I think the first step was learning more about the terrible ways animals. I read “Eating Animals” when I was 18 which informed me of this. I really liked his approach of “food and tradition are important for me, but this is an important enough topic that I should dig into it”.
This didn’t trigger many donations or any “activism” but it made me go vegetarian. At some point I was eating shrimp in a meal and for some reason I visualised the shrimp in my mind, going about its life in the sea. And I was like “I don’t want to kill them. If they were in front of me I wouldn’t kill them”.
Fast forward a few years, I was donating to both the AMF and some animal charities—basically doing the default stuff regarding EA donating. But I spent a lot of time comparing different cause areas between them. And I could see that the number to save a human life was super high (5000 per life), and the number to save an animal and spare them a life of torture was dirt cheap (less than 1 dollar). So naturally, since my goal is to help the largest number of beings, I redirected my efforts and money toward animals. I also changed the topics I worked on (my main topic was mostly environmental stuff).
I started with supporting standard cage-free commitment, but completed that by gradually helping more neglected and numerous animals (e.g. donating to the shrimp welfare project), because I didn’t find a good enough reason saying that smaller animals do not matter as much, beyond our basic “this feels weird” bias. Sure there’s a possibility they’re not sentient, but I simply don’t see why evolution wouldn’t have implemented a mechanism as useful as pain in other beings. We have millions of years of common evolutionary history, and behavioural evidence clearly indicate pain and panic when animals are attacked.
I still updated downward towards Rethink priorities’s moral weight because they did much more research than me on that.
The basic argument is pretty simple : animals are much more numerous, they suffer much worse conditions, less people are helping them, and we can do tractable stuff there.
Are there specific sources or arguments which you recall as being the key influences in you changing your mind?
Good question.
I think the first step was learning more about the terrible ways animals. I read “Eating Animals” when I was 18 which informed me of this. I really liked his approach of “food and tradition are important for me, but this is an important enough topic that I should dig into it”.
This didn’t trigger many donations or any “activism” but it made me go vegetarian. At some point I was eating shrimp in a meal and for some reason I visualised the shrimp in my mind, going about its life in the sea. And I was like “I don’t want to kill them. If they were in front of me I wouldn’t kill them”.
Fast forward a few years, I was donating to both the AMF and some animal charities—basically doing the default stuff regarding EA donating. But I spent a lot of time comparing different cause areas between them. And I could see that the number to save a human life was super high (5000 per life), and the number to save an animal and spare them a life of torture was dirt cheap (less than 1 dollar). So naturally, since my goal is to help the largest number of beings, I redirected my efforts and money toward animals. I also changed the topics I worked on (my main topic was mostly environmental stuff).
I started with supporting standard cage-free commitment, but completed that by gradually helping more neglected and numerous animals (e.g. donating to the shrimp welfare project), because I didn’t find a good enough reason saying that smaller animals do not matter as much, beyond our basic “this feels weird” bias. Sure there’s a possibility they’re not sentient, but I simply don’t see why evolution wouldn’t have implemented a mechanism as useful as pain in other beings. We have millions of years of common evolutionary history, and behavioural evidence clearly indicate pain and panic when animals are attacked.
I still updated downward towards Rethink priorities’s moral weight because they did much more research than me on that.
The basic argument is pretty simple : animals are much more numerous, they suffer much worse conditions, less people are helping them, and we can do tractable stuff there.
Regarding resources, I don’t have a go-to one, but here are some good ones:
- On emotionally connecting with the topic : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xtcgsLA2G8bn8vj99/reminding-myself-just-how-awful-pain-can-get-plus-an
- On sentience : https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration
Maybe also animal liberation now ? I heard it’s pretty good.