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.
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.