Dhruv Makwana

• Dhruv Makwana 2 Jan 2023 14:38 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Jeff Sebo: A util­i­tar­ian case for an­i­mal rights

  [Transcript has been moved to the body of the post]

Abo­li­tion­ist in the Streets, Prag­ma­tist in the Sheets: New Ideas for Effec­tive An­i­mal Advocacy

Part 1/​4: A Case for Abolition

Part 2/​4: Limi­ta­tions with Cur­rent EA An­i­mal Advocacy

Part 3/​4: Scru­ti­nis­ing Ob­jec­tions to (Tra­di­tional) Abo­li­tion­ist Approaches

Part 4/​4: Un­der-ex­plored Abo­li­tion­ist Approaches

• Dhruv Makwana 12 Jan 2023 20:03 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Ariel Simnegar’s comment on: Part 4/​4: Un­der-ex­plored Abo­li­tion­ist Approaches

  Hi Ariel! Thank you for the kind words. May I suggest moving this discussion to the overview piece given its cross-cutting content?

  And yes perhaps a sequence might have been better, but I’d already started, had some glitches trying to create a sequence, and got the impression (from other examples) that sequences are “heavier”/​longer.

  Edit: I’ll just answer here while I have the time. I especially appreciate you highlighting the points you thought were good, thank you.

  1. Clearly I disagree with Tomasik with respect to the point about “long-run effects on society’s values”. What you said seems possible, rather than plausible, but that just suggests to me we should be careful about the message/​argument (whenever I ask people why they care about “the environment”, it’s pretty easy to get most to see it’s due to instrumental value to sentient beings). And yes, if ones values “robust net-positive effects” above abolition, then yes the implication you draw out seems correct, but I don’t see a good reason to do that valuation in the first place.

  2. I thought I answered these questions in the first post (as yes and abolitionism)? And I don’t understand what the relevant similarities with prohibition are to comment meaningfully.

  3. Not more decisive, but worth keeping in mind given the difficulty with cultured meat.

• Dhruv Makwana 12 Jan 2023 20:58 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: Yellow (Daryl)’s comment on: Abo­li­tion­ist in the Streets, Prag­ma­tist in the Sheets: New Ideas for Effec­tive An­i­mal Advocacy

  Thanks, the title is probably the main reason I didn’t give up on writing all this 😂 I came up with it and Peter approved it.

  In the series, I mean the first. For precisely this reason, when discussing the latter, I use the term “animal wellbeing” instead.

• Dhruv Makwana 12 Jan 2023 22:03 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: MattBall’s comment on: Abo­li­tion­ist in the Streets, Prag­ma­tist in the Sheets: New Ideas for Effec­tive An­i­mal Advocacy

  Hi Matt, thanks for commenting. I think it would be helpful if this disagreement was more specific. I list three reasons in the following sentence, go into detail about the first two reason in posts 3 and 2 respectively.

  From reading the chapter you pointed to, it seems like you have had some frustrating experiences with the community, who prioritise purity over effectiveness. I relate, and end up avoiding engaging in those cases.

  I address some of the points made in that chapter and more in the 3rd post, except for the old liberation pledge, for which the chapter assigns a pretty uncharitable motivation. Afaict the internal logic (based on the end of foot-binding girls in China) was sensible, whether or not it works is different: even they have realised it doesn’t and have since changed tactics https://​​paxfauna.org/​​rethinking-the-liberation-pledge/​​

  Which I think illustrates my overall point: there are advocates out there who are pragmatic, but have an abolitionist-leaning mindset (and sometimes have ideas which are worth considering)

• Dhruv Makwana 13 Jan 2023 13:47 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Yellow (Daryl)’s comment on: Part 1/​4: A Case for Abolition

  My thoughts are that it’s sensible (and an important component) but insufficient by itself.

• Dhruv Makwana 13 Jan 2023 19:10 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: jasonk’s comment on: Part 4/​4: Un­der-ex­plored Abo­li­tion­ist Approaches

  Thanks for the kind words, and I look forward to hearing about any opportunities for collaboration.

