I didn’t want to read all of @Vasco Grilo🔸’s post on the “meat eating” problem and all 80+ comments, so I expanded all the comments and copy/pasted the entire webpage into Claude with the following prompt: “Please give me a summary of the authors argument (dot points, explained simply) and then give me a summary of the kinds of push back he got (dot points, explained simply, thematised, giving me a sense of the concentration/popularity of themes in the push back)”
Below is the result (the Forum team might want to consider how posts with large numbers of comments can be read quickly):
The author claims that saving lives in developing countries might cause more harm than good in the short term because:
When people are saved from death, they consume animal products
The suffering of farm animals (especially chickens and farmed fish/shrimp) from being raised and killed outweighs the happiness of the human life saved
Using specific calculations, they estimate that one average person causes 15.5 times more animal suffering than human happiness globally (with higher ratios in some countries)
The author specifically criticizes two organizations:
GiveWell (for granting $1.09 billion without considering animal welfare impacts)
Ambitious Impact (for helping start 8 organizations that save lives without considering animal impacts)
The author suggests these organizations should:
Be more transparent about why they ignore animal welfare effects
Focus on interventions that don’t increase mortality (like mental health)
Offset harm to animals by funding animal welfare projects
Main themes in the pushback (ordered by rough frequency/engagement):
Moral/Philosophical Objections (Most Common):
Rejecting the premise that saving human lives could be net negative
Viewing it as morally repugnant to let children die because they might eat meat
Arguing that we shouldn’t hold people responsible for future choices they haven’t made yet
Methodological Critiques:
Questioning assumptions about consumption patterns of aid recipients
Noting that population growth doesn’t necessarily increase meat consumption proportionally
Pointing out that many aid recipients are too poor to consume significant amounts of animal products
Practical/Strategic Concerns:
Arguing that organizations like GiveWell don’t need to justify their focus on human welfare
Suggesting that offsetting through animal welfare donations is more practical than avoiding human welfare work
Noting that this type of reasoning could lead to harmful outcomes if applied broadly
Communication/Framing Concerns:
Suggesting the argument is unnecessarily divisive
Recommending changes to terminology (e.g., “meat eating problem” instead of “meat eater problem”)
Expressing concern about how this reflects on the EA community
The strongest pushback seemed to center around the moral implications of letting people die because of potential future actions, with many commenters finding this fundamentally problematic regardless of the utilitarian calculations involved.
It strikes me that the above criticisms don’t really seem consequentialist / hedonic utilitarian-focused. I’m curious if other criticisms are, or if some of these are intended to be as such (some complex logic like, “Acting in the standard-morality way will wind up being good for consequentialist reasons in some round-about way”.)
More generally, those specific objections strike me as very weak. I’d expect and hope that people at Open Philanthropy and GiveWell would have better objections.
I personally think this is a conversation worth having, but I can imagine a bunch of reasons people wouldn’t want to. For one thing, it is a PR nightmare!
I didn’t want to read all of @Vasco Grilo🔸’s post on the “meat eating” problem and all 80+ comments, so I expanded all the comments and copy/pasted the entire webpage into Claude with the following prompt: “Please give me a summary of the authors argument (dot points, explained simply) and then give me a summary of the kinds of push back he got (dot points, explained simply, thematised, giving me a sense of the concentration/popularity of themes in the push back)”
Below is the result (the Forum team might want to consider how posts with large numbers of comments can be read quickly):
The author claims that saving lives in developing countries might cause more harm than good in the short term because:
When people are saved from death, they consume animal products
The suffering of farm animals (especially chickens and farmed fish/shrimp) from being raised and killed outweighs the happiness of the human life saved
Using specific calculations, they estimate that one average person causes 15.5 times more animal suffering than human happiness globally (with higher ratios in some countries)
The author specifically criticizes two organizations:
GiveWell (for granting $1.09 billion without considering animal welfare impacts)
Ambitious Impact (for helping start 8 organizations that save lives without considering animal impacts)
The author suggests these organizations should:
Be more transparent about why they ignore animal welfare effects
Focus on interventions that don’t increase mortality (like mental health)
Offset harm to animals by funding animal welfare projects
Main themes in the pushback (ordered by rough frequency/engagement):
Moral/Philosophical Objections (Most Common):
Rejecting the premise that saving human lives could be net negative
Viewing it as morally repugnant to let children die because they might eat meat
Arguing that we shouldn’t hold people responsible for future choices they haven’t made yet
Methodological Critiques:
Questioning assumptions about consumption patterns of aid recipients
Noting that population growth doesn’t necessarily increase meat consumption proportionally
Pointing out that many aid recipients are too poor to consume significant amounts of animal products
Practical/Strategic Concerns:
Arguing that organizations like GiveWell don’t need to justify their focus on human welfare
Suggesting that offsetting through animal welfare donations is more practical than avoiding human welfare work
Noting that this type of reasoning could lead to harmful outcomes if applied broadly
Communication/Framing Concerns:
Suggesting the argument is unnecessarily divisive
Recommending changes to terminology (e.g., “meat eating problem” instead of “meat eater problem”)
Expressing concern about how this reflects on the EA community
The strongest pushback seemed to center around the moral implications of letting people die because of potential future actions, with many commenters finding this fundamentally problematic regardless of the utilitarian calculations involved.
Thanks, Yanni! Strongly upvoted.
No problem :)
Thanks for summarizing!
It strikes me that the above criticisms don’t really seem consequentialist / hedonic utilitarian-focused. I’m curious if other criticisms are, or if some of these are intended to be as such (some complex logic like, “Acting in the standard-morality way will wind up being good for consequentialist reasons in some round-about way”.)
More generally, those specific objections strike me as very weak. I’d expect and hope that people at Open Philanthropy and GiveWell would have better objections.
No worries :)
I personally think this is a conversation worth having, but I can imagine a bunch of reasons people wouldn’t want to. For one thing, it is a PR nightmare!