JoA🔸

Karma: 197

Campaign coordinator for the World Day for the End of Fishing and Fish Farming, organizer of Sentience Paris 8 (animal ethics student group), FutureKind AI Fellow, enthusiastic donor.

Fairly knowledgeable about the history of animal advocacy and possible strategies in the movement. Very interested in how AI developments and future risks could affect non-human animals (both wild and farmed).

“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🔸Jun 5, 2025, 6:08 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Tacit knowledge: how I *exactly* approach EAG(x) conferences
Concise, concrete, helpful: much appreciated, thank you!

JoA🔸Jun 4, 2025, 6:17 AM
5 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Chicken reforms and veg advocacy may contribute to the Small Animal Replacement Problem—it’s not just environmental strategies
I appreciate the shortness of this post: plus, that makes it more convenient to use as a link if I ever find myself making this point in a discussion.

JoA🔸Jun 2, 2025, 6:15 PM
12 points
2 ∶ 0
on: The Horror Of Unfathomable Pain
Morality for me is about crying out at the horrors of the universe and pleading for them to stop.
I think about this quote on a nearly daily basis, it sits close to my heart. I agree that this is one of your most important articles!

JoA🔸May 29, 2025, 8:50 PM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Long-Run Human Impact On Wild Animal Suffering: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
(Not a very high-effort comment, reposting it from Substack for encouragement)^[1]I
Super excited to see you going into this area. It’s a thorny field where a lot of speculation is currently needed, and it seems most people who care about this (not that there are many of us), still defer to Brian Tomasik articles from fifteen years ago. It’s cool to see someone with your degree of visibility carrying the torch, and it motivates me to speak up on this topic too. I applied to give a talk about how to reduce wild animal suffering now (and considerations for wild animal suffering in the future) at an animal advocacy conference this summer, and while I have no confirmation that I’ll be able to do it, you played a role in me proposing this topic.
1. ^
  I must confess that I comment early whenever I see a Bentham’s Bulldog post about invertebrates or other animals, to send a signal that some dedicated readers do care about the subject and want to see more of it. Let’s just say that for now, my positive reactions still stick out amidst the comments, sadly.

JoA🔸May 20, 2025, 6:04 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jim Buhler’s comment on: Sentientia, Reversomelas, and the Small Animal Replacement Problem
(my answer is kind of messy as I probably misunderstood some of your points while first writing it, and then edited in a disorderly fashion)
What will shape the future is always unclear. Naively predictable factors that seem much larger than animal advocacy to me are:
- Caring about the environment / sustainability: it’s likely that if these factors remain important in society, some forms of farming could be severely restricted (cow farming, but also perhaps some forms of fish farming?)
- Cultural / commercial contingencies: stuff like the popularity of sushi in the west, successful ad campaigns by red lobster, seem to have significantly influenced the demand for small animals
- Technological development: current developments may make cow farming more sustainable (good for small animals), but productivity developments will probably be more significant for small animal farming, which is much less efficient currently and has more room for improvement.
Sure, animal advocates could strategically try to influence these factors in one direction or the other, but I’d see at possible marginal impact over force currently beyond their control. Regarding second-order effects of the moral advocacy / cultural influence aspect of animal advocacy, I can’t remember ever encountering any indication of the fact that people in the west were eating more chickens^[1], crustaceans and fishes because of culturally-encouraged empathy for large animals. Maybe there are non-consumer cases where a link can be drawn, such as ethical criticisms of meat from large animals being leveraged by the insect farming industry, but this is more of an imaginary example as I’m not sure this has been the case.
As for whether animal advocates are still likely to influence SARP: yes, but plausibly only marginally, unless they act with a strategic mindset in some key field (eg through getting a ban on the use of Precision Livestock Farming for large animals but not for small animals). I agree that it should be taken more seriously. However, I think whether current animal advocacy efforts increase or decrease SARP is very unclear to me. There are definitely strategic questions to be asked here, such as whether welfare reforms that drive up the prices of products from large animals will increase the consumption of small animals, or whether the movement should try to be aligned with the environmental movement (who seems to have a larger effect on SARP), and reminding advocates that SARP actually matters a lot is a good step in that direction. I wonder to what extent the big animal welfare orgs are currently thinking about this (it seems to be on L214′s mind from what I’ve heard floating around, but it’s unclear whether their current efforts are going in the right direction).
1. ^
  Matt Ball is definitely an interesting case, it’s surprising that the person who’s probably been the most outspoken about SARP is also the one anti-invertebrate sentience advocate in the movement.

