[2 of 6] Why hasn’t WAI implemented interventions yet?
In short: Because that’s not what we’ve been trying to do.
If we had been spending the last six years trying to find interventions that could be implemented as soon as possible, and our progress to date is all we had to show for it, then that would be extremely disappointing. If that’s what we’d been aiming for and this is where we landed, then I think it’d be fair to say we failed — or at the very least, we definitely shouldn’t be an ACE-recommended charity.
What we have been doing instead is pursuing a strategy that is entirely focused on building wild animal welfare science up into a self-sustaining academic field that is positioned to produce the research needed to reduce wild animal suffering as much as possible over the long run.
I’m glad you brought up Rethink Priorities and Happier Lives Institute, because I think the contrast between us is very illustrative. Like most EA research orgs, RP and HLI mostly conduct research with the aim of directly informing policymaking, philanthropy, or movement strategy. Although the particular topics they’re focusing on are highly neglected, those topics are often close enough to longstanding human concerns (e.g., public health, agricultural productivity) that they can build on the deep bodies of literature that have been developed by mature academic fields (e.g., development economics, human psychology, farm animal veterinary medicine).
Wild animal welfare science is at best several decades behind those fields. The problem is not that potential interventions haven’t been evaluated yet; it’s that we lack the basic scientific knowledge of how to evaluate most interventions. The few interventions we can evaluate with confidence are evaluable precisely because they have very limited impacts or only work under a narrow set of conditions.
That’s why we have optimized for field-building over intervention research: not because there are no interventions worth trying now, but because there’s a very low ceiling to how much impact you can have before you know how to measure welfare across different several classes and phyla, how to account for compensatory mortality, how to predict and monitor for effects on non-target species, etc.
Which is not to say we have done no research on interventions. Rather, we have chosen to research interventions insofar as we think it will contribute to field growth, such as by attracting interest and funding, providing opportunities to refine research methodologies, building bridges with relevant research communities, or simply serving as a proof of concept for the field.
I explicitly acknowledged your stated strategy and the need for foundational research. My question is when you expect that strategy to translate into real-world impact.
To move this forward, let’s try to crystallise what you’ve said:
1. What exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare?
Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? ‘Self-sustaining’ risks becoming an unending horizon.
2. What does ‘the long run’ mean in practice?
A strategy without a time-bound target is very difficult to evaluate. Is the honest answer simply ‘as long as it takes’? As long as people are willing to fund it?
3. How much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?
If the answer is ‘we don’t know’, that’s fine—but then we need some proxy indicators or budget ranges that would count as reasonable expectations.
Is the reality that donors are effectively funding an open-ended research project with no agreed stopping rule? Your answers make it hard not to reach that conclusion.
I’m not trying to exhaust you with relentless questions. I’m trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in what you’ve said. Long replies run the risk of diverting away from the central thrust of discussion.
[2 of 6] Why hasn’t WAI implemented interventions yet?
In short: Because that’s not what we’ve been trying to do.
If we had been spending the last six years trying to find interventions that could be implemented as soon as possible, and our progress to date is all we had to show for it, then that would be extremely disappointing. If that’s what we’d been aiming for and this is where we landed, then I think it’d be fair to say we failed — or at the very least, we definitely shouldn’t be an ACE-recommended charity.
What we have been doing instead is pursuing a strategy that is entirely focused on building wild animal welfare science up into a self-sustaining academic field that is positioned to produce the research needed to reduce wild animal suffering as much as possible over the long run.
I’m glad you brought up Rethink Priorities and Happier Lives Institute, because I think the contrast between us is very illustrative. Like most EA research orgs, RP and HLI mostly conduct research with the aim of directly informing policymaking, philanthropy, or movement strategy. Although the particular topics they’re focusing on are highly neglected, those topics are often close enough to longstanding human concerns (e.g., public health, agricultural productivity) that they can build on the deep bodies of literature that have been developed by mature academic fields (e.g., development economics, human psychology, farm animal veterinary medicine).
Wild animal welfare science is at best several decades behind those fields. The problem is not that potential interventions haven’t been evaluated yet; it’s that we lack the basic scientific knowledge of how to evaluate most interventions. The few interventions we can evaluate with confidence are evaluable precisely because they have very limited impacts or only work under a narrow set of conditions.
That’s why we have optimized for field-building over intervention research: not because there are no interventions worth trying now, but because there’s a very low ceiling to how much impact you can have before you know how to measure welfare across different several classes and phyla, how to account for compensatory mortality, how to predict and monitor for effects on non-target species, etc.
Which is not to say we have done no research on interventions. Rather, we have chosen to research interventions insofar as we think it will contribute to field growth, such as by attracting interest and funding, providing opportunities to refine research methodologies, building bridges with relevant research communities, or simply serving as a proof of concept for the field.
I explicitly acknowledged your stated strategy and the need for foundational research. My question is when you expect that strategy to translate into real-world impact.
To move this forward, let’s try to crystallise what you’ve said:
1. What exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare?
Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? ‘Self-sustaining’ risks becoming an unending horizon.
2. What does ‘the long run’ mean in practice?
A strategy without a time-bound target is very difficult to evaluate. Is the honest answer simply ‘as long as it takes’? As long as people are willing to fund it?
3. How much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?
If the answer is ‘we don’t know’, that’s fine—but then we need some proxy indicators or budget ranges that would count as reasonable expectations.
Is the reality that donors are effectively funding an open-ended research project with no agreed stopping rule? Your answers make it hard not to reach that conclusion.
I’m not trying to exhaust you with relentless questions. I’m trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in what you’ve said. Long replies run the risk of diverting away from the central thrust of discussion.