not helpful in Intro to EA. too meta, too academic, and not contextualized for explicit purpose or message for this topic of AI ethics.
Anthony Villano
Karma: 14
Concerns with the ALT meat movement.
The issues with factory farms are certainly valid and the truth of the inhumanity present in the way meat is produced at industrial scales needs to be elevated to the public consciousness.
Technology as a solution in this space is highly concerning due to the expected resource consumption to produce meat simulating products given our current manufacturing processes.
Once the technology becomes more readily available, it will continue to concentrate economic power to the conglomerates of corporations who lack a moral center to directly address the issues of animal suffering, human suffering (workers rights and poverty wages), and global climate change.
Alternative technological meat ignores the incredible and often ignored indigenous wisdom of stewarding local ecosystems to provide effective nutrient dense, protein rich food sources through intentional and sustainable methods.
Personal disclaimers: I do eat meat and I have experimented with following a vegan lifestyle. My religious beliefs provided me the opportunity to witness and participate in an animal sacrifice and slaughter. I did not raise the animal, I was only present in its death and consumption as food.
Please reach out if you would like to learn more about my experience. I would love to discuss my observations and reflections with other EA before creating a forum post on this sensitive subject.
We are making decisions every single day, however a lot less frequently than every second.*
An additional consideration for the benefits of Triage is to address decision fatigue. Triage is a methodology and can be considered a logical, sequential system of prioritization to prevent the overwhelm of making a decision on a decision. Triage is a way of weighing options quickly and consistently. I believe most of us here have the privilege of making gradual decisions, especially in everyday life.
Triage is to maintain calm in chaotic and emotional environments of immediate and obvious human suffering. Many of us, especially Earn to Give, are often shielded from those environments. The media we have access to understand tropical diseases or other high-impact, low-cost is not necessarily personal or visceral. Every choice we make takes considerable energy, from breakfast to whether to acknowledge a human we see in clear distress with a cardboard sign requesting assistance.
I get frustrated when I see charity organizations pushing images of suffering as it often portrays an image of inferiority of recipient below the giver rather than equal. I believe the reality of the living conditions of our fellow man needs to be transparent, but presented in a context where people have space to understand the systems that create these disparities in the first place. Poor people deserve privacy in their lives as much as those with an semblance of wealth. However, whether an intimate knowledge of someones life conditions is necessary to provide effective support is a discussion for another space.
For triage to be conducted in the context of Effective Altruism, there need to be explicit and accessible guidelines and best practices to of how to process the information about various sources on how to prioritize recipients of abundance. I am at the beginning of this journey, so I ask for your understanding as I continue to learn through the resources provided and contribute my reflections along the way.
I am excited by the prospects of this vision and I am curious as I learn more how different cultures internalize these values in reference to their ancestral wisdom and indigenous beliefs. There are countless human philosophies around the earth that live in harmony with their land and sustainably and abundantly provide for their communities. It appears that cultures and nations who recently dominated and decimated similar sustainable ways of living, in search for profit, expansion of power, etc. are the cultures trying to provide support and charity toward the people and lands whom they actively extract value from. I am uncertain if this power dynamic is effectively captured in the concepts of “privilege and seriousness of these issues”. I am seeking to find the truth and looking forward to conversations with those who disagree and those who recognize the seriousness of unconditional reparations as a form of decolonization.
https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/talking-about-a-schism-is-ahistorical-3c454a77220f