My ungenerous, broad strokes takeaway, which I’m not holding strongly but does motivate me to look a lot more into SMA, and which is based on my extremely limited time/experience in ea, and having never heard of SMA till this post, and mainly the impact section, is that if there were babies constantly drowning in ponds, ea would maximize babies pulled out of the water per dollar, whereas sma might be more inclined to looking into finding the source of all these babies and stopping that. How close to your model of the two is that? What am I missing there?
Cause frankly I’ve been surprised how many ea orgs are like “we’re still torturing/murdering/etc the animals to eat them, but now it’s just a little less torturous at some stages of life” instead of, what seem to me like the obvious long term view of “we need to find ways to shut down animal agriculture for good”
“we need to find ways to shut down animal agriculture for good”
There have been EA-aligned alternative protein efforts, so I don’t think it would be correct to say that this impulse is absent from EA animal advocacy. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up somewhat more prominent in SMA, although it’s a young movement and so much is unknown.
To the extent that SMA ends up considerably less focused on measurables, it will be interesting to see how it deals with some of the potential biases that a focus on measurement helps mitigate (e.g., the risk of focusing on what feels good subjectively / or on what is higher status socially / or what suits one’s pre-existing ideological sympathies). My own take on EA—which is probably not the orthodox view—is that running all the world’s charitable activity through an EA lens would not be a good idea, but that some of that activity should be, and that amount that should be is higher than the amount that currently is.
Yeah, the alt protein does seem to be the biggest push to that end I’ve seen in EA. Has anyone done the math on lives saved (and hours of torture averted) per person who goes vegan or something, to see if a movement in that direction would be worth prioritizing more?
Definitely agree on your second paragraph, it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out. And I especially agree with you last sentence :)
My ungenerous, broad strokes takeaway, which I’m not holding strongly but does motivate me to look a lot more into SMA, and which is based on my extremely limited time/experience in ea, and having never heard of SMA till this post, and mainly the impact section, is that if there were babies constantly drowning in ponds, ea would maximize babies pulled out of the water per dollar, whereas sma might be more inclined to looking into finding the source of all these babies and stopping that. How close to your model of the two is that? What am I missing there?
Cause frankly I’ve been surprised how many ea orgs are like “we’re still torturing/murdering/etc the animals to eat them, but now it’s just a little less torturous at some stages of life” instead of, what seem to me like the obvious long term view of “we need to find ways to shut down animal agriculture for good”
There have been EA-aligned alternative protein efforts, so I don’t think it would be correct to say that this impulse is absent from EA animal advocacy. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up somewhat more prominent in SMA, although it’s a young movement and so much is unknown.
To the extent that SMA ends up considerably less focused on measurables, it will be interesting to see how it deals with some of the potential biases that a focus on measurement helps mitigate (e.g., the risk of focusing on what feels good subjectively / or on what is higher status socially / or what suits one’s pre-existing ideological sympathies). My own take on EA—which is probably not the orthodox view—is that running all the world’s charitable activity through an EA lens would not be a good idea, but that some of that activity should be, and that amount that should be is higher than the amount that currently is.
Yeah, the alt protein does seem to be the biggest push to that end I’ve seen in EA. Has anyone done the math on lives saved (and hours of torture averted) per person who goes vegan or something, to see if a movement in that direction would be worth prioritizing more?
Definitely agree on your second paragraph, it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out. And I especially agree with you last sentence :)