JoA🔸

Karma: 359

Volunteer spread over multiple animal welfare orgs, freelance translator, and enthusiastic donor. Reasonably clueless about what interventions are impartially good. Past experiences include launching an animal ethics university group, coordinating small campaigns in animal advocacy, and designing automated workflows in that context.

“We have enormous opportunity to reduce suffering on behalf of sentient creatures [...], but even if we try our hardest, the future will still look very bleak.”—Brian Tomasik

JoA🔸 2 Dec 2025 19:14 UTC
12 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Poll: Wild animal vs Farm Animal welfare
(20% Wild Animal Welfare)
Nice poll, but tough call! With the little we know, the effects of interventions on wild animals seem likely to outweigh those on farmed animals. However, we do not have a clear notion of how current wild animal interventions (even field-building and research) will affect wild animals in the long run (though this is also true of interventions that don’t aim to help wild animals).

I do not think a “robust” and “safe” pick in animal welfare exists yet (that we’re aware of): under the current state of my uncertainties, I’m voting with my dollars on invertebrate welfare interventions (though those are still probably outweighed by effects on wild invertebrates). Though I’m gradually seeing the appeal of funding more research (especially on small wild animals).

Slightly in favor of wild animal welfare here, because it seems likely that if we gain enough knowledge to find a robust intervention in animal welfare, it will target wild animals directly or indirectly (since they’re probably the dominant group of moral patients).

JoA🔸 1 Dec 2025 18:23 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Subagents for Shrimp
Nice post! Though it comes from another post of yours, I appreciated the paragraph about how “common sense” worldviews may suffer from fanaticism. Thank you for contributing to Shrimpact week!

JoA🔸 30 Nov 2025 16:22 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: My 2025 donations (so far)
I want people who have influence over the EA community (and humanity in general) to be making decisions from an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset
In case you read the comments here: do you have a short form / a blog post on this (even from someone else) that you’d like to link to?

JoA🔸 26 Nov 2025 9:12 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: a Fun Idea for attracting New Funders: Pet Sitting
Great post! It’s quite common to see solid ideas like this on the EA Forum, but seeing them executed is rare. And it’s a nice change to see a more in-person kind of outreach for effective giving, in particular for animals. I’m interested to see a follow-up learned on what you’ll have learned after giving season!

JoA🔸 18 Nov 2025 15:57 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Angelina Li’s comment on: A list of resources on Cluelessness
Were I to pick only one that’s at once rigorous and accessible, I’d say the first post in Anthony DiGiovanni’s sequence on Unawereness (20m read officially, but has some references and charts, so I’d say it probably takes 10 minutes to read it: 1. The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance: Introduction

JoA🔸 17 Nov 2025 21:19 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: How feasible is it to work at non-EA organizations while still doing genuinely altruistic work of AI risks?
Hi! My superficial understanding is that grantmakers in s-risks have a certain bar for what they’re open to funding, and that they generally have the capacity to fund a marginal independent researcher if their work is sufficiently promising. If, in the future, you seem like an individual with a track record that is good enough in funders’ views (maybe that can come through doing independent research, applying to fellowships, doing non-S-risk related research at AI labs, etc.), then receiving funding will be possible, as money does not seem to be the primary constraint (at leas that’s not what grantmakers in the field seem to think). But that is a high bar to pass.

If you actually manage to save a 150,000$ per year, Macroscopic can advise you in donations to reduce S-risks, which would be a considerable contribution to a cause you seem to care about a lot. (I have no ties to Macroscopic, the information is publically available on their website)

JoA🔸 17 Nov 2025 7:23 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Can we regain innocence and common sense? Exploring a radically life-affirming stance
Thank you for this post, Zlatko! Welcome to the forum, and well-done for your transparent criticism of a perspective you find repugnant. Many individuals prefer to call such perspectives “crazy” without justification. So reading this was a good way to start the week.
I think this post is quite valuable, since it defends a point of view (that it’s not super cautious to just reduce the amount of net-negative lives) that seems somewhat common in EA, but is also rarely defended as such. Some thoughts (lengthy, but there’s a lot of content in your post!):
- I think this is a much stronger point than arguing that many animal lives could simply be positive on a hedonistic utilitarian view (less repugnant, requires less arguments from implausible interpersonal tradeoffs)
- In the takeaways, however, you don’t focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, it’s probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more “maximizing” takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesn’t seem to have affected the world much for now).
My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:
- I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say “Most suffering is not in that category.”, and I entirely agree.
  - However, I’m inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if it’s a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether there’s a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether it’s such a strong positive value that it “outweighs” the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).
- More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but I’d be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they can’t spread their wings. I assume, eg, “tasting food” feels very different when you’ve only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.
Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! That’s not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.

