I’d be interested to know how likely you think it is that you could do a “good job”.
I do think I could do a good job, yes. While I’ve been thinking about these problems off and on for over a decade I’ve never dedicated actual serious time here, and in the past when I’ve put that kind of time into work I’ve been proud of what I’ve been able to do.
You say you have a “bundle of intuitions and thoughts” which doesn’t seem like much to me.
What I meant by that is that I don’t have my overall views organized into a form optimized for explaining to others. I’m not asking other people to assume that because I’ve inscrutably come to this conclusion I’m correct or that they should defer to me in any way. But I’d also be dishonest if I didn’t accurately report my views.
In your original comment you say “This isn’t as deeply a considered view as I’d like”. Were you saying you haven’t considered deeply enough or that the general community hasn’t?
Primarily the former. While if someone in the general community had put a lot of time into looking at this question from a perspective similar to my own and I felt like their work addressed my questions that would certainly help, given that no one has and I’m instead forming my own view I would prefer to have put more work into that view.
To clarify, when I asked if you could do a good job I meant can you put together a convincing argument that might give some people like me pause for thought (maybe this is indeed how you understood me).
If you think you can, I would strongly encourage you to do so. As per another comment of mine, tens of millions of dollars goes towards animal welfare within EA each year. If this money is effectively getting burned it is very useful for the community to know. Also, there is no convincing argument that animals are not moral patients on this forum (or indeed anywhere else) that I am aware of, so your view is exceedingly neglected. I think you could really do a whole lot of good if you do have a great argument up your sleeve.
Your argument that you would effectively be forced into becoming an anti-animal advocate if you convincingly wrote up your views—sorry I don’t really buy it. For example, I don’t think Luke Muehlhauser has been forced into becoming a pro-animal advocate, in the way you hypothesise that you would, after writing his piece. This just seems like too convenient an excuse, sorry.
Of course you’re not under any obligation to write anything (well...perhaps some would argue you are, but I’ll concede you’re not). But if I thought I had a great argument up my sleeve, mostly ignored by the community, which, if true, would mean we were effectively burning tens of millions of dollars a year, I know I’d write it up.
Ah, thank you for clarifying! That is a much stronger sense of “doing a good job” than I was going for. I was trying to point at something like, successfully writing up my views in a way that felt like a solid contribution to the discourse. Explaining what I thought, why I thought it, and why I didn’t find the standard counter arguments convincing. I think this would probably take me about two months of full-time work, so a pretty substantial opportunity cost.
I think I could do this well enough to become the main person people pointed at when they wanted to give an example of a “don’t value animals” EA (which would probably be negative for my other work), but even major success here would probably only result in convincing <5% of animal-focused EAs to change what they were working on. And much less than that for money, since most of the EA money is from OP, which funds animal work as part of an explicit process of worldview diversification.
Your argument that you would effectively be forced into becoming an anti-animal advocate if you convincingly wrote up your views—sorry I don’t really buy it.
I would be primarily known as an anti-animal advocate if I wrote something like this, even if I didn’t want to be.
On whether I would need to put my time into continuing to defend the position, I agree that I strictly wouldn’t have to, but I think that given my temperament and interaction style I wouldn’t actually be able to avoid this. So I need to think of this as if I am allocating a larger amount of time than what it would take to write up the argument.
Your argument that you would effectively be forced into becoming an anti-animal advocate if you convincingly wrote up your views—sorry I don’t really buy it.
OK so he says he would primarily be “known” as an anti-animal advocate not “become” one.
This is especially the case because If I did a good job at this I might end up primarily known for being an anti-animal advocate
But he then also says the following (bold emphasis mine):
I also expect that, again, conditional on doing a good job of this, I would need to spend a lot of time as a representative of this position: responding to the best counter arguments, evaluating new information as it comes up, people wanting me to participate in debates, animal advocates thinking that changing my mind is really very important for making progress toward their goals. These are similarly not where I want to put my time and energy, either for altruistic reasons personal enjoyment.
I’m struggling to see how what I said isn’t accurate. Maybe Jeff should have said “I would feel compelled to” rather than “I would need to”.
To my eyes “be known as an anti-animal advocate” is a much lower bar than “be an anti-animal advocate.”
For example I think some people will (still!) consider me an “anti-climate change advocate” (or “anti-anti-climate change advocate?”) due to a fairly short post I wrote 5+ years ago. I would, from their perspective, take actions consistent with that view (eg I’d be willing to defend my position if challenged, describe ways in which I’ve updated, etc). Moreover, it is not implausible that from their perspective, this is the most important thing I do (since they don’t interact with me at other times, and/or they might think my other actions are useless in either direction).
However, by my lights (and I expect by the lights of e.g. the median EA Forum reader) this would be a bad characterization. I don’t view arguing against climate change interventions as an important aspect of my life, nor do I believe my views on the matter as particularly outside of academic consensus.
Hence the distinction between “known as” vs “become.”
It’s the only part of my comment that argues Jeff was effectively saying he would have to “be” an animal advocate, which is exactly what you’re arguing against.
