Section 4 (âThe weirdest stuff will put people off the moderate stuffâ) argues that perceptions of the weirdness of a given cause or intervention âcreate blocks to uptake and prevents people from supporting the more moderate parts of the same movement.â
Insofar as this is true, itâs important to know the degrees of perceived weirdness. To my pleasant surprise, Iâve found that wild animal welfare seems much less weird to most people than it does to most EAs. This is based on my experience working at Wild Animal Initiative for the last five years, hearing my colleaguesâ reports of their conversations with people (primarily scientists), and generally talking about it at every chance I get (both with EAs and non-EAs).
Apologies for the forthcoming generalizations about EAs. Iâm trying to describe general patterns; Iâm not trying to flatten everyone into one caricature.
How the idea is introduced
In my experience, EAs often explain wild animal welfare along these lines: âNature is really brutal. The animals with the worst lives are the most numerous. We should destroy habitat or eliminate predators.â
In contrast, my colleagues and I have settled on an approach thatâs closer to this: âYou seem like you care about animals. So do we. People talk a lot about human harms to animals, but thereâs so much we donât know about naturally occurring harms. We think it would be good to protect wild animals from things like disease or starvation if we could. But ecosystems are really complicated, so thatâs why weâre focused on doing research first.â
It turns out most people respond really well to that. In fact, our biggest communication challenge is not people thinking weâre too weird, but rather people not thinking weâre weird enough. That is, âreducing wild animal sufferingâ sounds a lot like âprotecting endangered species.â They get the overlap quickly; itâs the differences that take longer to explain.
What things are discussed
In my experience, most EA discussions of wild animal welfare focus on extreme thought experiments, extreme interventions, and core philosophical principles. My hypothesis is that thatâs largely because of a temperamental inclination toward abstraction and consistency, which is why many of us (including me) like to steer conversations toward areas of deepest disagreement or highest uncertainty.
Turns out thereâs no rule that says you have to single out whatever someone loves most and declare it must be wiped from this earth. The thought experiments and zany interventions are also of only limited usefulness, because theyâre almost completely untethered from the considerations that will guide the next steps of research and movement-building.
So we and other researchers in the field mostly discuss things that are both more palatable and more achievable in the near term (or at least representative of how we might do things in the near term, which âfeeding lions cultivated meat via dronesâ is not): vaccination against diseases, contraception to prevent starvation, promoting habitats/âland uses that host populations with higher total welfare than the alternatives, reducing sources of stress, etc.
Baseline attitudes toward nature
I think most people in the industrialized West like wildlife. It seems like the default is people seeing themselves on the same side as animals (e.g., happy to see them at all, sad to see them suffer), and exceptions come when people come into direct conflict with animals (urban pest species, predators of livestock, etc.). Crucially, these attitudes seem to be not just about preferences (âI like animalsâ), but also tied into identity at a very basic, nonpartisan level: âIâm the kind of person who appreciates wildlife,â âNice people are nice to animals,â etc. Iâve singled out âanimalsâ here, but in reality these preferences and identities tend to bundle animals and nature into one, and ânatureâ is whatâs mentioned more often: âNature is beautiful,â âIâm the kind of person who respects nature,â etc.
Before I got involved in EA, I had only ever met a handful of people who disliked nature. (They were all kidsâI was also a kidâwho grew up in densely urban areas, and their main issue seemed to be with bugs, particularly mosquitoes.) Now that Iâm deep in the EA bubble and talking about nature a lot, Iâve met tons of EAs who say theyâve always disliked nature: they thought it was obviously cruel, harsh, unwelcoming, gross, etc. (I even met one person who said they didnât even understand why anyone thought natural vistas looked beautiful until a psychedelic experience gave them that experience for the first time.) Either I grew up super sheltered (likely true), or EA has a way of attracting weirdos (definitely trueâagain, I offer myself as evidence).
Another thing that causes many EAs to underestimate how willingâhow excitedâmost people are to help wildlife is their experiences advocating for farmed animals. Most people have very different attitudes toward farmed animals than wild animals, and they have a vested interest in not changing what they eat or how our economy works. As Henry points out, mocking vegans is a cultural norm, and sometimes even part of peopleâs identities. Fortunately, when asked to help wild animals, people donât interpret that as an attack on their integrity or their lifestyle, so they donât have the same defensive reaction.
Conclusion
That was wordier than I expected. All I really wanted to say is I know we can make âmass vaccination eco-engineering projects to limit unnecessary wild animal suffering from diseaseâ sound pretty weird, but most people think âprotecting wildlife from diseasesâ sounds like a pretty good idea. There are still lots of challenges to people fully understanding, accepting, and improving wild animal welfare, but we shouldnât make those challenges out to be worse than they are.
