Jamie_Harris

• Jamie_Harris 20 Apr 2021 19:50 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: Silk pro­duc­tion: global scale and an­i­mal welfare is­sues

  Interesting! Obviously a whole host of pros and cons to animal advocacy in India generally. The evidence I’m referring to is from our social movement case studies—we have a post in draft form atm. Feel free to either wait for the finished post (~1 month?) or email me at jamie@sentienceinstitute.org and I’ll send you the draft!

• Jamie_Harris 20 Apr 2021 11:48 UTC

  2 points

  on: Silk pro­duc­tion: global scale and an­i­mal welfare is­sues

  Important topic! I appreciate the balanced consideration of both direct and indirect evidence, as well as both advocacy and academic perspectives /​ info.

  I agree bans at the retail level seem promising for a number of reasons. Apologies if I missed it, but have you seen data on which countries/​areas are the main markets for silk? I.e. the demand side rather than the supply side? (On the one hand, bans in areas with high use might have larger impact, but historical evidence and my general intuition suggest that bans in areas with low usage will be much more tractable—happy to provide further info if helpful)

• Jamie_Harris 11 Apr 2021 11:04 UTC

  11 points

  on: On the longter­mist case for work­ing on farmed an­i­mals [Uncer­tain­ties & re­search ideas]

  Thanks for this post Michael, I think I agree with everything here! Though if anyone thinks we can “confidently dismiss the above longtermist argument for farmed animal welfare work, without needing to do this research” I’d be interested to hear why.

  I won’t be pursuing those questions myself, as I’m busy with other projects

  I just wanted to note that Sentience Institute is pursuing some of this sort of research, but (1) we definitely won’t be able to pursue all of these things any time soon, (2) not that much of our work focuses specifically on these cause prioritisation questions—we often focus on working out how to make concrete progress on the problems, assuming you agree that MCE is important. That said, I think a lot of research can achieve both goals. E.g. my colleague, Ali, is finishing up a piece of research that fits squarely in “4a. Between-subjects experiments… focused on the above questions” currently titled “The impact of perspective taking on attitudes and prosocial behaviours towards non-human outgroups.” And the more explicit cause prioritisation research would still fit neatly within our interests. SI is primarily funding constrained, so if any funders reading this are especially interested in this sort of research, they should feel free to reach out to us.

  Contact the Sentience Institute and/​or me to discuss ideas

  Thanks for this note! Agreed. My email is jamie@sentienceinstitute.org if anyone does want to discuss these ideas or send me draft writeups for review.

• Jamie_Harris 10 Apr 2021 15:11 UTC

  4 points

  on: Case stud­ies of self-gov­er­nance to re­duce tech­nol­ogy risk

  Cool post! I like the methodology; it bears a lot of similarities to the case studies summary and analysis I’m writing for Sentience Institute at the moment. What do you think about the idea of converting those low /​ moderate /​ high ratings in the RQ2 table into numerical scores (e.g. out of 5, 10, or 100) and testing for statistically significant correlations between various scores and the “level of success” score?

• Jamie_Harris 10 Apr 2021 11:29 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: EA De­bate Cham­pi­onship & Lec­ture Series

  I saw after writing this comment that Jonas Vollmer’s recent “Some quick notes on ‘effective altruism’” post is filled with people calling for more empirical testing on EA messaging. So perhaps there is both more interest and intent to carry out this sort of research than I previously believed.

• Jamie_Harris 6 Apr 2021 19:25 UTC

  6 points

  on: EA De­bate Cham­pi­onship & Lec­ture Series

  This is very cool. Seems like high fidelity outreach to a highly promising group, done well.

  My main concern: how often can this general debate theme be repeated among major debate tournaments? I wonder if this will now not be repeatable for several years.

  <<Lesson 5: It may be helpful to design a formal EA-advocacy framework and research agenda. Debate can be a useful case-study for EA-advocacy for the reasons mentioned in this post.>> I have often thought this. There is a lot of research that seems like it could be useful for EA outreach, e.g. testing the effectiveness of various messaging strategies. There’s some cause area-specific research, but not much that I’m aware of relating to more general EA principles.

  << However, even with the help of fellow EAs, it took us a while to understand how best to measure engagement with EA content. >> I have also thought this! I created some questions to use in an RCT we are running at Animal Advocacy Careers and lamented that I had a scale to use for “Animal Farming Opposition” (based on factor analysis of Sentience Institute’s surveys) but not “Effective Altruism Inclination” or something similar.

  Would be happy to discuss the EA outreach research ideas a bit more if anyone reading this is interested in pursuing (/​ collaborating on?) that.

So­cial Move­ment Les­sons from the Fair Trade Movement

• Jamie_Harris 9 Mar 2021 13:39 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: quinn’s comment on: The Im­por­tance of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

  Hey, glad you liked the post! I don’t really see a tradeoff between extinction risk reduction and moral circle expansion, except insofar as we have limited time and resources to make progress on each. Maybe I’m missing something?

  When it comes to limited time and resources, I’m not too worried about that at this stage. My guess is that by reaching out to new (academic) audiences, we can actually increase the total resources and community capital dedicated to longtermist topics in general. Some individuals might have tough decisions to face about where they can have the most positive impact, but that’s just in the nature of there being lots of important problems we could plausibly work on.

