Jesse Gainsburg

Karma: 87

Jesse Gainsburg 30 Dec 2025 17:24 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tobias Häberli’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
This might be a bit pedantic, but I would note that Veganuary is more popular in the UK. If we adjust the Google trends search to be UK-only, it looks more comparable.
Of course, I suspect Movember is more US-based, so this is now maybe too biased towards Veganuary, and even so, Movember still outpaces Veganuary, but it does look more competitive.
(I don’t know if Black History Month is a fair comparable, especially considering it’s part of the US education system in a way the other two aren’t.)
Again, I don’t think this changes your larger point all that much, but figured additional context helps.

Jesse Gainsburg 24 Dec 2025 20:07 UTC
48 points
11 ∶ 3
on: EAs would mostly not have been abolitionists
I find this pretty unsavory. I identify as EA, but not particularly involved in the AI safety space, as I am more focused on animal welfare.
I have not been shy about drawing the comparison between slavery abolition and factory farming abolition, so I am someone who is willing to play that card so to speak.
Still, it seems to me that reasonable minds can disagree about the importance of AI safety and p(doom). AGI is hardly a surefire thing. The atrocities of slavery (and factory farming) are much realer and more tangible. I think comparing something that is not inevitable to that amount of visceral suffering, that suffering that has actually occurred doesn’t feel constructive.
I understand you are writing this to get a rise out of people just like me. But this misses the mark in my personal opinion.

Jesse Gainsburg 26 Nov 2025 17:49 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Benjamin M.’s comment on: 3 doubts about veganism
Interesting to here you say that, as most vegans I know in-person indeed do their best to adhere to a plant-based diet 100% of the time. Those that don’t will call themselves “mostly vegan” and still eat vegan 95%+ of the time.
Not here to claim you are not telling the truth, but rather to add a different set of anecdata to the conversation.

Jesse Gainsburg 18 Feb 2025 23:01 UTC
12 points
5 ∶ 2
in reply to: Henry Howard🔸’s comment on: Effective giving initiatives should not assume the best animal and human welfare interventions are equally cost-effective?
While this is true, I also think it’s worth considering that this is often a criticism of any CEA, period. To the average person, the suggestion that a GiveWell top-recommended charity is more cost-effective than, say, a local food kitchen similarly requires estimates with error bars.
Yes, there are more assumptions when dealing with animals given welfare ranges, but I am reluctant to dismiss the analysis entirely because of that.
It is not immediately intuitive to me on what grounds one should value a human life more than that of a cow or pig. The moral weights project tries to put a number to something difficult to quantify. It’s not perfect, but it is better than nothing. (To be clear, I do value the human life more, but it seems unfair and speciest to do so.)

Jesse Gainsburg 6 Jan 2025 16:12 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Vegetarian or not..?
There are many more arguments both for and against that I’m not going to enumerate here, but are definitely available elsewhere in the forum. I’ll also plug that I agree with Henry’s comment—there are grassroots effects that are hard to measure, but my intuition is they have sneakily high EV.
But the main argument for me, and many other vegans (and vegetarians, but I’ll just say vegans for brevity) I know, is that at some point, they stop wanting to eat meat. If one truly views it as a chore, it will always be seen as a sacrifice. However, if the notion of eating animal products truly grosses you out, then it’s basically easier to be vegan than to eat meat.
I am not trying to deny that animal products can smell or taste great! But at this point, if I were to have a bite of chicken, the first thought for me would be “I am eating this factory farmed chicken that lived a horrible life of abject suffering” and not “hey, this tastes good.” It just grosses me out. Perhaps this would be a corollary to your point 5, but at some point, the dedication to the diet becomes more internalized. At that point, points 2 and 3 somewhat fall off, because it’s just a baseline lifestyle rather than part of my EA-aligned activities.
(To be clear, I acknowledge that this isn’t a universal vegan experience. I don’t mean to invalidate longtime committed vegetarians/vegans who don’t view meat the same way I do. I just mean to point out that there is potentially some light at the end of the tunnel that makes committing to this diet/lifestyle significantly easier. For me, that was about one year after transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism. Watching Dominion helped lock in any remaining doubts I may have had at the 1.5-2 year mark.)

Jesse Gainsburg 10 Apr 2024 16:05 UTC
19 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Should I donate my kidney or part of my liver?
While your primary question is whether you should donate your kidney or liver lobe, I actually reject your premise that you have to choose.
While hospitals don’t let you donate both at the same time for good reason, it’s now fairly common (insofar as living organ donation is common) for hospitals to allow folks to donate both assuming full recovery from the first operation.
I believe I was told when donating my kidney that I wouldn’t be eligible to donate part of my liver, though my memory is fuzzy because it was some years ago.
However, I looked into it after a few years, and sure enough, was cleared to donate part of my liver. Perhaps the medical community is slowly coming around to this, but the transplant clinic you are working with isn’t quite there yet.
I ended up going under the knife for the second time in July 2023. I was cleared to donate at two top-flight hospitals in the US despite my prior kidney donation, as a point of reference.
If you are truly interested in doing both, I’d suggest donating the kidney first. The recovery is not as strenuous, so it’s a good “trial run” to see if you would be interested in doing the liver donation, too. One point that might move you marginally more towards liver donation is that there is a group (NOTA) trying to legalize compensation for kidney donors which might increase the supply of donated kidneys, thus marginally making donated livers more valuable.
Today marks the 6-year anniversary of my kidney donation. Aside from the raw QALY’s of it all, I found it to be a rather rewarding experience.