Discussions of the long-term future often leave me worrying that there is a tension between democratic decision-making and protecting the interests of all moral patients (e.g. animals). I imagine two possible outcomes:
Mainstream political coalitions make the decisions in their usual haphazard manner.
RISK: vast numbers of moral patients are ignored.
A small political cadre gains power and ensures that all moral patients are represented in decision-making.
CLAIM: The most straightforward way to dissolve this tradeoff is to get the mainstream coalitions to care about all sentient beings before they make irreversible decisions.
How?
A major push to change public opinion on animal welfare. Conventional wisdom in EA is to prioritize corporate campaigns over veg outreach for cost effectiveness reasons. The tradeoff I’ve described here is a point in favor of large-scale outreach.
I don’t just mean 10x of your grandpa’s vegan leafletting. A megaproject-scale campaign would be an entirely different phenomenon.
A Long Reflection. Give society time to come to its senses on nonhuman sentience.
Of course, the importance of changing public opinion depends a lot on how hingey you think the future is, and tractability depends on how close you think we are to the hinge. But in general, I think this is an underrated point for moral circle expansion.
Thanks for this! For what it’s worth I think this is an important and under-explored area and would be really interested in seeing a longer-form post version.
Discussions of the long-term future often leave me worrying that there is a tension between democratic decision-making and protecting the interests of all moral patients (e.g. animals). I imagine two possible outcomes:
Mainstream political coalitions make the decisions in their usual haphazard manner.
RISK: vast numbers of moral patients are ignored.
A small political cadre gains power and ensures that all moral patients are represented in decision-making.
RISK: the cadre lacks restraint and leaves its fingerprints on the future.
Neither of these is what we should want.
CLAIM: The most straightforward way to dissolve this tradeoff is to get the mainstream coalitions to care about all sentient beings before they make irreversible decisions.
How?
A major push to change public opinion on animal welfare. Conventional wisdom in EA is to prioritize corporate campaigns over veg outreach for cost effectiveness reasons. The tradeoff I’ve described here is a point in favor of large-scale outreach.
I don’t just mean 10x of your grandpa’s vegan leafletting. A megaproject-scale campaign would be an entirely different phenomenon.
A Long Reflection. Give society time to come to its senses on nonhuman sentience.
Of course, the importance of changing public opinion depends a lot on how hingey you think the future is, and tractability depends on how close you think we are to the hinge. But in general, I think this is an underrated point for moral circle expansion.
I wrote this quickly and am on the fence about turning it into a longer-form post.
Thanks for this! For what it’s worth I think this is an important and under-explored area and would be really interested in seeing a longer-form post version.