  On the more general category of s-risks vs extinction risks, it seems to be pretty unanimous that people focused on s-risks advocate cooperation between these groups. E.g. see Tobias Baumann’s “Common ground for longtermists” and CLR’s publications on “Cooperation & Decision Theory”. I’ve seen less about this from people focused on extinction risks, but I might just not have been paying enough attention.

• Jamie_Harris 8 Mar 2021 23:23 UTC

  8 points

  on: To­tal Fund­ing by Cause Area

  Cool post, I enjoyed seeing these numbers like this. I share your takeaway that global health seems more overrepresented than I expected.

  “Do you feel that the numbers I’m using are misrepresentative?” One consideration here is whether the appropriate figures to consider are “EA funding” or “all funding.” What’s the case for the former? Just that you expect EA funding to be substantially more cost-effective? Maybe. But even then you’d ideally include non-EA funding with some sort of discount, e.g. each non-EA dollar is only counted as 0.5, 0.1, or 0.01 EA dollars. I appreciate also that EA dollars are easier to count.

• Jamie_Harris 4 Mar 2021 17:45 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Cullen_OKeefe’s comment on: The Im­por­tance of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

  Thanks very much!

• Jamie_Harris 3 Mar 2021 23:30 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: The Im­por­tance of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

  Oh “staff” might have just been the wrong word. I just meant “team members” or something else non-prescriptive. (They commented anonymously so I couldn’t thank an individual.) They confirmed to me that they are currently inactive.

The Im­por­tance of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

• Jamie_Harris 18 Feb 2021 16:21 UTC

  3 points

  on: Many (many!) char­i­ties are too small to mea­sure their own impact

  Some other, partly overlapping reasons:

  • In rushing to measure their impact to meet requests for impact evaluation, they might just focus on the wrong things. E.g. proxy metrics that sound like good impact evaluation but aren’t very good indicators really. If measuring in their “own” timelines, rather than when asked, charities might have more scope and time to do it carefully.

  • I think there’s something to be said for just trying to do something really well and only subsequently stopping to take stock of what you have or haven’t achieved. (We’ve taken pretty much the opposite approach at Animal Advocacy Careers and I periodically wonder whether that was a mistake)

  • if you’re doing something that seems pretty clearly likely to be cost-effective, given the available evidence, spending resources on further evaluation might just be a waste.

  • Similarly, unless conducting and disseminating research is an important part of your theory of change, the research focus might be be a distraction if it doesn’t seem likely to affect your decision-making.

• Jamie_Harris 18 Feb 2021 16:11 UTC

  7 points

  on: How can non-biol­o­gists con­tribute to wild an­i­mal welfare?

  I hosted a podcast episode substantially (not exclusively) about this question! https://​​www.sentienceinstitute.org/​​podcast/​​episode-13.html

  Main categories of possible actions discussed:

  • fund Animal Ethics or Wild Animal Initiative. They’re massively underfunded.

  • spread the word, especially to audiences that seem likely to be receptive to the idea.

  • get a career in an area that might help, like in policy.

• Jamie_Harris 18 Feb 2021 16:00 UTC

  7 points

  on: Run­ning an AMA on the EA Forum

  I like answering questions when I’m asked them, but I suspect that there won’t be (m)any questions asked to me if I did an AMA. Should I do one anyway?

• Jamie_Harris 2 Feb 2021 20:11 UTC

  1 point

  on: Is there any ev­i­dence that peo­ple who re­cy­cle also ad­vo­cate for in­sti­tu­tional policy changes to com­bat man-made cli­mate change?

  There’s actually evidence that recycling produces a “moral licencing” effect, but there is evidence from other social movements that people who participate in consumer action are more likely to participate in wider institutional tactics.

  (Apologies for the lack of links/​citations for now, but I have a post coming out soon which discuses this briefly!)

Effec­tive an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy bot­tle­necks surveys

• Jamie_Harris 3 Jan 2021 18:43 UTC

  6 points

  on: How do EA re­searchers de­cide on which top­ics to write on, and how much time to spend on it?

  For me, the short answer is that I follow this process!

• Jamie_Harris 23 Dec 2020 16:08 UTC

  3 points

  on: What ar­eas are the most promis­ing to start new EA meta char­i­ties—A sur­vey of 40 EAs

  Thanks! A lot of these tradeoffs are closer to a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ split than I would have expected.

  I’d be interested in any info you’re able to share about who was actually asked—but I’m guessing you’ve already shared as much info as you feel you are able to about that.

  I’d also be interested in what the numerical scores are based on?

• Jamie_Harris 19 Dec 2020 17:58 UTC

  1 point

  on: How high im­pact are UK policy ca­reer paths?

  I don’t think I have much to offer on all-things-considered views of how civil service roles compare to lobbying, politics, earning to give, etc. But since you expressed interest in anecdotes, you might be interested in Animal Advocacy Careers’ skills profile on politics, policy, and lobbying (https://​​www.animaladvocacycareers.org/​​skills-profiles). You can read the interviews in full on a spreadsheet off that profile -- two of the interviewees were UK civil servants.