The following comment was initially intended to be some combination of synthesis, steelmanning, “translation” into EA concepts, and riffing on the result. It’s gone more heavily into the last two categories as I have written it. It’s possible that some or even all of the authors wouldn’t agree with how I have translated/riffed on their concerns. I’ve deliberately not attempted to reference specific articles for that reason.
I do not have object-level opinions of any significance in the animal-welfare space, and I do not indentify as a member of the ideological left. I don’t have a clear opinion on whether EA should act differently in the animal-welfare space. However, I do think the book’s contributors at least indirectly touch on some broader themes that are worth reflecting on.
How Farmed Animal WelfareMightBe Different
One key theme of the book seems to be an argument that EA methodology is reductionistic—including that EA’s cost-effectiveness analyses cannot capture the complexity of the world particularly well (especially in diverse cultural contexts), that a heavy focus on utilitarianism fails to capture all the dimensions we should be evaluating on, and so forth. Some of the authors seem to advocate for what I might call methodological diversification—those authors don’t necessarily seem opposed to EA-style interventions, but don’t think animal advocacy should put too many vegan egg-substitutes in that (or perhaps any) basket.
It occured to me that how we think about methodological diversification could be different in farmed animal welfare than other cause areas. In (e.g.) global health & development, EA spend is a small fraction of total spend in the cause area. So EA GH&D work is relatively focused on what the other funders have missed or undervalued, and the methodological diversity in GH&D comes predominately from what non-EA funders (e.g., Gates, governments) do. You can think that EA-favored projects and frameworks fail to measure and evaluate a lot of important outcomes, or that they give more credence to utilitarianism than warranted, and still think they are the best use of your marginal charitable dollar. In some other areas, EA may be the only actor, and so there is no risk of actively displacing pre-existing approaches.
I don’t have a good sense of how large EA funding is a percentage of the entire farmed animal welfare (FAW) funding world. However, it seems plausible that, given how underfunded FAW has been historically, EA functions as a big fish in what is a rather small pond. And many of the authors seem to view EA in that light. Moreover, much existing non-EA funding may be bound as a practical matter to existing work, so it’s plausible that an large proportion of the FAW funding potentially available for new or expanded work may be EA-flavored even if it’s not as large in absolute terms.
Thus, the FAW context causes us to reflect on whether we think there is a limit on the proportion of charitable endeavor in a given cause area that should be conducted according to EA principles, and whether not disrupting methodological diversity becomes an important consideration at some point.
On Skepticism of Big Fish
EAs spill a lot of digital ink about epistemics. I wonder if a sizable fraction of the authors’ concerns about and criticism of EA relate to epistemics—what are the purposes of the FAW movement, and how can they best be achieved? Who decides the answers to those questions, and how?
Like most attempts at doing good, FAW needs a framework of ethical systems and values against which to evaluate its efforts. Where should that come from? I think the authors would be much more comfortable with answers like “the viewpoints of people who have made sustained and significant personal sacrifices for FAW” or even “a survey of faculty in philosophy departments” rather than giving much weight to “the views of a few major EA funders and their agents.”
I’m sure most of the authors had thought about utilitarianism as it relates to animal advocacy before EA got involved; Peter Singer wrote a while ago, and by my count six of the contributors hold positions in philosophy departments (plus two in religious studies). It’s not unreasonable for them to doubt that the increased influence of utilitarianism on what gets funded in FAW was primarily driven by advances in utilitarian thought or by its increasing acceptance by a broad swath of society.
If you’re sympathetic to EA ways of doing things, then having EA firepower in a cause area you care about is a good thing. If you aren’t sympathetic, then you are probably worried about the effect of that firepower on the epistemics of your cause area. If that cause area is FAW, you probably don’t think it healthy that the power wielded by a small group of people (wealthy capitalists and their agents) has an outsize effect on what the FAW movement does—both now and in the future. Stated another way, you probably don’t think that what major EA FAW donors think should update you much at all on what the epistemics of the FAW movement should be.
And this is consistent with how we might think about the epistemic implications of New Big Fish in general, behind a veil of ignorance of sorts (i.e, without knowing whether their perspective is better or worse than the mix of existing perspectives in one’s cause area). We’d likely conclude that their viewpoints shouldn’t change cause area epistemics much at all, because there is no a priori reason to think the New Big Fish knows better than the greater number of other participants.
