Jamie_Harris

Karma: 507

Jamie_Harris 29 May 2020 10:40 UTC
1 point

in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: The Effects of Animal-Free Food Technology Awareness on Animal Farming Opposition
Thanks! GFI did some focus group research around the name cultivated meat, but as far as I know, didn’t test it in any RCTs. ACE’s RCT also only compared “clean” and “cultured.” The differences are all pretty small though between name types. I’d be surprised if differences in the names of the products altered the sign of the effect of increased awareness about AFFT.

Jamie_Harris 24 May 2020 18:15 UTC
6 points

in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: MichaelA’s Shortform
The only other very directly related resource I can think of is my own presentation on moral circle expansion, and various other short content by Sentience Institute’s website, e.g. our FAQ, some of the talks or videos. But I think that the academic psychology literature you refer to is very relevant here. Good starting point articles are, the “moral expansiveness” article you link to above and “Toward a psychology of moral expansiveness.”
Of course, depending on definitions, a far wider literature could be relevant, e.g. almost anything related to animal advocacy, robot rights, consideration of future beings, consideration of people on the other side of the planet etc.

There’s some wider content on “moral advocacy” or “values spreading,” of which work on moral circle expansion is a part:
Arguments for and against moral advocacy—Tobias Baumann, 2017
Values Spreading is Often More Important than Extinction Risk—Brian Tomasik, 2013
Against moral advocacy—Paul Christiano, 2013

Also relevant: “Should Longtermists Mostly Think About Animals?”

Jamie_Harris 17 May 2020 19:58 UTC
1 point

in reply to: antimonyanthony’s comment on: The Effects of Animal-Free Food Technology Awareness on Animal Farming Opposition
Good point that the interaction terms are relevant to that. But yeah, the nonsignificant relationships there don’t tell us much, I don’t think, as the interaction term is presumably just “cannibalising” the effect of AFFT.

The Effects of Animal-Free Food Technology Awareness on Animal Farming Opposition

Jamie_Harris

16 May 2020 7:30 UTC

30 points

5 comments1 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Jamie_Harris 2 May 2020 7:31 UTC
0 points

on: When can I eat meat again?
Cool to see more recent estimates, thanks Claire! What’s the timeframe for the table? I.e. when are those “approximate share” columns referring to? Is that meant to be 2070 onwards, i.e. once the technologies are something like being “fully” developed?