JoA🔸 15 Nov 2025 18:57 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Historical EA funding data: 2025 update
This is super insightful, thank you!

JoA🔸 15 Nov 2025 9:39 UTC
11 points
7 ∶ 0
on: If wild animal welfare is intractable, everything is intractable.
This going in my personal best-of for Forum posts of 2025! You explore crucial considerations and possible responses in a clear and transparent way, with pleasant sequencing. I find it very helpful in order to be less confused about my reactions in the face of backfire effects.

JoA🔸 13 Nov 2025 21:12 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Zoe L’s comment on: EA Has a Branding Problem
Hi Zoe! It’s thrilling to meet others with interest in invertebrate welfare (doesn’t happen every day), and congratulations again for donating to a cause that is rarely considered appealing! Unsurprisingly, there’s really no consensus on what one should do for animals in the face of AGI. However, there’s a lot of exchange around what AI could mean for animals on the Sentient Futures slack, and if you have some thoughts you want to share about this, I’m sure there are many members there (including me) who’d be happy to read your current takes on the topic!

JoA🔸 13 Nov 2025 21:09 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: How to Virtue Signal the “Right” Way
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this important topic! I enjoyed reading it, and I loved the reference to the supporter/fan framework from Mjreard.

My feelings: the EA community is somewhat better than average at 1-2, most definitely better at 4 in certain cases (and I think cultivated meat is a good example, as EA circles very often argue for it on non-animal welfare grounds). I agree that 5 is an EA failure mode (I’m on the obsequious / sycophant side, I’m a bit cowardly and think being “fully transparent” about your values often leads to unproductive conflict), and 3 is something where improvement could be made (though it’s hard-ish for longtermist causes, or even when you care about animals—heck, even discussing the welfare of cute mice seems to backfire).

Again, this is an important topic, since how we influence others positively could have a large impact, and taking a few hours to think about how to do it right is certain worth it.

JoA🔸 7 Nov 2025 22:41 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: 12 Theses on EA
3. The psychology of professional sports is surprisingly healthy.
This thesis is one of the most insightful community-related things I’ve read on the forum. I’d love to read more about if and hear if you think there’s anything actionable on the margin (highly de-emphasize careers within EA orgs in outreach material, especially now that top impact may have moved elsewhere, eg, in high-impact non-EA roles?). Thanks!

JoA🔸 7 Nov 2025 20:16 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why I Think All The Species Of Significantly Debated Consciousness Are Conscious And Suffer Intensely
In the spirit of thanking whoever helped you, this post was what finally convinced me to substantially donate (1,500$+ since then) to charities working on limiting the growth of insect farming when I read it in February of 2025. And yet, I had already substantially engaged with work on insect suffering, especially from Tomasik. Not sure what pushed me over the edge, but this post really managed to make take in the current evidence as worthy of influencing my priorities.

JoA🔸 7 Nov 2025 20:07 UTC
12 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Incomparability Implies Nihilism
I’m not well-learned enough on this, but it seems that you would appreciate this very cool recent post which (badly summarized) kind of explains how one can still have forms of moral action-guidance even if some sound moral theories (in your post, a form of impartial consequentialism?) imply that “none of our actions matter” : Resolving radical cluelessness with metanormative bracketing.

JoA🔸 6 Nov 2025 16:10 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Summit 2025: Paris—Retrospective
Really cool! Love these breakdowns that go into the weeds of measurable impact.

“Programming: Some more focus on EA’s past achievements would have been beneficial in making a more compelling case for the movement as a whole.”

I intuitively agree (“track record” seems like one of the strongest arguments for EA (obligatory Scott Alexander reference), especially in global health and farm animal welfare), but I wonder what makes you say that. Was it something you heard in the feedback form?

