I think there has been very little argument for animals not counting at the post level because, quite simply, the argument that (in expectation) they do count is just far stronger.
Iām confused how this works, could you elaborate?
My usual causal chain linking these would be āargument is weakā ā ā~nobody believes itā ā ānobody posts itā.
The middle step fails here. Do you have something else in mind?
FWIW, I thought these twocomments were reasonable guesses at what may be going on here.
Iām not sure the middle step does actually fail in the EA community. Do you have evidence that it does? Is there some survey evidence for significant numbers of EAs not believing animals are moral patients?
If there is a significant number of people that think they have strong arguments for animals not counting, they should definitely post these and potentially redirect a great deal of altruistic funding towards global health.
Anyway, another possible causal chain might be:
āargument is weak but some people intuitively believe it in part because they want it to be trueā ā āthere is no strong post that can really be writtenā ā ānobody posts itā
Maybe you can ask Jeff Kauffman why he has never provided any actual argument for this (I do apologize if he has and I have just missed it!).
Ah, gotcha, I guess that works. No, I donāt have anything I would consider strong evidence, I just know itās come up more than anything else in my few dozen conversations over the years. I suppose I assumed it was coming up for others as well.
they should definitely post these and potentially redirect a great deal of altruistic funding towards global health
FWIW this seems wrong, not least because as was correctly pointed out many times there just isnāt a lot of money in the AW space. Iām pretty sure GHD has far better places to fundraise from.
To the extent I have spoken to people (not Jeff, and not that much) about why they donāt engage more on this, I thought the two comments I linked to in my last comment had a lot of overlap with the responses.
FWIW this seems wrong, not least because as was correctly pointed out many times there just isnāt a lot of money in the AW space. Iām pretty sure GHD has far better places to fundraise from.
This is bizarre to me. This post suggests that between $30 and 40 million goes towards animal welfare each year (and it could be more now as that post was written four years ago). If animals are not moral patients, this money is as good as getting burned. If we actually were burning this amount of money every year, Iād imagine some people would make it their overwhelming mission to ensure we donāt (which would likely involve at least a few forum posts).
Assuming it costs $5,000 to save a human life, redirecting that money could save up to 8,000 human lives every year. Doesnāt seem too bad to me. Iām not claiming posts arguing against animal moral patienthood could lead to redirecting all the money, but the idea that no one is bothering to make the arguments because thereās just no point doesnāt stack up to me.
For the record, I have a few places I think EA is burning >$30m per year, not that AW is actually one of them. Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears? Though unsurprisingly they donāt agree about where the money is getting burned..
So from where I stand I donāt recognise your guess of how people respond to that situation. A few things I believe that might help explain the difference:
Most of the money is directed by people who donāt read or otherwise have a fairly low opinion of the forum.
Posting on the forum is ānot for the faint of heartā.
On the occasion that I have dug into past forum prioritisation posts that were well-received, I generally find them seriously flawed or otherwise uncompelling. I have no particular reason to be sad about (1).
People are often aware that thereās an āother sideā that strongly disagrees with their disagreement and will push back hard, so they correctly choose not to waste our collective resources in a mud-slinging match.
I donāt expect to have capacity to engage further here, but if further discussion suggests that one of the above is a particularly surprising claim, I may consider writing it up in more detail in future.
Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears?
Maybe I donāt speak to enough EAs, which is possible. Obviously many EAs think our overall allocation isnāt optimal, but I wasnāt aware that many EAs think we are giving tens of millions of dollars to interventions/āareas that do NO good in expectation (which is what I mean by āburning moneyā).
Maybe the burning money point is a bit of a red herring though if the amount youāre burning is relatively small and more good can be done by redirecting other funds, even if they are currently doing some good. I concede this point.
To be honest you might be right overall that people who donāt think our funding allocation is perfect tend not to write on the forum about it. Perhaps they are just focusing on doing the most good by acting within their preferred cause area. Iād love to see more discussion of where marginal funding should go though. And FWIW one example of a post that does cover this and was very well-received was Arielās on the topic of animal welfare vs global health.
As a small note, I donā think the ābelieve it because they want it to be trueā is really an argument either way. To state the obvious, animal welfare researchers need sentience to be true, otherwise all the work they are doing is worth a lot less.
So I donāt think the āwant it to be trueā argument stands really at all. Motivations are very strong on both sides, and from a ārealpolitikā kind of perspective, thereās so much more riding on this from animal researchers than there is for people like Yud and Zvi.
On the other hand, the āvery few people believe animals arenāt moral patients and havenāt made great arguments for itā point for me stands very strong.
Animal welfare researchers need sentience to be true, otherwise all the work they are doing is worth a lot less.
That is fair, but there are several additional reasons why most people would want it that animals are not moral patients:
They can continue to eat them guilt-free and animals are tasty.
People can give to global health uncertainty-free and get āfuzziesā from saving human lives with pretty high confidence (I think we naturally get more fuzzies by helping people of our own species).