• Dhruv Makwana 13 Jan 2023 19:22 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Are there lives not worth liv­ing?

  There’s no slam-dunk either way that I’m aware of. The closest example irl I’ve seen is the issue of cluster headaches—some people who have it question whether life is worth living with the condition. https://​​www.happierlivesinstitute.org/​​report/​​global-priority-pain/​​

  Given the differing intuitions, I think the approach that HLI has done with its recent charity evaluations is pretty useful: assuming that existence and non-existence are comparable (which is a significant assumption), how would the comparative effectiveness on wellbeing interventions differ based on where on a 0-10 scale would one place the neutral point?

  https://​​www.happierlivesinstitute.org/​​2022/​​11/​​24/​​2022-charity-recommendation/​​

  https://​​www.happierlivesinstitute.org/​​key-ideas/​​#5_Will_our_priorities_change

• Dhruv Makwana 14 Jan 2023 14:04 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: emre kaplan’s comment on: Abo­li­tion­ist in the Streets, Prag­ma­tist in the Sheets: New Ideas for Effec­tive An­i­mal Advocacy

  Hi Emre, thanks for remembering, waiting, and your details comments! :D

  1. Yes I link to that study and basically agree, more evidence would be great.
     

  2. I don’t think I do, but I could have acknowledged that a little better in the writing, say by pointing to movement building getting 5-14% of funds based this table. But also...
     
     In terms of the 8 examples you give, only 3 are still considered standout: I pointed out here that “charities like NHRP or ProVeg which were previously considered are now ignored”, and SVB, Vegetarians Hoy, Vegan Outreach are not considered to be standout charities. I think your examples point more to funding for neglected/​LMICs (great!) but not to an openness to different approaches: for example, the reasoning for the one-time funding of Veganuary was specifically given for Latin-American staff costs.
     
     I did not know about/​come across Transfarmation, so thanks for that, and I’d be curious to hear about which documentaries and how much they cost.
     

  3. Agree with direction, though not assessment of current status quo. I think there’s more to the current major strands in EAA than just “these are neglected”: in posts 3 & 4 I tried to give examples of how other are thought to be ineffective. Also, there might be “many other groups” working on the suggested interventions, but it’s not clear any are doing it with an effectiveness mindset, which would be a valuable contribution.
     

  4. “I know of no industry that has ever disappeared because someone tried to attract its workers with more lucrative careers.”
     It’s not just money, but stress/​wellbeing and changing social & market pressures.
     
     ”Subsidizing farmers’ transitions to plant-based farming seems similar to paying people to avoid animal products, and I think both approaches would be prohibitively expensive.”
     I strongly disagree with this given what I said above, and the fact they could transition to profitable businesses. I don’t think the charities currently helping with this are getting a huge amount of money, but could be averting quite a lot of lives. All this being said, it shouldn’t be too difficult to settle this intuition joust with a cost-effectiveness analysis, which I think we both agree on.
     
     ”I wish that people who tried this intervention would collect contact information from the people they reached out to. “
     I wish that people with an effectiveness mindset helped people running such interventions to do such things ;-)

• Dhruv Makwana 20 Jan 2023 23:29 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Vasco Grilo’s comment on: Part 1/​4: A Case for Abolition

  What do you think the risk of re-emergence and the psychological argument (linked in the post) by Jeff Sebo? I believe they outweigh the benefits of any potential net-positive high welfare farming (if one is thinks non-existence is comparable and neutral wrt negative/​positive existence).

  And yes, I mentioned a slightly different take on your last point when I pointed out Tomasik’s false dichotomy (either not slaughtering animals, or putting those resources to better use by having happy humans live on the land instead).

• Dhruv Makwana 21 Jan 2023 1:29 UTC

  1 point

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  on: An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Digest #4: Dec 24th- Jan 20th

  Thanks for the shout-out!

Money barely in­creases hap­piness (un­less you re­ally value money, and even then not by much)

[Question] Cul­ti­vated meat 25x worse for cli­mate?

