In general, I agree with the position that investing an additional $100m into animal welfare opportunities would be more impactful than global health opportunities even under views that use moral weights on the lower end of the scale for nonhumans, and potentially way more impactful if we use moral weights that grant nonhumans greater capacity for sentience (which I think we probably should).
In short—I think the scale of animal suffering is much larger (even when only considering animal agriculture, and not wild animal welfare); animal welfare is much more neglected (even when only considering Open Phil’s grants, which probably skew towards animal welfare compared to average funding); and I’m less certain about the difference in tractability, but I think it’s reasonable to think that tractability could be comparable for both. If animal welfare work is less tractable for some reason, I think it’s unlikely for the reduced tractability to make up for the large difference in scale and neglectedness.
Neglectedness: Global health seems likely to continue getting more funding than animal welfare due to society prioritizing human interests. Thus, animal welfare will probably continue being more neglected.
Not only does global health get much more funding now than animal welfare, but I imagine this will continue to be the case going forward because humans and human institutions seem to strongly prioritize human welfare over nonhuman welfare.
If that’s true, it would mean that animal welfare is not only much more neglected now, but on the whole it will probably remain that way for many years, if not indefinitely. Thus, marginal dollars will probably be more impactful when allocated to animal welfare.
Scale: Nonhumans may account for the majority of moral value now and indefinitely into the future.
Not only do nonhumans seem to account for the majority of all moral value now, but it seems like they probably always will, unless something drastic happens to change that. One implication of this is explored in the piece Net global welfare may be negative and declining.
I think it’s unlikely that humans are or will be the majority of moral value, given the history of the world so far and some reasonable assumptions about our trajectory into the future. (I think while possible, it’d be much more surprising if humans do end up ever becoming the majority of moral value.)
If that’s true, then animal welfare efforts are important not only in the near-term but also in the long-term, since the moral importance of our decisions will mostly depend on the effects on nonhumans.
Tractability: There seem to be many impactful animal welfare initiatives that could already effectively utilize much more funding, and many more projects could exist if funding were available.
There are also potentially impactful megaprojects for animals that others have written about (some of which could be promising).
There are whole categories of work that are just getting started that could use a lot more funding to scale. For example, I think plant-based defaults work seems extremely promising, and that work is really just beginning and has not been executed at scale yet. Organizations working on this like Greener By Default are relatively new, but their work seems to already be having a large impact. I think one of the best examples of this is NYC Health + Hospitals switching to plant-based default meals, which over half of patients ended up choosing, leading to millions of plant-based meals being consumed instead of animal-based. Plant-based defaults as a strategy is very new and (in my opinion) could effectively utilize millions of dollars in the coming years. I think we’re still in the early stages of discovering how impactful this strategy could be.
Others have pointed out that public policy / political advocacy is particularly neglected in the animal welfare space and could use more funding, and I think we’ve seen some successes here already with a relatively small amount of funding. (Animal Policy Careers is a new initiative focused on this space, one of the few.)
There’s also the opportunity to grow the animal welfare movement in neglected regions, in particular Asia and Africa, and for neglected species, in particular aquatic animals.
And, as the animal welfare space grows, there are new opportunities for meta / movement building organizations like Connect For Animals and Hive, and for capacity building organizations like Vegan Hacktivists and Animal Defense Partnership, and for additional global conferences like the AVA Summit series.
From my experience as a nonprofit founder in the animal welfare space, many impactful organizations are very funding constrained, and many other impactful organizations do not get started due to lack of funding. Given the scale and neglectedness of animal welfare work, I think that a good number of initiatives would clear the bar for investment.
(And if we needed more research and analysis of the impact of these organizations, then part of the $100m could go towards that.)
Reason why global health may be a more effective use of $100m now than animal welfare: second-order effects for total future well-being.
In general, as mentioned above, I do think there is a very strong case for spending an extra $100m on animal welfare than on global health.
But, I think the strongest argument that might nudge me in the other direction is the idea that second-order effects for global health could result in higher overall future well-being, possibly due to better governance and collaboration by humans in the future that leads to overall reduction in nonhuman suffering as well. In this case, I still think the majority of impact in the long-term would probably come from positive effects on nonhumans.
However, the track record of development in richer countries doesn’t necessarily make me think that a positive trajectory would automatically be the case (i.e. that human development will naturally lead to better overall well-being for nonhumans as well). In fact, increased wealth has seemed to go along with increased meat consumption, with that increased consumption being the fundamental cause of factory farming. Increased development also seems to correlate with increased animal exploitation in other areas, and greater impacts on wild animals (which still seem very difficult to fully account for). So I’m not convinced that human development will naturally lead to greater animal welfare; if current society serves as an example, it seems like the opposite may be true. Thus, heavy investment in animal welfare work still seems extremely necessary if we are going to turn our growing wealth and health into a society that positively affects nonhumans.
In general, I agree with the position that investing an additional $100m into animal welfare opportunities would be more impactful than global health opportunities even under views that use moral weights on the lower end of the scale for nonhumans, and potentially way more impactful if we use moral weights that grant nonhumans greater capacity for sentience (which I think we probably should).
