Thank you for this thought-provoking article! We want to make it the topic of our next meetup, so I’ve tried to clarify what my new position should be.
Your first two points are easily conceded—in my view everyone should direct their donations to the, in their view, most effective charity when offsetting. Your third point is most interesting.
Nino already married your and Scott’s positions, but I find it more useful to structure my thoughts in a list of pros and cons anyway.
On the pro side I see the following arguments:
Contrary to Claire’s point, I think offsetting also questions the act-omission distinction because instead of forgoing something, one engages in proactive activism. Having done that, it will be harder to later argue that doing good is supererogatory, because it would be inconsistent with one’s past behavior.
Offsetting can be used as a starting point to extend the circle of compassion in that a person could be brought to care enough about the harm inflicted by friends and family members to offset for them too. (But I haven’t seen this implemented.)
Charities that advocate for nonhuman animals are probably the most commonly chosen reference class, and they are highly funding constrained, possibly more than they are talent constrained, so that an additional regular donor may be worth many additional vegans.
Outside EA there are many nonveg*ns that are compassionate and want to reduce suffering but find that for them or in their context, veganism would be hard. Instead of resorting to the defensiveness and denigration discussed at the last meetup, they can join in with highly impactful donations.
Offsetting can counter the cliché that veg*ns are dogmatic Siths that only deal in absolutes.
Bridging the schism between veg*ns and nonveg*ns can help make advocacy for farmed animals a universally accepted movement, which would greatly simplify political advocacy.
On the con side I see the following arguments:
Offsetting also bolsters the act-omission distinction because it fails to provide incentives to scale one’s proactive activism beyond the low level of harm the average person inflicts, so that the offsetter will fall far short of their potential. (Unless they also offset for friends and family members or even larger circles.)
Offsetting may incur moral licensing when the satisfaction a person gains from “having donated” doesn’t scale in proportion with the size of the donation, so that a small donation makes further donations unlikely to the same extend that a large donation would have.
Advantage 3 only holds for our current state of an anti-inductive system. In a decade or two there will hopefully be a point when the suffering of farmed animals has been reduced sufficiently to make offsetting much more expensive. At that point, an additional veg*n will be more valuable than an additional offsetter given what the latter can be expected to be able to donate. In short, success in offsetting values spreading diminishes its own value. Core EA ideas don’t suffer from that problem.
Offsetting when described in terms of offsetting is only compatible with a subclass of consequentialist moralities, so that it’s impact is limited or the framing should be reconsidered.
Offsetting may signal a readiness to defect (in such situations as the prisoner’s dilemma or the stag hunt), which might interfere with the offsetter’s chances for trade with agents that are not value aligned.
Offsetting when described in terms of offsetting may in turn introduce (or aggravate) the schism between deontological and consequentialist veg*ns.
When offsetting funds are taken from a person’s EA budget, it is at best meaningless because the money would’ve been donated effectively anyway, and likely harmful if the reference class is chosen to exclude the most effective giving opportunities.
When offsetting becomes associated with EA, it may increase the perceived weirdness of EA, making it harder for people to associate with more important ideas of EA.
Some of the disadvantages only limit the scope of offsetting, others could be avoided with different rhetoric. What other pros or cons did I forget?
I think the harmfulness of offsetting’s focus on collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering is still being underestimated in these conversation. (I’m using “collectively anthropogenic” because there are potential sources of badness like UFAI that are anthropogenic, but only caused by a few people to the idea of offsetting would be useless to spread to most people to address the problem of UFAI. Also, offsetting the harm done by UFAI would be, uh, tricky.) I think offsetting might even reenforce a non-interventionist mindset that could prove extremely harmful for addressing problems like wild animal suffering.
One good aspect of offsetting that I think I initially underestimated is the way it can be used as a psychological tool for beginning to alieve that a cause area matters. For example, I can imagine an individual who is beginning to suspect animals suffering is important, but finds the idea of vegetarianism or veganism daunting, and shies away from it and thus doesn’t want to think more about animal suffering. For them, offsetting could be a good bridge step. I don’t think this conflicts with anything I said, but I don’t want people to feel like it’s shameful to use this tool.
I’d want to add on to:
Pro 3: If you’re just offsetting, it’s worth only as much as one additional vegan (if your numbers are right). I haven’t seen evidence that ethical offsetting leads to big regular donors. It may, and if you just meant to bring up the possibility that seems reasonable.
Pro 4: People who eat animal products can donate to animal charities even if it’s not offsetting. That’s great! But you don’t need offsetting to introduce that possibility. I think offsetting harmfully frames the discussion around them “making up” for their behavior, instead of possibly just making large donations that help lots of animals. Many vegetarians enthusiastically make large donations to animal charities, which is wonderful, without worrying about offsetting. I don’t know what happened at your last meetup but I think it’s awesome when nonvegans donate to animal charities.
Pro 6: I’m not sure how offsetting helps bridge this schism well. I can imagine some arguments about how it would help, and others about how it would hurt.
Con 5: I’m not sure how offsetting signals a willingness to defect. Could you explain that more?
Collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering: True, and that class of suffering is already broad. I wouldn’t expect people to extend their circle of compassion to even just the harm caused by all of humanity just via the idea of offsetting. The friends and family scenario is probably already the limit.
Psychological tool: Indeed. This tool is also one that can be employed without using the term “offsetting,” like “If veganism is too hard for you at this point, just reduce chicken, eggs, and fish. You can also donate to one of ACE’s top charities. That might seem too easy, but at the moment a donation of just $50 allows you to do as much good for the animals as being vegan for a year.” (Well, basically Ben’s point.)
A related problem is figuring out whether the supplements I buy are overpriced compared to an animal product plus top charity donation counterfactual. I wonder if I can just straight compare the prices or whether there are any multipliers I’m overlooking.
About pro 3: Yes, that’s what I meant, the average regular donor compared to the average vegan minus any donations they might make.
About pro 4: The framing we’ve come up with is one for older people who have a harder time changing their habits, namely that they’re donating to create a better society for the next generation. Offsetting isn’t mentioned, but you can still get nonveg*ns donating.
About pro 6: The topic of our last meetup was the threat of unfavorable social moral comparison, that some people trivialize or denigrate people or the behavior of people who they perceive as being more moral. I seem to be well filter-bubbled against such people, but studies have found that a lot of nonveg*ns are ascribing various nasty terms to veg*ns.
When animal advocacy has to fight against such strong forces as people trying to protect their identities and self-image against it, it’ll remain an uphill battle and be labeled as “controversial,” whereas, when we can invite a wide range of people into the movement, we may not be producing the best activists, but we’ll be reducing opposition. (The reducetarian movement is working on that too.) How might offsetting hurt this exact cause?
About con 5: Not compared to nonveg*ns but compared to deontological veg*ns. Then again a given nonveg*n could be assumed to be nonveg*n out of ignorance, while the same could not be assumed about an offsetter. When you’re offsetting you could be seen as defecting against some animals to save other animals (except that nonhuman animals are not really “agenty”).
For example, when a profit-oriented employer pays a person to deliver some pointless advertisement to hundreds of households, and the person does that in order to donate a portion to a charity the employer doesn’t care about, then this deal might work just fine. But when the employer sees that a potential employee has a history of defecting in such arrangements to further their moral goal, the employer may imagine that the potential employee will sell the advertisement to a company that buys scrap paper to donate even more and save time that they can use to swindle several advertisement companies in parallel. So it might hurt a person’s–or more likely, a group’s or movement’s–reputation.
Thank you for this thought-provoking article! We want to make it the topic of our next meetup, so I’ve tried to clarify what my new position should be.
Your first two points are easily conceded—in my view everyone should direct their donations to the, in their view, most effective charity when offsetting. Your third point is most interesting.
Nino already married your and Scott’s positions, but I find it more useful to structure my thoughts in a list of pros and cons anyway.
On the pro side I see the following arguments:
Contrary to Claire’s point, I think offsetting also questions the act-omission distinction because instead of forgoing something, one engages in proactive activism. Having done that, it will be harder to later argue that doing good is supererogatory, because it would be inconsistent with one’s past behavior.
Offsetting can be used as a starting point to extend the circle of compassion in that a person could be brought to care enough about the harm inflicted by friends and family members to offset for them too. (But I haven’t seen this implemented.)
Charities that advocate for nonhuman animals are probably the most commonly chosen reference class, and they are highly funding constrained, possibly more than they are talent constrained, so that an additional regular donor may be worth many additional vegans.
Outside EA there are many nonveg*ns that are compassionate and want to reduce suffering but find that for them or in their context, veganism would be hard. Instead of resorting to the defensiveness and denigration discussed at the last meetup, they can join in with highly impactful donations.
Offsetting can counter the cliché that veg*ns are dogmatic Siths that only deal in absolutes.
Bridging the schism between veg*ns and nonveg*ns can help make advocacy for farmed animals a universally accepted movement, which would greatly simplify political advocacy.
On the con side I see the following arguments:
Offsetting also bolsters the act-omission distinction because it fails to provide incentives to scale one’s proactive activism beyond the low level of harm the average person inflicts, so that the offsetter will fall far short of their potential. (Unless they also offset for friends and family members or even larger circles.)
Offsetting may incur moral licensing when the satisfaction a person gains from “having donated” doesn’t scale in proportion with the size of the donation, so that a small donation makes further donations unlikely to the same extend that a large donation would have.
Advantage 3 only holds for our current state of an anti-inductive system. In a decade or two there will hopefully be a point when the suffering of farmed animals has been reduced sufficiently to make offsetting much more expensive. At that point, an additional veg*n will be more valuable than an additional offsetter given what the latter can be expected to be able to donate. In short, success in offsetting values spreading diminishes its own value. Core EA ideas don’t suffer from that problem.
Offsetting when described in terms of offsetting is only compatible with a subclass of consequentialist moralities, so that it’s impact is limited or the framing should be reconsidered.
Offsetting may signal a readiness to defect (in such situations as the prisoner’s dilemma or the stag hunt), which might interfere with the offsetter’s chances for trade with agents that are not value aligned.
