While taking the introductory EA virtual programme, I shared my experiences with my Muslim roommate. She was very sympathetic to the idea of ea. Big BUT: when I mentioned one of the exercises on moral decision making which weighed the expected value of deworming children with lobbying for farmed pig welfare (and ultimately led to comparing the value of human life with a pig), she was horrified.
I’m thrilled to see that Ahmed is planning to develop a Muslim EA fellowship! In the meanwhile, perhaps a Muslim EA could review the introductory EA virtual programme and see if there are any examples such as this one which could be altered to make EA principles seem less hostile to Islam while retaining the community’s intellectual honesty?
To be fair, there are lots of types of people who reject comparing value of human life with value of animal life, spanning secular and religious backgrounds. I wouldn’t have guessed there was a correlation between religiosity and that particular rejection.
Agreed. However, I think the issue with my Muslim friend was not the foreignness of this idea but rather that it was illustrated with a particularly off-putting (for her) example of pigs. In this case, I think something as simple as changing the animal to one that does not automatically invoke disgust in certain religious groups (i.e. Judaism and Islam) would increase the diversity of those taking the intro EA programme.
Thanks for this. Yeah it’s tough—I’ve thought about this particular thing quite a bit and I don’t know what the right direction would be. This could be mitigated by “EA for Muslims” not taking a particular stance on anything and creating spin-off projects which do take a stance on things (e.g. maybe “EA Islamic Animal welfare initiative” does care about pigs.
On the one hand: Some (probably most) muslims would not want to help pigs because they’re specifically singled out as an unclean/non-prefered/dirty animal. I don’t know whether or not they’re sympathetic to pig suffering or if they’re indifferent (I’m sure some percentage would be pro-pig suffering but we’re probably not trying to reach those people in the first place).
but on the other hand: Some muslims (like me) think pigs are probably very capable of feeling suffering and the amount of suffering endured collectively by pigs is really really bad and we should try stopping it. I think a reasonable muslim could say something like “god made these pigs, and says lots of things about how we should prevent the suffering of animals, and he doesn’t say “except pigs”
While taking the introductory EA virtual programme, I shared my experiences with my Muslim roommate. She was very sympathetic to the idea of ea. Big BUT: when I mentioned one of the exercises on moral decision making which weighed the expected value of deworming children with lobbying for farmed pig welfare (and ultimately led to comparing the value of human life with a pig), she was horrified. I’m thrilled to see that Ahmed is planning to develop a Muslim EA fellowship! In the meanwhile, perhaps a Muslim EA could review the introductory EA virtual programme and see if there are any examples such as this one which could be altered to make EA principles seem less hostile to Islam while retaining the community’s intellectual honesty?
To be fair, there are lots of types of people who reject comparing value of human life with value of animal life, spanning secular and religious backgrounds. I wouldn’t have guessed there was a correlation between religiosity and that particular rejection.
Agreed. However, I think the issue with my Muslim friend was not the foreignness of this idea but rather that it was illustrated with a particularly off-putting (for her) example of pigs. In this case, I think something as simple as changing the animal to one that does not automatically invoke disgust in certain religious groups (i.e. Judaism and Islam) would increase the diversity of those taking the intro EA programme.
Thanks for this. Yeah it’s tough—I’ve thought about this particular thing quite a bit and I don’t know what the right direction would be. This could be mitigated by “EA for Muslims” not taking a particular stance on anything and creating spin-off projects which do take a stance on things (e.g. maybe “EA Islamic Animal welfare initiative” does care about pigs.
On the one hand: Some (probably most) muslims would not want to help pigs because they’re specifically singled out as an unclean/non-prefered/dirty animal. I don’t know whether or not they’re sympathetic to pig suffering or if they’re indifferent (I’m sure some percentage would be pro-pig suffering but we’re probably not trying to reach those people in the first place).
but on the other hand: Some muslims (like me) think pigs are probably very capable of feeling suffering and the amount of suffering endured collectively by pigs is really really bad and we should try stopping it. I think a reasonable muslim could say something like “god made these pigs, and says lots of things about how we should prevent the suffering of animals, and he doesn’t say “except pigs”