Thanks a lot for this answer! That sounds very plausible.
I think a lot depends here on whether:
i) We think there may well be a meaningful effect for vegan education initiatives but we can’t measure it in a controlled experiment, or
ii) We think there is no meaningful effect for currently popular vegan education initiatives.
(By ‘meaningful’, I basically mean an effect big enough that I might consider donating, which is admittedly a bit vague)
I think CC makes a good point. Whichever of these possibilities is true, it feels like there is still scope for someone interested in vegan outreach to do something useful with their donations. If (i), then we could fund research into alternative non-experimental ways of comparing existing vegan outreach interventions (EAs are often happy funding things on the basis of weaker evidence than RCTs). If (ii), then we could fund research to investigate alternative kinds of interventions that haven’t been considered yet (or has everything been considered?) If unsure between (i) and (ii), we can do both!
Maybe there is already research on these questions that we could use as well. I’ve been doing some more digging and found this survey of vegans, linked to from Faunalytics: https://​​vomad.life/​​survey/​​#about-your-veganism This seems like a decent non-experimental way of finding out which factors might influence someone to go vegan.
On the basis of this survey, maybe some effective vegan outreach interventions would be:
Funding advertising campaigns for Veganuary
Funding the production and/​or marketing of vegan documentaries
Funding the production and/​or marketing of online videos with a vegan message
(EAs are often happy funding things on the basis of weaker evidence than RCTs).
Yes, but that is often in cases where (1) there are few/​no interventions in the cause area amenable to RCTs or other high-reliability ways of assessing results (e.g., AI safety), or (2) the intervention has some added benefit that compensates for the less solid evidentiary base (e.g., if it works, foreign aid policy work would be massively more cost-effective than traditional GiveWell-style work). So I’d expect many EAs to consider weaker-evidence programs only if more weaknesses in the evidence base for corporate campaigns were identified and/​or benefits for the vegan outreach interventions that compensate for a weaker evidentiary basis are identified.
I think (2) is the relevant one here. Maybe in the not too distant future there will be a massive shift in global public opinion, and the farming of animals (at least at industrial scale) will become a thing of the past. If you think most farmed animals lead lives so bad that they would be better off not being born, then the impact of this change would be huge. (And if you’re a non-consequentialist vegan who doesn’t like to view the issue in these terms, then it’s harder to quantify the impact, but you probably care even more about doing everything possible to make this scenario happen)
I think this is what is hoped for by the vegans who prioritise outreach. The idea would be that outreach either increases the probability of this scenario becoming reality, or it means that this scenario happens sooner than it otherwise would. I think this is a conceivable way that vegan outreach could have the kind of huge, hard to measure, benefit you’re talking about.
Of course there’s a whole argument to be had here. I’m sure lots of people would find this scenario so implausible as to not be worth considering (or they would think it will only happen if and when we get good cheap lab grown meat, or that we can’t do anything to influence if and when it happens… etc).
I wasn’t really trying to start that argument with this question, but just asking what someone who wants to give some weight to this argument in their donations should do.
Thanks a lot for this answer! That sounds very plausible.
I think a lot depends here on whether:
i) We think there may well be a meaningful effect for vegan education initiatives but we can’t measure it in a controlled experiment, or
ii) We think there is no meaningful effect for currently popular vegan education initiatives.
(By ‘meaningful’, I basically mean an effect big enough that I might consider donating, which is admittedly a bit vague)
I think CC makes a good point. Whichever of these possibilities is true, it feels like there is still scope for someone interested in vegan outreach to do something useful with their donations. If (i), then we could fund research into alternative non-experimental ways of comparing existing vegan outreach interventions (EAs are often happy funding things on the basis of weaker evidence than RCTs). If (ii), then we could fund research to investigate alternative kinds of interventions that haven’t been considered yet (or has everything been considered?) If unsure between (i) and (ii), we can do both!
Maybe there is already research on these questions that we could use as well. I’ve been doing some more digging and found this survey of vegans, linked to from Faunalytics: https://​​vomad.life/​​survey/​​#about-your-veganism This seems like a decent non-experimental way of finding out which factors might influence someone to go vegan.
On the basis of this survey, maybe some effective vegan outreach interventions would be:
Funding advertising campaigns for Veganuary
Funding the production and/​or marketing of vegan documentaries
Funding the production and/​or marketing of online videos with a vegan message
Yes, but that is often in cases where (1) there are few/​no interventions in the cause area amenable to RCTs or other high-reliability ways of assessing results (e.g., AI safety), or (2) the intervention has some added benefit that compensates for the less solid evidentiary base (e.g., if it works, foreign aid policy work would be massively more cost-effective than traditional GiveWell-style work). So I’d expect many EAs to consider weaker-evidence programs only if more weaknesses in the evidence base for corporate campaigns were identified and/​or benefits for the vegan outreach interventions that compensate for a weaker evidentiary basis are identified.
I think (2) is the relevant one here. Maybe in the not too distant future there will be a massive shift in global public opinion, and the farming of animals (at least at industrial scale) will become a thing of the past. If you think most farmed animals lead lives so bad that they would be better off not being born, then the impact of this change would be huge. (And if you’re a non-consequentialist vegan who doesn’t like to view the issue in these terms, then it’s harder to quantify the impact, but you probably care even more about doing everything possible to make this scenario happen)
I think this is what is hoped for by the vegans who prioritise outreach. The idea would be that outreach either increases the probability of this scenario becoming reality, or it means that this scenario happens sooner than it otherwise would. I think this is a conceivable way that vegan outreach could have the kind of huge, hard to measure, benefit you’re talking about.
Of course there’s a whole argument to be had here. I’m sure lots of people would find this scenario so implausible as to not be worth considering (or they would think it will only happen if and when we get good cheap lab grown meat, or that we can’t do anything to influence if and when it happens… etc).
I wasn’t really trying to start that argument with this question, but just asking what someone who wants to give some weight to this argument in their donations should do.