Time is precious, so I’m just going to commit to ending my involvement after this comment.
BLUF: I’m not trying to convey “AIM good, WAI bad”. Just that “WAI does not appear to be unbeatable and therefore other charities in this space might be better uses of funding” AIM was just an example of a charity which would be very hard.
This critique just seems weirdly anti-science and presumably an issue for all AIM charities / animal welfare charities. you’re worried about the replication crisis… then presumably every AIM-intervention based on scientific research should be viewed with a ton of skepticism too?
I didn’t claim there was anything wrong with the scientific method. I claimed there was something wrong with academia. Apologies if I am misinterpreting you, but you seem to imply that other charities are around equally as dependent on academia. I think that’s clearly false.
Quotes from the post
“Our primary goal is to support the growth of a self-sustaining interdisciplinary research community focused on reducing wild animal suffering.”
“Here are some highlights of our progress to date… Establishing that wild animal welfare science is a serious academic endeavor, including by… helping to get the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program established.”
Regarding other charities based on scientific research, you can largely tell that they’re working within a year or two of them launching. The evaluation doesn’t require academics. It doesn’t depend on anyone taking published research seriously; the interventions help regardless of whether or not anyone takes the evaluation seriously.
The rest of your writing here seems to assume that I accept that wild animal welfare considerations dominate all others. I don’t come close to believing that.
I don’t think this is accurate. I think it is true that AIM founded charities pay much less, and so do many startups. But WAI has been around several more years than the oldest AIM animal charities and is significantly more established. I think I’d expect most AIM charities that survive to having 20+ staff, etc to raise their salaries significantly, with AIM itself being an exception to this due to a particular ideological commitment.
I don’t think that every AIM charity is field-leading. I’m trying to communicate that for Jason’s case to hold true, crudely paraphrased, that when fields funding is scarce we should rally around its incumbents), the incumbent charities need to be hard to beat. AIM is one example of a charity I think is field leading in it’s area. I’m trying to show that WAI is not nearly as hard to beat because the TOC seems a lot weaker and the cost is a lot higher.
This seems like it intentionally left off WAI’s main program and activity / the source of the vast majority of their impact? A little confused about why you didn’t include it and it makes me unclear how much to update on this comment or to take your critique overall
Based on the post, I haven’t read much further into their work, it seems that most their value cashes out in published research papers, either of them or their grantees. I included both in the statistics cited above, even preprints. AIM could equally complain that I’ve left off their research, for-profit incubation program, and researcher incubation program.
“WAI does not appear to be unbeatable and therefore other charities in this space might be better uses of funding”
I was basing my comment on you asserting WAI was several orders of magnitude less cost-effective then other charities in the space. I absolutely agree that WAI might be less cost-effective than other groups, but this claim is a lot less extreme than the first one you made. I’d still love to see your estimate if you have it, because I’d appreciate a more critical lens on WAI’s theory of change than I’ve seen before.
Regarding other charities based on scientific research, you can largely tell that they’re working within a year or two of them launching. The evaluation doesn’t require academics. It doesn’t depend on anyone taking published research seriously; the interventions help regardless of whether or not anyone takes the evaluation seriously.
...
I didn’t claim there was anything wrong with the scientific method. I claimed there was something wrong with academia. Apologies if I am misinterpreting you, but you seem to imply that other charities are around equally as dependent on academia. I think that’s clearly false.
I think this is interesting but probably incorrect — while other charities don’t have interventions that involve academia, any kind of claim about their effectiveness, and any ability they have to develop interventions is heavily reliant on it. We can’t tell at all if they are working without academics. Basically everything EA affiliated groups have done to help animals (cage-free campaigns, alternative proteins, welfare reforms, etc) have relied incredibly heavily on academia—they just happen to work on the other side of the academic research than WAI.
