EATS act would just allow lower-welfare imports AFAIK. I’m wondering if anyone has an idea of how much this would actually impact welfare (i.e. in a massive state like California, is there enough price incentive to set up factory farms on the border post-EATS?)
Nithin Ravi
Karma: 101
In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I’m unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.
funding circles. Note that most funding circles I know require a large budget and are therefore inaccessible for most earn to givers.
Related: a small group of like-minded donors evaluating a specific organization.
Give each other recommendations. If you have expertise of specific cause area and you can recommend organizations (especially when you don’t have a conflict of interest with them), do talk about it to potential donors during networking events. Or, if you are a donor, do ask.
Thanks for posting this! I tend to agree, it’s not my comparative advantage to make grants as a mid-size donor; and it’s unlikely that I’ll beat the impact/rigor of a fund.
I’m not sure that these particular examples will necessarily solve the issue of groupthink/centralized decision-making as they still rely heavily on a few knowledgeable decision makers. For instance, I found that a lot of decisions in funding circles are deferred to the experts in the room. However, I’m hopeful that they can help. :)
What do you think about losses like these being a trigger for backsliding on other farmed animal work?
For instance, the Animal Ag Lobby saying something like, “Look people don’t care about animal welfare. Even progressive cities turned this down.” Could this effect trigger something like the EATS act getting passed? I don’t have an informed opinion on this, but it seems like a significant backfire risk.
I’m also worried that 308 (Denver’s fur ban) would have passed without 309 (Denver’s slaughterhouse ban) being right next to it. The Denver Democrats anti-endorsed both measures which may not have happened if the measures were run separately (total guess on that one, but it passed in Boulder which has very similar demographics).
At the same time, perhaps there is very significant social change & radical flank effects from forcing the vote on abolitionist work! Looking for insight.
Hmm, I hadn’t considered farmed animals lives becoming net positive as a case against the meat eating problem! Thanks for pointing that out.
> the best animal welfare interventions will be much more cost-effective than the best global > health and development interventions.
I’m a bit confused by this point. It still seems like if we value this framework, we should still be considering flow-through effects in questions of cause prioritization and which GHD interventions to support. I think there are also reasonable edge cases where we may be able to influence GHD interventions to have better positive flow-through effects, if the donor is not onboard with AW.
How about modeling the flow through effects on animal welfare? This may negate any decrease in human welfare, but I haven’t seen a BOTEC of this that models the income increase on the meat eating problem. I suspect it would likely still be very positive for animal welfare.
How about both lens? I could see the ‘end factory farming’ framing and dreaming big be really good for some folks, particularly young people with lofty ambitions who are not yet in the movement. I think it was particularly helpful for me to have this framing when joining the movement!
We could also advocate for near-term suffering reduction as a lofty goal within itself, given the right context (i.e. within EA)!
Thanks Yanni! I’ve been on the path of nondual meditation for about a year now, and have slowly watched the benefits manifest.
You’re so right, but I’m so far away from being at this level...
How did you build your capability for this?
This to me drills home how important it is to have a few additional great people – imagine what we could an additional Carolina Galvani, Mahi Klosterhalfen or Ryan Xue.
Hopefully we get a few more James Özden’s too :)
I’ve been going through all of the debate posts after being out for the last week and I’ve also been an animal advocate for 7 years now. I don’t watch footage of violence to animals anymore because of longstanding trauma from it.
Since stopping watching graphic imagery/video, no written post in the last few years has triggered such an emotional reaction in me. I had to stop halfway through to bawl my eyes out.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! After reading posts from the last week, I feel even more invigorated and motivated to continue this fight. <3
I tend to agree with Ariel Simnegar’s “Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare”, however I still have some uncertainty in moral weights.
I am very convinced by the arguments presented in Ariel Simnegar’s “Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare”. I still have uncertainty in moral weights so am not 100% agree
Thanks for making it easily accessible and centralized to batch my donations and report my income. Having a good platform made it super easy for me to report!
Congrats on gathering a broad coalition of support for LIC for the case!
I thought the same way about this, but something that changed my mind a bit was a friend asking me:
”If a baby tried to steal your blood to survive would you kill them for it?”
Now, this is a contrived example and you may have a extremely low moral weight for mosquitoes (I have pretty low moral weights for them too), but I wonder how your thoughts about the statement changes if it is instead:
I have no qualms about killing someone that stole my blood to survive.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts!
Tomasik’s article on vegetarianism and wild animals was very humbling for me! For a long time I believed that veganism was the ‘right way’ and his article helped me see that I could be wrong even if I assign relatively high moral weights to other species.
Hmm, this response feels a bit weird particularly “if you really felt bad”. I do actually feel bad about killing small insects whether or not it is net positive utility or morally consistent.
I totally agree that it is very unlikely that I am averting the most suffering from harms caused directly by me!
That being said, I do think there is some subjective value in how much moral patienthood I am mentally able to assign to other beings by not hurting them directly.
What do you believe is the moral value of environmental systems?
Wonderful! I think I may have came off as anti-ballot measure in my comment but I actually canvassed for DD, 308, & 309. Thanks for sharing and thinking critically about future ballot initiatives. I’m excited to see what we come up with. :)