So I guess my best reply is just to point you back to that...
I guess I still don’t think of “I would need to spend a lot of time as a representative of this position” as being an anti-animal advocate. I spend a lot of time disagreeing with people on many different issues and yet I’d consider myself an advocate for only a tiny minority of them.
Put another way, I view the time spent as just one of the costs of being known as an anti-animal advocate, rather than being one.
I do think I could do a good job, yes. While I’ve been thinking about these problems off and on for over a decade I’ve never dedicated actual serious time here, and in the past when I’ve put that kind of time into work I’ve been proud of what I’ve been able to do.
What I meant by that is that I don’t have my overall views organized into a form optimized for explaining to others. I’m not asking other people to assume that because I’ve inscrutably come to this conclusion I’m correct or that they should defer to me in any way. But I’d also be dishonest if I didn’t accurately report my views.
Primarily the former. While if someone in the general community had put a lot of time into looking at this question from a perspective similar to my own and I felt like their work addressed my questions that would certainly help, given that no one has and I’m instead forming my own view I would prefer to have put more work into that view.
To clarify, when I asked if you could do a good job I meant can you put together a convincing argument that might give some people like me pause for thought (maybe this is indeed how you understood me).
If you think you can, I would strongly encourage you to do so. As per another comment of mine, tens of millions of dollars goes towards animal welfare within EA each year. If this money is effectively getting burned it is very useful for the community to know. Also, there is no convincing argument that animals are not moral patients on this forum (or indeed anywhere else) that I am aware of, so your view is exceedingly neglected. I think you could really do a whole lot of good if you do have a great argument up your sleeve.
Your argument that you would effectively be forced into becoming an anti-animal advocate if you convincingly wrote up your views—sorry I don’t really buy it. For example, I don’t think Luke Muehlhauser has been forced into becoming a pro-animal advocate, in the way you hypothesise that you would, after writing his piece. This just seems like too convenient an excuse, sorry.
Of course you’re not under any obligation to write anything (well...perhaps some would argue you are, but I’ll concede you’re not). But if I thought I had a great argument up my sleeve, mostly ignored by the community, which, if true, would mean we were effectively burning tens of millions of dollars a year, I know I’d write it up.
Ah, thank you for clarifying! That is a much stronger sense of “doing a good job” than I was going for. I was trying to point at something like, successfully writing up my views in a way that felt like a solid contribution to the discourse. Explaining what I thought, why I thought it, and why I didn’t find the standard counter arguments convincing. I think this would probably take me about two months of full-time work, so a pretty substantial opportunity cost.
I think I could do this well enough to become the main person people pointed at when they wanted to give an example of a “don’t value animals” EA (which would probably be negative for my other work), but even major success here would probably only result in convincing <5% of animal-focused EAs to change what they were working on. And much less than that for money, since most of the EA money is from OP, which funds animal work as part of an explicit process of worldview diversification.
I would be primarily known as an anti-animal advocate if I wrote something like this, even if I didn’t want to be.
On whether I would need to put my time into continuing to defend the position, I agree that I strictly wouldn’t have to, but I think that given my temperament and interaction style I wouldn’t actually be able to avoid this. So I need to think of this as if I am allocating a larger amount of time than what it would take to write up the argument.
I don’t think this is what Jeff said.
OK so he says he would primarily be “known” as an anti-animal advocate not “become” one.
But he then also says the following (bold emphasis mine):
I’m struggling to see how what I said isn’t accurate. Maybe Jeff should have said “I would feel compelled to” rather than “I would need to”.
To my eyes “be known as an anti-animal advocate” is a much lower bar than “be an anti-animal advocate.”
For example I think some people will (still!) consider me an “anti-climate change advocate” (or “anti-anti-climate change advocate?”) due to a fairly short post I wrote 5+ years ago. I would, from their perspective, take actions consistent with that view (eg I’d be willing to defend my position if challenged, describe ways in which I’ve updated, etc). Moreover, it is not implausible that from their perspective, this is the most important thing I do (since they don’t interact with me at other times, and/or they might think my other actions are useless in either direction).
However, by my lights (and I expect by the lights of e.g. the median EA Forum reader) this would be a bad characterization. I don’t view arguing against climate change interventions as an important aspect of my life, nor do I believe my views on the matter as particularly outside of academic consensus.
Hence the distinction between “known as” vs “become.”
You seem to have ignored the bit I made in bold in my previous comment
I don’t think there is or ought to be an expectation to respond to every subpart of a comment in a reply
It’s the only part of my comment that argues Jeff was effectively saying he would have to “be” an animal advocate, which is exactly what you’re arguing against.
So I guess my best reply is just to point you back to that...
Oh well, was nice chatting.
I guess I still don’t think of “I would need to spend a lot of time as a representative of this position” as being an anti-animal advocate. I spend a lot of time disagreeing with people on many different issues and yet I’d consider myself an advocate for only a tiny minority of them.
Put another way, I view the time spent as just one of the costs of being known as an anti-animal advocate, rather than being one.