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.
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.