My assumption is that where effective animal advocacy has theories, they arenât explicitly modelling it around Transformative AI (TAI).
The theories of victory/âchange I have seen articulated online, IMO, fall into these buckets (I donât have a sense of how popular or far along each of these are):
Farm & Food level
Turn factory farms into humane farms (no requirements about total meat consumption, but implicitly less occurs since we canât humanely farm at scale) so that total suffering in factory farms is below X. Tactics could include:
Undercover investigations, corporate campaigns, legislative bans on worst practices
Expand and improve animal welfare certifications
Make CAFO meat more expensive than more humane alternatives (via bans on cheap inhumane practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns with most expensive reforms, meat taxes)
Shift dietary preference to animals easier to farm humanely
Genetically modify animals so they can be farmed intensively without suffering
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât actually reduce suffering, just shift production to some new form of equal or worse suffering
If people increase meat consumption because they think it is more acceptable
If itâs too hard to source enough âhumaneâ meat but meat demand continues, and model collapses
End meat eating (everyone gets protein from plants and pulses, becomes vegan). Tactics could include:
Make meat less coolâincrease moral outrage via undercover investigations
Make plant-proteins more coolâVegan movement building
Give animals legal personhood, protection from all exploitation, expand moral circle
Make meat more expensive than alternatives (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)
Bankrupt animal farming. Pursue reforms raising the price of meat, divestment campaign, and the most expensive welfare reforms such that the animal ag industry goes bankrupt
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics
If weâre wrong about how moral circle expansion works
If there arenât tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag
End farmed meat (meat comes from plants, cell-cultures, funghi, algae, perhaps hunted animals). Tactics could include:
Invest in alternative proteins (mock-meats)
Pass legislation making it easier for consumers to identify these products as substitutes for meat
Make animal meat more expensive (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If investment in alternative proteins doesnât improve the axes consumers care about
If alt proteins canât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins
Hybrid approaches
Costly welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to increase prices on conventional meat so alternative proteins are competitive, people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât increase prices, or donât increase them enough to cause switching to nonmeats. (Jayson Lusk probably has best work on this so far)
If alt proteins donât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins, especially at any price
High welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to reduce worst suffering of farmed animals until alternative proteins are competitive,people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât actually reduce suffering
If alt proteins donât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins
Make veganism cool + end farming: Ignore welfare reforms unless they increase costs to the point of bankruptcy or increase opposition to animal farming, abolish farming, make animals legally persons, make veganism cool via movement building and/âor alt proteins. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics
If weâre wrong about how moral circle expansion works
If there arenât tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag
Meta level
Inject evidence and reason into the animal advocacy movement
Tracking progress, estimating impact, prioritising asks, changing behaviour & beliefs based on evidence is relatively new to the farmed animal movement.
Create new organizations with this approach at their core
Provide research that influence existing orgs to adopt this approach
Go work for existing orgs and change their approach
Inject animal advocacy into the evidence and reason movement
Create scholarships, departments, labs, prizes for scholars & scientists to research FAW issues
Raise the profile of animal issues in the EA & Rationalist communities
Inject animal advocacy into policy sphere
Create FAW ombudsmen, ambassadors, envoys in national and regional governments and supranational organizations likes EU and UN
Get FAW people to try staff these positions
Inject animal advocacy into philanthropy sphere (maybe less needed given EA funding overhang)
Shift Open Philâs/âFarmed Animal Fundersâs/âFAIRRâs funding allocation towards the interventions in line with the theory of change
Create more things like Open Philâs FAW department/âFarmed Animal Funders/âFAIRR
Inject animal advocacy beyond Anglosphere
Movement building abroad, especially where animal farming is concentrated
Itâs unclear what percent of the problem we think each of these could actually solve alone. Not all farms can be made humane, not everyone will eat alternative meats, not everyone will give up meat eating.
What level of suffering are we willing to accept? 0 animal lives at risk of suffering? Total animal suffering to be below X amount? A y% reduction in total animal suffering relative to a 2010 baseline?
In all paths itâs not obvious whether to focus on one sector or many. Should we focus on the animals where most of the suffering is occurring- plausibly shrimps or insect farmed for animal feed? Or move all egg-laying hens out of cages and into free-range or egg-replacers and go gung-ho on that until we stop making progress? Should we focus on any suffering so long as it is easy? (do cage-free hens, then do whatever is easier for fish, then whatever is easiest for insects, etc even if it is not tackling the largest sources of suffering which are harder to solve?).
My assumption is that where effective animal advocacy has theories, they arenât explicitly modelling it around Transformative AI (TAI).