JoA🔸May 20, 2025, 5:48 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Fai’s comment on: Asymmetries, AI and Animal Advocacy
Thanks for questioning my imprecise definition! I was thinking (too?) broadly of vegans in general or casual activists. Even within this community, few prioritize animal suffering as evidenced by low participation in animal advocacy events and careers. While we could narrow our focus to ‘extremely dedicated animal advocates,’ this represents just thousands of individuals worldwide against billions of consumers and thousands of highly motivated industry stakeholders who likely match or exceed their commitment level.

JoA🔸May 16, 2025, 6:35 AM
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Asymmetries, AI and Animal Advocacy
This makes important points about strategy in a field where a lot is yet to be mapped and defined, and this is potentially useful in order to do that. I appreciate your concision, too.
The most important asymmetry for animal advocates seems to be the truth asymmetry, especially moral alignment to consumers. One of the only reasons I can find to feel hopeful about farmed animal advocacy is that animal advocates are likely to be much more aligned with the general preferences of individual consumers than those who wish to encourage factory farming. Optimistic scenarios of AGI development allowing for better decision-making could increase the chances that these consumer preferences can be leveraged (though I’m not sure how hopeful I am about this for now).
An asymmetry that seems more doubtful to me is the motivational asymmetry: I don’t get the impression that the majority of animal advocates are strongly motivated by reducing animal suffering, and there might be a sufficient number of stakeholders (in a broad sense) in animal agriculture who are likely to be as motivated as the minority of “highly motivated” animal advocates.
This will probably be helpful for my own strategic thinking on this question, so thank you for posting this!

JoA🔸May 15, 2025, 7:48 PM
7 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Sentientia, Reversomelas, and the Small Animal Replacement Problem
I found this post excellent and original. SARP is an immense problem and still seems crucially neglected within EA animal advocacy, perhaps because it’s still difficult to find good theories of change aimed at preventing it. This also might be the first piece I encounter that treats SARP as more than a short-termist concern.
While I superficially agree with the overall point, I do have a few cruxes. “[...] advocacy towards considering the suffering of mammals farmed for their meat, seems to be contributing to the growth of the farming of smaller animals” seems like a core claim, and yet there’s no link or footnote for tentative evidence^[1]. Yes, vegan advocacy and SARP have both grown in the past ten years, but does correlation imply causation?
My second crux ends up being kind of the same as the first one. I find both Sentientia and Reversomelas implausible, because I find it unlikely that the values of a tiny minority of present-day humans (animal advocates) will have a strong effect on the values of society in the future.
Overall, while I found the post enriching, I find myself disagreeing with the premise somewhat. Your description of the present, as well as those of both futures, seem to give too much weight to moral adovcacy, compared to other factors. While I think that the size of animals that will be farmed in the future matters a lot, I think that the factors that will determine that are neither the way current vegans talk about animals, nor the choices we make in welfare campaigns during this decade.
1. ^
  Since veganism / antispeciesism opposes the farming of small animals, by contrast with environmentalists who are likelier to be favorable to insect farming for pet feed or honey production while being critical of the farming of large animals, there is a strong “superficial” case for thinking that the vegan / sentientist meme is likelier to attenuate SARP than to worsen it. Another point would be the (very minor) waves that shrimp welfare campaigns have made recently.
  There are obvious counterpoints to my position though: cow-focused environmental / leaning vegan material like Cowspiracy has probably worsened SARP on the margin.

JoA🔸May 7, 2025, 7:35 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: GideonF’s comment on: Community Polls for the Community
I thought of insect farming, but this is definitely one too!

JoA🔸May 6, 2025, 12:09 PM
7 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Henry Stanley 🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets
To be precise, I didn’t say the post committed any norm violation (and Henry Stanley didn’t either), I made the vaguer claim that it doesn’t fit the standards of discussion that are often seen on the EA Forum (a “generous” approach, scout mindset).

JoA🔸May 4, 2025, 7:02 AM
9 points
7 ∶ 2
on: Don’t Void Your Pets
I appreciate some of the concerns raised here, and share some of them myself (I think focusing on “rights”, especially in the way Francione and Charlton usually frame them, has been unhelpful in animal ethics, especially when it comes to the discipline’s public image).
However, while I don’t want to be holding linkposts to unreasonable standards (and the post would probably have been more nuanced if it had been planned as an EA Forum linkpost), I did find the article quite uncharitable to the two things it critiques: the calling into attention of the harms that can come to domestic animals, and minimalist axiologies.
Regarding the former: in the comments, you mention second-order effects that could come from “humane farming” in the future, but in the post itself, you don’t link the strays whose lives you acknowledge to be bad to the breeding of pets themselves. Currently, domestic animals are often bred in operations with poor welfare standards, and many are mistreated and abandoned by their owners. I do think Francione and Charlton are not doing the cause a favor by pointing to “rights” instead of the tangible, terrible experiences that millions of domestic animals face every year, but I don’t think it can be said that there’s “no trade-off” with another’s interests here: if we focus on domestic animals that will live long, good lives, and think it’s important that more exist and thus think that the pet industry should continue existing as it currently does, this will cause more strays (not to mention all the short and miserable lives that end at the puppy mills itself), and more domestic animals who might end up in homes where they are mistreated.
So to me, this example isn’t a spotless application of the idea you wish to defend: but I’m also not sure there are any good applications of this idea that can be as broad as “the existence of pets”, as there are generally significant trade-offs with other’s interests when creating good lives, as our resources could be allocated elsewhere (as has been pointed out by Magnus Vinding).
Regarding the latter: calling a philosophical position “a pathology” with no further justification is not the sort of thing I usually expect to find on the forum, though it’s still common when it comes to minimalist axiologies and related views.

