My views on WAW have changed quite a lot since I wrote this. I think there are things within WAW that could be very promising. I hope to write more about that in the future.
Sure (＾-＾) I’ll do it in a comments below. Note that these are a little more than shower thoughts. I’d love some discussion and back and forth on these. Perhaps I will write a post with conclusions after these discussions.
I haven’t examined the screwworm eradication in detail. Someone told me that gene drives are politically infeasible. People working on it told me that it’s totally feasible. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, political feasibility is not something I can evaluate. The cost-effectiveness in the linked article seems a lot more conservative than my estimates.
If screwworm eradication intervention is promising, then maybe there are other promising WAW interventions. Yes, so far the experience of researchers has been that it’s more difficult to find cost-effective WAW interventions compared to farmed animal interventions. This is partly because it’s so difficult to think about the indirect effects of WAW. But someone told me “unknown unknowns cancel each other out.” In other words, maybe we don’t need to think about 3rd order effects because they might be canceled out by 4th order effects, and so on. I feel very confused about this, I’d like to think more about it at some point.
Also, perhaps if we find WAW interventions, they might have a bigger scale than typical farmed animal welfare interventions. So maybe searching for FAW interventions is easier and more immediately rewarding but it’s still just as worthwhile to search for WAW interventions.
Spreading the idea/meme that we should care about wild animals seems potentially very important. We could have AGI that might be able to do magic-like stuff soon. Or at least an unprecedented AI-fuelled economic growth. It seems possible that this would create a situation of abundance, where problems like poverty and climate change are fully solved. If the values of the society remain as they are, a lot of resources might be used for conservation, species preservation, and so on, without almost any care about the welfare of individual animals. Wildlife could also be spread to other planets with little or no thought given to the vast amount of suffering it would create. All of this seems a bit less likely to happen if we just try to spread the idea of wild animal welfare more. I’d be excited to see things like documentaries for mainstream audiences about WAW. Humane Hancock mentioned a plan for a WAW documentary, and I’m excited about it.
There may or may not be even more cost-effective things to do for the far future, like reducing x-risks and thinking about how to help digital minds. But that doesn’t mean that spreading the idea of WAW is not worthwhile. I don’t think that x-risk and digital mind stuff would get significantly less funding or talent if someone also worked on spreading the idea of WAW. So perhaps there’s not much point in comparing the two :)
On the other hand, spreading awareness of Wild Animal Welfare ideas could lead to even more polarization. In the U.S., for example, this idea could potentially resonate with some liberals but could easily become a target for ridicule in conservative media. It’s the kind of concept that could be framed as an example of ‘extreme’ liberal values, fueling outrage and reinforcing the perception that progressive causes are becoming increasingly detached from reality.
Hmm, ya, I could buy that more WAW support could help prevent some policies and other work that’s bad for wild animal welfare, and perhaps most importantly space colonization with wild animals (or with little regard for their welfare).
I’m skeptical that WAW support would actually lead to actively intervening in the wild for wild animal welfare at a large scale, through things like gene drives, engineering ecosystems or eliminating species or reducing their populations, given the values I expect people to continue to hold. People might do these things in some cases for perceived human benefits, like screwworm eradication and some wild animal vaccines. Or adjust how we treat wild animals we’re already dealing with, especially how we manage their populations.
I think that these interventions by Brian Tomasik could be promising, though I haven’t examined them in detail. They’d reduce insect numbers by doing things like opposing irrigation subsidies using environmental and economical arguments. It’s unclear if insects live net negative lives to me, but this makes sense for negative utilitarians, or if you think there’s >50% chance that they live net negative lives and you’re ok with uncertainty. We discussed in these comments where we worried about PR risks because our true motivations would be different from the stated ones. But I now know multiple other organizations that do similar stuff without any problems.
No problems so far! The more such risks we take, the more likely one is to be realized. And PR risk could blow back against all of effective altruism by association and do long-lasting damage to EA and its perception, if the work is not adequately distanced from EA. The downside is not limited to the organization itself.
We might not want these kinds of interventions to be funded by the biggest EA/EAA grantmakers, or at least for these grants to be reported publicly. We might also not want them to give talks or have career booths at EAGs or animal advocacy conferences (but they could still attend and fundraise at them).
Maybe donors could coordinate so that some private donors not too big in EA take on most of the funding.
And all of this leads to worse transparency, which can mean less scrutiny of the work and the rationale behind it, increasing the risk that the work is ineffective or net negative. You can also get into unilateralist curse territory.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be worth it anyway, maybe with some mitigating measures. But it’s worth keeping all of this in mind.
I’m not sure if I agree. The worst-case scenario seems like an article titled, ‘Organization Opposes Irrigation Subsidies Due to Insect Harm, Not Environmental Impact.’ Realistically, would that provoke much anger? It might just come off as quirky or amusing rather than headline material. Often, lobbying arguments don’t fully reveal the underlying motivations. I think it’s common for people and companies to lobby for policies that benefit them financially while framing them as sustainable or taxpayer-friendly.
Hmm, yes that is a scarier headline. But I think that as long as we do it in ways that are also good from sustainability point of view, we would look really benign. Like we do a thing that many people agree is good for an unusual reason. There are definitely much more outrageous sounding scandals going around all the time.
My views on WAW have changed quite a lot since I wrote this. I think there are things within WAW that could be very promising. I hope to write more about that in the future.
How soon in the future? :P
Could you share a list of things now, without elaborating?
