It seems to me very unlikely to be that these big, thoughtful orgs are directionally wrong
That doesnât seem so unlikely to me. There are many patterns that push towards doing things over research: donors prefer it, volunteers prefer it, hard to justify research when that means doing nothing about atrocity today, things that looked good on BOTEC often donât get more investigation as reliance increase, etc. Add on top of this the poor epidemics of the animal welfare movement and I really wouldnât be surprised at all.
I think the patterns you point which pressure towards âjust doing thingsâ are all reasonable, but Iâll push back on your link on your âpoor epistemics of the animal welfare movementâ claim.
The linked post by Elizabeth argues that EA vegan advocacy has bad epistemics. Magnus Vindingâs comment on that post is the closest to my view. Briefly, I was confused by Elizabethâs focus on a topic I consider pretty tangential and not load-bearing on any of the arguments for vegan advocacy (and even less so for AW at large). Is vegan advocacy really less truthseeking than the general publicâs views on meat consumption? How do the human health effects trade off against animal effects? Seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
The epistemics of vegan advocacy also seem quite distinct from arguments for the importance of animal welfare, or prioritization between animal welfare charities, which seem to have convinced many EAs who are not vegan. So thereâd be much more work to do to make the claim that EA AW at large has poor epistemics.
I came away from Elizabethâs post agreeing that some vegan advocates should message better about health tradeoffs, but not seeing why that should update me on the load-bearing arguments for veganism (animal effects), or certainly on EA AWâs epistemics at large.
I also recommend reading Nataliaâs answers to Elizabethâs posts, both here and on LessWrong (you need to scroll down a bit there) instead of just reading the post uncritically.[1]
I didnât get the sense that Nataliaâs epistemics were poorer than commenters in other cause areas, but I did get the sense that the evidence base available is weaker.
Regarding this post, as a non-expert I wouldnât be shocked if shrimp stunning and slaughter interventions turned out to be less valuable than we currently think, as itâs such a new field and shrimp seem hard to study. But for cage-free campaigns thereâs been a lof of research, analysis, and debate in EA for more than 5 years. My sense is that people studying these things have many reasons to believe that these interventions are very likely to be net positive (and are deeply aware of the significant downsides of cage-free systems, they just have compelling arguments for why the upsides compensate for those)[2]
I also donât think thereâs much pressure by donors/âvolunteers/âemployees to invest in cage free campaigns compared to things like vegan advocacy, or promotion of plant-based defaults in schools/âhospitals/âworkplaces. If anything Iâd guess the opposite, and that senior people pushing for cage-free interventions really do it because of the data (and of course tractability)
But I do think most EAs should get their ferritin levels tested: low iron impacts productivity, EAs are uniquely likely to be lacto-vegetarian, which according to Gemini is âone of the most difficult dietary patterns for maintaining adequate iron levelsâ, and 80mg equivalent iron tablets are very cheap
That doesnât seem so unlikely to me. There are many patterns that push towards doing things over research: donors prefer it, volunteers prefer it, hard to justify research when that means doing nothing about atrocity today, things that looked good on BOTEC often donât get more investigation as reliance increase, etc. Add on top of this the poor epidemics of the animal welfare movement and I really wouldnât be surprised at all.
I think the patterns you point which pressure towards âjust doing thingsâ are all reasonable, but Iâll push back on your link on your âpoor epistemics of the animal welfare movementâ claim.
The linked post by Elizabeth argues that EA vegan advocacy has bad epistemics. Magnus Vindingâs comment on that post is the closest to my view. Briefly, I was confused by Elizabethâs focus on a topic I consider pretty tangential and not load-bearing on any of the arguments for vegan advocacy (and even less so for AW at large). Is vegan advocacy really less truthseeking than the general publicâs views on meat consumption? How do the human health effects trade off against animal effects? Seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
The epistemics of vegan advocacy also seem quite distinct from arguments for the importance of animal welfare, or prioritization between animal welfare charities, which seem to have convinced many EAs who are not vegan. So thereâd be much more work to do to make the claim that EA AW at large has poor epistemics.
I came away from Elizabethâs post agreeing that some vegan advocates should message better about health tradeoffs, but not seeing why that should update me on the load-bearing arguments for veganism (animal effects), or certainly on EA AWâs epistemics at large.
I also recommend reading Nataliaâs answers to Elizabethâs posts, both here and on LessWrong (you need to scroll down a bit there) instead of just reading the post uncritically.[1]
I didnât get the sense that Nataliaâs epistemics were poorer than commenters in other cause areas, but I did get the sense that the evidence base available is weaker.
Regarding this post, as a non-expert I wouldnât be shocked if shrimp stunning and slaughter interventions turned out to be less valuable than we currently think, as itâs such a new field and shrimp seem hard to study.
But for cage-free campaigns thereâs been a lof of research, analysis, and debate in EA for more than 5 years. My sense is that people studying these things have many reasons to believe that these interventions are very likely to be net positive (and are deeply aware of the significant downsides of cage-free systems, they just have compelling arguments for why the upsides compensate for those)[2]
I also donât think thereâs much pressure by donors/âvolunteers/âemployees to invest in cage free campaigns compared to things like vegan advocacy, or promotion of plant-based defaults in schools/âhospitals/âworkplaces. If anything Iâd guess the opposite, and that senior people pushing for cage-free interventions really do it because of the data (and of course tractability)
But I do think most EAs should get their ferritin levels tested: low iron impacts productivity, EAs are uniquely likely to be lacto-vegetarian, which according to Gemini is âone of the most difficult dietary patterns for maintaining adequate iron levelsâ, and 80mg equivalent iron tablets are very cheap
But it does seem that the actual estimated marginal cost-effectiveness numbers could be very different from whatâs often claimed