Moritz Stumpe 🔸

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 14, 2024, 11:57 AM

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  in reply to: squeezy’s comment on: Slow­ing down fac­tory farm­ing in Sub Sa­haran Africa: In­fluenc­ing na­tional poli­cies on sub­sidies to hin­der the in­ten­sifi­ca­tion of an­i­mal agri­cul­ture

  Thanks for your inputs, this is great. I also didn’t expect you to have the perfect answer. It’s a very tricky problem.

  I’ll incorporate these considerations in our research!

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 7, 2024, 2:02 PM

  2 points

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  on: Slow­ing down fac­tory farm­ing in Sub Sa­haran Africa: In­fluenc­ing na­tional poli­cies on sub­sidies to hin­der the in­ten­sifi­ca­tion of an­i­mal agri­cul­ture

  Thanks for your research on this Aashish! Very relevant for our work at Animal Advocacy Africa.
  I’m getting the sense that policy work /​ lobbying could be a good idea (since your uncertainty around this has reduced as a result of your evidence review), but it should be targeted at something else than subsidies, since their path to impact is quite long and unclear? For example lobbying for better animal welfare standards might be more promising as it more directly addresses the problem (has a shorter ToC)?
  Do you have an opinion on this? Or any other interventions you think might be more promising than addressing subsidies?

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 7, 2024, 10:49 AM

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  in reply to: squeezy’s comment on: Slow­ing down fac­tory farm­ing in Sub Sa­haran Africa: In­fluenc­ing na­tional poli­cies on sub­sidies to hin­der the in­ten­sifi­ca­tion of an­i­mal agri­cul­ture

  Have you seen this post on second-hand battery pages in Africa? Do you think an intervention focusing on this issue would be promising? If so, what kind of intervention? Should this be focused on the exporting or importing countries?

  I would be curious to get your opinion on this, as we (Animal Advocacy Africa) are currently considering different strategies to recommend/​pursue.

  Thank you!

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 3, 2024, 2:29 PM

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  in reply to: Pat Myron 🔸’s comment on: Ex­plor­ing Cor­po­rate Cam­paigns Against Silk Retailers

  Also linking CE’s own previous research here. Note that we did not really look at this previous report when we conducted our own research and came to the topic with fresh eyes.

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 3, 2024, 2:28 PM

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  in reply to: Zuzana Sperlova🔸’s comment on: Ex­plor­ing Cor­po­rate Cam­paigns Against Silk Retailers

  Thanks both!

  I just wanted to add to Zuzana’s response that our basis for the statement in question is also based on what we have learned out about cage-free corporate campaigns. From our understanding, the threat of a “bad cop” campaign is often enough for companies to sign commitments. So yes Jojo, your interpretation is correct I would say.

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Feb 3, 2024, 2:18 PM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Ex­plor­ing Cor­po­rate Cam­paigns Against Silk Retailers

  Thanks for adding that helpful perspective!

  We did not make the comparison to QALYs since the program looked at global health/​development and animal interventions separately. So we only compared animal interventions to other animal interventions. My personal perspective is that animal interventions indeed tend do be much more cost-effective, which is why I focus on that area.

  It might also be interesting to note that CE’s own previous research (which we did not really look at when we conducted our own research) estimates ~20-30 welfare points per dollar, which is somewhat higher than our best guess of 12 WP/​$.

Char­ity Eval­u­a­tion: An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Careers

Ex­plor­ing Cor­po­rate Cam­paigns Against Silk Retailers

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Jan 26, 2024, 2:41 PM

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  in reply to: Zuzana Sperlova🔸’s comment on: An­i­mal farm­ing for the fash­ion in­dus­try and other non-food pur­poses in Africa

  Thank you Zuzana!
  If you haven’t yet, I can recommend this article that I linked in the post which gave me some food for thought on the interplay between farming for meat and leather.
  Please also note that the statement “demand for leather products is on a downward trajectory on a global level” is based on that article and I didn’t dive deeper into this, since this was only a shallow review. Would have to do more detailed research to be very confident in this.

An­i­mal farm­ing for the fash­ion in­dus­try and other non-food pur­poses in Africa

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Jan 20, 2024, 7:06 AM

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  in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: What “Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan” can teach us about EA

  Thanks for the links to those other pieces that address similar issues. I wasn’t aware of most of them and they are suuuper interesting/​relevant! Seems like I have some more reading and researching to do.

