I manage operations, research, publishing and grantwriting at Allied Scholars for Animal Protection.
Benny Smith
Karma: 731
I just re-read this, really appreciate the thorough research!
A few thoughts:
A lot of the “optimistic” / hopeful cases are basically saying “it is possible to use this technology for X” without saying what the incentive would be to help. Seems to me that without a gears-level story about why people / AI systems would be incentivized to help animals, they by default will not.
Moral circle expansion is one way to change the incentives, especially moral circle expansion among groups likely to hold power in the future.
But this is more relevant for longer AI timelines, since MCE is slow.
This does not seem exactly right to me:
“People are also more likely to consider animal rights to be a legitimate concern if they are not themselves directly affected by poverty and poor health.”
There are lots of vegetarians in India who are quite poor compared to high-income countries, but who are much more inclined to consider animal rights to be legitimate than most westerners.
It seems more true that poverty makes people less likely to change their values since this requires time and resources for self-reflection and behavioral adjustments. So I agree that MCE may be easier with higher-income populations.
Thanks for writing this up, Sam. “Fixing” factory farms through PLF seems cynical and defeatist, and I wonder if automating factory farms could make it a lot harder to do undercover investigations.
Great point!
In addition to not doing anything, we should also stop thinking.
Very true. Nit-picking and deference to authority are highly neglected cause areas in themselves. Imposter syndrome is underrated
That’s a great point, thanks Manuel!
Against Doing Things
@Jamie_Harris thanks for sharing! I will put this on my reading list. :)
I think that would make a great cross-post!
Yeah that was interesting! He was raised vegetarian, ate meat for a while and then went back to it.
Also, re social movements and animals—James Ozden has some useful research.
Yeah he talks about vegetarianism a lot actually! Here’s one paragraph about his efforts to promote vegetarianism as a young man in England:
What he describes is one of the problems we want to solve at Allied Scholars for Animal Protection – clubs die when student leaders graduate because there’s no larger infrastructure to support recruitment.
Thanks for sharing this on the forum!
Thinking about how past social movements succeeded at large-scale attitude and behavior change seems important, and I’m not sure why there isn’t more attention to that kind of thing in EA discussions around animal advocacy.
I recently read Gandhi’s autobiography and found some useful stuff there.
Meaningfully reducing meat consumption is an unsolved problem: meta-analysis
Field Building for Animal Rights—Fall 2024 Updates
Report: The Broken State of Animal Advocacy in Universities
I just preordered Yuval Noah Harari’s new book
Yeah I think this is a good point! Donor-advised funds seem like a good way to benefit from compound interest (and tax deductions) while avoiding the risk of value drift.
Thanks Vasco!
Another finding I’ve seen is that widespread adoption of a plant-based diet would save ~3.3% of global GDP per year due to healthcare savings. That study also suggest a 6-10% reduction in global mortality, though I think these types of findings are necessarily pretty speculative and contingent on assumptions.
Environmental & health appeals are the most effective vegan outreach strategies
Animal Charity Evaluators estimates that a plant-based diet spares 105 vertebrates per year. So if you’re vegan for 50 years, that comes out to 5,250 animals saved. If you put even 10% credence in the ACE number, where the counterfactual is zero impact, you’d still be helping over 500 animals in expectation.
Excited to read your work, Seth. Thanks for sharing