Hi Andrew, welcome to the forum! We should consider ourselves lucky that you are chiming in! I hope you share your thoughts here, and may you inspire future generations of EA to start big, bold projects in health, poverty reduction and education!
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āAre there such opportunities? So far, I canāt break this down to anything tangible. āIf we donāt do anything, the systems will become entrenched and determine animal outcomes for decades to comeā - what systems? What outcomes? Who, where? Can someone give me a few clear examples of tractable situations?
ā¦ Agricultural AI platforms from John Deere and Bayer are being deployed. But how is any of this tractableāwhat are you hoping orgs/āgrantees/āEA people can do about those things?ā
ā¦ If thatās so, then can someone tell me, in plain English, what that looks like? I.e ā[lab] is currently planning [this development]. If we do [this action], we can change it to [this outcome], which will mean [x number] of animals experience [less suffering, presumably].ā
I just want to express that these are really sound questions and I hope you keep asking them. I believe they are, as of yet, unanswered. Iād love to see AIxAnimals field/āthought leaders work out their theories of change more clearly and concretely.I think you correctly point out that there are gaps, and some of the framings Iāve seen seem to suggest that poultry farmers will just sit idly by as their animal-friendly AI COOās will make commercially suboptimal farm-management and procurement decisions.
But, this is still a nacent field and I think questions like these will help it along!
What Meta CharĀity FunĀders funded in Spring 2025 - Fourth Round Retrospective
ReĀquest for ProĀposĀals: Meta CharĀity FunĀdersāFall 2025
ReĀquest for proĀposĀalsāGlobal Health FundĀing CirĀcle Fall 2025
ReĀquest for ProĀposĀalsāStrateĀgic AnĀiĀmal FundĀing CirĀcle Fall 2025
Itās one of the main factors going into the decisions from most of the funders in the circle :)
However, CEAās are rather shallow and most grants are quite experimental or exploratory in nature sometimes with the intent to allow orgs to scale and find ways to cost-effectively use funds at a larger scale in the future, either by themselves or by others.
Thanks Sofia! You should mainly thank Joey and James, who typed most and set the norm for transparency.
I definitely second that thereās room for a guide that helps people seeking funding in the AW space with understanding where and when to apply, based on the scope, size and maturity of their organisation. This might be something the AIM grantmaking team could help with at a point in the future and I know Joeyās quite keen on this, but Hive might be in an even better position to work on sth similar :)
StrateĀgic AnĀiĀmals FundĀing CirĀcleāReĀsults from first two rounds
Thanks for the reply :) the number you cite for other insects is yearly turnover, not how many are alive at any moment, right? So the number might not be as far off?
But yeah, without looking at any data, other major farmed insects numbers are probably increasing at a faster rate than honeybees.
Holy **** this was one of those things that changed my mind just by looking at the title because I realised I was holding a belief that was clearly mistaken if you think about it logically for a second, but no one actually ever really challenged me on it. Why did I never realise that honeybees are obviously the most farmed animal on earth?
I always told people that farmed honey is terrible, but terrible in the same way as that dairy is terrible. I would have put the order of āplz stop eating this for the love of godā ateggs & white meat
red meat,
dairy and honey
I will bump honey up the list (50% vibes based list by the way, not calibrated on exact SAD/āportion).
PS: Would have been easier if you listed ā#days of farmingā per āper capita consumptionā rather than per kilo. 1kg is roughly the yearly consumption per person in Europe I believe (surprisingly high?), vs 20kg for chicken. Also, the link to the 97% thing didnāt work, so I couldnāt really check that stat. (It seems oddly specific given uncertainty)
Thanks Bjƶrn! Really interested in the diet change interventions. Veganuary has probably also had quite a nice spillover effect through corporate engagement with the challenge (wether solicited by veganuary or not). During the month of January, supermarkets and brands tend to allocate more resources on marketing, product development and deals for plant based products.
To me, this write-up would have been a lot more useful if it ended with a rough cost-effectiveness analysis and any takes on what funders should be excited to fund.
Some other thoughts: Iām sceptical that every 6 extra sign ups to a challenge will get someone from an average diet to an almost plant based diet for a duration of more than 2 years. Is that what the 15% suggests? How were the RCTās performed? Were random people selected and given an incentive to participate?
AFAIK, the fact that SMA takes a different stance on ādistancingā or differentiating itself from the EA community compared to, say, Ambitious Impact, is because the reputation of EA is just really very different in the US than in Europe. A lot more toxic, that is.
If they only had plans to launch in NL, Germany and other European countries, I think they would have been a bit less careful to set up their own separate brand /ā community and maintain some distance.Nevertheless, theyāve generally expressed the desire to not be branded an āea-organisationā by people in or outside the community (stressing they take inspiration from other groups and schools of thougt too*) so I think people should respect that :)
*Including the Naderās Raiders which I guess is also not the most uncontroversial in the US but old enough that people donāt get upset about it lol
Last days to apĀply for HPHās health adĀvoĀcacy trainĀing program
LaunchĀing the Health Progress Hub (and how you can help us!)
Could nets be made such that their mesh size increases when they get soaking wet?
PS: Are the insecticides also a problem? Are there biodegradable insecticides?
Can the reading times be updated for linkposts? Our previous fellowship participants said this would have helped them schedule and anticipate reading preparation.
Couldnāt make it this time, but will join next time! Thanks for the article and hosting this event!!
Go ahead!
Quick rambly comment from my side (because I didnāt expect this to be spread outside of the publication and wasnāt aware of timelines :))
Most of the writing is done by Dirk-Jan. I gave input and part of this followed from a conversation we had on stage during EAGxAmsterdam.
I think Dirk-Jan is a rare example of an experienced professional from the ODE field who is willing to engage critically with EA ideas in good faith, and I am very happy we started this discussion :) As a community, I think we should cherish encounters with constructive outside experts
My quick take if you need to take one thing away from this thought-piece: we need to make sure that, as a community, we incentivize careful analysis of unintended consequences, and then update accordingly! The incentive is to write away unintended effects qualitatively, or handwave a modest discount (or bonus, for positive effects)
When you start a project/āorganisation, it makes sense to put most effort into making your theory of change very rigorous and de-risk it as much as possible. Once you scale that project/āorganisation, you should probably put the same effort on analyzing whether the causal links in your ToC could break-down at scale, and pay attention to the causal effects that fall outside your ToC all together!
The best version of this, as always, employs a good mix of qualitative and quantitative thinking. If anything, I personally think discussions on unintended effects and ābackfire risksā are often too qualitative, and miss a serious attempt at sizing.
Lastly, a prompt everyone can use:
What incentives are you creating with this project, especially at scale/āmaturity?
How will insiders and outsiders perceive your work when you scale it?
And the memeable: āis there anyone you forgot to ask?!ā or āwhoās left out of this project, but will still experience consequencesā
Are you crowding anyone out?
Are there (indirect) costs you are incurring on people?