This initiative sounds really cool! You guys are seriously amazing to take up such a difficult task, and major kudos to you.
I’ve felt that wild animal suffering research agendas tend to focus more on research reports as opposed to lab research. Given that the fundamental goal is to raise the hedonic level of wild animals, my opinion is that research into modifying pain pathways + propagating those modifications is essential. The only person who is doing research in this area is Prof. Kevin Esvelt at MIT, who has written about wild animal suffering and is applying the above techniques to rodents.
Personally, I think it would be valuable to consult with Prof. Esvelt and focus substantially on lab research. I’d appreciate your perspective, if you think I’m missing something.
Thanks for this—we definitely agree that there needs to be more work in the field. However, I think it’s unlikely that we are best positioned to do that work. This is the reason that academic field building is such a major part of our focus. Both WASR and UF tried this for the last year (UF has a write up on this here—https://www.utility.farm/words/academic-outreach. Neither had much success with this, both through offering funding for research directly and trying to shift values.
We are taking a new approach to this now, working with early career academics who are less likely to have their reputation staked on certain approaches, etc. Hopefully, this will be a lot more fruitful for generating novel and relevant lab and field research. Also, this research would likely be funded outside EA / animal advocacy, which adds additional value. Lab research is significantly more expensive than literature reviews / things within our capabilities. Since we don’t have a strong sense of what the most important questions are to answer first, shifting those costs to external organizations reduces risk in some ways for us, while allowing us to still help shape the direction of the research to some extent.
Hi!
This initiative sounds really cool! You guys are seriously amazing to take up such a difficult task, and major kudos to you.
I’ve felt that wild animal suffering research agendas tend to focus more on research reports as opposed to lab research. Given that the fundamental goal is to raise the hedonic level of wild animals, my opinion is that research into modifying pain pathways + propagating those modifications is essential. The only person who is doing research in this area is Prof. Kevin Esvelt at MIT, who has written about wild animal suffering and is applying the above techniques to rodents.
Personally, I think it would be valuable to consult with Prof. Esvelt and focus substantially on lab research. I’d appreciate your perspective, if you think I’m missing something.
Thank you!
Thanks for this—we definitely agree that there needs to be more work in the field. However, I think it’s unlikely that we are best positioned to do that work. This is the reason that academic field building is such a major part of our focus. Both WASR and UF tried this for the last year (UF has a write up on this here—https://www.utility.farm/words/academic-outreach. Neither had much success with this, both through offering funding for research directly and trying to shift values.
We are taking a new approach to this now, working with early career academics who are less likely to have their reputation staked on certain approaches, etc. Hopefully, this will be a lot more fruitful for generating novel and relevant lab and field research. Also, this research would likely be funded outside EA / animal advocacy, which adds additional value. Lab research is significantly more expensive than literature reviews / things within our capabilities. Since we don’t have a strong sense of what the most important questions are to answer first, shifting those costs to external organizations reduces risk in some ways for us, while allowing us to still help shape the direction of the research to some extent.