Jamie_Harris 1 May 2020 10:13 UTC
0 points

in reply to: zdgroff’s comment on: Wild Animal Welfare Meetup (Spring 2020)
(Low relevance to the original post, but relevant to this discussion)
I’ve written the following for a draft “skills profile” I’m writing on fundraising roles at animal advocacy nonprofits for Animal Advocacy Careers. Feedback would be welcome. Message me directly (preferably email jamie.a.harris94 [at] gmail [dot] com) if you’d like to see/review the full draft or the footnotes, which I haven’t copied over here.
“There are reasons to doubt that the animal advocacy movement is substantially constrained by funding:
- At the time of searching (March 2020), the Open Philanthropy Project had granted out $110 million since 2016 to organisations categorised as focusing on “farm animal welfare,” including $38.5 million in 2019. The 4 “top charities” in Animal Charity Evaluators’ ratings had received an average of $7.5 million each (covering on average about 50% of each organisation’s expenditure since 2016), compared to the wider average of $2.2 million per grantee. This seems to provide evidence that the most cost-effective organisations — at least by Open Philanthropy Project and Animal Charity Evaluators’ estimations — will receive substantial funding.
- A 2019 survey of effective altruism organisations by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) found that, on average, organisations rated themselves as more “talent-constrained” (average 3.8 out 5) than “funding-constrained” (average 2.4 out of 5). Using similar methodology, 80,000 Hours’ surveys from 2018 and 2017 had found similar results — 1.1 out of 4 and 1.5 out of 4 “funding-constrained” in 2017 and 2018, respectively, versus 2.6 out of 4 and and 2.8 out of 4 “talent-constrained.” 80,000 Hours’ surveys also found that, in general, the organisations were willing to sacrifice a lot of extra donations to hold on to their most recent hires. Importantly, however, in CEA’s survey, Animal Charity Evaluators and the Good Food Institute were the only included organisations that focused primarily on animal issues, representing 3 out of 29 listed respondents, and 80,000 Hours’ surveys had similarly low representation of animal advocacy organisations. The cause areas that CEA and 80,000 Hours are most interested in (and hence were best represented in the surveys) do not seem to be substantially funding constrained and 80,000 have noted that there are many other limitations of these results.
There are also reasons to expect that the movement is substantially funding constrained:
- Despite the large amounts of funding received through Open Philanthropy Project’s grants, Animal Charity Evaluators’ “top charities” were only assigned this status because ACE concluded that they each had considerable “room for more funding.”
- Animal Charity Evaluators and Open Philanthropy Project seem to frequently agree about which charities can make best use of additional funding. If you disagree with their views about animal advocacy strategy, then you might conclude that the movement is substantially more funding constrained, because important tactics and organisations are still not receiving much of this funding. Of course, these two funding bodies only provide a small portion of the total funding in the animal advocacy movement.
- In our short initial survey and interviews with 12 CEO’s and hiring professionals from 9 of the “top” or “standout” charities currently or formerly recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, 9 respondents selected “funding” as the bottleneck that they “identify most” with in their organisation, though most respondents selected more than one option. We asked participants another question that provided evidence that funding was a major bottleneck for organisations, but the answers seemed highly counterintuitive to us, so we don’t think that we should place much weight on this finding.
- Our impression from a limited number of conversations (and these comments by three organisations working on wild animal welfare research) is that progress for effective animal advocacy research organisations seems to be slowed more by a lack of funding than by a lack of good candidates. Of course, these organisations may not be highly representative of the animal advocacy space more broadly.”

Which institutional tactics can animal advocates use?

Jamie_Harris

29 Apr 2020 14:11 UTC

17 points

0 comments10 min readEA link

Jamie_Harris 26 Apr 2020 16:56 UTC
3 points

on: What are some good online courses relevant to EA?
The Good Food Institute have a short online course relevant to animal-free food technology. It’s not very detailed, but I understand that they are working on adding to it so that it becomes a more thorough walk-through of the issues and technical knowledge.
Additionally, Animal Advocacy Careers is a new nonprofit focusing on addressing career and talent bottlenecks in the effective animal advocacy community. One intervention that we’re planning to trial this year is running an online course and workshop focusing on integrating 1) effective animal advocacy research and 2) 80k and EA career considerations into career decision-making. People can express interest in participating in that programme here.

Jamie_Harris 26 Apr 2020 16:02 UTC
5 points

on: What career advice gaps are you trying to fill?
Animal Advocacy Careers is a new nonprofit focusing on addressing career and talent bottlenecks in the effective animal advocacy community.
Soon, we’ll be publishing online “skills profiles”, comparable to 80,000 Hours profiles on AI safety policy work and operations. We’ll providing one-to-one careers coaching for people interested in maximising their impact for animals through their careers. We’ll be running an online course and workshop focusing on integrating 1) EAA research and 2) 80k and EA career considerations into career decision-making. People can express interest in participating in those programmes here.
We’re also running training programmes with animal advocacy organisations, focusing on upskilling their staff on areas that are a bit of a bottleneck.
As context, see this post I wrote. In the 80k post that you linked to, 80k wrote: “We don’t intend to create new detailed articles about animal welfare or global health. You can see our old articles on these subjects here and here.”
(Vaidehi, I know you already know this, but sharing for the benefit of any other readers!)