Sure (＾-＾) I’ll do it in a comments below. Note that these are a little more than shower thoughts. I’d love some discussion and back and forth on these. Perhaps I will write a post with conclusions after these discussions.
I haven’t examined the screwworm eradication in detail. Someone told me that gene drives are politically infeasible. People working on it told me that it’s totally feasible. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, political feasibility is not something I can evaluate. The cost-effectiveness in the linked article seems a lot more conservative than my estimates.
If screwworm eradication intervention is promising, then maybe there are other promising WAW interventions. Yes, so far the experience of researchers has been that it’s more difficult to find cost-effective WAW interventions compared to farmed animal interventions. This is partly because it’s so difficult to think about the indirect effects of WAW. But someone told me “unknown unknowns cancel each other out.” In other words, maybe we don’t need to think about 3rd order effects because they might be canceled out by 4th order effects, and so on. I feel very confused about this, I’d like to think more about it at some point.
Also, perhaps if we find WAW interventions, they might have a bigger scale than typical farmed animal welfare interventions. So maybe searching for FAW interventions is easier and more immediately rewarding but it’s still just as worthwhile to search for WAW interventions.
I would not want to ignore higher-order effects, and would rather try to bound their expected values, do sensitivity analysis and consider what we do at the level of portfolios of interventions instead of just interventions in isolation, and hedging.
Spreading the idea/meme that we should care about wild animals seems potentially very important. We could have AGI that might be able to do magic-like stuff soon. Or at least an unprecedented AI-fuelled economic growth. It seems possible that this would create a situation of abundance, where problems like poverty and climate change are fully solved. If the values of the society remain as they are, a lot of resources might be used for conservation, species preservation, and so on, without almost any care about the welfare of individual animals. Wildlife could also be spread to other planets with little or no thought given to the vast amount of suffering it would create. All of this seems a bit less likely to happen if we just try to spread the idea of wild animal welfare more. I’d be excited to see things like documentaries for mainstream audiences about WAW. Humane Hancock mentioned a plan for a WAW documentary, and I’m excited about it.
There may or may not be even more cost-effective things to do for the far future, like reducing x-risks and thinking about how to help digital minds. But that doesn’t mean that spreading the idea of WAW is not worthwhile. I don’t think that x-risk and digital mind stuff would get significantly less funding or talent if someone also worked on spreading the idea of WAW. So perhaps there’s not much point in comparing the two :)
On the other hand, spreading awareness of Wild Animal Welfare ideas could lead to even more polarization. In the U.S., for example, this idea could potentially resonate with some liberals but could easily become a target for ridicule in conservative media. It’s the kind of concept that could be framed as an example of ‘extreme’ liberal values, fueling outrage and reinforcing the perception that progressive causes are becoming increasingly detached from reality.
Hmm, ya, I could buy that more WAW support could help prevent some policies and other work that’s bad for wild animal welfare, and perhaps most importantly space colonization with wild animals (or with little regard for their welfare).
I’m skeptical that WAW support would actually lead to actively intervening in the wild for wild animal welfare at a large scale, through things like gene drives, engineering ecosystems or eliminating species or reducing their populations, given the values I expect people to continue to hold. People might do these things in some cases for perceived human benefits, like screwworm eradication and some wild animal vaccines. Or adjust how we treat wild animals we’re already dealing with, especially how we manage their populations.
I think that these interventions by Brian Tomasik could be promising, though I haven’t examined them in detail. They’d reduce insect numbers by doing things like opposing irrigation subsidies using environmental and economical arguments. It’s unclear if insects live net negative lives to me, but this makes sense for negative utilitarians, or if you think there’s >50% chance that they live net negative lives and you’re ok with uncertainty. We discussed in these comments where we worried about PR risks because our true motivations would be different from the stated ones. But I now know multiple other organizations that do similar stuff without any problems.
No problems so far! The more such risks we take, the more likely one is to be realized. And PR risk could blow back against all of effective altruism by association and do long-lasting damage to EA and its perception, if the work is not adequately distanced from EA. The downside is not limited to the organization itself.
We might not want these kinds of interventions to be funded by the biggest EA/EAA grantmakers, or at least for these grants to be reported publicly. We might also not want them to give talks or have career booths at EAGs or animal advocacy conferences (but they could still attend and fundraise at them).
Maybe donors could coordinate so that some private donors not too big in EA take on most of the funding.
And all of this leads to worse transparency, which can mean less scrutiny of the work and the rationale behind it, increasing the risk that the work is ineffective or net negative. You can also get into unilateralist curse territory.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be worth it anyway, maybe with some mitigating measures. But it’s worth keeping all of this in mind.
I’m not sure if I agree. The worst-case scenario seems like an article titled, ‘Organization Opposes Irrigation Subsidies Due to Insect Harm, Not Environmental Impact.’ Realistically, would that provoke much anger? It might just come off as quirky or amusing rather than headline material. Often, lobbying arguments don’t fully reveal the underlying motivations. I think it’s common for people and companies to lobby for policies that benefit them financially while framing them as sustainable or taxpayer-friendly.
What about an article along the lines of “Effective Altruists are trying to reduce insect populations”?
Hmm, yes that is a scarier headline. But I think that as long as we do it in ways that are also good from sustainability point of view, we would look really benign. Like we do a thing that many people agree is good for an unusual reason. There are definitely much more outrageous sounding scandals going around all the time.