The post implies a large trade off between animal welfare and other cause areas.
It seems crucial to consider the actual trade off in energy/resources/attention and it seems plausible the trade off isn’t large at all. It’s important to explain this, but it’s difficult to communicate the underlying situation, for very compelling reasons.
I think some elaboration of the current state of farm animal welfare in EA is important to show why this tradeoff might not be large.
This elaboration or further explanation of the tradeoff won’t appear in this comment. (Someone else can/should do this but I know someone who can give some insight at some point).
Some considerations, not directly related:
If there needs to be (careful, proportionate) adjustment of the political climate of animal activism in certain circles, so that the resulting activity is collegial to EA, that is possible and may not be overly costly. This should be acceptable to altruistic animal activists if it provides EA resources and results in impactful activity.
I don’t think “flow through” effects is a good argument in general but it’s worth noting that farm animal welfare was a cause that brought on some of the strongest longtermists today.
The post implies a large trade off between animal welfare and other cause areas.
It seems crucial to consider the actual trade off in energy/resources/attention and it seems plausible the trade off isn’t large at all. It’s important to explain this, but it’s difficult to communicate the underlying situation, for very compelling reasons.
I think some elaboration of the current state of farm animal welfare in EA is important to show why this tradeoff might not be large.
This elaboration or further explanation of the tradeoff won’t appear in this comment. (Someone else can/should do this but I know someone who can give some insight at some point).
Some considerations, not directly related:
If there needs to be (careful, proportionate) adjustment of the political climate of animal activism in certain circles, so that the resulting activity is collegial to EA, that is possible and may not be overly costly. This should be acceptable to altruistic animal activists if it provides EA resources and results in impactful activity.
I don’t think “flow through” effects is a good argument in general but it’s worth noting that farm animal welfare was a cause that brought on some of the strongest longtermists today.