Jamie_Harris 26 Apr 2020 8:41 UTC
1 point

in reply to: Dale’s comment on: Effective Animal Advocacy Nonprofit Roles Spot-Check
I don’t think that the baseline we should expect if all was fair and there was perfect equality of opportunity is 50% female. Bear in mind that far more veg*ns are female than male (without looking into the best studies on this, a quick Google suggests 80% female in the US). I’d guess that “animal advocates” has a similar gender balance. So this would suggest that women are still slightly underrepresented in paid roles, or at least that they’re not overrepresented. Also note that women are slightly underrepresented in management and leadership roles in my findings compared to the number of employees (although not by as much as I would have guessed)

Jamie_Harris 7 Apr 2020 12:37 UTC
2 points

in reply to: agent18’s comment on: A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
I find this very hard to understand.
This is useful feedback. I might need to work on the wording.
Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right?
I don’t think I agree with that—I think the important consideration is the number of identified advertised roles of a particular type relative to the number of identified currently filled roles of the same type. Not the number of advertised roles of type A relative to advertised roles of type B. But FWIW the full report is now published.
this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims
I agree its weak evidence; I think it’s the weakest of the 5 bullet points above. I find weak evidence useful.

Jamie_Harris 7 Apr 2020 12:34 UTC
1 point

in reply to: jasonk’s comment on: A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
Thanks for the input! If the above bullet points were evidence of funding constraints, then this “more negative reading” would be a plausible alternative explanation. But I’m not following how the above bullet points could be read in this way. Apologies if I’m missing something.
Are you thinking this applies to all 5 of the above bullet points? Or specific bullet points within that group?

Jamie_Harris 5 Apr 2020 9:55 UTC
1 point

in reply to: agent18’s comment on: A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
<<Would you be able to give me a real example to satisfy your claim?>>

The difference here is probably whether an individual or an organisation (80k, AAC) is evaluating TC.

If, via some research, you have the ability to either 1) make claims about TC across a movement or range or orgs, with moderate confidence or 2) make claims about TC in one or two orgs, with higher confidence, an individual might opt for (2), as they can focus on orgs they’re more interested in. But 80k/AAC would opt for (1), because the advice is useful to a larger number of people?

<<I am lost. What is “MANY”? What does a “position in government” even look like.>> Given that the ideal distribution of roles and applicants and how this compares to the current situation is only really one consideration among several important considerations that affect career decisions (i.e. it affects your comparative advantage), maybe a high level of precision isn’t that important?

Jamie_Harris 2 Apr 2020 20:32 UTC
5 points

in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Effective Animal Advocacy Nonprofit Roles Spot-Check
Yeah part of the appeal of this project was that I could do it independently without relying on connections or asking orgs to fill out a survey (we’re going to use a lot of them going forwards I imagine). There are definitely things we can play around with going forwards to get better information about these things.

Jamie_Harris 2 Apr 2020 6:26 UTC
3 points

in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Effective Animal Advocacy Nonprofit Roles Spot-Check
<<E.g., of all recently open roles, how many remain open>> I agree that this is probably more informative, but this would require ongoing monitoring to measure and evaluate so it’s not appropriate for this “spot-check” methodology? I think that that suggestion comes under the general category of further research that could be be possible in combination with a a jobs board, which I referred to briefly to in the first bullet point in the further research section.

