Thoughts on how to resolve the tensions between being maximally honest vs running a coalition that unites different stakeholders that have different positions on the topic. Being maximally honest requires saying the things you believe as much as possible. Running a coalition requires acting inside the common ground, and not illegitimately seizing the platform to promote your specific position on the matter.
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Empirical research I would like to see in animal advocacy. Primarily to 1. have more robust estimates of impact in animal advocacy 2. Most research in animal advocacy is understandably driven by donor needs. I would like to list some questions that would be more decision-relevant for the animal advocacy organisations(when to campaign, how to campaign, which targets to select etc.).
Thanks for this, I had a couple of things listed out. This looks like a nice way to prioritise them. I will list some ideas here.
I canāt speak for Lewis but as an animal advocate running an organisation, my bigger concern is that politicisation is irreversible and destroys option value.
Thanks for this comment, it felt awkward to include all veto-players in Shapley value calculation while writing the post, now Iām able to see why. For offsetting weāre interested in making every single individual weakly better off in expectation compared to the counterfactual where you donāt exist/ādonāt move your body etc. so that no one can complain about your existence. So instances of doing harm can only be offset by doing good. Meanwhile, Shapley doesnāt distinguish between doing/āallowing, therefore it assigns credit to everyone who could have prevented an outcome even if they havenāt done any good.
Hi James, did you make this?
My understanding is that you donated 40% of your income last year. What a wonderful thing to do! Thank you. Iām glad you shared this here.
āConsistent Growth in Donations: There has been a consistent increase in overall donations year over year, with the EA Infrastructure and Long-Term Future funds experiencing notable growth in 2021 and 2022.ā
This doesnāt seem right to me. Data from EA Funds dashboard:
I often think whether Benjamin Lay would be banned from the EA forum or EA events. It seems to me that the following exchange would have gotten him at least a warning within the context of vegetarianism:
āBenjamin gave no peaceā to slave owners, the 19th-century radical Quaker Isaac Hopper recalled hearing as a child. āAs sure as any character attempted to speak to the business of the meeting, he would start to his feet and cry out, āThereās another negro-master!āāI canāt think of any EAs that take actions similar to the following:
āBenjamin Layās neighbors held slaves, despite Layās frequent censures and cajoling. One day, he persuaded the neighborsā 6-year old son to his home and amused him there all day. As evening came, the boyās parents became extremely concerned. Lay noticed them running around outside in a desperate search, and he innocently inquired about what they were doing. When the parents explained in panic that their son was missing, Lay replied: Your child is safe in my house, and you may now conceive of the sorrow you inflict upon the parents of the negroe girl you hold in slavery, for she was torn from them by avarice. (Swarthmore College Bulletin)ā
My diet is very similar to this one. Iām curious what other knowledgeable people think about the lack of variety in vegetables/āfruits. Iām also curious about other peopleās takes on the lack of probiotics.
I think a more important reason is the additional value of the information and the option value. Itās very likely that the change resulting from AI development will be irreversible. Since weāre still able to learn about AI as we study it, taking additional time to think and plan before training the most powerful AI systems seems to reduce the likelihood of being locked into suboptimal outcomes. Increasing the likelihood of achieving āutopiaā rather than landing into āmediocrityā by 2 percent seems far more important than speeding up utopia by 10 years.
Boycotting animal products is quite effective on its own. Avoiding eating one single egg prevents around 24 hours of chicken suffering in expectation, which is pretty significant. Eating one more chicken causes around 30 days of additional intense chicken suffering. Your boycott would have a very significant impact in expectation.
The problem with animal product boycotts is that we havenāt discovered a robustly cost-effective way of getting other people adopt a plant-based diet. My current position on this issue is that: āItās impactful to go plant-based, but itās very hard to get other people go plant-basedā.
There is the following graph in the article:
I think supplementing it with the following graph provides important context. It should be noted that January 2024 data is incomplete.
I would appreciate it if someone with technical competence assessed the reliability of this study and its findings.
One additional cost of cause specific groups is that once you brand yourself inside a movement, you get drawn into the politics of that movement. Other existing groups perceive you as a competitor for influence and activists. Hence they become much less tolerant of differences in your approach.
For example an animal advocacy group advocating for cultivated meat work in my country would frequently be bad-mouthed by other activists for not being a vegan group(because cultivated meat production uses some animal cells taken without consent).
My observation is that animal activists are much more lenient when an organisation doesnāt brand itself as an āanimalā organisation.
Strong upvote. I would like to encourage advocates outside of English speaking countries to write more about their work so that other advocates can learn lessons from them.
āThe EA Infrastructure Fund will fund and support projects that build and empower the community of people trying to identify actions that do the greatest good from a scope-sensitive and impartial welfarist view.ā
Iām curious how EA Funds incorporates moral uncertainty into its decision making given its mandate is 100% welfarist. To be clear, I donāt think running one project that is 100% welfarist necessarily contradicts with plausible views on moral uncertainty. I think welfarism is massively underrepresented in most peopleās decision making and to compensate for that one might run a 100% welfarist project despite having credence in multiple theories.
I know this is not within the scope EAIF but I think this example from animal welfare illustrates a trade-off well. Some countries have passed legislation to ban the culling of male chicks in the egg industry. Male chicks wonāt be born in those countries. Working on these bans is a moral priority if you think acts of killing are intrinsically bad. If you think welfare is all that matters then working on this issue is far lower in priority since male chicks live for three days at most and their life experiences are dwarfed by the life experiences of other animals. Would EA Funds prefer people coming into EA to be 100% welfarist with respect to projects they choose to work on?
I had similar conundrums when drafting a vision and mission for my organisation, ie. how to keep our edge while being clear about taking moral uncertainty seriously. So Iām curious about how EA Funds thinks about this issue.
āWe want the community to be neither a factory nor a social club.ā
It is not immediately needed but I would really appreciate some further elaboration of your thoughts on this topic as I reckon many people(including me) are grappling with the same problem for their work outside of EAIF.
What is the evidence that bivalves are much less likely to be sentient than insects? They are also small animals, so when they are eaten they add up to very large numbers.
Thoughts on the idea that āWorking for institutional change is far more effective than working for individual change in animal advocacyā. How strong is the evidence behind that statement, in which contexts it might be wrong?