CB🔸

Karma: 1,050

I’m living in France. Learned about EA in 2018, found that great, digged a lot into the topic. The idea of “what in the world improves well-being or causes suffering the most, and what can we do” really influenced me a whole lot—especially when mixed with meditation that allowed me to be more active in my life.

One of the most reliable thing I have found so far is helping animal charities : farmed animals are much more numerous than humans (and have much worse living conditions), and there absolutely is evidence that animal charities are getting some improvements (especially from The Humane League). I tried to donate a lot there.

Long-termism could also be important, but I think that we’ll hit energy limits before getting to an extinction event—I wrote an EA forum post for that here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wXzc75txE5hbHqYug/the-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea

CB🔸May 14, 2025, 9:58 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where To Offset Carbon Without Increasing Wild Animal Suffering?
Very good question. Usually I tend to recommend Giving Green-recommended charities such as the Good Food Institute, but that doesn’t seem to match your criteria.
But, if I can indulge in some self-promotion, we at the National Observatory on Insect Farming are working on identifying the limits of a new industry that tends to have significant climate impacts. In a recent study, insect meal has been shown to have 5 to 13 times the climate impact of soybean meal. There are also significant biodiversity concerns were genetically selected insects to escape.
Of course, we’re new and haven’t been vetted by Giving green or similar orgs, but I thought I’d share.
More detail on our work here (and you can contact me by MP for more detail) : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jb5aovXeAarw69hN7/insect-farming-new-media-coverage-on-the-hidden-challenges

CB🔸May 14, 2025, 9:23 PM
6 points
4 ∶ 1
on: People Barely Care About Relative Income
I’m not convinced by this way of looking at the Easterlin paradox.
The thing I see is not necessarily that people want to feel superior to their neighbour—it’s rather that they have a ‘quality of life’ threshold they consider ‘normal’ (mostly defined by what they see around them when they grow up—in their neighbours, télévision, cinéma, social media) and feel less good if they feel left out.
For instance, I’m used to having a smartphone, video games, microwavable food, Uber eats and my own room because of where I live. I’m frankly not convinced that societies where these elements don’t exist would be unhappier. But me not having them when everyone else does is not something that feels good.
Moving to another country doesn’t solve that. For most people, they want to get above the ‘normal’ threshold. That’s why changing neighborhood doesn’t appear like an option for most people. If I have a PS3 and everyone around me has a PS5, moving to a country where people can’t afford more than a PS1 doesn’t do the trick.
I agree that there is a correlation with income and happiness, because some elements that money buys do improve happiness (food, medicine, leisure time with your family). But increasing income is less and less effective at increasing happiness over time. Most charts indicating that countries with higher GDP have higher happiness use log scales—the result is much less impressive after some threshold using a linear scale.

CB🔸May 13, 2025, 4:43 PM
11 points
3 ∶ 0
on: How To Help Neglected Animals
Great post !
It’s very good that you’ve been able to receive a list of charities from ACE on that extremely important topic.

CB🔸May 7, 2025, 6:56 AM
2 points
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on: Speedrunning on-demand bliss for improved productivity, wellbeing, and thinking
Very useful, I will check it!

I also was on a plateau with breath-work meditation (although it did bring good benefits). And different people resonate differently to different meditation techniques, so it’s worth trying a lot of them. This one sounds very promising.

I won’t be able to attend this one, but I could do the one after the summer. Do they have a “stay notified for future session” link?

CB🔸May 6, 2025, 9:10 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Ethan Spencer’s comment on: Insects Are Not Moderately Important
Interesting position though very curious—one on side, I understand, because evolution favoured these intuitions for quite some time.
On the other side, I find really strange the ability to recognise the value of a position intellectually, but not being able to adopt it at a gut level (I mean, it’s common, it’s just that most people do that in an unconscious way).
But props to you for recognising that. I hope you have a nice week.

CB🔸May 5, 2025, 10:33 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Ethan Spencer’s comment on: Insects Are Not Moderately Important
You’re able to formulate your moral view clearly, which I appreciate.
However, what I have trouble with is understanding the precise quality that makes humans so special that morality should overwhelmingly be focused on them. This makes sense intuitively (we’re surrounded by humans, so we know them well). But for me, the morally most important thing about humans is their ability to feel positive and negative emotions (happiness, suffering), which is not exclusive to our species.
The question about the special trait that makes humans special has been discussed at length, but I don’t have a single resource in mind. I think this has been addressed by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation iirc. His AI can probably express these views : https://www.petersinger.ai/

CB🔸May 1, 2025, 7:50 AM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: tylermjohn’s comment on: EA Funds and CEA are merging
Yes, that’s a good thing. Thanks a lot for your work!

CB🔸Apr 29, 2025, 7:35 AM
6 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Poll: Should people with more forum karma have more powerful votes?
Vote power should scale with karma
I find the content on the Forum exceptionally good when compared to all other online spaces I’ve been to. I don’t know what share the karma votes played in that, but I tend to assume it contributed.