• [ ]

  [deleted]

• Dhruv Makwana 6 Jun 2023 14:19 UTC

  10 points

  3 ∶ 1

  on: Change my mind: Ve­ganism en­tails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes

  This is a very long piece and also a lot of comments, and so I apologise if I’ve missed something relevant by skimming.

  I think my main disagreement is that I would frame it as few weeks of adjustments rather than lasting tradeoffs (except for logistics and social pressure). My model of the adjustment period is nutrition education and body adjustment. Everyone should do the first, and some have the second, with a small minority needing some help (e.g. these case studies from this nutritionist).

  Here’s an RCT https://​​www.nature.com/​​articles/​​nutd20173 it’s across 6 months, and also looks at ‘quality of life’ variables,

  Between-group differences favouring intervention were significant at 6 months for both the physical component summary (P=0.03) and the mental component summary (P<0.01) (Table 4). At 6 months no significant between-group differences were seen for: average daily exercise, food enjoyment or food costs (Table 4). Statistically significant differences favouring the intervention were seen at 6 months for general self-efficacy (P=0.01), nutritional self-efficacy (P<0.0001) and self-esteem (P<0.01).

  There are a few claims that were asserted and I found very surprising; maybe I’ve spent too much time on nutritionfacts.org. I think the bar of evidence you ask for, whilst would be conclusive, seems a little high and unrealistic given the practicalities around most nutrition research.

  It’s not clear that the claims your baselines (in particular the one below) are based on the same high bar: most of the “I found veganism difficult” anecdotes I come across are incredibly vague and describe no systematic investigation of what actually went wrong (e.g. Cronometer/​food diary, blood tests, SIBO tests etc), and usually just attribute it to “no animal products”.

  People are extremely variable. This includes variation in digestion, tastes, time, money, cooking ability…

  Most people’s optimal diet includes small amounts of animal products, but people eat sub-optimally for lots of reasons and that’s their right.

  but if you add up all the foods you would need to meet every need, for people who aren’t gifted at digestion, it’s far too many calories and still fairly restrictive.

  Especially the last claim (have you come across “How Not to Die?” and “How Not to Diet?”); the daily dozen has around 1200-1500 calories in it; it’s not clear that someone is ‘gifted at digestion’ or not, with no ability to change (in fact, the opposite seems to be true, and there seems to be some evidence documenting the shifts, across admittedly short-timescales).

  What links here?

  • EA Ve­gan Ad­vo­cacy is not truth­seek­ing, and it’s ev­ery­one’s problem by Elizabeth (LessWrong; 28 Sep 2023 23:30 UTC; 317 points)
  • EA Ve­gan Ad­vo­cacy is not truth­seek­ing, and it’s ev­ery­one’s problem by Elizabeth (29 Sep 2023 4:04 UTC; 115 points)

• Dhruv Makwana 8 Jun 2023 18:08 UTC

  5 points

  3 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Change my mind: Ve­ganism en­tails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes

  I think emphasising protein is totally the wrong track, since it’s just not that important (and also if you’re getting enough calories near impossible to have a deficiency in)

  https://​​nutritionfacts.org/​​video/​​the-great-protein-fiasco/​​

  I also think your general model of “satisfying” is built off of myths which just are not supported by the evidence

  https://​​nutritionfacts.org/​​video/​​evidence-based-weight-loss-live-presentation/​​

  See especially 38:41 where he talks about a review with meat industry funding

  “In general, these data confirm a modest satiety effect with protein-rich meals but do not support an effect on energy intake at the next eating occasion.”

  Lastly your omission of leafy greens is suspicious—from memory spinach has about 40% of its calories from protein, and (dry) soya chunks/​mince around 66%, far exceeding most animal products (due to fat), and legumes.

  What links here?

  • EA Ve­gan Ad­vo­cacy is not truth­seek­ing, and it’s ev­ery­one’s problem by Elizabeth (LessWrong; 28 Sep 2023 23:30 UTC; 317 points)
  • EA Ve­gan Ad­vo­cacy is not truth­seek­ing, and it’s ev­ery­one’s problem by Elizabeth (29 Sep 2023 4:04 UTC; 115 points)