JoA🔸May 2, 2025, 6:52 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Denkenberger🔸’s comment on: Poll: the next existential catastrophe is likelier than not to wipe off all animal sentience from the planet
I realize I didn’t choose a clear position on this in my description, and I’m actually not sure. I’d call a complete, seemingly irreversible collapse of civilization, even with humans remaining on earth (what the outcome of a nuclear war could be, for example), an X-risk even if it’s not full-on extinction, but when it comes to lock-in and disempowerment, since humans (and presumably other animals) remain numerous and living, it doesn’t feel like it should be part of the same question. I’d say my question is about X-risks involving death and destruction (or even mass sterilization), rather than a change in who controls the outcome.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 7:17 PM
2 points
2 ∶ 1
on: Prioritizing Work
I read this on the morning of a sunny national holiday that I spent indoors, typing away as usual, and I came back to it three times, it really resonates. I might even translate it in French, crediting you (if that’s alright) and share it with acquaintances (or simply paraphrase it) next time they seem confused or worried by me choosing to make work my main focus in life. I really like the last sentence in particular.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 7:11 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
We should promote AI safety ideas more than other EA ideas
AI Safety work is likely to be extremely important, but “other EA ideas” is too broad for me to agree. It would mean, for example, that it’s more important than the “three radical ideas” and I have trouble agreeing with that.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 7:08 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
We should focus more on building particular fields (AI safety, effective global health, etc.) than building EA
I don’t have very specific arguments. EA community-building seems valuable, but I do think that work on specific causes can be interesting and scalable (for example, Hive, AI for Animals, of the Estivales de la question animale in France, all concretely seems like good ways to draw new individuals into the EA/EA-adjacent community).

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 7:04 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
Most AI safety outreach should be done without presenting EA ideas or assuming EA frameworks
Agree “on principle”, clueless (and concerned) on consequences.
From my superficial understanding of the current psychological research on EA (by Caviola and Althaus), a lot of core EA ideas are unlikely to really resonate with the majority of individuals, while the case for building safer AI seems to have broader appeal. Nonetheless, I do worry that AI Safety with a lack of EA ideas involved is more likely to favor an ethics of survival rather than a welfarist ethic, is unlikely to take S-risks / digital sentience into account, so it also seems possible that scaling in that way could have very negative outcomes.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 7:00 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
We should be trying to accelerate the EA community and brand’s current trajectory (i.e., ‘rowing’) versus trying to course-correct the current trajectory (i.e., ‘steering’)
Not a very developed objection, but “steering” seems to lack tractability to me, so I’d rather see the EA community scale to an extent, even though it could be perfected. Things like GWWC aiming to increase the number of pledge takers, or CEA organizing more medium-scale summits, seems more tractable to me, and potentially quite good.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 6:58 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
The case for doing EA community building hinges on having significant probability on ‘long’ (>2040) AI timelines
Not sure it’s okay to say this, but I simply agree with Michael Dickens on this. If we expect to have have AGI by 2038, or even say, 2033 (8 years from now!) it seems like EA community building could be very important. I know people who went full-time into AI safety / governance work less than one year after discovering the issue through EA.

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 6:55 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Community Polls for the Community
There exists a cause which ought to receive >20% of the EA community’s resources but currently receives little attention
Agree depending on what counts as “little attention”. Wild animal welfare, perhaps S-risks, but neither of those are completely neglected.
I’d also be tempted to say “limiting the development of insect farming” as it seems likely to be very cost-effective, but I don’t think the field could currently absorb that much funding.

Poll: the next existential catastrophe is likelier than not to wipe off all animal sentience from the planet

JoA🔸May 1, 2025, 6:49 PM

18 points

7 comments1 min readEA link

JoA🔸

Poll: the next ex­is­ten­tial catas­tro­phe is like­lier than not to wipe off all an­i­mal sen­tience from the planet

Poll: the next existential catastrophe is likelier than not to wipe off all animal sentience from the planet