Welcome! And well done to donate 50% — I only know a few people with ordinary jobs who’ve done this, and they’re all among my favorite individuals. You’re doing incredible good.
I feel that the Effective Altruism movement overvalues animal well-being vs human well-being.
The EA movement doesn’t really have its own values, aside from a few baseline principles — it’s a collection of individuals who agree on the principles but differ on many other things. If you were to ask something like “how valuable is saving a chicken from a year of constant suffering?”, people in the movement would give you a vast range of answers.
If you think that a particular estimate you’ve seen from some EA-aligned organization is wrong, the EA Forum is a great place to make that argument!
I also feel it ignores that improving human welfare is an avenue to improving animal welfare (people who are struggling don’t have room to think about whether their chickens are free range).
It seems unlikely on its face that spending money on human welfare will do much for animals, relative to the incredible efficiency of e.g. cage-free campaigns. I don’t think animal advocates ignore these side effects (I think almost everyone would agree that there’s a link between economic prosperity and moral circle expansion). But I do think that they’d judge the side effects as very minor in the grand scheme of things.
If you think the side effects aren’t minor… sounds like another potential Forum post!
Note that there’s been some conversation about the direct opposite idea — that wealthier people eat more animal products, which means that improving human welfare might lead to additional animal suffering (meat consumption has skyrocketed around the world in recent decades).
I haven’t seen people actually use this as a reason not to support human-focused charities — again, this “side effect” is very small — but I think it illustrates how difficult and complicated these questions can be.
Welcome! And well done to donate 50% — I only know a few people with ordinary jobs who’ve done this, and they’re all among my favorite individuals. You’re doing incredible good.
The EA movement doesn’t really have its own values, aside from a few baseline principles — it’s a collection of individuals who agree on the principles but differ on many other things. If you were to ask something like “how valuable is saving a chicken from a year of constant suffering?”, people in the movement would give you a vast range of answers.
If you think that a particular estimate you’ve seen from some EA-aligned organization is wrong, the EA Forum is a great place to make that argument!
It seems unlikely on its face that spending money on human welfare will do much for animals, relative to the incredible efficiency of e.g. cage-free campaigns. I don’t think animal advocates ignore these side effects (I think almost everyone would agree that there’s a link between economic prosperity and moral circle expansion). But I do think that they’d judge the side effects as very minor in the grand scheme of things.
If you think the side effects aren’t minor… sounds like another potential Forum post!
Note that there’s been some conversation about the direct opposite idea — that wealthier people eat more animal products, which means that improving human welfare might lead to additional animal suffering (meat consumption has skyrocketed around the world in recent decades).
I haven’t seen people actually use this as a reason not to support human-focused charities — again, this “side effect” is very small — but I think it illustrates how difficult and complicated these questions can be.