  I think I agree with what you referenced from 80K. I see virtues and good character as the foundation on which you can then build in a more maximizing way. Satisfying certain personal needs and wants also fits into this foundational category. Of course, how exactly one balances these aspects highly varies from person to person.

  And these decisions are highly context-dependent, yes. What I wrote is only a very high-level frame. In practice, it is of course very important to consider which aspects of “common sense morality” we really want to follow, just as it is very important to reflect on which personal needs and wants we should really follow or prioritize. This is a tricky balancing act that I am constantly trying to master. And social norms are always in flux as well.

  For instance, I certaintly don’t think it is okay to farm animals in ways that make them suffer unnecessarily, even though it is common practice and might be commonly seen as morally acceptable. This also means that I act in ways that deviate from the norm (i.e. plant-based consumption). But society around me is also adapting and some data suggests that a majority of people actually find the way we treat farmed animal abhorrent (they just don’t act on it or rationalize their behavior).

  All of this to say: Yes, moral common sense is vague and constantly changing. Yes, we always need to reflect on it and not follow the majority blindly. But I think it is beneficial to find certain core value and virtues to adhere by (and those should be ones where we are confident that they are not overall harmful).

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Jan 20, 2024, 6:28 AM

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  in reply to: Aashish K’s comment on: What “Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan” can teach us about EA

  Thanks Aashish!

  Important points and I agree that common sense morality is underdeveloped here. I suspect that there are some things that are relatively universal (like love and care for the family or generosity), but yes, the focus/​weight of different aspects will vary.

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Jan 14, 2024, 6:53 AM

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  in reply to: JBentham’s comment on: What “Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan” can teach us about EA

  Thanks for your comment! This helped me to think about my argument further.

  I agree that the conception of common sense morality is quite underdeveloped here and can be interpreted in different ways. It acts somewhat as a placeholder and I would like to explore this a bit further with more time. Public opinion might not even be a reliable proxy for what I mean here. Maybe virtue ethics would have been a better choice than common sense morality. For instance, I think Oskar Schindler exhibited many important virtues (though my knowledge about the historical facts is limited), while at the same time thinking quite utilitarian.

  I agree that in practice there are not as many differences between utilitrianism and common-sense morality (or virtue ethics) as one might initially anticipate. I think that most people in the EA movement already accept this, but I do think there are parts of the movement that neglect “basic virtues”. See my disclaimer about the essay being more of a reminder than a critique.

  Thanks for your reference to Schindler’s List. That film is one of my all-time favorites and also highly interesting from an EA perspective. It might be nice to have a series of posts or something like that on exploring EA themes in popular movies, series, books, etc. (if this doesn’t exist already).

What “Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan” can teach us about EA

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Dec 5, 2023, 9:20 AM

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  on: Every­thing I didn’t know about fertilizers

  Hi Helene, nice writeup! You might enjoy this podcast from 80K with Hannah Ritchie, if you haven’t heard it already. There are some nice bits in there about agricultural productivity (incl. fertiliser use).

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Dec 4, 2023, 7:05 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Hayven Frienby’s comment on: Ex­tend­ing Ex­ist­ing An­i­mal Pro­tec­tion Laws

  Thanks for your comment Hayven!

  Yes, if there is one key takeaway from the report, I think it would be that someone with more local knowledge on China should investigate the Shandong guidelines in more depth. I was quite excited to see these guidelines and my research seems somewhat promising, but this needs to be validated further.

  It seems like we are also aligned on the other points :)

Ex­tend­ing Ex­ist­ing An­i­mal Pro­tec­tion Laws

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Nov 29, 2023, 11:17 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸’s comment on: GWWC’s eval­u­a­tions of evaluators

  Thanks for your perspective and transparency Sjir! That seems reasonable from my prior perspective and how I read your report.

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Nov 27, 2023, 8:02 AM

  3 points

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  on: GWWC’s eval­u­a­tions of evaluators

  Thanks for your work on this!

  I am interested in how you would prioritise between ACE’s Movement Grants (MG) and their recommended charities. What would you recommend, if you had to recommend one of them, and why? From how I read your analysis, it seems that you think that MG are the better option. Do I read that correctly?

• Moritz Stumpe 🔸Nov 23, 2023, 3:05 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Bob Fischer’s comment on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Welfare Range Estimates

  Thanks for the explanation Bob. That absolutely makes sense! I was somehow assuming that negative results would count as zeros as well.