JoA🔸 5 Nov 2025 15:13 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 0
on: EA Has a Branding Problem
Welcome to the Forum, Zoe! I guess my knee-jerk response to this would be that I agree that these are significant problems with EA branding, I don’t think most of these have easy, tractable answers (sadly a common occurrence in EA branding problems imo, eg “longtermism” being perceived as callous toward present-day issues).
“Hive mind” seems hard to avoid when building a community of people working toward common goals that are somewhat strange. “Holier-than-thou” is almost inevitable in “doing the most good one can” (and EA seems in fact quite relaxed by this standard, though your specific criticisms of the 10% pledge were interesting to read). “Sounds like AI”, however, is probably fixable, and individuals could make some efforts, in the age where “AI-like writing” is increasingly criticized, to have a slightly warmer style, and maybe to de-emphasize bulletpoints somewhat? (less sure about this, I like bulletpoints)
But above all, I want to say, congratulations on your yearly donations! Even if it’s not the holy grail of 10%, 10K a year is absolutely no joke, and giving 10% is far from having become an EA norm anyway. This level of donations, and the plan to keep going, is rare and precious. Thank you for doing so much for others!

JoA🔸 25 Oct 2025 4:59 UTC
5 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Should other EA cause areas try to copy the recent success of AI safety videos?
Interesting question! Might the Kurzgesagt video on factory farming count as an example of this for animal welfare? If someone wants to do it again, they could try to assess what they think the video did right (and wrong) and improve upon it. Maybe some cues on messaging could be taken from Lewis Bollard’s fairly successful appearance on the Dwarkesh podcast?

Also, a potential reason why AI Safety focused on it (compared to other cause areas) might be that they have pipelines which can absorb a fair amount of people, and so they find it more worthwhile to launch broad outreach that could get a few dozen counterfactual people applying to fellowships, and the like? This may less be the case for other causes when it comes to talent—I assume that for animal welfare and global health, the informal theory of change behind funding a high-quality video would be rather donation-focused. However, I could be wrong about the talent pipeline reason, and maybe some content creation funders mostly want to raise broad awareness of AI risk issues (seemed to be the case for the Future of Life Institute).

JoA🔸 20 Oct 2025 13:57 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Discussions of Longtermism should focus on the problem of Unawareness
I think this is a very compelling (and enjoyable) essay. I particularly appreciate the first point of 2.1 as an intuitive reminder of the complicated empirical issues at hand. The main argument here is strengthened by this intuitive way of highlighting that doing (impartial) good is actually complicated.
I appreciate the efforts made here of highlighting alternatives to long-term EV maximization with precise credences, since the lack of “other options” can be a big mental blocker. Part 3 (and the conclusion, to an extent) seem to constitute the first solid high-level overview of this on the Forum, so this is quite helpful. Not to mention, these sections act as serious reminders of how important it is to “get it right”, whatever that ends up meaning.

JoA🔸 9 Oct 2025 6:43 UTC
16 points
4 ∶ 0
on: What to do about near-term cluelessness in animal welfare
When discussing considerations around backfire risks and near-term uncertainty, it is common to hear that this is all excessive nitpicking, and that such discussion lacks action guidance, making it self-defeating. And it’s true that raising salience of these issues isn’t always productive because it doesn’t offer clear alternatives to going with our best guess, deferring to current evaluators that take backfire risks less seriously, or simply not seeking out interventions to make the world a bit better.
Thus, because this article centers the discussion on the search for positive interventions through a reasonably action list of criteria, it has been one of my most valuable reads of the year.
I think the more time we spend exploring the consequences of our interventions, the more we realize that doing good is hard. But it’s plausibly not insurmountable, and there may be tentative, helpful answers to the big question of effective altruism down the line. I hope that this document will inspire stronger consideration for uncertainty. Because the individuals impacted by near-term second-order effects of an action are not rhetorical points or numbers on a spreadsheet: they’re as real and sentient as the target beneficiaries, and we shouldn’t give up on the challenge of limiting negative outcomes for them.

JoA🔸 24 Sep 2025 20:54 UTC
6 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Bracketing cluelessness: A new theory of altruistic decision-making
As someone who’s interested in the practical implications of cluelessness for practical decisions but would not be able to read that paper, I’m grateful that you went beyond a linkpost and took the time to make your theory accessible to more Forum readers. I’m excited to see what comes next in terms of practical action guidance beyond the reliance on EV estimates. Thank you so much for a great read!