My arguments B and C are both of the form “Hey, let’s watch out for this bias that could lead us to misallocate our altruistic resources (away from current animal suffering).” For B, the bias (well, biases) is/are status quo bias and self-interest. For C, the bias is comfort. (Clearly “comfort” is related to “self-interest”—possibly I should have combined B and C, I did ponder this. Anyway...)
None of this implies we shouldn’t do longtermist work! As I say in section F, I buy core tenets of longtermism, and “Giving future lives proper attention requires turning our attention away from some current suffering. It’s just a question of where we draw the line.” The point is just to ensure these biases don’t make us draw the line in the wrong place.
The question from A is meant as a sanity check. If millions of humans were in conditions comparable to battery cages, and comparably tractable, how many of “our” (loosely, the EA movement’s) resources should we devote to that—even insofar as that pulls away resources from longtermism? I’d argue “A significant amount, more than we are now.” Some would probably argue “No, terrible though that is, the longtermist work is even more important”—OK, we can debate that. The main stance I’d push back on is “The millions of humans would merit resources; the animals don’t.”
Btw none of this is meant as an argument for veganism (ie personal dietary/habit change), at all. How best to help farmed animals, if we agreed to, is a whole nother topic (except yes, I am assuming it’s quite tractable, happy to back that up).
Yup, I’m mostly sympathetic to your last three paragraphs.
What I meant to argue is that biases like status quo bias, self-interest, and comfort are not biases that could lead us to (majorly) misallocate careers away from current animal suffering and toward future generations, because (I claim) work focused on future generations often involves roughly as much opposition to the status quo, self-sacrifice, and discomfort as work focused on animals. (That comparison doesn’t hold for dietary distinctions, of course, so the effects of the biases you mention depend on what resources we’re worried about misallocating / what decisions we’re worried about messing up.)
My arguments B and C are both of the form “Hey, let’s watch out for this bias that could lead us to misallocate our altruistic resources (away from current animal suffering).” For B, the bias (well, biases) is/are status quo bias and self-interest. For C, the bias is comfort. (Clearly “comfort” is related to “self-interest”—possibly I should have combined B and C, I did ponder this. Anyway...)
None of this implies we shouldn’t do longtermist work! As I say in section F, I buy core tenets of longtermism, and “Giving future lives proper attention requires turning our attention away from some current suffering. It’s just a question of where we draw the line.” The point is just to ensure these biases don’t make us draw the line in the wrong place.
The question from A is meant as a sanity check. If millions of humans were in conditions comparable to battery cages, and comparably tractable, how many of “our” (loosely, the EA movement’s) resources should we devote to that—even insofar as that pulls away resources from longtermism? I’d argue “A significant amount, more than we are now.” Some would probably argue “No, terrible though that is, the longtermist work is even more important”—OK, we can debate that. The main stance I’d push back on is “The millions of humans would merit resources; the animals don’t.”
Btw none of this is meant as an argument for veganism (ie personal dietary/habit change), at all. How best to help farmed animals, if we agreed to, is a whole nother topic (except yes, I am assuming it’s quite tractable, happy to back that up).
Yup, I’m mostly sympathetic to your last three paragraphs.
What I meant to argue is that biases like status quo bias, self-interest, and comfort are not biases that could lead us to (majorly) misallocate careers away from current animal suffering and toward future generations, because (I claim) work focused on future generations often involves roughly as much opposition to the status quo, self-sacrifice, and discomfort as work focused on animals. (That comparison doesn’t hold for dietary distinctions, of course, so the effects of the biases you mention depend on what resources we’re worried about misallocating / what decisions we’re worried about messing up.)