A thought experiment: imagine someone lurking the Forum suddenly died and left Open Phil-level money in their will, restricted to the pursuit of effective altruism in a cause area that is currently viewed as second-tier and/or with a methodology that is currently viewed as second-tier. What would the likely effects on EA epistemics be? My guess is that, within a decade, people would think the cause area or methodology was significantly more important / more sound than they would have thought in the absence of the lurking benefactor. In other words, throwing lots of money around tends to alter epistemics in practice. Although it’s possible that the hypothetical mysterious lurker knew better than the community consensus, it’s more likely that they were acting as a unilateralist and generated net harmful changes in EA epistemics.
The Unilateralist’s Curse
Although perhaps not clearly stated as such, I think there is a kernel of an argument about the unilateralist’s curse in the book that goes something like this:
(1) Some/many EA-inspired projects in FAW are bad, overrated, etc.
(2) Despite (1), they still get a ton of funding because they don’t have to persuade a broad range of the relevant community of their worth; they only have to persuade one wealthy EA funder (or that person’s agents).
(3) Pre-EA, an activist would need to get a lot of buy-in from others before taking an action that could produce a big net negative result (e.g., the risk that widespread cage-free corporate campaigns will impede efforts at getting people to stop eating eggs altogether, and the benefits of corporate campaigns are not worth that cost). Thus, the structural features of the pre-EA FAW world provided substantial protection against the risk of projects with significant net expected value.
(4) There is no ex ante reason to believe that wealthy EA funders (or their agents) are more capable of determining what is in animals’ best interest than a larger group of people who have devoted significant sweat equity and sacrifice to the cause of FAW. In other words, ability to make a lot of money in the tech industry has little correlation with ability to serve as a proxy for farmed animals. Where the EA funder acts in opposition to the broader universe of people invested in FAW, this observation significantly raises the possibility that the wealthy EA funder is acting as a cursed unilateralist.
My takeaway would be: when one is entering a new cause area with a large pocketbook, one should be careful to consult with existing stakeholders about proposed new projects, and listen carefully to any concerns they have about downside risk. (I don’t know whether this happened in FAW or not.)
Thinking about the Long Term
Considering the effects of EA on the broader FAW ecosystem is particularly important to the extent that neither we nor the authors know where EA will focus its resources in a decade or two. For instance, it’s plausible that more and more resources will flow to longtermist causes.
Apart from EA, FAW is most likely to draw funding and workers from communities that are rather left-focused in orientation. So, to the extent that EA’s long-term commitment to the field isn’t ironclad, it should be particularly careful to ensure that—if it exits or sharply reduces investment—the field is left in a position where it can carry on with the resources it has available to it. For instance, it would be bad for EA to transform the FAW field into one focused on working with corporations (e.g., corporate crate-free campaigns, alternative protein), to such an extent that there is a loss of institutional memory about other approaches, and then leave.
A Lesson for Each Side?
Interestingly, I think some of the lessons to draw from the book potentially apply to both sides (albeit to different extents and in different ways).
One suggestion is that, when critiquing those with different methodological commitments, one should always hold the mirror up to yourself as well. For instance, the author of the main post suggests a conflict of interest on the book authors’ part, suggesting that at least some of them are reacting to threats of harm “to the wallets of the authors and their allies.” I think it’s proper to consider that the authors may have personal reasons for their positions—many have invested significant portions of their careers into that work and presumably draw a great sense of purpose/meaning/fulfillment from it. (I doubt many people in FAW are getting rich off the work, though!)
However, EAs should recognize that they have their own personal interests as well and are—well, human (i.e., not dispassionate dispensers of utilons). For example, many people who have done well in a capitalist system are at higher risk of underrating arguments that capitalism is the root of much harm. And it’s common to care a lot about how much impact you are personally generating, which could potentially bias people into favoring top-down solutions rather than taking a more indirect role of supporting grassroots activism.
It seems that it would be helpful to turn the temperature down a bit on both sides. That is not to suggest that disagreements shouldn’t be vetted, that people’s feelings aren’t allowed to get hurt, or that anyone needs to sing songs around the campfire together. On a related note, I think sitting down and talking to one another is usually more productive than writing articles/blog posts/etc. at the other group (although the latter has its place). I don’t have a podcast or anything, but think it would be fruitful to have some of these authors on an EA podcast for a mutual attempt at understanding perspectives and cruxes.