In short—I think the scale of animal suffering is much larger (even when only considering animal agriculture, and not wild animal welfare); animal welfare is much more neglected (even when only considering Open Phil’s grants, which probably skew towards animal welfare compared to average funding); and I’m less certain about the difference in tractability, but I think it’s reasonable to think that tractability could be comparable for both. If animal welfare work is less tractable for some reason, I think it’s unlikely for the reduced tractability to make up for the large difference in scale and neglectedness.
Other pieces have made a much more in-depth case for this than I will do here, such as Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare, The Marginal $100m Would Be Far Better Spent on Animal Welfare Than Global Health, other pieces linked by MichaelStJules before debate week began, and the Rethink Priorities moral weights project. Below, I’ll just add a smattering of points that might be important that I don’t see discussed as frequently.
Neglectedness: Global health seems likely to continue getting more funding than animal welfare due to society prioritizing human interests. Thus, animal welfare will probably continue being more neglected.
Not only does global health get much more funding now than animal welfare, but I imagine this will continue to be the case going forward because humans and human institutions seem to strongly prioritize human welfare over nonhuman welfare.
If that’s true, it would mean that animal welfare is not only much more neglected now, but on the whole it will probably remain that way for many years, if not indefinitely. Thus, marginal dollars will probably be more impactful when allocated to animal welfare.
Scale: Nonhumans may account for the majority of moral value now and indefinitely into the future.
Not only do nonhumans seem to account for the majority of all moral value now, but it seems like they probably always will, unless something drastic happens to change that. One implication of this is explored in the piece Net global welfare may be negative and declining.
I think it’s unlikely that humans are or will be the majority of moral value, given the history of the world so far and some reasonable assumptions about our trajectory into the future. (I think while possible, it’d be much more surprising if humans do end up ever becoming the majority of moral value.)
If that’s true, then animal welfare efforts are important not only in the near-term but also in the long-term, since the moral importance of our decisions will mostly depend on the effects on nonhumans.
Tractability: There seem to be many impactful animal welfare initiatives that could already effectively utilize much more funding, and many more projects could exist if funding were available.
There are great organizations that exist now that I think could easily deploy an additional $1m+, such as The Humane League, the Good Food Institute, Mercy For Animals, etc.
Additionally, there are small / mid-sized impactful organizations that could scale up their work with access to additional funding, such as Aquatic Life Institute, Shrimp Welfare Project, and New Roots Institute.
There are also potentially impactful megaprojects for animals that others have written about (some of which could be promising).
There are whole categories of work that are just getting started that could use a lot more funding to scale. For example, I think plant-based defaults work seems extremely promising, and that work is really just beginning and has not been executed at scale yet. Organizations working on this like Greener By Default are relatively new, but their work seems to already be having a large impact. I think one of the best examples of this is NYC Health + Hospitals switching to plant-based default meals, which over half of patients ended up choosing, leading to millions of plant-based meals being consumed instead of animal-based. Plant-based defaults as a strategy is very new and (in my opinion) could effectively utilize millions of dollars in the coming years. I think we’re still in the early stages of discovering how impactful this strategy could be.
Others have pointed out that public policy / political advocacy is particularly neglected in the animal welfare space and could use more funding, and I think we’ve seen some successes here already with a relatively small amount of funding. (Animal Policy Careers is a new initiative focused on this space, one of the few.)
There’s also the opportunity to grow the animal welfare movement in neglected regions, in particular Asia and Africa, and for neglected species, in particular aquatic animals.
And, as the animal welfare space grows, there are new opportunities for meta / movement building organizations like Connect For Animals and Hive, and for capacity building organizations like Vegan Hacktivists and Animal Defense Partnership, and for additional global conferences like the AVA Summit series.
From my experience as a nonprofit founder in the animal welfare space, many impactful organizations are very funding constrained, and many other impactful organizations do not get started due to lack of funding. Given the scale and neglectedness of animal welfare work, I think that a good number of initiatives would clear the bar for investment.
(And if we needed more research and analysis of the impact of these organizations, then part of the $100m could go towards that.)
Reason why global health may be a more effective use of $100m now than animal welfare: second-order effects for total future well-being.
In general, as mentioned above, I do think there is a very strong case for spending an extra $100m on animal welfare than on global health.
But, I think the strongest argument that might nudge me in the other direction is the idea that second-order effects for global health could result in higher overall future well-being, possibly due to better governance and collaboration by humans in the future that leads to overall reduction in nonhuman suffering as well. In this case, I still think the majority of impact in the long-term would probably come from positive effects on nonhumans.
However, the track record of development in richer countries doesn’t necessarily make me think that a positive trajectory would automatically be the case (i.e. that human development will naturally lead to better overall well-being for nonhumans as well). In fact, increased wealth has seemed to go along with increased meat consumption, with that increased consumption being the fundamental cause of factory farming. Increased development also seems to correlate with increased animal exploitation in other areas, and greater impacts on wild animals (which still seem very difficult to fully account for). So I’m not convinced that human development will naturally lead to greater animal welfare; if current society serves as an example, it seems like the opposite may be true. Thus, heavy investment in animal welfare work still seems extremely necessary if we are going to turn our growing wealth and health into a society that positively affects nonhumans.