Thanks for the detailed comment Jamie! I appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts.
I’m not sure I understand your first point. Do you believe that the dominant effect of something like a cage-free corporate campaign is “public discussion, connections between advocates and decision-makers, activist recruitment etc”? If so, then I disagree. I think the primary effect is the better lives the chickens have when not in cages.
I think more likely what you’re saying is that the secondary effect of “momentum towards further change” outweighs the other secondary effect of complacency. I agree in the case of cage free campaigns, and I also agree it’s less clear in the case of animal welfare technologies. However I’ll say:
The best way to commercialize many (though not all) technologies involves public discussion (i.e. marketing). For example, in-ovo egg sexing tech has already led to numerous mainstream articles about the problem of male chick culling in the egg industry. I actually think promoting tech could be a particular good way to generate public discussion about animal ag in a non-antagonistic, non-inflammatory way. Similar comments apply for connections w/ decision makers and recruitment.
The dominant effect is still the birds not being in cages. Even if you thought cage-free campaigns led to some complacency, they could still be worth it because of the massively important primary effects. Same thing goes for animal welfare technologies.
On the general point of humanewashing, there’s a ton of discussion on that on the internet, and I don’t have anything particularly novel to say about it. I’ll just note how I currently think about it:
Concerns about humanewashing apply to many activist-y welfare-focused efforts that EAs tend to support (e.g. corporate cage-free campaigns) as well as animal welfare technologies.
Abolitionist-focused and alt-protein-focused activist efforts have a huge risk of the small animal replacement problem, which is a major way that efforts can cause unintended harm. Directly targeting the most problematic practices is one of the best ways in my experience to avoid the SRAP. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid just doing your best with expected value and accepting some risk of causing unintended harm.
Practically speaking, often the efficiencies from an animal welfare technology are minor, and the effects on welfare often huge. Technologies that have major implications for efficiency are more likely to happen without intervention. For example, in the long-term, I think in-ovo egg sexing could be a cost-saver for hatcheries, causing egg prices to decrease by some fraction of a percent. Ultimately, I think it’s well worth it to save billions of chicks from being ground up alive, but I acknowledge there’s room for disagreement there.
On your question regarding counterfactual value, I’m not sure I understand. I was saying that if a company actively seeks us out for collaboration, then that suggests we can help them do something that they can’t do on their own, i.e. we’re providing counterfactual value. I do think that interventions in the category of “supporting X” often have the effect of both “making X more likely to happen rather than not” and “making X happen faster,” and the two effects can be difficult to disambiguate. Both are positive effects though.
Hope this all makes sense, please let me know if I’ve misunderstood something!
Hey, thanks for engaging! I won’t reply line by line but it seems like you’re understanding my comments well in at least the first half of your response. (I do think that the indirect effects on momentum or complacency for further change are probably more important than the more direct effects on short-run animal welfare.) I think your comments and replies make sense even if I don’t have time right now to dive into all the weeds of them.
I was saying that if a company actively seeks us out for collaboration, then that suggests we can help them do something that they can’t do on their own, i.e. we’re providing counterfactual value.
I appreciate the logic here. I was talking about something slightly different. Apologies for the possibly incoherent comment. I’ll try to clarify:
If a company seems interested in a service/product without much pressure, then that seems like an indication that its in their own (for-profit) interest to use that service/product
A more profitable animal agriculture industry seems bad—it might lead to more or more durable/resilient (factory) farming
Therefore if a company seems interested in a service/product without much pressure, then this also seems like an indication that providing that service might lead to more (factory) farming
Hence my guess is that actions that help animals most will tend to be those that are hard-fought and only reluctantly accepted by the industry.
Of course, there might be some win-win situations, but generally I’d interpret high demand for a service/product/technology at least as an initial red flag from the perspective of having coutnerfactual positive impact for animals. Like—‘we should think about the effects here carefully’
Thanks for the detailed comment Jamie! I appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts.
I’m not sure I understand your first point. Do you believe that the dominant effect of something like a cage-free corporate campaign is “public discussion, connections between advocates and decision-makers, activist recruitment etc”? If so, then I disagree. I think the primary effect is the better lives the chickens have when not in cages.
I think more likely what you’re saying is that the secondary effect of “momentum towards further change” outweighs the other secondary effect of complacency. I agree in the case of cage free campaigns, and I also agree it’s less clear in the case of animal welfare technologies. However I’ll say:
The best way to commercialize many (though not all) technologies involves public discussion (i.e. marketing). For example, in-ovo egg sexing tech has already led to numerous mainstream articles about the problem of male chick culling in the egg industry. I actually think promoting tech could be a particular good way to generate public discussion about animal ag in a non-antagonistic, non-inflammatory way. Similar comments apply for connections w/ decision makers and recruitment.
The dominant effect is still the birds not being in cages. Even if you thought cage-free campaigns led to some complacency, they could still be worth it because of the massively important primary effects. Same thing goes for animal welfare technologies.
On the general point of humanewashing, there’s a ton of discussion on that on the internet, and I don’t have anything particularly novel to say about it. I’ll just note how I currently think about it:
Concerns about humanewashing apply to many activist-y welfare-focused efforts that EAs tend to support (e.g. corporate cage-free campaigns) as well as animal welfare technologies.
Abolitionist-focused and alt-protein-focused activist efforts have a huge risk of the small animal replacement problem, which is a major way that efforts can cause unintended harm. Directly targeting the most problematic practices is one of the best ways in my experience to avoid the SRAP. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid just doing your best with expected value and accepting some risk of causing unintended harm.
Practically speaking, often the efficiencies from an animal welfare technology are minor, and the effects on welfare often huge. Technologies that have major implications for efficiency are more likely to happen without intervention. For example, in the long-term, I think in-ovo egg sexing could be a cost-saver for hatcheries, causing egg prices to decrease by some fraction of a percent. Ultimately, I think it’s well worth it to save billions of chicks from being ground up alive, but I acknowledge there’s room for disagreement there.
On your question regarding counterfactual value, I’m not sure I understand. I was saying that if a company actively seeks us out for collaboration, then that suggests we can help them do something that they can’t do on their own, i.e. we’re providing counterfactual value. I do think that interventions in the category of “supporting X” often have the effect of both “making X more likely to happen rather than not” and “making X happen faster,” and the two effects can be difficult to disambiguate. Both are positive effects though.
Hope this all makes sense, please let me know if I’ve misunderstood something!
Hey, thanks for engaging! I won’t reply line by line but it seems like you’re understanding my comments well in at least the first half of your response. (I do think that the indirect effects on momentum or complacency for further change are probably more important than the more direct effects on short-run animal welfare.) I think your comments and replies make sense even if I don’t have time right now to dive into all the weeds of them.
I appreciate the logic here. I was talking about something slightly different. Apologies for the possibly incoherent comment. I’ll try to clarify:
If a company seems interested in a service/product without much pressure, then that seems like an indication that its in their own (for-profit) interest to use that service/product
A more profitable animal agriculture industry seems bad—it might lead to more or more durable/resilient (factory) farming
Therefore if a company seems interested in a service/product without much pressure, then this also seems like an indication that providing that service might lead to more (factory) farming
Hence my guess is that actions that help animals most will tend to be those that are hard-fought and only reluctantly accepted by the industry.
Of course, there might be some win-win situations, but generally I’d interpret high demand for a service/product/technology at least as an initial red flag from the perspective of having coutnerfactual positive impact for animals. Like—‘we should think about the effects here carefully’