The following comment was initially intended to be some combination of synthesis, steelmanning, “translation” into EA concepts, and riffing on the result. It’s gone more heavily into the last two categories as I have written it. It’s possible that some or even all of the authors wouldn’t agree with how I have translated/riffed on their concerns. I’ve deliberately not attempted to reference specific articles for that reason.
I do not have object-level opinions of any significance in the animal-welfare space, and I do not indentify as a member of the ideological left. I don’t have a clear opinion on whether EA should act differently in the animal-welfare space. However, I do think the book’s contributors at least indirectly touch on some broader themes that are worth reflecting on.
How Farmed Animal Welfare Might Be Different
One key theme of the book seems to be an argument that EA methodology is reductionistic—including that EA’s cost-effectiveness analyses cannot capture the complexity of the world particularly well (especially in diverse cultural contexts), that a heavy focus on utilitarianism fails to capture all the dimensions we should be evaluating on, and so forth. Some of the authors seem to advocate for what I might call methodological diversification—those authors don’t necessarily seem opposed to EA-style interventions, but don’t think animal advocacy should put too many vegan egg-substitutes in that (or perhaps any) basket.
It occured to me that how we think about methodological diversification could be different in farmed animal welfare than other cause areas. In (e.g.) global health & development, EA spend is a small fraction of total spend in the cause area. So EA GH&D work is relatively focused on what the other funders have missed or undervalued, and the methodological diversity in GH&D comes predominately from what non-EA funders (e.g., Gates, governments) do. You can think that EA-favored projects and frameworks fail to measure and evaluate a lot of important outcomes, or that they give more credence to utilitarianism than warranted, and still think they are the best use of your marginal charitable dollar. In some other areas, EA may be the only actor, and so there is no risk of actively displacing pre-existing approaches.
I don’t have a good sense of how large EA funding is a percentage of the entire farmed animal welfare (FAW) funding world. However, it seems plausible that, given how underfunded FAW has been historically, EA functions as a big fish in what is a rather small pond. And many of the authors seem to view EA in that light. Moreover, much existing non-EA funding may be bound as a practical matter to existing work, so it’s plausible that an large proportion of the FAW funding potentially available for new or expanded work may be EA-flavored even if it’s not as large in absolute terms.
Thus, the FAW context causes us to reflect on whether we think there is a limit on the proportion of charitable endeavor in a given cause area that should be conducted according to EA principles, and whether not disrupting methodological diversity becomes an important consideration at some point.
On Skepticism of Big Fish
EAs spill a lot of digital ink about epistemics. I wonder if a sizable fraction of the authors’ concerns about and criticism of EA relate to epistemics—what are the purposes of the FAW movement, and how can they best be achieved? Who decides the answers to those questions, and how?
Like most attempts at doing good, FAW needs a framework of ethical systems and values against which to evaluate its efforts. Where should that come from? I think the authors would be much more comfortable with answers like “the viewpoints of people who have made sustained and significant personal sacrifices for FAW” or even “a survey of faculty in philosophy departments” rather than giving much weight to “the views of a few major EA funders and their agents.”
I’m sure most of the authors had thought about utilitarianism as it relates to animal advocacy before EA got involved; Peter Singer wrote a while ago, and by my count six of the contributors hold positions in philosophy departments (plus two in religious studies). It’s not unreasonable for them to doubt that the increased influence of utilitarianism on what gets funded in FAW was primarily driven by advances in utilitarian thought or by its increasing acceptance by a broad swath of society.
If you’re sympathetic to EA ways of doing things, then having EA firepower in a cause area you care about is a good thing. If you aren’t sympathetic, then you are probably worried about the effect of that firepower on the epistemics of your cause area. If that cause area is FAW, you probably don’t think it healthy that the power wielded by a small group of people (wealthy capitalists and their agents) has an outsize effect on what the FAW movement does—both now and in the future. Stated another way, you probably don’t think that what major EA FAW donors think should update you much at all on what the epistemics of the FAW movement should be.
And this is consistent with how we might think about the epistemic implications of New Big Fish in general, behind a veil of ignorance of sorts (i.e, without knowing whether their perspective is better or worse than the mix of existing perspectives in one’s cause area). We’d likely conclude that their viewpoints shouldn’t change cause area epistemics much at all, because there is no a priori reason to think the New Big Fish knows better than the greater number of other participants.
