I’m surprised by how much of this post is in the future tense and framed as imagining what will happen if we do animal welfare reform. Animal welfare reform has been a part of EA for around as long as EA has existed, and there’s now more than a decade of track record to look at. So when you say things like:
Where the intervention is imposed, there will be resistance and that will limit progress.
Discussions of banning cage eggs or regulations for shrimp welfare will quickly turn into conspiracies [...]
The argument that human welfare pales in comparison to chicken [...] will come across to many as cold, out-of-touch, privileged, classist. This will generate resistance to the animal welfare movement and EA more broadly.
[...] there will be accusations of cultural insensitivity [...]
my response is, well, we already did all this stuff, did we see these negative side effects or not?
This is a good point, but I think Henry’s post should probably be read as above the consequences of a “movement towards animal welfare interventions and away from global health interventions”—i.e., a major increase in the scope and ambition of AW efforts, especially if seen as at the cost of GW efforts.
Broadly speaking, I would say that the major efforts have been things that could draw on meaningful pre-existing popular support and that the things that could provoke backlash have tended to be small enough (or focused on internal spaces like the Forum) to not be on the general population’s radar. How much AW can expand within the former category (and without going too much into the latter) is one of my major uncertainties for funding allocation.
I’m surprised by how much of this post is in the future tense and framed as imagining what will happen if we do animal welfare reform. Animal welfare reform has been a part of EA for around as long as EA has existed, and there’s now more than a decade of track record to look at. So when you say things like:
my response is, well, we already did all this stuff, did we see these negative side effects or not?
This is a good point, but I think Henry’s post should probably be read as above the consequences of a “movement towards animal welfare interventions and away from global health interventions”—i.e., a major increase in the scope and ambition of AW efforts, especially if seen as at the cost of GW efforts.
Broadly speaking, I would say that the major efforts have been things that could draw on meaningful pre-existing popular support and that the things that could provoke backlash have tended to be small enough (or focused on internal spaces like the Forum) to not be on the general population’s radar. How much AW can expand within the former category (and without going too much into the latter) is one of my major uncertainties for funding allocation.