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 really great, Holden. Well-structured piece, too.
Thanks for the comment about the Catch-22 situation facing AI development—that caution by one group could let a reckless group get there first. I make that point in the Longtermism chapter here, and I wish it would get more consideration.
I find the discussion of these claims interesting. I would also warn about extrapolating this to any other issue. Climate issues are well supported over there. But this doesn’t mean the same would be true for issues with minority support. Just in my field, I’ve seen a minority of animal advocates poison the word “vegan” in the United States, as I document in Losing My Religions.
Fantastic, out-of-box thinking!
Thanks for this, Richard. Very thoughtful.
However, after being a ~total utilitarian for decades, I’ve come to realize it is beyond salvage. As I point out in the chapter “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” here.
Take care!
Thanks Bob—appreciate it!
Do I have this right—Functionalism doesn’t support spending more on small invertebrates?
Conscious Subsystems probably supports spending far more on small invertebrates -->
Great post. I’d love to see an entire post on this:
Acknowledging good-faith intentions and attempts to help others
Maybe have it pinned to the top of every page. :-)
I’m not saying the analysis is wrong. I’m just curious if the analyst has ever suffered from depression. Or had someone they love suffer from depression.
It is easy to empathize with polio or malaria, but not as much depression. And when a cheap drug (as noted by other comments) can take one from suicidal to life worth living....
In the fourth decade of animal advocacy, I honestly wonder what has hurt animals more than AR advocates pointing to polls.
Why would we ever, ever, ever look at opinion polls, when every day, everyone is casting an actual ballot at the grocery store and restaurant?
This reminds me of all the interviews where Beyond Meat’s Ethan Brown said, “People tell me they don’t want GMOs.” He is simply talking to the wrong people. Nearly everyone only cares about cheap meat. Full stop. Nothing else matters, no matter what they say.
I think this is useful, but I think we should emphasize that ethics is not about expected value. So much of EA is “I can top your expected value!”
Obv not all EAs. But often the loudest / most “I will beat you down with 80,000 words on every post” folks.
Once again, researchers fail to distinguish between “pain” and “suffering.”
https://www.mattball.org/2022/10/ed-yong-on-insects.html
Open Phil is pretty much the only place I’ve seen that’s done a good job of honestly exploring this distinction:
I think we should just stop overreacting, period. This guy’s money doesn’t mean he is EA. No one person is EA.
If we spent as much time figuring out how to better be more effective as we do on self-loathing and self-over-analysis, we’d be further along.
IMHO. Of course, I could be wrong.
Hey Vasco,
As a founder of One Step for Animals, you don’t need to convince me we should be looking to help chickens. :-)
It is when we say that X chickens = 1 human, or Y mosquitoes = 1 human, or Z electrons = 1 human—that’s where I get off the train (as I lay out in Losing My Religions).
Thanks again and keep up the great work!
Thanks so much, Corentin! You might like my latest book:
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Take care!
What Jamie said—the number of neurons across a population is irrelevant. What matters is the capacity for suffering, and that is dependent on the number (and arrangement) of neurons in an individual. This is my favorite discussion:
I fear that thinking in the terms above (total neurons in some group) does significant harm.
This doesn’t add much, but thank you for sharing this. I honestly believe that the world would be much better (and many people on this forum much happier) if more people did this.
When I worked as a Department of Energy Global Change Fellow in the 90s, there was a well-known commentary that we’re always at peak oil (coal, natural gas, etc.). It never turns out to be true.
Also, about 15 years ago, New Scientist ran a very convincing article that we were about to run out of the metals we need for modern society. It, also, didn’t turn out to be true.
I think that posts like this will read like “The Population Bomb” in the future.
Congratulations on being one of the winners of the contest.
Having spent most of my adult life promoting veganism, it is pretty sad to know that ACE found “Around 1% of adults both self-identify as vegetarians and report never consuming meat. It seems that this percentage has not changed substantially since the mid-1990s.” That is why One Step for Animals pursues a different path.
I think there is a deeper problem, though, at least in the United States, as I document in the “The End of Veganism” chapter in Losing My Religions.
Happy with every effort to help reduce burnout. We would all do well to take ourselves a little less seriously. (I wish I had understood that decades ago.)
Just requested our library system buy it!