A thought experiment: imagine someone lurking the Forum suddenly died and left Open Phil-level money in their will, restricted to the pursuit of effective altruism in a cause area that is currently viewed as second-tier and/or with a methodology that is currently viewed as second-tier. What would the likely effects on EA epistemics be? My guess is that, within a decade, people would think the cause area or methodology was significantly more important / more sound than they would have thought in the absence of the lurking benefactor. In other words, throwing lots of money around tends to alter epistemics in practice. Although it’s possible that the hypothetical mysterious lurker knew better than the community consensus, it’s more likely that they were acting as a unilateralist and generated net harmful changes in EA epistemics.
The Unilateralist’s Curse
Although perhaps not clearly stated as such, I think there is a kernel of an argument about the unilateralist’s curse in the book that goes something like this:
(1) Some/many EA-inspired projects in FAW are bad, overrated, etc.
(2) Despite (1), they still get a ton of funding because they don’t have to persuade a broad range of the relevant community of their worth; they only have to persuade one wealthy EA funder (or that person’s agents).
(3) Pre-EA, an activist would need to get a lot of buy-in from others before taking an action that could produce a big net negative result (e.g., the risk that widespread cage-free corporate campaigns will impede efforts at getting people to stop eating eggs altogether, and the benefits of corporate campaigns are not worth that cost). Thus, the structural features of the pre-EA FAW world provided substantial protection against the risk of projects with significant net expected value.
(4) There is no ex ante reason to believe that wealthy EA funders (or their agents) are more capable of determining what is in animals’ best interest than a larger group of people who have devoted significant sweat equity and sacrifice to the cause of FAW. In other words, ability to make a lot of money in the tech industry has little correlation with ability to serve as a proxy for farmed animals. Where the EA funder acts in opposition to the broader universe of people invested in FAW, this observation significantly raises the possibility that the wealthy EA funder is acting as a cursed unilateralist.
My takeaway would be: when one is entering a new cause area with a large pocketbook, one should be careful to consult with existing stakeholders about proposed new projects, and listen carefully to any concerns they have about downside risk. (I don’t know whether this happened in FAW or not.)
Thinking about the Long Term
Considering the effects of EA on the broader FAW ecosystem is particularly important to the extent that neither we nor the authors know where EA will focus its resources in a decade or two. For instance, it’s plausible that more and more resources will flow to longtermist causes.
Apart from EA, FAW is most likely to draw funding and workers from communities that are rather left-focused in orientation. So, to the extent that EA’s long-term commitment to the field isn’t ironclad, it should be particularly careful to ensure that—if it exits or sharply reduces investment—the field is left in a position where it can carry on with the resources it has available to it. For instance, it would be bad for EA to transform the FAW field into one focused on working with corporations (e.g., corporate crate-free campaigns, alternative protein), to such an extent that there is a loss of institutional memory about other approaches, and then leave.
A Lesson for Each Side?
Interestingly, I think some of the lessons to draw from the book potentially apply to both sides (albeit to different extents and in different ways).
One suggestion is that, when critiquing those with different methodological commitments, one should always hold the mirror up to yourself as well. For instance, the author of the main post suggests a conflict of interest on the book authors’ part, suggesting that at least some of them are reacting to threats of harm “to the wallets of the authors and their allies.” I think it’s proper to consider that the authors may have personal reasons for their positions—many have invested significant portions of their careers into that work and presumably draw a great sense of purpose/meaning/fulfillment from it. (I doubt many people in FAW are getting rich off the work, though!)
However, EAs should recognize that they have their own personal interests as well and are—well, human (i.e., not dispassionate dispensers of utilons). For example, many people who have done well in a capitalist system are at higher risk of underrating arguments that capitalism is the root of much harm. And it’s common to care a lot about how much impact you are personally generating, which could potentially bias people into favoring top-down solutions rather than taking a more indirect role of supporting grassroots activism.
It seems that it would be helpful to turn the temperature down a bit on both sides. That is not to suggest that disagreements shouldn’t be vetted, that people’s feelings aren’t allowed to get hurt, or that anyone needs to sing songs around the campfire together. On a related note, I think sitting down and talking to one another is usually more productive than writing articles/blog posts/etc. at the other group (although the latter has its place). I don’t have a podcast or anything, but think it would be fruitful to have some of these authors on an EA podcast for a mutual attempt at understanding perspectives and cruxes.
Learned a ton about my own concerns from this post. Thank you for it!