Great question. Yes, I think the claim still holds. It’s a bit tricky to explain why so you will have to stick with me. Let’s assume that:
Chicken welfare reforms are the most cost-effective intervention we found if we only consider the direct impact on chickens,
The indirect impacts of these welfare reforms on WAW are so bad that they outweigh the impact on chickens,
Each 1$ we spend to oppose welfare reforms negates 1$ spent on welfare reforms.
It would follow that if we ignored the impact on chickens, then opposing welfare reforms would be the new most cost-effective intervention because of its impact on WAW. But that would be a very surprising coincidence. I’d call it surprising divergence (as opposed to surprising convergence).
But ah, I’m now realizing that there is much more to this problem. It gets a lot messier. I’ll write more about this later.
Good argument. It might not work if one maintains an act-omission distinction regarding harms to the environment. For example, imagine that
value to farm animals of veg outreach = 1 util/$
value to wild animals of veg outreach = −2 util/$ (due to reducing environmental impact).
If this were the case, we shouldn’t do veg outreach. It would seem that we should try to increase environmental impact by promoting beef consumption, but maybe our act-omission distinction prevents us from wanting to do that. It could also be difficult to explain why one is promoting beef production or get other people concerned for animal welfare on board.
(This example is just for illustration. In reality, if I could push a button to increase vegetarianism in the world, I probably would.)
Great question. Yes, I think the claim still holds. It’s a bit tricky to explain why so you will have to stick with me. Let’s assume that:
Chicken welfare reforms are the most cost-effective intervention we found if we only consider the direct impact on chickens,
The indirect impacts of these welfare reforms on WAW are so bad that they outweigh the impact on chickens,
Each 1$ we spend to oppose welfare reforms negates 1$ spent on welfare reforms.
It would follow that if we ignored the impact on chickens, then opposing welfare reforms would be the new most cost-effective intervention because of its impact on WAW. But that would be a very surprising coincidence. I’d call it surprising divergence (as opposed to surprising convergence).
But ah, I’m now realizing that there is much more to this problem. It gets a lot messier. I’ll write more about this later.
Good argument. It might not work if one maintains an act-omission distinction regarding harms to the environment. For example, imagine that
value to farm animals of veg outreach = 1 util/$
value to wild animals of veg outreach = −2 util/$ (due to reducing environmental impact).
If this were the case, we shouldn’t do veg outreach. It would seem that we should try to increase environmental impact by promoting beef consumption, but maybe our act-omission distinction prevents us from wanting to do that. It could also be difficult to explain why one is promoting beef production or get other people concerned for animal welfare on board.
(This example is just for illustration. In reality, if I could push a button to increase vegetarianism in the world, I probably would.)