Offsetting when described in terms of offsetting may in turn introduce (or aggravate) the schism between deontological and consequentialist veg*ns.
When offsetting funds are taken from a person’s EA budget, it is at best meaningless because the money would’ve been donated effectively anyway, and likely harmful if the reference class is chosen to exclude the most effective giving opportunities.
When offsetting becomes associated with EA, it may increase the perceived weirdness of EA, making it harder for people to associate with more important ideas of EA.
Some of the disadvantages only limit the scope of offsetting, others could be avoided with different rhetoric. What other pros or cons did I forget?
Cool, this mostly seems right.
I think the harmfulness of offsetting’s focus on collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering is still being underestimated in these conversation. (I’m using “collectively anthropogenic” because there are potential sources of badness like UFAI that are anthropogenic, but only caused by a few people to the idea of offsetting would be useless to spread to most people to address the problem of UFAI. Also, offsetting the harm done by UFAI would be, uh, tricky.) I think offsetting might even reenforce a non-interventionist mindset that could prove extremely harmful for addressing problems like wild animal suffering.
One good aspect of offsetting that I think I initially underestimated is the way it can be used as a psychological tool for beginning to alieve that a cause area matters. For example, I can imagine an individual who is beginning to suspect animals suffering is important, but finds the idea of vegetarianism or veganism daunting, and shies away from it and thus doesn’t want to think more about animal suffering. For them, offsetting could be a good bridge step. I don’t think this conflicts with anything I said, but I don’t want people to feel like it’s shameful to use this tool.
I’d want to add on to:
Pro 3: If you’re just offsetting, it’s worth only as much as one additional vegan (if your numbers are right). I haven’t seen evidence that ethical offsetting leads to big regular donors. It may, and if you just meant to bring up the possibility that seems reasonable.
Pro 4: People who eat animal products can donate to animal charities even if it’s not offsetting. That’s great! But you don’t need offsetting to introduce that possibility. I think offsetting harmfully frames the discussion around them “making up” for their behavior, instead of possibly just making large donations that help lots of animals. Many vegetarians enthusiastically make large donations to animal charities, which is wonderful, without worrying about offsetting. I don’t know what happened at your last meetup but I think it’s awesome when nonvegans donate to animal charities. Pro 6: I’m not sure how offsetting helps bridge this schism well. I can imagine some arguments about how it would help, and others about how it would hurt.
Con 5: I’m not sure how offsetting signals a willingness to defect. Could you explain that more?
Collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering: True, and that class of suffering is already broad. I wouldn’t expect people to extend their circle of compassion to even just the harm caused by all of humanity just via the idea of offsetting. The friends and family scenario is probably already the limit.
Psychological tool: Indeed. This tool is also one that can be employed without using the term “offsetting,” like “If veganism is too hard for you at this point, just reduce chicken, eggs, and fish. You can also donate to one of ACE’s top charities. That might seem too easy, but at the moment a donation of just $50 allows you to do as much good for the animals as being vegan for a year.” (Well, basically Ben’s point.)
A related problem is figuring out whether the supplements I buy are overpriced compared to an animal product plus top charity donation counterfactual. I wonder if I can just straight compare the prices or whether there are any multipliers I’m overlooking.
About pro 3: Yes, that’s what I meant, the average regular donor compared to the average vegan minus any donations they might make.
About pro 4: The framing we’ve come up with is one for older people who have a harder time changing their habits, namely that they’re donating to create a better society for the next generation. Offsetting isn’t mentioned, but you can still get nonveg*ns donating.
About pro 6: The topic of our last meetup was the threat of unfavorable social moral comparison, that some people trivialize or denigrate people or the behavior of people who they perceive as being more moral. I seem to be well filter-bubbled against such people, but studies have found that a lot of nonveg*ns are ascribing various nasty terms to veg*ns.
When animal advocacy has to fight against such strong forces as people trying to protect their identities and self-image against it, it’ll remain an uphill battle and be labeled as “controversial,” whereas, when we can invite a wide range of people into the movement, we may not be producing the best activists, but we’ll be reducing opposition. (The reducetarian movement is working on that too.) How might offsetting hurt this exact cause?
About con 5: Not compared to nonveg*ns but compared to deontological veg*ns. Then again a given nonveg*n could be assumed to be nonveg*n out of ignorance, while the same could not be assumed about an offsetter. When you’re offsetting you could be seen as defecting against some animals to save other animals (except that nonhuman animals are not really “agenty”).
For example, when a profit-oriented employer pays a person to deliver some pointless advertisement to hundreds of households, and the person does that in order to donate a portion to a charity the employer doesn’t care about, then this deal might work just fine. But when the employer sees that a potential employee has a history of defecting in such arrangements to further their moral goal, the employer may imagine that the potential employee will sell the advertisement to a company that buys scrap paper to donate even more and save time that they can use to swindle several advertisement companies in parallel. So it might hurt a person’s–or more likely, a group’s or movement’s–reputation.
did this happen at the MeetUp? outcomes?
Oops, too long ago; I don’t remember. But I don’t think I updated any more that evening. Not entirely sure.