CB🔸Apr 25, 2025, 7:14 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Ethan Spencer’s comment on: Insects Are Not Moderately Important
Regarding moral intuitions, I agree that it’s hard to feel concern for insects, from a gut level. However, it’s entirely possible that we react more easily to factors such as size, numbers and proximity.
On that topic, I suggest reading this excellent post, where the author addresses the mismatch between our gut reaction and the available evidence : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2RdYDcwrnvdCn2SbK/the-case-for-insect-consciousness

CB🔸Apr 24, 2025, 7:44 AM
4 points
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in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Insects Are Not Moderately Important
How did you come to these numbers for the P-sentience ? Why not between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100,000,000,000,000 ?
My personal feeling, while reading these kind of numbers, is that they seem conveniently in the ballpark of ‘wide enough that I recognize I am not really sure about what is causing sentience, but low enough that I don’t have anything to do about it’. Maybe this is not how you came up with them, but this is what I would come up with I had to justify not working on the topic.
I understand that it’s possible that insects may have a lower ability to feel suffering, but I don’t see how we can be confident enough to find it unlikely that they are morally relevant.

CB🔸Apr 23, 2025, 3:54 AM
4 points
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on: Mechanisms Behind Breast Cancer Cell Dormancy and Their Subsequent Wakefulness and Metastasis
This is very technical and specific. I have trouble understanding why this has been posted on the EA forum ?

CB🔸Apr 8, 2025, 7:06 AM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: AI for Animals 2025 Bay Area Retrospective
So great to see progress on this topic! Thanks for your inspiring work.

CB🔸Apr 8, 2025, 7:01 AM
12 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: William_MacAskill’s comment on: William_MacAskill’s Shortform
Yes—I once sent a email of appreciation to them since, well, it’s so good they are donating so much! That’s truly altruistic :D
Their willingness to mostly defer to expert really is praiseworthy !
They are among the most impactful people in the world—so I really am grateful that they do what they do !

CB🔸Mar 30, 2025, 5:43 PM
4 points
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on: Should There Be Insect Farming In The UK? (Deadline April 1st)
This is an impactful opportunity, worth dedicating a little amount of time!

CB🔸Mar 29, 2025, 7:53 AM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: How should we adapt animal advocacy to near-term AGI?
Fantastic post, very clear. This is a very important topic.

CB🔸Mar 26, 2025, 5:41 PM
12 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Carolina Galvani - Sinergia Animal’s comment on: Sinergia (ACE Top Charity) Makes False Claims About Helping Millions of Animals
Thank you for this comment. While I initially found the analysis of Vetted Causes plausible and worth addressing, your comments (and ACE) made me update positively in your favor. They were very clear and constructive. I changed my mind on this topic.
I am now concerned that Vetted Causes 1/ Continues to make strong claims suggesting ill-intent, when this can be explained by honest mistakes from their or Sinergia’s part 2/ Is not trying to discuss these matters with the charity beforehand, which would save a lot of time and reputational harm to everyone (including us readers who have to wait days before getting the position of both sides). This doesn’t look good.

Note: I think you got some downvotes on this comment because you reused the same text four times in this comment thread. This is probably not good for readability. I think next time you can just make this one comment and link to it elsewhere.

CB🔸Mar 23, 2025, 8:37 PM
3 points
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in reply to: Jess Binksmith’s comment on: 80,000 Hours is shifting its strategic approach to focus more on AGI
Great! Good to know.

CB🔸Mar 21, 2025, 4:45 PM
11 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Luisa_Rodriguez’s comment on: 80,000 Hours is shifting its strategic approach to focus more on AGI
On a personal level, I’ve really loved covering topics like invertebrate welfare, global health, and wild animal suffering, and I’m very sad we won’t be able to do as much of it.
There’s something I’d like to understand here. Most of the individuals that an AGI will affect will be animals, including invertebrates and wild animals. This is because they are very numerous, even if one were to grant them a lower moral value (although artificial sentience could be up there too). AI is already being used to make factory farming more efficient (the AI for Animals newsletter is more complete about that).

Is this an element you considered?

Some people in AI safety seem to consider only humans in the equation, while some assume that an aligned AI will, by default, treat them correctly. Conversely, some people push for an aligned AI that takes into account all sentient beings (see the recent AI for animals conference).

I’d like to know what will be 80k’s position on that topic? (if this is public information)

CB🔸Mar 17, 2025, 7:55 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Discussion Thread: Existential Choices Debate Week
I find it very difficult to determine whether the future will be net-negative or net-positive (when considering humans, factory-farmed animals, wild animals, and possibly artificial sentience).
This makes it very hard to know whether work on extinction reduction is likely to be positive or not.
I prefer to work on things that aim to move the sign towards “net-positive”.

CB🔸Feb 22, 2025, 10:42 AM
7 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Ditching what we are good at: A change of course for Anima International in France
I followed the whole process and still I am super impressed by the whole approach!
Very few orgs go through the process of looking at everything that can be done and choosing the best opportunity. Especially with suffering reduction as the main goal. I’d love it if more orgs were able to do that.
Excellent post.