Summary: This is a slightly steelmanned version of an argument for creating a mass social movement as an effective intervention for animal advocacy (which I think is neglected by EA animal advocacy), based on a talk by people at Animal Think Tank. (Vote on my comment below to indicate if you think it’s worth expanding into a top-level post)
link to the talk; alternative version with clearer audio, whose contents—I guess—are similar, but I’m not sure. (This shortform doesn’t cover all content of the talk, and has likely misinterpreted something in the talk; I recommend you to listen to the full talk)
Epistemic status: An attempt at steelmaning the arguments, though I didn’t really try hard—I just wrote down some arguments that occur to me.
The claim: Creating a mass social movement around animals, is more effective than top-to-bottom interventions (e.g. policy) and other interventions like vegan advocacy, at least on current margins.
This is not to say policy work isn’t important. Just that it comes into the picture later.
My impression is that the track record of mass movements in creating change is no less impressive than that of policy reforms, but EA seems to have completely neglected the former.
A model of mass movements:
Analogous to historic movements like the civil rights movement in the US, and recent movements like Extinction Rebellion. Both examples underwent exponential growth, which will be explained in the next bullet point.
You start with a pool of people in the movement, and these people go out and try to grab attention for the movement, using tactics like civil disobedience and protests. Exposure to the ideas leads to more people thinking about them, which in turn leads to more people joining. With the enlarged people pool, you start the cycle again. This then leads to an exponentially growing pool.
After the movement is large enough and has enough influence, policy reforms and other interventions aimed at the top of society will become viable.
Research showed that few, if any, movements failed after reaching a size threshold of 3.5% of the entire population.
Many movements died down because their base number of exponentiation is smaller than 1, but successful movements can have much higher base number.
Other interventions like vegan outreach and policy work may also have similar exponential growth, but it’s plausible that their base numbers are much less likely to be >1 (or to be very high) when compared with mass social movements.
Strategies for mass movements:
Strategy is super important!
Start from your ultimate goal (e.g. stop animal exploitation), and then set milestones for achieving this goal, and then design concrete actions and campaigns in service of milestones.
One key point is “escalation”—how to make the movement grow exponentially starting from the initial pool
You need to be momentum-driven: convert the attention you get to new movement members, seize more attention with your enlarged membership, and repeat the cycle
You need to force people in the general public to take sides, possibly by non-violent disruptions and making salient sacrifices (e.g. arrests)
You may need to show concrete demands (rather than abstract ones) that resonate with people
Another key point is “absorption”—when large numbers of new members join the movement, how to rapidly and effectively absorb them
Decentralized movements can absorb more rapidly. (e.g. people trained can go off independently and train other new people)
There’s no silver bullet; we still need deep thinking and discussions and coordination to guide our strategy.
Do you think it’s worth expanding into a top-level post? Please vote on my comment below.
Statement: This shortform is worth expanding into a top-level post.
Please cast upvote/downvote on this comment to indicate agreement/disagreement to the above statement. Please don’t hesitate to cast downvotes.
If you think it’s valuable, it’ll be really great if you are willing to write this post, as I likely won’t have time to do that. Please reach out if you’re interested—I’d be happy to help by providing feedback etc., though I’m no expert on this topic.
Summary: This is a slightly steelmanned version of an argument for creating a mass social movement as an effective intervention for animal advocacy (which I think is neglected by EA animal advocacy), based on a talk by people at Animal Think Tank. (Vote on my comment below to indicate if you think it’s worth expanding into a top-level post)
link to the talk; alternative version with clearer audio, whose contents—I guess—are similar, but I’m not sure. (This shortform doesn’t cover all content of the talk, and has likely misinterpreted something in the talk; I recommend you to listen to the full talk)
Epistemic status: An attempt at steelmaning the arguments, though I didn’t really try hard—I just wrote down some arguments that occur to me.
The claim: Creating a mass social movement around animals, is more effective than top-to-bottom interventions (e.g. policy) and other interventions like vegan advocacy, at least on current margins.
This is not to say policy work isn’t important. Just that it comes into the picture later.
My impression is that the track record of mass movements in creating change is no less impressive than that of policy reforms, but EA seems to have completely neglected the former.
A model of mass movements:
Analogous to historic movements like the civil rights movement in the US, and recent movements like Extinction Rebellion. Both examples underwent exponential growth, which will be explained in the next bullet point.
You start with a pool of people in the movement, and these people go out and try to grab attention for the movement, using tactics like civil disobedience and protests. Exposure to the ideas leads to more people thinking about them, which in turn leads to more people joining. With the enlarged people pool, you start the cycle again. This then leads to an exponentially growing pool.
After the movement is large enough and has enough influence, policy reforms and other interventions aimed at the top of society will become viable.
Research showed that few, if any, movements failed after reaching a size threshold of 3.5% of the entire population.
Many movements died down because their base number of exponentiation is smaller than 1, but successful movements can have much higher base number.
Other interventions like vegan outreach and policy work may also have similar exponential growth, but it’s plausible that their base numbers are much less likely to be >1 (or to be very high) when compared with mass social movements.
Strategies for mass movements:
Strategy is super important!
Start from your ultimate goal (e.g. stop animal exploitation), and then set milestones for achieving this goal, and then design concrete actions and campaigns in service of milestones.
One key point is “escalation”—how to make the movement grow exponentially starting from the initial pool
You need to be momentum-driven: convert the attention you get to new movement members, seize more attention with your enlarged membership, and repeat the cycle
You need to force people in the general public to take sides, possibly by non-violent disruptions and making salient sacrifices (e.g. arrests)
You may need to show concrete demands (rather than abstract ones) that resonate with people
Another key point is “absorption”—when large numbers of new members join the movement, how to rapidly and effectively absorb them
Decentralized movements can absorb more rapidly. (e.g. people trained can go off independently and train other new people)
There’s no silver bullet; we still need deep thinking and discussions and coordination to guide our strategy.
Do you think it’s worth expanding into a top-level post? Please vote on my comment below.
Statement: This shortform is worth expanding into a top-level post.
Please cast upvote/downvote on this comment to indicate agreement/disagreement to the above statement. Please don’t hesitate to cast downvotes.
If you think it’s valuable, it’ll be really great if you are willing to write this post, as I likely won’t have time to do that. Please reach out if you’re interested—I’d be happy to help by providing feedback etc., though I’m no expert on this topic.
A counter-argument: Here it is argued that the research supporting the 3.5% figure may not apply to the animal advocacy context.