As an aside, I donât think someone writing an âactivistâ comment disqualifies them from being truthseeking.
I used to find it absurd to think one could justify spending on animals when they could be spending on humans. Over years, I changed my mind, between discussing consciousness and moral weights with others, reading many relevant writings, and watching relevant documentaries. I wrote a post explaining why I changed my mind, and engaged extensively with hundreds of comments.
So far, nobody has posed an argument for prioritizing global health over animal welfare which Iâve found convincing. If the case for animal welfare is indeed correct, then marginal global health funding could be doing orders of magnitude more good if instead allocated to animal welfare. I donât think it means I have bad epistemics, or that my writings arenât worth engaging with, if my actions are following the logical conclusions of my changed beliefs.
If global health is indeed better at the margin than animal welfare, then I would love to know, because that would mean Iâve been causing enormous harm by allocating my time and donations to preventing us from reducing more suffering. I strive to remain as open-minded as I can to that possibility, but for reasons I and others have written extensively about, I currently think itâs very likely indeed that animal welfare is better at the margin.
I agree that âactivistâ comments donât imply that someone isnât truthseeking. I think that whether an activist mindset or a philosophical mindset should be brought to bear on a given problem is highly context dependent.
I was trying to make the point that I was disappointed that the responses to this question of cause prioritization (human welfare vs animal welfare) seemed to be predominantly activist mindset oriented. To me, it seems this question is a context that, at the very least, requires a balance of philosophy and activism, if not predominantly philosophy. This interpretation is, I think, supported by this question being asked in the context of a âdebate weekâ, where the implied goal is for us to explain our viewpoints and attempt to resolve our differences in worldviews.
An example of a question where I would be disappointed to see predominantly philosophical debate instead of activist planning would be: âGiven the assumption that there is a 1:1e6 moral value tradeoff for cows to shrimp, and how best should we allocate a budget of 1 million dollars between this set of existing charities: (list of charities).â
To respond to a question like that with philosophical debate of the premise would seem off-topic to me. The question specifies a premise, and if you want to fight the hypothesis you ought to initiate an entirely separate conversation.
In your specific case, Ariel, Iâd like to thank you for your above comment explaining your philosophical journey and giving links to sources you found influential. This is exactly the sort of comment I would like to see in a conversation like this. I will take the time to read what you have linked, and think carefully about it, then get back to you on where your info has changed my mind and where I might still disagree.
Very good answer. I have also followed the same path, from donating to the AMF to switching to supporting animal welfare works since it helps more beings.
I think the first step was learning more about the terrible ways animals. I read âEating Animalsâ when I was 18 which informed me of this. I really liked his approach of âfood and tradition are important for me, but this is an important enough topic that I should dig into itâ.
This didnât trigger many donations or any âactivismâ 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 âI donât want to kill them. If they were in front of me I wouldnât kill themâ.
Fast forward a few years, I was donating to both the AMF and some animal charitiesâbasically 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 didnât find a good enough reason saying that smaller animals do not matter as much, beyond our basic âthis feels weirdâ bias. Sure thereâs a possibility theyâre not sentient, but I simply donât see why evolution wouldnât 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 prioritiesâs 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.
As an aside, I donât think someone writing an âactivistâ comment disqualifies them from being truthseeking.
I used to find it absurd to think one could justify spending on animals when they could be spending on humans. Over years, I changed my mind, between discussing consciousness and moral weights with others, reading many relevant writings, and watching relevant documentaries. I wrote a post explaining why I changed my mind, and engaged extensively with hundreds of comments.
So far, nobody has posed an argument for prioritizing global health over animal welfare which Iâve found convincing. If the case for animal welfare is indeed correct, then marginal global health funding could be doing orders of magnitude more good if instead allocated to animal welfare. I donât think it means I have bad epistemics, or that my writings arenât worth engaging with, if my actions are following the logical conclusions of my changed beliefs.
If global health is indeed better at the margin than animal welfare, then I would love to know, because that would mean Iâve been causing enormous harm by allocating my time and donations to preventing us from reducing more suffering. I strive to remain as open-minded as I can to that possibility, but for reasons I and others have written extensively about, I currently think itâs very likely indeed that animal welfare is better at the margin.
I agree that âactivistâ comments donât imply that someone isnât truthseeking. I think that whether an activist mindset or a philosophical mindset should be brought to bear on a given problem is highly context dependent.
I was trying to make the point that I was disappointed that the responses to this question of cause prioritization (human welfare vs animal welfare) seemed to be predominantly activist mindset oriented. To me, it seems this question is a context that, at the very least, requires a balance of philosophy and activism, if not predominantly philosophy. This interpretation is, I think, supported by this question being asked in the context of a âdebate weekâ, where the implied goal is for us to explain our viewpoints and attempt to resolve our differences in worldviews.
An example of a question where I would be disappointed to see predominantly philosophical debate instead of activist planning would be: âGiven the assumption that there is a 1:1e6 moral value tradeoff for cows to shrimp, and how best should we allocate a budget of 1 million dollars between this set of existing charities: (list of charities).â To respond to a question like that with philosophical debate of the premise would seem off-topic to me. The question specifies a premise, and if you want to fight the hypothesis you ought to initiate an entirely separate conversation.
In your specific case, Ariel, Iâd like to thank you for your above comment explaining your philosophical journey and giving links to sources you found influential. This is exactly the sort of comment I would like to see in a conversation like this. I will take the time to read what you have linked, and think carefully about it, then get back to you on where your info has changed my mind and where I might still disagree.
Very good answer. I have also followed the same path, from donating to the AMF to switching to supporting animal welfare works since it helps more beings.
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 âEating Animalsâ when I was 18 which informed me of this. I really liked his approach of âfood and tradition are important for me, but this is an important enough topic that I should dig into itâ.
This didnât trigger many donations or any âactivismâ 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 âI donât want to kill them. If they were in front of me I wouldnât kill themâ.
Fast forward a few years, I was donating to both the AMF and some animal charitiesâbasically 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 didnât find a good enough reason saying that smaller animals do not matter as much, beyond our basic âthis feels weirdâ bias. Sure thereâs a possibility theyâre not sentient, but I simply donât see why evolution wouldnât 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 prioritiesâs 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 donât have a go-to one, but here are some good ones:
- On emotionally connecting with the topic : https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââxtcgsLA2G8bn8vj99/ââreminding-myself-just-how-awful-pain-can-get-plus-an
- On sentience : https://ââsites.google.com/âânyu.edu/âânydeclaration/ââdeclaration
Maybe also animal liberation now ? I heard itâs pretty good.