JoA🔸

• JoA🔸 10 Jan 2026 11:05 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: Against Suffer­ing-Minimization

  Thank you so much for pushing back on my simplistic comment! I agree that my framing was misleading (I commented without even re-reading had said). Thanks for highlighting crucial considerations on counterintuitive conclusions in NU and CU.

  Your comment makes me realize that an objection based on utopian situations makes sense (and I’ve found it reasonable in the past as a crux against NU). I guess my frustration with the use of the World Destruction Argument against NU, in the ways EAs often bring it up, is that it criticizes the fact that NU recommends extinction in our world (which contains suffering), even though CU has a decent chance of recommending extinction in our world (as soon as we determine whether wild invertebrates are living net-negative lives or not!).^[1]

  1. ^

     Though again, if there are higher chances of astronomically good than astronomically bad futures, animal suffering is easily outweighed in CU, but not in NU (but CUs could change their mind on the empirical aspect and recommend extinction). But my impression is that this isn’t what people (among non-philosophers, which includes me) are objecting to? They mostly seem to find deliberate extinction repugnant (which is something I think many views can agree upon).

An­i­mals in AI-trans­formed fu­tures: can any­thing be done to­day?

An­i­mals in AI-trans­formed fu­tures: will progress be made on this is­sue?

• JoA🔸 8 Jan 2026 5:04 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Clara Torres Latorre 🔸’s comment on: Against Suffer­ing-Minimization

  Nice comment! I answered one of your requests as a top-level comment.

• JoA🔸 8 Jan 2026 5:03 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Against Suffer­ing-Minimization

  Clara said she would appreciate “Any negative utilitarian or person knowledgeable about negative utilitarianism commenting on why NU doesn’t necessarily recommend extinction.”

  Simon Knutsson’s paper “The World Destruction Argument” has an argument that I’d simplify as “The World Destruction Problem is a problem of consequentialism, not of NU”. One of the arguments (simplifying) being that classic utilitarians would recommend the extinction of all sentient life if they found out that it was resiliently net negative, or that it could be replaced by marginally happier sentient life through killing off every current sentient being painlessly.

  For other thoughts on why Negative Utilitarianism doesn’t recommend extinction, see this excerpt from a Center For Reducing Suffering article.

• JoA🔸 22 Dec 2025 10:16 UTC

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: New Doc­u­men­tary on AI and Animals

  That’s huge! Can’t wait to see it.

• JoA🔸 20 Dec 2025 15:12 UTC

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Where did you donate this year?

  Shrimp Welfare Project, charities working on insect farming for feed, among others. Currently quite uncertain about the impact of this and may give the remainder of my donation budget to research.

• JoA🔸 12 Dec 2025 8:07 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Re­think epistemic stan­dards be­fore giv­ing that advice

  I think this point is potentially significant, but the post is clearly LLM-generated, and thus, most of the paragraphs don’t add much beyond the initial point of “there’s no Script of Truth and it depends on the person’s context”. In practice, I have no clear examples of people making wrong choices based on overconfident EA advice—in fact, my experience has been the opposite: people don’t want to give high-level advice, because they think it depends too much on the options that are available to me, and they couldn’t choose from there. Sure, counterexamples could exist, but this post hasn’t convinced me of this.

  I’d have found the post much more valuable if it had a few anonymized examples, rather than LLM-generated text to complete the main post.

You can be very helpful to first-timers at EA events

• JoA🔸 10 Dec 2025 16:40 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: I Donate be­cause I am Christian

  Such a lovely post, Nick! Made me chuckle, I really appreciate the eclectic sources and how you highlight uncertainties and nuances among Christians.

The world’s largest in­sect farm­ing com­pany has offi­cially gone bankrupt

• JoA🔸 7 Dec 2025 19:05 UTC

  10 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: On­line EAGs are un­der­rated (FBB #11)

  Strongly agree with this post! EA Connect has been more useful to me than the two in-person EA conferences I’ve attended, and I estimate I’ve been far more useful (as a mentor, but not only) at EA Connect than at these other conferences.

  No awesome afterparty

  
  I wonder if say, links to post-conference games of Gartic Phone and the like could be a low-cost way to recreate that moment where everyone winds down (esp since the online conference feels more serious and formal) for those who would be interested. (Not confident it’s a good idea, just throwing it out there.)

• 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

  1 ∶ 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

  0 points

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  on: His­tor­i­cal EA fund­ing data: 2025 update

  This is super insightful, thank you!