The theories of victory/âchange I have seen articulated online, IMO, fall into these buckets (I donât have a sense of how popular or far along each of these are):
Farm & Food level
Turn factory farms into humane farms (no requirements about total meat consumption, but implicitly less occurs since we canât humanely farm at scale) so that total suffering in factory farms is below X. Tactics could include:
Undercover investigations, corporate campaigns, legislative bans on worst practices
Expand and improve animal welfare certifications
Make CAFO meat more expensive than more humane alternatives (via bans on cheap inhumane practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns with most expensive reforms, meat taxes)
Shift dietary preference to animals easier to farm humanely
Genetically modify animals so they can be farmed intensively without suffering
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât actually reduce suffering, just shift production to some new form of equal or worse suffering
If people increase meat consumption because they think it is more acceptable
If itâs too hard to source enough âhumaneâ meat but meat demand continues, and model collapses
End meat eating (everyone gets protein from plants and pulses, becomes vegan). Tactics could include:
Make meat less coolâincrease moral outrage via undercover investigations
Make plant-proteins more coolâVegan movement building
Give animals legal personhood, protection from all exploitation, expand moral circle
Make meat more expensive than alternatives (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)
Bankrupt animal farming. Pursue reforms raising the price of meat, divestment campaign, and the most expensive welfare reforms such that the animal ag industry goes bankrupt
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics
If weâre wrong about how moral circle expansion works
If there arenât tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag
End farmed meat (meat comes from plants, cell-cultures, funghi, algae, perhaps hunted animals). Tactics could include:
Invest in alternative proteins (mock-meats)
Pass legislation making it easier for consumers to identify these products as substitutes for meat
Make animal meat more expensive (via bans on practices, regulating externalities, removing subsidies, corporate campaigns, meat taxes)
Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If investment in alternative proteins doesnât improve the axes consumers care about
If alt proteins canât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins
Hybrid approaches
Costly welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to increase prices on conventional meat so alternative proteins are competitive, people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât increase prices, or donât increase them enough to cause switching to nonmeats. (Jayson Lusk probably has best work on this so far)
If alt proteins donât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins, especially at any price
High welfare + alt proteins: Use welfare reforms to reduce worst suffering of farmed animals until alternative proteins are competitive,people buy these instead of meat and causes a reduction in the number of animals farmed. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If welfare reforms donât actually reduce suffering
If alt proteins donât scale
If people donât switch from meat to alternative proteins
Make veganism cool + end farming: Ignore welfare reforms unless they increase costs to the point of bankruptcy or increase opposition to animal farming, abolish farming, make animals legally persons, make veganism cool via movement building and/âor alt proteins. Some ways it might turn out not to work:
If the number of people not eating meat does not increase in response to these tactics
If weâre wrong about how moral circle expansion works
If there arenât tractable ways to bankrupt animal ag
Meta level
Inject evidence and reason into the animal advocacy movement
Tracking progress, estimating impact, prioritising asks, changing behaviour & beliefs based on evidence is relatively new to the farmed animal movement.
Create new organizations with this approach at their core
Provide research that influence existing orgs to adopt this approach
Go work for existing orgs and change their approach
Inject animal advocacy into the evidence and reason movement
Create scholarships, departments, labs, prizes for scholars & scientists to research FAW issues
Raise the profile of animal issues in the EA & Rationalist communities
Inject animal advocacy into policy sphere
Create FAW ombudsmen, ambassadors, envoys in national and regional governments and supranational organizations likes EU and UN
Get FAW people to try staff these positions
Inject animal advocacy into philanthropy sphere (maybe less needed given EA funding overhang)
Shift Open Philâs/âFarmed Animal Fundersâs/âFAIRRâs funding allocation towards the interventions in line with the theory of change
Create more things like Open Philâs FAW department/âFarmed Animal Funders/âFAIRR
Inject animal advocacy beyond Anglosphere
Movement building abroad, especially where animal farming is concentrated
Itâs unclear what percent of the problem we think each of these could actually solve alone. Not all farms can be made humane, not everyone will eat alternative meats, not everyone will give up meat eating.
What level of suffering are we willing to accept? 0 animal lives at risk of suffering? Total animal suffering to be below X amount? A y% reduction in total animal suffering relative to a 2010 baseline?
In all paths itâs not obvious whether to focus on one sector or many. Should we focus on the animals where most of the suffering is occurring- plausibly shrimps or insect farmed for animal feed? Or move all egg-laying hens out of cages and into free-range or egg-replacers and go gung-ho on that until we stop making progress? Should we focus on any suffering so long as it is easy? (do cage-free hens, then do whatever is easier for fish, then whatever is easiest for insects, etc even if it is not tackling the largest sources of suffering which are harder to solve?).