How does the high effectiveness of the recommended ACE charities make a harm more trivial? AMF can save a human life very cheaply; does that make taking a human life a trivial harm?
Same for the willingness of many people to pay much more than 2 cents to eat meat. Why does their strong preference for eating meat make it very ineffective to avoid eating meat? We should be thinking about what does the most good here, not just what satisfies people’s personal preferences.
How does the high effectiveness of the recommended ACE charities make a harm more trivial?
Because people generally care about animals in an aggregative sense—they care about the total amount of suffering.
AMF can save a human life very cheaply; does that make taking a human life a trivial harm?
No, firstly because it costs AMF over $3,000 per life, which is 600,000x more than the figure I was discussing. Multiplying a trivial number by 600,000 can yield non-trivial numbers!
Secondly because we generally think of human lives as being less interchangeable. Killing one human to save one other is not acceptable.
We should be thinking about what does the most good here, not just what satisfies people’s personal preferences.
It’s unreasonable to expect people to dedicate 100% of their resources to altruism. But what people are willing to dedicate, we should dedicate in the most efficient manner. It’s better for both the individual and animals in aggregate for someone to eat meat for lunch and donate $1 than to abstain from meat.
Because people generally care about animals in an aggregative sense—they care about the total amount of suffering.
That doesn’t seem to do the work you imply it does. Being able to spare 100 lives is a huge feat of good, even if the total amount of people suffering is much greater.
No, firstly because it costs AMF over $3,000 per life, which is 600,000x more than the figure I was discussing. Multiplying a trivial number by 600,000 can yield non-trivial numbers!
But it’s still very cheap, even if it’s much larger than other very cheap figures.
Secondly because we generally think of human lives as being less interchangeable. Killing one human to save one other is not acceptable.
It seems speciesist to apply some moral standards to humans but not nonhumans.
It’s unreasonable to expect people to dedicate 100% of their resources to altruism. But what people are willing to dedicate, we should dedicate in the most efficient manner. It’s better for both the individual and animals in aggregate for someone to eat meat for lunch and donate $1 than to abstain from meat.
As argued elsewhere on this page, it seems dietary change has many more benefits than a small donation that has roughly the same (or even better) direct impact. And your original argument, that “many people are willing to pay much more than 2 cents to eat meat,” doesn’t do any work in addressing those additional benefits and simply draws from personal preference.
It is pretty hard to offset a human life, as estimates from givewell suggest a cost per marginal life saved in the thousands of dollars.
Lark’s point (I imagine) is something like this. If you think ACE’s figures are about right, the direct harm of eating meat can be offset fairly cheaply, so better a carnivore giving a few dollars a year to THL than a vegetarian giving nothing. You might say this is a false dilemma, but in reality people are imperfect, and often try and allocate their limited altruistic resources as effectively as possible. If they find refraining from meat to be much more difficult than giving a few dollars (or earning a few more dollars to give away) it seem better all-things-considered they keep eating meat and give money.
So the harm of EA venues eating meat is primarily symbolic, as I don’t think animal advocates would be happy if EA venues kept serving meat but gave $100 or whatever to THL, despite this being enough to offset the direct harm. In public facing events, fair enough (although I’m tempted to suggest that offsets etc. might be a good ‘EA message’), yet this seems unclear in non-front-facing events.
How does the high effectiveness of the recommended ACE charities make a harm more trivial? AMF can save a human life very cheaply; does that make taking a human life a trivial harm?
Same for the willingness of many people to pay much more than 2 cents to eat meat. Why does their strong preference for eating meat make it very ineffective to avoid eating meat? We should be thinking about what does the most good here, not just what satisfies people’s personal preferences.
Because people generally care about animals in an aggregative sense—they care about the total amount of suffering.
No, firstly because it costs AMF over $3,000 per life, which is 600,000x more than the figure I was discussing. Multiplying a trivial number by 600,000 can yield non-trivial numbers!
Secondly because we generally think of human lives as being less interchangeable. Killing one human to save one other is not acceptable.
It’s unreasonable to expect people to dedicate 100% of their resources to altruism. But what people are willing to dedicate, we should dedicate in the most efficient manner. It’s better for both the individual and animals in aggregate for someone to eat meat for lunch and donate $1 than to abstain from meat.
That doesn’t seem to do the work you imply it does. Being able to spare 100 lives is a huge feat of good, even if the total amount of people suffering is much greater.
But it’s still very cheap, even if it’s much larger than other very cheap figures.
It seems speciesist to apply some moral standards to humans but not nonhumans.
As argued elsewhere on this page, it seems dietary change has many more benefits than a small donation that has roughly the same (or even better) direct impact. And your original argument, that “many people are willing to pay much more than 2 cents to eat meat,” doesn’t do any work in addressing those additional benefits and simply draws from personal preference.
It is pretty hard to offset a human life, as estimates from givewell suggest a cost per marginal life saved in the thousands of dollars.
Lark’s point (I imagine) is something like this. If you think ACE’s figures are about right, the direct harm of eating meat can be offset fairly cheaply, so better a carnivore giving a few dollars a year to THL than a vegetarian giving nothing. You might say this is a false dilemma, but in reality people are imperfect, and often try and allocate their limited altruistic resources as effectively as possible. If they find refraining from meat to be much more difficult than giving a few dollars (or earning a few more dollars to give away) it seem better all-things-considered they keep eating meat and give money.
So the harm of EA venues eating meat is primarily symbolic, as I don’t think animal advocates would be happy if EA venues kept serving meat but gave $100 or whatever to THL, despite this being enough to offset the direct harm. In public facing events, fair enough (although I’m tempted to suggest that offsets etc. might be a good ‘EA message’), yet this seems unclear in non-front-facing events.
That seems basically right, but different from what Lark actually said.