Wild animals and weirdness
Section 4 (âThe weirdest stuff will put people off the moderate stuffâ) argues that perceptions of the weirdness of a given cause or intervention âcreate blocks to uptake and prevents people from supporting the more moderate parts of the same movement.â
Insofar as this is true, itâs important to know the degrees of perceived weirdness. To my pleasant surprise, Iâve found that wild animal welfare seems much less weird to most people than it does to most EAs. This is based on my experience working at Wild Animal Initiative for the last five years, hearing my colleaguesâ reports of their conversations with people (primarily scientists), and generally talking about it at every chance I get (both with EAs and non-EAs).
Apologies for the forthcoming generalizations about EAs. Iâm trying to describe general patterns; Iâm not trying to flatten everyone into one caricature.
How the idea is introduced
In my experience, EAs often explain wild animal welfare along these lines: âNature is really brutal. The animals with the worst lives are the most numerous. We should destroy habitat or eliminate predators.â
In contrast, my colleagues and I have settled on an approach thatâs closer to this: âYou seem like you care about animals. So do we. People talk a lot about human harms to animals, but thereâs so much we donât know about naturally occurring harms. We think it would be good to protect wild animals from things like disease or starvation if we could. But ecosystems are really complicated, so thatâs why weâre focused on doing research first.â
It turns out most people respond really well to that. In fact, our biggest communication challenge is not people thinking weâre too weird, but rather people not thinking weâre weird enough. That is, âreducing wild animal sufferingâ sounds a lot like âprotecting endangered species.â They get the overlap quickly; itâs the differences that take longer to explain.
What things are discussed
In my experience, most EA discussions of wild animal welfare focus on extreme thought experiments, extreme interventions, and core philosophical principles. My hypothesis is that thatâs largely because of a temperamental inclination toward abstraction and consistency, which is why many of us (including me) like to steer conversations toward areas of deepest disagreement or highest uncertainty.
Turns out thereâs no rule that says you have to single out whatever someone loves most and declare it must be wiped from this earth. The thought experiments and zany interventions are also of only limited usefulness, because theyâre almost completely untethered from the considerations that will guide the next steps of research and movement-building.
So we and other researchers in the field mostly discuss things that are both more palatable and more achievable in the near term (or at least representative of how we might do things in the near term, which âfeeding lions cultivated meat via dronesâ is not): vaccination against diseases, contraception to prevent starvation, promoting habitats/âland uses that host populations with higher total welfare than the alternatives, reducing sources of stress, etc.
Baseline attitudes toward nature
I think most people in the industrialized West like wildlife. It seems like the default is people seeing themselves on the same side as animals (e.g., happy to see them at all, sad to see them suffer), and exceptions come when people come into direct conflict with animals (urban pest species, predators of livestock, etc.). Crucially, these attitudes seem to be not just about preferences (âI like animalsâ), but also tied into identity at a very basic, nonpartisan level: âIâm the kind of person who appreciates wildlife,â âNice people are nice to animals,â etc. Iâve singled out âanimalsâ here, but in reality these preferences and identities tend to bundle animals and nature into one, and ânatureâ is whatâs mentioned more often: âNature is beautiful,â âIâm the kind of person who respects nature,â etc.
Before I got involved in EA, I had only ever met a handful of people who disliked nature. (They were all kidsâI was also a kidâwho grew up in densely urban areas, and their main issue seemed to be with bugs, particularly mosquitoes.) Now that Iâm deep in the EA bubble and talking about nature a lot, Iâve met tons of EAs who say theyâve always disliked nature: they thought it was obviously cruel, harsh, unwelcoming, gross, etc. (I even met one person who said they didnât even understand why anyone thought natural vistas looked beautiful until a psychedelic experience gave them that experience for the first time.) Either I grew up super sheltered (likely true), or EA has a way of attracting weirdos (definitely trueâagain, I offer myself as evidence).
Another thing that causes many EAs to underestimate how willingâhow excitedâmost people are to help wildlife is their experiences advocating for farmed animals. Most people have very different attitudes toward farmed animals than wild animals, and they have a vested interest in not changing what they eat or how our economy works. As Henry points out, mocking vegans is a cultural norm, and sometimes even part of peopleâs identities. Fortunately, when asked to help wild animals, people donât interpret that as an attack on their integrity or their lifestyle, so they donât have the same defensive reaction.
Conclusion
That was wordier than I expected. All I really wanted to say is I know we can make âmass vaccination eco-engineering projects to limit unnecessary wild animal suffering from diseaseâ sound pretty weird, but most people think âprotecting wildlife from diseasesâ sounds like a pretty good idea. There are still lots of challenges to people fully understanding, accepting, and improving wild animal welfare, but we shouldnât make those challenges out to be worse than they are.
Interesting!
Good to know that predicting reasonable things in a reasonable way, well, works. This stresses the importance of the way we present things.