We wouldnāt as a human species then be committing a grave moral atrocity which would be a massive relief.
There arenāt really similar arguments for wanting animals to be moral patients (other than āI work on animal welfareā) but I would be interested if Iām missing any relevant ones.
Iām confused how this works, could you elaborate?
My usual causal chain linking these would be āargument is weakā ā ā~nobody believes itā ā ānobody posts itā.
The middle step fails here. Do you have something else in mind?
FWIW, I thought these two comments were reasonable guesses at what may be going on here.
Iām not sure the middle step does actually fail in the EA community. Do you have evidence that it does? Is there some survey evidence for significant numbers of EAs not believing animals are moral patients?
If there is a significant number of people that think they have strong arguments for animals not counting, they should definitely post these and potentially redirect a great deal of altruistic funding towards global health.
Anyway, another possible causal chain might be:
āargument is weak but some people intuitively believe it in part because they want it to be trueā ā āthere is no strong post that can really be writtenā ā ānobody posts itā
Maybe you can ask Jeff Kauffman why he has never provided any actual argument for this (I do apologize if he has and I have just missed it!).
Ah, gotcha, I guess that works. No, I donāt have anything I would consider strong evidence, I just know itās come up more than anything else in my few dozen conversations over the years. I suppose I assumed it was coming up for others as well.
FWIW this seems wrong, not least because as was correctly pointed out many times there just isnāt a lot of money in the AW space. Iām pretty sure GHD has far better places to fundraise from.
To the extent I have spoken to people (not Jeff, and not that much) about why they donāt engage more on this, I thought the two comments I linked to in my last comment had a lot of overlap with the responses.
This is bizarre to me. This post suggests that between $30 and 40 million goes towards animal welfare each year (and it could be more now as that post was written four years ago). If animals are not moral patients, this money is as good as getting burned. If we actually were burning this amount of money every year, Iād imagine some people would make it their overwhelming mission to ensure we donāt (which would likely involve at least a few forum posts).
Assuming it costs $5,000 to save a human life, redirecting that money could save up to 8,000 human lives every year. Doesnāt seem too bad to me. Iām not claiming posts arguing against animal moral patienthood could lead to redirecting all the money, but the idea that no one is bothering to make the arguments because thereās just no point doesnāt stack up to me.
For the record, I have a few places I think EA is burning >$30m per year, not that AW is actually one of them. Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears? Though unsurprisingly they donāt agree about where the money is getting burned..
So from where I stand I donāt recognise your guess of how people respond to that situation. A few things I believe that might help explain the difference:
Most of the money is directed by people who donāt read or otherwise have a fairly low opinion of the forum.
Posting on the forum is ānot for the faint of heartā.
On the occasion that I have dug into past forum prioritisation posts that were well-received, I generally find them seriously flawed or otherwise uncompelling. I have no particular reason to be sad about (1).
People are often aware that thereās an āother sideā that strongly disagrees with their disagreement and will push back hard, so they correctly choose not to waste our collective resources in a mud-slinging match.
I donāt expect to have capacity to engage further here, but if further discussion suggests that one of the above is a particularly surprising claim, I may consider writing it up in more detail in future.
Maybe I donāt speak to enough EAs, which is possible. Obviously many EAs think our overall allocation isnāt optimal, but I wasnāt aware that many EAs think we are giving tens of millions of dollars to interventions/āareas that do NO good in expectation (which is what I mean by āburning moneyā).
Maybe the burning money point is a bit of a red herring though if the amount youāre burning is relatively small and more good can be done by redirecting other funds, even if they are currently doing some good. I concede this point.
To be honest you might be right overall that people who donāt think our funding allocation is perfect tend not to write on the forum about it. Perhaps they are just focusing on doing the most good by acting within their preferred cause area. Iād love to see more discussion of where marginal funding should go though. And FWIW one example of a post that does cover this and was very well-received was Arielās on the topic of animal welfare vs global health.
As a small note, I donā think the ābelieve it because they want it to be trueā is really an argument either way. To state the obvious, animal welfare researchers need sentience to be true, otherwise all the work they are doing is worth a lot less.
So I donāt think the āwant it to be trueā argument stands really at all. Motivations are very strong on both sides, and from a ārealpolitikā kind of perspective, thereās so much more riding on this from animal researchers than there is for people like Yud and Zvi.
On the other hand, the āvery few people believe animals arenāt moral patients and havenāt made great arguments for itā point for me stands very strong.
That is fair, but there are several additional reasons why most people would want it that animals are not moral patients:
They can continue to eat them guilt-free and animals are tasty.
People can give to global health uncertainty-free and get āfuzziesā from saving human lives with pretty high confidence (I think we naturally get more fuzzies by helping people of our own species).
We wouldnāt as a human species then be committing a grave moral atrocity which would be a massive relief.
There arenāt really similar arguments for wanting animals to be moral patients (other than āI work on animal welfareā) but I would be interested if Iām missing any relevant ones.