Taking Shrimp Welfare Project as an example (primarily because I suspect from a neartermist lens, SWP is far and away the most cost-effective animal charity, likely more cost-effective than WAI, and a great opportunity for donors right now too), they exclusively do welfare interventions. We literally would have no idea if they are helping animals without animal welfare science (like the science WAI funds). We might know that their interventions impacted a lot of animals, but we wouldn’t know the sign or degree of it at all. The only reason we have any idea that SWP, for example, is so impactful, is because of academic research. And SWP was only able to make determinations on what interventions to do based on that science. If you’re uncertain that science can be trusted as you express in your initial point, you’d have to throw this out all. The issues in science you point to are very very real. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress on animal issues based on scientific research, and that doing science well to support future interventions isn’t important.
Final comment—I’ve edited by initial comment to better reflect what I wanted to convey, but left the original text so the context of your reply remains for later readers.
Time is precious, so I’m just going to commit to ending my involvement after this comment.
BLUF: I’m not trying to convey “AIM good, WAI bad”. Just that “WAI does not appear to be unbeatable and therefore other charities in this space might be better uses of funding” AIM was just an example of a charity which would be very hard.
I didn’t claim there was anything wrong with the scientific method. I claimed there was something wrong with academia. Apologies if I am misinterpreting you, but you seem to imply that other charities are around equally as dependent on academia. I think that’s clearly false.
Quotes from the post
“Our primary goal is to support the growth of a self-sustaining interdisciplinary research community focused on reducing wild animal suffering.”
“Here are some highlights of our progress to date… Establishing that wild animal welfare science is a serious academic endeavor, including by… helping to get the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program established.”
If that doesn’t make it sufficiently clear, view their grants page; Almost all of their grants went to academics.
Regarding other charities based on scientific research, you can largely tell that they’re working within a year or two of them launching. The evaluation doesn’t require academics. It doesn’t depend on anyone taking published research seriously; the interventions help regardless of whether or not anyone takes the evaluation seriously.
The rest of your writing here seems to assume that I accept that wild animal welfare considerations dominate all others. I don’t come close to believing that.
I don’t think that every AIM charity is field-leading. I’m trying to communicate that for Jason’s case to hold true, crudely paraphrased, that when fields funding is scarce we should rally around its incumbents), the incumbent charities need to be hard to beat. AIM is one example of a charity I think is field leading in it’s area. I’m trying to show that WAI is not nearly as hard to beat because the TOC seems a lot weaker and the cost is a lot higher.
Based on the post, I haven’t read much further into their work, it seems that most their value cashes out in published research papers, either of them or their grantees. I included both in the statistics cited above, even preprints. AIM could equally complain that I’ve left off their research, for-profit incubation program, and researcher incubation program.
I was basing my comment on you asserting WAI was several orders of magnitude less cost-effective then other charities in the space. I absolutely agree that WAI might be less cost-effective than other groups, but this claim is a lot less extreme than the first one you made. I’d still love to see your estimate if you have it, because I’d appreciate a more critical lens on WAI’s theory of change than I’ve seen before.
I think this is interesting but probably incorrect — while other charities don’t have interventions that involve academia, any kind of claim about their effectiveness, and any ability they have to develop interventions is heavily reliant on it. We can’t tell at all if they are working without academics. Basically everything EA affiliated groups have done to help animals (cage-free campaigns, alternative proteins, welfare reforms, etc) have relied incredibly heavily on academia—they just happen to work on the other side of the academic research than WAI.
Taking Shrimp Welfare Project as an example (primarily because I suspect from a neartermist lens, SWP is far and away the most cost-effective animal charity, likely more cost-effective than WAI, and a great opportunity for donors right now too), they exclusively do welfare interventions. We literally would have no idea if they are helping animals without animal welfare science (like the science WAI funds). We might know that their interventions impacted a lot of animals, but we wouldn’t know the sign or degree of it at all. The only reason we have any idea that SWP, for example, is so impactful, is because of academic research. And SWP was only able to make determinations on what interventions to do based on that science. If you’re uncertain that science can be trusted as you express in your initial point, you’d have to throw this out all. The issues in science you point to are very very real. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress on animal issues based on scientific research, and that doing science well to support future interventions isn’t important.
Final comment—I’ve edited by initial comment to better reflect what I wanted to convey, but left the original text so the context of your reply remains for later readers.