I don’t believe a cruelty-free diet is possible. Rodents and insects are killed in industrial agriculture, even for just plants. A vegan diet can be characterized as a cruelty-reduced diet, but not cruelty-free.
Avi Norowitz
The two links at the top are broken.
Personally, I’d just like a nice looking t-shirt that said “effective altruism” or some other related term for the purpose of provoking conversation.
I have a GiveWell t-shirt and I do like it. A few people have asked about it though I do need to get better at marketing effective altruism ideas in those conversations. So far I have 0 converts, as far as I know.
Avi
A problem is that declines in the stock market are correlated with mass unemployment, and there’s a significant risk you’ll lose more than $6,000 at the same time you become unemployed. This would leave you with an emergency fund of less than $20,000. If you were depending on that $20,000 to survive a period of unemployment, then you’re going to have a problem.
I am very late to this discussion, but the quote from William MacAskill that the “average rating for broiler chickens is −1” does not accurately represent Norwood’s views.
Norwood gives his estimates on animal welfare for one breeder chicken (-4) and one market chicken (+3) for chicken meat (page 229). Norwood and Lusk also report how many breeder chickens (0.001804675) and how many market chickens (0.259740260) are associated with 1lb of chicken meat (page 233). Given the numbers provided, the weighted average of animal welfare for 1lb of chicken meat is:
(-4 0.001804675) + (3 0.259740260) = 0.77
So, based on Norwood’s estimates, eating chicken meat increases animal welfare.
I don’t know whether I agree with this, but that is the implication of Norwood’s estimates, and that is clearly Norwood’s intent. In fact, Norwood and Lusk write on page 241 that “Because Bailey [Norwood] believes chickens are overall happy animals, fewer chickens means less happiness in the world.”
Avi
Norwood says he did take slaughter into account, but that he didn’t think it affected animal welfare much relative to other factors. See his discussion with Simon Knutsson:
http://simonknutsson.com/files/exchange-bailey-norwood-2013-07-29-for-publication.docx
FWIW, if I had a choice whether to live as a broiler chicken and be slaughtered after 42 days or not exist at all, I think I’d prefer not to exist at all. OTOH, I think I’d prefer to live 2 years or so as a beef cow and then be slaughtered rather than not exist at all. So I feel a lot more comfortable eating beef than chicken. But I’m not completely comfortable because I’m not fully confident in this preference, and because I think “animal rights” arguments have some merit independent of utilitarian considerations.
Avi
One clarification: Norwood’s view, as indicated in the table above, is that broiler chickens (raised for meat) have a welfare score of +3 which means they have lives worth living. Norwood does believe that the breeders (parents) of broilers have a welfare score of −4 (better off dead), but the ratio of breeders to broilers is 1 to 144 so his conclusion is that eating chicken increases animal welfare.
That differs from egg laying hens. Norwood gives caged hens, which currently represent the vast majority of the egg laying hens in the US, a welfare score of −8.
FWIW, I tend to disagree with Norwood’s views about broiler chickens and believe they are probably better off dead.
Great work! Indeed, if I type “wounded warrior” in Google (with or without the quotes), the first non-ad item is your Time article.
It’s interesting that only around 10% of self-identified EA’s report donating 10% or more of their income. That makes me feel less guilty about “only” giving 10%. :)
I like this idea, and I think an improved version could be helpful in clarifying people’s thinking about the importance of reducing animal suffering. But I see a few substantial problems with the existing spreadsheet, and I don’t think the results can be considered meaningful until these problems are addressed.
A person who avoids eating animals is reducing—not increasing—animal life-years, by preventing factory farm animals from being born. The same is true for most THL’s vegan outreach interventions, assuming such interventions are effective. That being said, if a factory farmed animal has a life that is not worth living (and I think that describes most factory farmed animals, though not all) then reducing the life-years of such animals is a good thing. Or alternatively, if one’s goal is to reduce the act of killing animals, then reducing the life-years of such animals may be an acceptable cost. But since these goals are very different from saving the lives of animals in the same way that donating to AMF might save the life of a child, they cannot be considered the same thing, and are not comparable without making further assumptions. This seems like a tricky problem to solve in your spreadsheet.
THL mostly conducts vegan outreach, and the evidence that vegan outreach is effective at reducing consumption of animal products is weak. The evidence for specific cost effective figures like $0.60 for a 1-year reduction in animal suffering is even weaker. I do think the evidence for THL’s cage-free campaigns is substantially better (though still very far from GiveWell-quality evidence). Given Open Philanthropy’s recent grant to THL, however, it appears THL’s cage-free program (at least in the US) has no room for funding for the time being. So I take issue with confident statements that one can reduce 1-year of animal suffering with a $0.60 donation. I think such statements should include caveats about the very weak evidence for these cost effectiveness figures.
You ask people to estimate the value of a pig’s well-being relative to a human’s well-being, but you’re presumably talking about eating animals in general when you say that going vegetarian saves 100 animal lives, or when you say donating to THL reduces one year of animal suffering for $0.60. But in terms of numbers, the vast majority of those 100 animal lives a person eats is going to be chicken and seafood, and I think most people would not give as much weight to the suffering of one chicken, fish, shrimp, etc. as they would give to the suffering of one pig. If you use chicken instead of pig in the spreadsheet, I think that would be more reasonable.
