Hi Dylan, thanks for these questions.
To make the tournament as decision-relevant as possible, would you be able to add:
Why you’re submitting this question, and how this question could influence decisions (your own, or those of others you know in the animal movement)
Your current (and/​or past) level of involvement in the animal movement (e.g. funder, researcher, advocate, none/​adjacent, etc.)
I very strongly agree with integrating the likelihood of TAI with other cause areas.
Animal welfare being my primary cause area, I have found it somewhat odd that this is a separate cause area in itself to the other anthropocentric cause areas (though it makes sense for it to be for emphasis’ sake). In reality I think there’s inevitably an intersection between cause areas like AI safety x Animals and Longtermism x Animals; it’s just that AI safety and longtermism currently hold a very anthropocentric focus, but in principle these could be applied to animal welfare.
That’s an interesting distinction between radical actions and radical asks; I think subconsciously I have been thinking about the two interchangeably.
In terms of asks, I think we’ll most likely be sticking to non-radical asks.
In terms of actions, I think we’ll most likely be sticking to non-radical actions. While I see the importance of a pluralistic approach to animal advocacy, we’re thinking about this from the perspective of filling a gap; there already seems to be many activist groups engaging in radical actions.
This is how we’re currently thinking about it, but very happy to be convinced otherwise.
Hi Ben,
We prioritised these two tasks after consulting with some experts here in Australia. We broadly looked at the scale of impact (should that ask be sufficiently met), the amount of suffering an intervention reduces, and how likely it is for an ask to be met.
Establishing an independent office for animal welfare would affect all animal species, and not just pigs, so the scale of impact here is large. Moreover, the state of NSW has already committed to an independent office for animal welfare, so we thought this might be a relatively easy commitment to get from the Victorian government as another Australian state has already committed to it.
As for banning farrowing crates, we chose this ask because it is a large source of suffering for mother pigs and are used when the urge to act on maternal instincts is the most intense. This ask is a lso a sufficiently concrete ask compared to other recommendations mentioned in the inquiry report.
We say the marginal return from the final few participants was low because we already had participants in the districts the final participants were from. If they had been from districts where we didn’t already have participants engaging in this campaign, then the marginal return would have been higher. However, this wasn’t the case.
Thanks for stating what you found informative from this post and for also sharing learnings from your campaigns!
I’ve fixed the UK Voters for Animals link—appreciate the flag!
Thanks for the great post! I was aware of the power of exponential growth in other movements/​spaces but never thought to apply it to the pro-animal movement, so that was an ‘aha’ moment for me.
I’m curious though—in what way do you think the concept of exponential growth might not apply to the pro animal movement? The examples you’ve given in the post make it tempting to call the rate of growth exponential, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on scenarios where this might not be true.
I’ve recently been coming across content that on some level discuss how some aspect ‘X’ is /​ shoud be different in the pro-animal movement.
One example is the disproportionate amount of focus that goes into consumer activism over institutional change. I’m not an expert in social movements, nor have I spent much active time studying them, but the sense I get is that other social movements like ending slavery, and feminism have involved focusing on institutional and scalable changes. In this example, X = type of change we should focus on.
In this post, I would say X = the goal of the pro-animal movement.
In both instances, X is different for the pro-animal movement than in other forms of social movements.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that nonhuman animal oppression is a beast that none other parallels so there ought to be some differences in the way we approach bringing about change in this area. But I inevitably also wonder if there is some level of embedded speciesism involved when we differentiate nonhuman animal oppression from human-specific oppressions.
Hey everyone!
I’m Aditi Basu and I’m based in Melbourne, Australia. I quit my full-time job last week to do more impactful work in the animal welfare space. It’s something I have been very passionate about but just didn’t have the guts to make the leap of faith (due to reasons falling under the low income high uncertainty umbrella). The Effective Altruism movement & community have played a big part in my decision to make this leap. In the one year I’ve been a part of this community, it has significantly changed the way I approach my life and make decisions.
I’m taking up to a year off to identify gaps in the pro-animal movement and work on (unpaid yet impactful) projects and at the same time make connections and forge collaborations with other similarly oriented individuals working in this space.
I’ll also aim to create a post on this forum in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out!
Fun facts about me:
I’m very much into Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
In the past, I’ve enjoyed long distance running and rock-climbing.
I have three cat babies who I absolutely adore and love.
Aditi
Hi Ben, thanks for these questions.
To make the tournament as decision-relevant as possible, would you be able to add:
Why you’re submitting this question, and how this question could influence decisions (your own, or those of others you know in the animal movement)
Your current (and/​or past) level of involvement in the animal movement (e.g. funder, researcher, advocate, none/​adjacent, etc.)