Campaign coordinator for the World Day for the End of Fishing and Fish Farming, organizer of Sentience Paris 8 (animal ethics student group), 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).
I realized that there was not even one comment on this post, so I wanted to quickly drop in to say that this one of my favorite posts Iāve read on the forum. It has stuck with me in the past months. I appreciate how it remains relatively simple in its categories, while pointing out facts about our position in the world that we tend to take for granted.
It sometimes feels to me like in fundamental philosophical debates about value in EA (such as the value of existence or the moral value of individuals from different species), the crux is a sort of core, visceral intuition (I especially feel this way about questions regarding outweighing disvalue through value, or the importance of existence) - and the main defenders of suffering-focused ethics acknowledge this at times, supporting their arguments through vivid real-life examples that aim a the guts. It seems unlikely that any consensus will emergeāthough there is clearly a majority view for now that goes against suffering-focused views, but it is interesting to remind us where we are all speaking from, and this might be something that individuals with very different ethical positions can agree upon. An example of where this may help is during debates on the claim that āwe are biased against taking suffering seriously because we have experienced little to no extreme sufferingā is equally true as āwe donāt realize how important happiness is because we havenāt experienced extreme happinessā. I think that reminding ourselves that we are among the happier individuals existing right now on this planet makes might more likely to consider that we should, by default, be more prone to ignoring the intensity that suffering often reaches, than the intensity that happiness often reaches.
Very engaging post! I appreciated how it covered the many different aspects of the decision-making and transition process: rational, practical, social and emotional. I feel like this would have value to animal advocates who are not particularly interested in EA, as it would be a very concrete way of introducing the difficult questions one grapples with when considering impact. However, I am not sure where else this could be posted in order for members of this wider audience to access it.
I hope this is not too much of a digression from the core of the post, but I was struck to see that you cited Brian Tomasikās article as being more or less the spark that set the organization off on the course of reevaluating their interventions, and eventually changing their domain of action. I often notice individuals in EA organizationsāor non-EA animal advocatesāciting Tomasik as someone who has led them to reevaluate their considerations, and sometimes even to change the type of interventions that they put in place. He also seems to have come first in advocating for earning-to-give (in 2006), appears to be one of the most cited advocates for reducing wild-animal suffering (2009), created the second-ever table trying to evaluate direct suffering caused by animal foods (2007), and wrote the first article dedicated to s-risks (2013). These things have all been substantially expanded upon since, and some, such as Wild Animal Welfare, are even considered by somes as EA causes in their own right. Would I be wrong in considering Brian Tomasikās influence as having been comparably far-reaching within the movement (especially on the level of ideas) as Toby Ordās or Nick Bostromās ?
(Side note: I know this is probably not the most important subject to think about, but I find it helpful to get a clearer picture of where the core concepts and claims that make up Effective Altruism come from, in order to be more aware of the contingencies of the movement; also, trying to vaguely keep track of this helps me reflect on the influence that sharing ideas can haveāand that is something where on the surface level, Tomasikās record seems out of the ordinary, especially for someone who isnāt much of a public figure).
I suspect that all of the species that are currently of significantly debated consciousnessācall them swing state speciesāare conscious. This would include crabs, lobsters, fish, and most insects, but it wouldnāt include oysters or AI. Thereās fairly widespread agreement that such beings arenāt conscious.
Since he states here (and on another occasion in the article) that oysters arenāt conscious, he most likely believes that itās not morally wrong to eat oysters (and he probably also includes mussels and other bivalves in this category).
Short question: why do you say that one who adheres to determinism considers individuals to be genetic blank slates ? (Disclaimer: I know very little about genetics) It seems like if certain things will āinevitablyā make us react in a certain way, there must be a genetic component to these rules.
Several factors make me confident regarding the importance of this choice : the sheer scale and intensity of the suffering involved, the lower cost of helping nonhuman individuals in farms compared to humans, and the comparative small size of the aniimal welfare /ā advocacy movement giving $100m a potentially more important long-term impact.
I appreciated this postāI find it good to see arguments related to wild animal ethics developed in a framework that isnāt strictly consequentialist. I was a bit surprised by the references to creating new ecosystems on other planets, as that seems to be a quite different matter, and hadnāt really been introduced in the postābut maybe your original writeup contained previous references to this, which made the reference make more sense?