suffrage before women had the chance to vote, or in favor of letting in Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and one who isn’t (and who may or may not be sketchy). (I don’t expect this argument to resonate for people who don’t put a lot of moral weight on animal lives). I don’t know how he’d do good for animals as mayor (I know he wants to ban meat, don’t know how likely that is to work), and I’d be interested in arguments that it’s implausible he’d do much good, but by default it doesn’t seem crazy.
I don’t know much about the incumbent; I’d guess we know more about Wayne’s shortcomings than his, because Wayne has been more adjacent to EA. I also think Wayne has shown great energy and had some meaningful successes, e.g. in community organizing, and getting fur banned in Berkeley, that are indicative of him being an agenty person. My current silly guess based on not much at all is that electing him in expectation saves tens of thousands of farm animals from torture.
My biggest worry is that Wayne’s work will backfire and have a negative effect on efforts to help farmed animals, e.g. because he gets elected but handles things poorly.
[edited just to fix a typo]
Thank you for this answer! I liked how reflectively balanced it was on the different considerations and how it tracked the object-level sentient beings at stake.