SP used to work on a research agenda with questions concerning sentience as a phenomenon itself, the list still resides here: SP former Research Agenda
SI’s research is now much more advocacy centered, as you write:
Our mission is to build on the body of evidence for how to most effectively expand humanity’s moral circle, and to encourage advocates to make use of that evidence.
We (Kelly and Jacy) weren’t working at SP when its agenda was written, but my impression is that SP’s research agenda was written to broadly encompass most questions relevant to reducing suffering, though this excluded some of the questions already prioritized by the Foundational Research Institute, another EAF project. I (Jacy) think the old SP agenda reflects EAF’s tendency to keep doors open, as well as an emphasis on more foundational questions like the “sentience as a phenomenon itself” ones you mention here.
When we were founding SI, we knew we wanted to have a relatively narrow focus. This was the recommendation of multiple advocacy/EA leaders we asked for advice. We also wanted to have a research agenda that was relatively tractable (though of course we don’t expect to have definitive answers to any of the big questions in EA in the near future), so we could have a shorter feedback loop on our research progress. As we improve our process, we’ll lean more towards questions with longer feedback loops. We also think that the old SP agenda was not only broad in topic, but broad in the skills/expertise necessary for tackling its various projects. Narrowing the focus to advocacy/social change means there’s more transferability of expertise between questions.
Finally, it seemed there had been a lot of talk in EA of values spreading as a distinct EA project, especially moral circle expansion, which arguably lies at the intersection of effective animal advocacy and existential risk/far future work, meaning it’s been kind of homeless and could benefit from having its own organization.*
All of this led us to focus SI on moral circle expansion and the more narrow/tractable/concrete/empirical research agenda than that of the old SP.** We’ve considered keeping the old agenda around as a long-term/broad agenda while still focusing on the new one for day-to-day work. I think it’s currently still up-in-the-air what exactly will happen to that document.
*The analogy that comes to mind here is cultured/clean meat, i.e. real meat grown from animal cells without slaughter. People in this field argue it’s been heavily neglected relative to other scientific projects because it’s at the intersection of food science (because the product is food) and medical science (because that’s where tissue engineering has been most popular).
**We think even our current mission/agenda is very broad, which is why we have the even narrower focus on animal farming right now. We think that narrower focus could change in the next few years, but we expect SI as an organization to be focused on moral circle expansion for the long haul.
SP used to work on a research agenda with questions concerning sentience as a phenomenon itself, the list still resides here: SP former Research Agenda
SI’s research is now much more advocacy centered, as you write:
What is the reason for this strategic shift?
We (Kelly and Jacy) weren’t working at SP when its agenda was written, but my impression is that SP’s research agenda was written to broadly encompass most questions relevant to reducing suffering, though this excluded some of the questions already prioritized by the Foundational Research Institute, another EAF project. I (Jacy) think the old SP agenda reflects EAF’s tendency to keep doors open, as well as an emphasis on more foundational questions like the “sentience as a phenomenon itself” ones you mention here.
When we were founding SI, we knew we wanted to have a relatively narrow focus. This was the recommendation of multiple advocacy/EA leaders we asked for advice. We also wanted to have a research agenda that was relatively tractable (though of course we don’t expect to have definitive answers to any of the big questions in EA in the near future), so we could have a shorter feedback loop on our research progress. As we improve our process, we’ll lean more towards questions with longer feedback loops. We also think that the old SP agenda was not only broad in topic, but broad in the skills/expertise necessary for tackling its various projects. Narrowing the focus to advocacy/social change means there’s more transferability of expertise between questions.
Finally, it seemed there had been a lot of talk in EA of values spreading as a distinct EA project, especially moral circle expansion, which arguably lies at the intersection of effective animal advocacy and existential risk/far future work, meaning it’s been kind of homeless and could benefit from having its own organization.*
All of this led us to focus SI on moral circle expansion and the more narrow/tractable/concrete/empirical research agenda than that of the old SP.** We’ve considered keeping the old agenda around as a long-term/broad agenda while still focusing on the new one for day-to-day work. I think it’s currently still up-in-the-air what exactly will happen to that document.
*The analogy that comes to mind here is cultured/clean meat, i.e. real meat grown from animal cells without slaughter. People in this field argue it’s been heavily neglected relative to other scientific projects because it’s at the intersection of food science (because the product is food) and medical science (because that’s where tissue engineering has been most popular).
**We think even our current mission/agenda is very broad, which is why we have the even narrower focus on animal farming right now. We think that narrower focus could change in the next few years, but we expect SI as an organization to be focused on moral circle expansion for the long haul.