I also didn’t like this comment because it seemed unnecessarily arrogant, and also dismissive of global health and animal welfare people, who I hope you would consider at least part of the heart of the wonderful EA intellectual ecosystem.
For what it’s worth, as a minor point, the animal welfare issues I think are most important, and the interventions I suspect are the most cost-effective right now (e.g. shrimp stunning), are basically only fundable because of EA being weird in the past and willing to explore strange ideas. I think some of this does entail genuine PR risk in certain ways, but I don’t think we would have gotten most of the most valuable progress that EA has made for animal welfare if we paid attention to PR between 2010 and 2021, and the animal welfare space would be much worse off. That doesn’t mean PR shouldn’t be a consideration now, but as a historical matter, I think it is correct that impact in the animal space has largely been driven by comfort with weird ideas. I think the new funding environment is likely a lot worse for making meaningful progress on the most important animal welfare issues.
The “non-weird” animal welfare ideas that are funded right now (corporate chicken campaigns and alternative proteins?) were not EA innovations and were already being pursued by non-EA animal groups when EA funding entered the space. If these are the best interventions OpenPhil can fund due to PR concerns, animals are a lot worse off.
I personally would rather more animal and global health groups distanced themselves from EA if there were PR risks, than EA distancing itself from PR risks. It seems like groups could just make determinations about the right strategies for their own work with regard to PR, instead of there being top down enforcement of a singular PR strategy, which I think is likely what this change will mostly cause. E.g. I think that the EA-side origins of wild animal welfare work are highly risky from a PR angle, but the most effective implementation of them, WAI, both would not have occurred without that PR risky work (extremely confident), and is now exceedingly normal / does not pose a PR risk to EA at all (fairly confident) nor does EA pose one to it (somewhat confident). It just reads as just a normal wild animal scientific research group to basically any non-EA who engages with it.
Thanks for the reply! I wasnt actually aware that animal welfare has run into major PR issues. I didn’t think the public took much interest in wild animal or shrimp welfare. I probably missed it but would be interested to see the articles / hit pieces.
I don’t think how “weird” something is necessarily correlates to PR risk. It’s definitely a factor but there are others too. For example buying Wytham Abbey wasn’t weird, but appeared to many in the public at least inconsistent with EA values.
For what it’s worth, as a minor point, the animal welfare issues I think are most important, and the interventions I suspect are the most cost-effective right now (e.g. shrimp stunning), are basically only fundable because of EA being weird in the past and willing to explore strange ideas. I think some of this does entail genuine PR risk in certain ways, but I don’t think we would have gotten most of the most valuable progress that EA has made for animal welfare if we paid attention to PR between 2010 and 2021, and the animal welfare space would be much worse off. That doesn’t mean PR shouldn’t be a consideration now, but as a historical matter, I think it is correct that impact in the animal space has largely been driven by comfort with weird ideas. I think the new funding environment is likely a lot worse for making meaningful progress on the most important animal welfare issues.
The “non-weird” animal welfare ideas that are funded right now (corporate chicken campaigns and alternative proteins?) were not EA innovations and were already being pursued by non-EA animal groups when EA funding entered the space. If these are the best interventions OpenPhil can fund due to PR concerns, animals are a lot worse off.
I personally would rather more animal and global health groups distanced themselves from EA if there were PR risks, than EA distancing itself from PR risks. It seems like groups could just make determinations about the right strategies for their own work with regard to PR, instead of there being top down enforcement of a singular PR strategy, which I think is likely what this change will mostly cause. E.g. I think that the EA-side origins of wild animal welfare work are highly risky from a PR angle, but the most effective implementation of them, WAI, both would not have occurred without that PR risky work (extremely confident), and is now exceedingly normal / does not pose a PR risk to EA at all (fairly confident) nor does EA pose one to it (somewhat confident). It just reads as just a normal wild animal scientific research group to basically any non-EA who engages with it.
Thanks for the reply! I wasnt actually aware that animal welfare has run into major PR issues. I didn’t think the public took much interest in wild animal or shrimp welfare. I probably missed it but would be interested to see the articles / hit pieces.
I don’t think how “weird” something is necessarily correlates to PR risk. It’s definitely a factor but there are others too. For example buying Wytham Abbey wasn’t weird, but appeared to many in the public at least inconsistent with EA values.
I don’t think these areas have run into PR issues historically, but they are perceived as PR risks.