Hi Lucas, I like your point about being careful about celebrating small wins too much. To me the big difference between going from −100 to −90 and going from −90 to 0 is I see the expected value calculation as very different because the first one (going cage free) is clearly quite tractable, whereas the second one (reducing egg consumption?) I see as being really hard and unclear how to pursue it.
I definitely think there should be some effort that goes towards ‘ending factory farming’ type work. But I’m also quite skeptical of many proposed solutions. Or at least I think the people putting forward the proposals are too optimistic. This is maybe too big a question to ask in a forum comments section, but what’s the path to ending factory farming in 50 or 100 years? What probability do you think we’ll get there in that time frame?
Yeah for sure, it’s hard to know how the EV calculation pans out. Using my made-up numbers, the interventions that end factory farming would need to have >10% as much chance of success to be better—I think that is plausible but there’s so much uncertainty here.
Agree these are big questions that are hard to discuss online, but let’s chat when we get a chance in person!
Hi Lucas, I like your point about being careful about celebrating small wins too much. To me the big difference between going from −100 to −90 and going from −90 to 0 is I see the expected value calculation as very different because the first one (going cage free) is clearly quite tractable, whereas the second one (reducing egg consumption?) I see as being really hard and unclear how to pursue it.
I definitely think there should be some effort that goes towards ‘ending factory farming’ type work. But I’m also quite skeptical of many proposed solutions. Or at least I think the people putting forward the proposals are too optimistic. This is maybe too big a question to ask in a forum comments section, but what’s the path to ending factory farming in 50 or 100 years? What probability do you think we’ll get there in that time frame?
Hey Elliot, sorry for the slow response on this.
Yeah for sure, it’s hard to know how the EV calculation pans out. Using my made-up numbers, the interventions that end factory farming would need to have >10% as much chance of success to be better—I think that is plausible but there’s so much uncertainty here.
Agree these are big questions that are hard to discuss online, but let’s chat when we get a chance in person!