Matt is the author, co-author, secondary-author, ghost-author, and non-author of articles, speeches, book chapters, and even entire books! The most recent is his blockbuster* The Accidental Activist (which Amazon claims is by his wife Anne Green. So it goes.). Currently, he is President of One Step for Animals; previously, he was shitcanned from more nonprofits than there is room to list here. (Although there’s still time for more!) Before Matt’s unfortunate encounter with activism, he was an aerospace engineer who wanted to work for NASA (to impress Carl Sagan).
His hobbies include photography, almost dying, and XXXXXX (Hey! This is a family-friendly website! -ed). He lives in Tucson with Anne, along with no dogs, no cats, and no African tortoises, although he cares for all of these via friends and family.
*JK
MattBall
This is a very reasonable argument, and one we should take seriously. It is one of the driving forces at https://fairstartmovement.org/
Having worked in animal advocacy for 35 years, I’ve only seen the number of animals consumed per person go up and up and up. (In the US and globally.) You know what they say is the definition of insanity....
Honestly, I think the answer to your question is that humans are, on average, completely and utterly self-centered. Look at how many people concerned with AI safety are totally indifferent to the plight of non-human animals.
Song: Wilco “You Never Know”
“Come on, children, you’re acting like children
”Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world”https://www.mattball.org/2023/01/climate-activists-are-to-blame-for-some.html
I know this is obvious and noted, but uncontrolled suffering is far different. Suffering such that you want to die. (I write about that, in the Worsts, in https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ )
I would ask everyone to check out https://www.preventsuffering.org/
Thanks, Vasco. I find it very difficult to imagine a scenario where I would support the active torture of factory farming chickens for any unknown / theoretical counterpoint. I’d certainly rather be a wild animal than a factory-farmed chicken.
Take care.
Really enjoyed this piece. It is somewhat painful to read, given that I believe most of my professional life did more harm than good.
I do think that partially rationalizing torturing billions of sentient beings every year for more corn in silos in case of a nuclear winter—that’s really a stretch.
>Almost every old-school vegan or vegetarian should instantly “get” that people will just lie about you.
I was sure you were going to talk about other vegans attacking you for not being “pure” enough.
Thanks so very much for this. I wish I could give it more upvotes. As I’ve written about elsewhere, the obsession with expected value while ignoring traceability is one of the worst aspects of that corner of EA. (Why I love https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GXzT2Ei3nvyZEdWef/every-moment-of-an-electron-s-existence-is-suffering )
I appreciate Lewis Bollard and all his focused work to reduce suffering.
I love this post, and I’m not convinced by some of the counters in the comments. (e.g., I don’t think LLMs will help persuade anyone of anything.)
This Ezra Klein podcast is really good, if you haven’t heard it.
This is extremely interesting and thought-provoking, but bees beating salmon really does undermine any attempt I can make to give this a lot of credence.
Moreso, though, I object to saying we can trade one week of human life for six days of chicken torture (in the comments). But this is more my critique of utilitarianism, as I lay out in “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” here.
Upvote just for the memes / images! And great content and comments; wish I had seen something like this 35 years ago.
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Hi Michelle—thanks for writing this. It is exceedingly thoughtful, compelling, and thorough.
Our kid is 28* - so almost everything we went through was before EA (and before we met Jason Gaverick Matheny). We met at an animal rights group I was running, and we went on to found several animal-focused charities (including One Step for Animals).
One of the reasons I wrote Losing My Religions last year (and have made the eBook free) was to give people an opportunity to live that process and understand the various pressures biology, family, and society place on us. (I also write about a friend, an EA here on this board, who has recently gone through some of the things I experienced.)
Like your great post, I hope LMR provides people some help.
*Kid is finishing up a PhD in Econ based in part on 80,000 Hours recommendation (but mostly Gaverick).
>it has assumed with insufficient reason that all abolitionist thinking and approaches are ineffective.
I appreciate this post, but this statement is, IMHO, simply not true. Many of us were “abolitionists” at one point. Many of us have decades of experience and have studied what has and hasn’t moved the needle over the years. See, for example, “The End of Veganism” chapter here.
I didn’t vote it down, but I think giving the Catholic Church the “benefit of the doubt” is off-base. You could say the same about anyone doing bad—“Maybe they’re right on some level.” The Catholic Church has simply done tons and tons of bad. And I think I’m saying this not just because of my personal hatred of the Catholic Church. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
I’m down with a lot of this, but I’m not sure about the EU. Given the history of war on the continent, I think the EU is a totally reasonable response. Hard to run the counter-factual.
Thanks for writing this. It isn’t exactly in the same line, but when I examine my career, I believe I have done more harm than good. It was writing Losing My Religions that really firmed up that conclusion. I hope posts like these—and the fascinating discussion—help others to do more good than harm. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Great, clear summary at the top, and a well-thought-out post. Thanks!
Title: Working with the Beef Industry for Chicken Welfare
Author: RobertY
Why it’s good: Correct focus on a source of immense, totally unnecessary suffering, with outside-the-box thinking to help mitigate the suffering. Thanks, Robert!
Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for mentioning One Step for Animals. Having spent decades promoting dietary change, I know my efforts at my previous nonprofits have ended up leading to more chickens suffering. (This for those not familiar, and this is what got me fired from “Animal Asylum”.) One of the reasons I wrote Losing My Religions—hoping readers won’t make the same mistake.
As far as funding for One Step, we reach more people with our short video the more people contribute. There seems to be no correlation between current contributions and future contributions. We just put money into outreach; we don’t have a development team, we don’t send out fundraising letters, we just buy more eyeballs. Since our founding in 2014, One Step has raised anywhere between ~$300k and $112k. We’re currently looking at ~$150k for the current fiscal year.
One note: One Step’s matching donor only contributes to double what we raise elsewhere. They don’t donate at all otherwise. Working for other orgs, I took part in “matching” campaigns where the org knew they were going to get the “matching” money regardless.
Again—thanks for the shout-out. I have a lot of work to do to make up for my past mistakes.
-Matt