I just found out I got into an online one—so looking forwards to it! Thanks for the help :)
M Bennett
Karma: 7
Thank you!
I’m really glad I found this forum—so many interesting posts here! Since I’m fairly new to EA, is there anything you can recommend to start off with, to be more involved with the community?
I was also wondering if there were any learning resources? I’m in a technical program that only teaches industry specific things, and it feels a bit limiting in some ways. I’d love to learn more about moral philosophy and the different subjects EA focuses on.
Hi—I’m Mira. I got into vegan activism a few years ago where I met many utilitarians and effective altruists—I realized that my current activism wasn’t the highest impact way of driving change. I originally assumed that the reason people were disregarding the interests of other sentient life was because they had never been shown the conditions in factory farming, and that they would change instantly if only they knew. Then through activism I realized that people can know all of the arguements for veganism, can agree with vegans and yet not change and not be able to justify it. As soon as I realized raising awareness wouldn’t be enough—i thought of other more effective strategies. A friend who attended EA meetings told me that one tactic they’d discussed was to earn money in an unrelated field—to then donate that money. So now I’m pursuing a career as a chief in marine engineering. The job is high earning, with food and accommodation covered and little to no tax—i will also be travelling the world and have 6 months consecutive months off in a year when I’m not at sea. In that 6 months i would like to devote my time to studies in other fields—like politics, (i eventually hope to stop the government from funding animal agriculture through subsidies). Animal agriculture is so inefficient as an industry it cannot survive without billions (72 billion in the USA) in subsidies—so it would likely collapse if that funding stopped.
If anyone reading this is not familiar with veganism here’s some info:
Every year trillions of animals are killed unnecessarily—most of which (aquatic animals) are suffocated
It has been proven that animals feel pain, so from the stance of reducing suffering this should be our number one concern
All major dietetic associations across the globe have said that a balanced vegan diet is perfectly healthy for all stages of life
resolving this would also help: 1) world hunger—as animals are fed grains which are edible for humans. Around 70% of the worlds soy is fed to farmed animals, if this were fed to humans instead we could potentially end world hunger. 2) communicable diseases—almost all diseases, (including covid most recently) have origins in the crammed and unhygienic conditions farmed animals are raised in. 3) Prevent death—the two main causes of death globally are cancer and cardiovascular disease, both of which are primarily caused by processed meats which are a class 1 carcinogen (like cigarettes). 4) Environment—animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water and air pollution—it is also a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect through methane.
Many people assume that factory farms are not representative of animal agriculture in general—but recent data shows that 99% of meat in America is from factory farms (with similar rates across the globe)
My efforts right now are in veganism as i think it will help with so many other issues that it is the most effective problem to work on at the moment. That said, I’m also planning on studying AI in the near future, as its very possible we’ll reach AGI soon. I think it also opens up opportunities for new areas of study—there seems to be a strong link between neuropsychology and AI neural networks, i think combining the two could help us understand both subjects better.
Interested to hear your thoughts—thanks!
If I recall correctly we currently have the enough resources to care for 10 billion people—the issue is instead about distributing those resources.
I think many of the issues you mention (shortages in food, water, natural resources and land) are also mainly down to poor management of our finite resources. Just to illustrate this with an example, at the moment the leading cause of deforestation and water pollution is animal agriculture; it uses 83% of farmland while producing only 18% of calories. The animals also consume a lot of the world’s food (most of which is already edible for humans). Around 70% of soy is fed to animals raised for meat. All that to say that we don’t have to make difficult decisions about who to save, when we can change how we manage our resources and save all (in theory, granted it’s much easier said than done). I’m new here so I’m not sure how to paste my source but the study I’m referencing was by Poore and Nemecek, University of Oxford in 2018, and it’s one of the most comprehensive studies on food distribution to date.