Thanks for engaging with my ideas and my post. I think we seem to be in agreement that farmed fish experience avoidable suffering at a very large scale and therefore should attract serious attention from animal advocates. I nevertheless believe, at the same time, that wild-caught fish advocacy should still be a top priority, alongside farmed fish advocacy. Would you agree?
Even if it is agreed that fish in aquaculture appears to involve more avoidable suffering than cause wild-caught fish (a claim I do currently agree with), there are reasons why the effective animal advocacy movement might want to commit some amount of resources to wild fish advocacy, alongside farmed fish advocacy: 1. Someone (e.g. an EA looking for a cause to work on) could have a moral theory that cares about things other than only suffering. The most compelling of these, to me, are theories that recognise animals’ right to life. Another popular view are those that invoke “naturalness”, the integrity of biological communities, and so on—I personally find such views uncompelling, but they are very popular, particularly among environmentalists. Under either of these views (an interest in life, or environmentalist-type ideas), wild fish could be far more compelling to work on, even if it is agreed that wild fish experience less avoidable suffering. 2. An advocate looking for a cause to work on might have a particular skillset, live in a particular country, have particular connections, etc, such that a decision to focus on wild-fish advocacy may have the higher impact in that advocate’s context. 3. An organisation or the EA movement wants to diversify its portfolio of causes, worldviews, etc, for either philosophical reasons (e.g. worldview diversification) or practical reasons (e.g. attractiveness to donors). This idea seems widely accepted among the EA community to me. 4. The movement may do the most good in the long run by looking out for new ideas and experimenting with ones that could conceivably have extremely high impact, even if most of these experiments are expected to fail.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply and your work on animal welfare.
So I think my previous comment is to express my belief/knowledge/informed guesses that chronic suffering is very large, and on average, focusing on interventions that reduce highly unnatural, chronic suffering is more impactful. I’m uncertain that ~1-2 hours of slaughter, even of many millions of fish, is the top priority if it shifts resources from other priorities[1]. I think that a general, uncommitted audience, should take these views into account.
All your reasons you mention seem great to me and also is useful, interesting ideas in themselves.
I think a project reducing slaughter suffering is really valuable. I think if you’re saying that you or someone else is committed to working on this, have a lead here, or even have a personal preference to work on these projects, that seems really good to do.
I think it’s really bad if EA aligned people thoughtfully working on interventions feel there they have to “win the extra game of being approved on the EA forum”, especially if the quality of discussants is low or the views unnecessarily disagreeable.
Further ways I know of communicating this, are basically massive violations of the intent of “CW”, “safe spaces”. I don’t know if anyone wants to read this right now.
Thanks for engaging with my ideas and my post. I think we seem to be in agreement that farmed fish experience avoidable suffering at a very large scale and therefore should attract serious attention from animal advocates. I nevertheless believe, at the same time, that wild-caught fish advocacy should still be a top priority, alongside farmed fish advocacy. Would you agree?
Even if it is agreed that fish in aquaculture appears to involve more avoidable suffering than cause wild-caught fish (a claim I do currently agree with), there are reasons why the effective animal advocacy movement might want to commit some amount of resources to wild fish advocacy, alongside farmed fish advocacy:
1. Someone (e.g. an EA looking for a cause to work on) could have a moral theory that cares about things other than only suffering. The most compelling of these, to me, are theories that recognise animals’ right to life. Another popular view are those that invoke “naturalness”, the integrity of biological communities, and so on—I personally find such views uncompelling, but they are very popular, particularly among environmentalists. Under either of these views (an interest in life, or environmentalist-type ideas), wild fish could be far more compelling to work on, even if it is agreed that wild fish experience less avoidable suffering.
2. An advocate looking for a cause to work on might have a particular skillset, live in a particular country, have particular connections, etc, such that a decision to focus on wild-fish advocacy may have the higher impact in that advocate’s context.
3. An organisation or the EA movement wants to diversify its portfolio of causes, worldviews, etc, for either philosophical reasons (e.g. worldview diversification) or practical reasons (e.g. attractiveness to donors). This idea seems widely accepted among the EA community to me.
4. The movement may do the most good in the long run by looking out for new ideas and experimenting with ones that could conceivably have extremely high impact, even if most of these experiments are expected to fail.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply and your work on animal welfare.
So I think my previous comment is to express my belief/knowledge/informed guesses that chronic suffering is very large, and on average, focusing on interventions that reduce highly unnatural, chronic suffering is more impactful. I’m uncertain that ~1-2 hours of slaughter, even of many millions of fish, is the top priority if it shifts resources from other priorities[1]. I think that a general, uncommitted audience, should take these views into account.
All your reasons you mention seem great to me and also is useful, interesting ideas in themselves.
I think a project reducing slaughter suffering is really valuable. I think if you’re saying that you or someone else is committed to working on this, have a lead here, or even have a personal preference to work on these projects, that seems really good to do.
I think it’s really bad if EA aligned people thoughtfully working on interventions feel there they have to “win the extra game of being approved on the EA forum”, especially if the quality of discussants is low or the views unnecessarily disagreeable.
Further ways I know of communicating this, are basically massive violations of the intent of “CW”, “safe spaces”. I don’t know if anyone wants to read this right now.