You suggest that the person should become vegetarian, but I personally don’t think this is an efficient compromise. In general, the consumption of eggs in the US causes a considerable amount of suffering, I think far more than beef. (I personally think beef cattle have lives worth living.) It certainly causes considerably more animals killed than the consumption of beef (though one might give a higher weight to killing a cow vs. a baby chick or hen). So an effective altruist with the goal of reducing animal suffering and/or killing without becoming vegan should probably limit their consumption of animal products to dairy and beef instead of dairy and eggs.
Avi
Thanks for sharing this helpful overview. I’m relatively uneducated about the scientific issues in question, but I’ve been reading a bit and had a few thoughts.
I’ve been a little skeptical at the proposed use of gene drives to eliminate mosquitoes. My fear is that we could be left with mosquitoes with evolutionary adaptations making them resistant to the biased inheritance aspect of gene drive technology, causing us to lose the ability to use a potentially precious tool in the fight against malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses. This seems to me like a plausible outcome given that there would be immense evolutionary pressure to evolve such adaptions.
The alternative, which you consider, is to make mosquitoes resistant to specific parasites such as malaria. You suggest that genetic load may cause parasite resistant mosquitoes to be selected against. However, there is some research that shows that malaria resistance increases the fitness of mosquitoes exposed to malaria:
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/13/5580.full
Even if this turns out to be wrong and such malaria-resistant mosquitoes incur a selective disadvantage, it seems less likely that the selective disadvantage would be so great that mosquitoes would evolve resistance to biased inheritance itself.
Given these considerations, isn’t starting out with using gene drives to engineer malaria resistant mosquitoes a safer approach than using gene drives to attempt to eliminate mosquito populations?
Avi
I forgot to follow-up in this earlier, but William MacAskill has issued a correction in his errata:
Seems that buying really cheap pet food might be an effective approach at reducing the farm animal suffering caused by pet ownership.
An alternative and inconsistent approach would be to buy pet food made from beef, which arguably causes the least amount of farm animal suffering and farm animals killed.
I’m not a proponent of ethical offsets, in part because of the reasons given by Claire Zabel here:
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/ry/ethical_offsetting_is_antithetical_to_ea/
Further, there’s really no good evidence in support of Animal Charity Evaluator’s cost effective estimates for vegan outreach. And in the case of corporate campaigns, it’s not clear that the organizations effective in this area still have room for funding.
Ashwin,
Oxitec takes the following strategy:
Issue repeated releases of large numbers of male transgenic mosquitoes over 4-6 months to suppress the mosquito population to very low levels.
Issue repeated releases of lower numbers of male mosquitoes after that to prevent resurgence of the mosquito population.
See this video, starting from 4:50:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XGcYoeHMMY#t=4m50s
Avi
Thanks for providing this update! I’m happy to hear that the FDA has approved the field trial. To the extent that your policy comment was influential in securing this approval, great work! :)
I worry that messages that suggests beef is particularly harmful to the environment are likely to increase farm animal suffering by causing people to replace their beef consumption with chicken, pork, and fish.
Some evidence to support this view: “With intended behavior, we see clear and significant differences between the different options. Respondents were significantly more likely to replace beef with chicken/fish/pork (a) than they were any of the other mitigation options (bc). As expected, they were significantly less likely to refrain from eating meat completely (c) than all other options.”
Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691921630077X
The full paper is paywalled, but I’d be happy to share the PDF with anyone who’s interested. Just send me a message.
The voting public is already quite uninformed as it is. I think it’s more important from an EA perspective that the candidate that will do the most amount of good wins.
A few comments, somewhat biased towards people in the US:
Is there a way to transfer out individual appreciated holdings for the purpose of donating those holdings? Does that cause problems with the remainder of your holdings? i.e. Does Wealthfront rebalance the remainder of your holdings, potentially selling holdings with capital gains and reducing future opportunities to donate appreciated holdings? For an effective altruist investor, this seems like a very important consideration in the long term.
Is a highly risky portfolio (100% stock, overweighting small cap value and emerging markets) necessarily appropriate for an effective altruist? Most people don’t have the risk tolerance to endure huge losses or maintain a portfolio that underperforms more conventional asset allocations for decades at a time. Such a situation may result in selling near the bottom of a market and/or being scared off from risky investing for good. Maybe effective altruists are different, but I’d be cautious in making that assumption. It may be better to start with a more conservative asset allocation and then endure one or more downturns before deciding to substantially increase risk.
A simple allocation like a 100% allocation to Vanguard Total US Stock Market or Vanguard Total World Stock may outperform a highly aggressive robo-advisor portfolio after fees in the long term. Fees are guaranteed to reduce performance, while tilting towards small cap value and emerging markets are not guaranteed to increase performance. Since 100% stock may still be too aggressive though, it may be a good idea to dilute risk further with bonds or CD’s.
Effective altruists who want more money in retirement than social security can provide (for consumption or donation) or who want to leave behind an estate should be making use of tax advantaged retirement accounts. That means a 401(k) in many cases. Similarly, effective altruists who want to pay for their childrens’ college should be using tax advantaged college savings accounts, such as 529 accounts. That makes investing more complicated than simply signing up for a robo-advisor and forgetting about it.
An effective altruist or anyone else who wants free high quality investing advice should check out www.bogleheads.org. You can read the Wiki and/or post of the forum with your situation (including your effective altruist goals) and highly competent people will be more than happy to help.
Avi