Effective Animal Advocacy Nonprofit Roles Spot-Check

Jamie_Harris

31 Mar 2020 15:22 UTC

50 points

9 comments14 min readEA link

Jamie_Harris 28 Mar 2020 11:07 UTC
14 points

in reply to: agent18’s comment on: A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
I’m currently doing some research for Animal Advocacy Careers on specific skill types in animal advocacy that will be posted in forthcoming “skills profiles.” An example from my draft report on fundraising roles is below. Feedback very welcome! (Obviously this is an unusual case in that its a talent constraint directly relating to funding constraints.)
- In our short initial survey and interviews with 12 CEO’s and hiring professionals from 9 of the “top” or “standout” charities currently or formerly recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, 5 respondents selected “fundraising experience” as one of up to 6 skills (out of 25 options) that their organisation most needed; this was the second most frequently selected option, after “management.”
- 2 out of 10 respondents to the same survey mentioned fundraising roles as being “the hardest to fill.”
- In our “spot-check” [note, this is forthcoming research, which will likely be released within a week] of current roles and advertised roles at 27 animal advocacy nonprofits, fundraising was the skillset that was most notably overrepresented in animal advocacy job adverts (appearing to be important in 17% of identified job ads) relative to the number of current roles in the movement (appearing to be important in 10% of current roles); this may imply that these roles are unusually hard to fill and that fundraising expertise is undersupplied in the community, relative to its needs. As discussed in our blog post on the spot-check, however, this research provides only very weak evidence on the question of what the movement’s greatest bottlenecks are.
- There is evidence from a 2013 report that senior fundraisers are difficult to hire in US nonprofits generally. This makes it seem more likely that animal advocacy nonprofits face the same difficulty.
- The same report found evidence that smaller nonprofits may struggle to attract the most experienced fundraisers. Given that many animal advocacy organisations have small budgets, this provides another reason to expect that animal advocacy organisations will struggle to hire fundraisers, though this is only very weak evidence that this is a bottleneck for the movement.

Jamie_Harris 28 Mar 2020 11:02 UTC
7 points

on: A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
Thanks for the reminder of the EA Leaders Forum survey—I’d forgotten about that and was relying on the 2018 80k findings. A couple of minor comments/questions:
In this post, discussions are focused on Orgs that are TC and not Causes that are TC. When I read that AI strategy is TC with the lack of “Disentanglement Research” (DR), I don’t know what to do about it. But if I know FHI and many other orgs are TC in DR, then I could potentially upskill in DR, and close the talent gap. So looking at causes for me, is less helpful, less concrete and is not what I have set out to understand.
Isn’t TC in the movement just the aggregation of TC in relevant orgs and actors? There’s a tradeoff between specificity/concreteness and representativeness/generalisability, and for most purposes, the latter seems more useful to me?
I didn’t know of any other sources doing this sort of research and coaching for people
Animal Advocacy Careers will be offering one-to-one advising soon. Before it is officially launched, people can sign up to express their interest here.

Jamie_Harris 28 Mar 2020 10:11 UTC
4 points

in reply to: HaydenW’s comment on: Why not give 90%?
<<My guess is that the main reason for that is that more devoted people tend to pledge higher amounts.>>
That could account for part of it, though, according to this article, “multiple studies have demonstrated that people perform better when goals are set higher and made more challenging.” I haven’t looked into this in more detail, but I’ve heard other social scientists who research behaviour change make similar claims (e.g. on this podcast).
My guess is that there’s a sweet spot of challenge/demandingness that is optimal, and that that sweet spot varies substantially by the individual.
(PS thanks for this post, I’ve had similar thoughts before and like the theoretical demonstration in expected value terms of the risk of giving up.)

Jamie_Harris 25 Mar 2020 8:33 UTC
2 points

in reply to: Animal_Ethics’s comment on: Surveying attitudes towards helping wild animals among scientists and students
Yeah, that definitely seems a reasonable concern. I guess you could still follow up the survey with an additional question for those who gave more favourable responses? Would depend on how you collected the survey though, e.g. if it was anonymous.

<<Other surveys among scientists do get much higher response rates, although they can vary a lot.>>
If you know of specific, comparable examples and are able to share their names/citations I’d be keen to take a look at them. This seems like a fairly difficult-to-Google topic, although I found one survey that received responses from 190 of the 231 academic departments that it mailed surveys to.
I might refer to your survey (and the point I’m making here, about high interest from respondents but a low response rate) in a research report I’m writing at the moment.

Jamie_Harris

The Effects of An­i­mal-Free Food Tech­nol­ogy Aware­ness on An­i­mal Farm­ing Opposition

Which in­sti­tu­tional tac­tics can an­i­mal ad­vo­cates use?

Effec­tive An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Non­profit Roles Spot-Check

The Effects of Animal-Free Food Technology Awareness on Animal Farming Opposition

Which institutional tactics can animal advocates use?

Effective Animal Advocacy Nonprofit Roles Spot-Check