Jakub Stencel, Weronika Zurek thanks that you wrote about it in public. I read it already in polish, but I think it is worth to sharing Anima International results and mistakes that were made but also lessons that we learned.
Rahela
Karma: 125
Thank you Meghan Barrett for this summary. I really like the table view, and I hope this topic will be more popular for society.
Thank you Ewelina H, I wish I had known at the time what questions to ask myself, and how to follow a path that would make me truly happy and show me how to help and change the world for the better.
How I went from working in the fashion industry to animal advocacy
Olivia Addy I’m glad you wrote this post, today my supervisor forwarded it to me regarding our last conversation when I told him that I’m too stupid to work for such a big organization as Anima International. It all had a beginning in that, as a person with a strong interest in insects, I read a discussion on genes of insects and couldn’t grasp any of it, although I’m in the middle of Richard Dawkins’ book, “The selfish gene” not much in my head cleared up. Then it came to me that maybe I don’t deserve this job.
Reading the comments below, I know I’m not stupid. Probably, I know more about some topics than many of the people around me, but getting into a pro-animal environment where it’s so important to act effectively, my head went through a lot of changes. The beginnings were difficult, as were the beginnings with this forum, which I didn’t understand, I knew, it’s probably the only forum where comments are sometimes like separate posts and deserve their own development. Someone told me that even William MacAskill is afraid to add posts here, :) Don’t know if this is true, but then I decided to create an account here and even created some draft of post.
At some point after reading a few posts on this forum I decided that I wanted to participate in The Blog Prize, as a blogger I have no problem with writing, Nick Whitacker added me to the slack regarding writing posts for this competition and I quickly calmed down as I saw what people were writing within their posts. Once again, I felt too stupid. I wrote feedback to Nick that I thought I could rather write at a basic level, which Nick agreed with and said that such texts are also needed, but to this day I haven’t written a word. And this is even worse for me. Today, I know that I should do one thing at the time.To sum up, I have the impression (I don’t have any good data for this) that I am undermining myself. I understand that I have my own limitations, e.g. I can’t make logical conclusions quickly, some content here is completely incomprehensible to me, I’m not so good at Math, but I want to be part of this community, and I want to be part of Anima International. I believe that if I were too stupid, no one would hire me. This shows me that most of the limitations I have, I create for myself. A colleague of mine once told me, Rahela I didn’t know all this either, but I read a lot and learned. I think this is the solution, although it scares me that I am already 42 years old and maybe too late for me, but I am not going to give up, so Olivia you are not alone :)
I recommend working for this organization, as an employed person I admire Anima International how it is able to build a culture, solve problems to work most effectively for animals. Above that, you can learn a lot from people from other countries and learn about their culture and scope of activities, the fact that we operate in many countries allows us to open up to a broader perspective of activities for animals.
Thanks Robert_Wiblin, for me about 2 years ago, the hardest thing was to let it go, but since I’m aware that discussions, especially on Internet sometimes go nowhere my Life is better:) Also now I’m double-checking if I’m not wrong on something.
Ben_West thanks for this text. I have some examples of outsourcing work in our organisations. And even when sometimes they are for free, for me as a Project Manager it is an additional cost, mostly time which is precious in NGO. Communication and trying to explain what is matter for us is sometimes very complicated, especially if someone wants to contact by mail. From last cooperation we did many improvements, like for example adding people to our slack and explaining the way we work in IT (even about code to not have broken windows after cooperation like that). But I still think that outsourcing should be rethought twice to not have more work than less. So thank you for your view for this topic.
Justis thank you. I used this too many times and as a non-native speaker or writer, your post is helpful for me.
Hey, thanks Aaron for this. Did you see a Gitlab Hanbook? Maybe you will find some inspiration. I think maybe it would be better for reading if you would create this as a page like here for example https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/ai-forecasting I’m sorry if I missed this somehow and the handbook already exist in that form. As I understand it will be only bigger with time, so it would be easier to read and also adding posts under, connected to the handbook would be more user-friendly? What you think?
Super, I hope I can help somehow. I just filled the survey.
Thanks mariushobbhahn this is helpful. I just signed up to the newsletter.
Pre-ordered. And really excited :)
Thanks, Simon, I prefer short post like that more than long philosophical texts. I read until now 2 articles about long-termism and I like your argumentation. Until now, I wasn’t convinced so much to care about people in the far future, but I think thanks to your text I will think more about this topic.
Wow, I didn’t even know that there is a new design. Looks really good.
Hi, call me Rahela. I’m working in Anima International and Open Cages PL, as IT manager. In free time I write my personal blog about animals, effective helping, ethics and life on the countryside. I also host a podcast about similar topics. You can find me here https://hodowlaslow.pl/.
I found EA, thanks to my colleagues from Anima International. Before that I was working 13 years in fashion industry, as a designer thinking all days what am I doing here. Took me a long time to became pragmatic, not fanatic. (I was radical vegan 4 years ago).
You can contact me about some fundraising topics and IT if you need some help.
I love meditation and cats. Try to meditate with 3 cats! Feel free to contact me.
Nice work, I’m still struggling with how to involve the IT business. I know that people there are willing to donate, but factory farming isn’t a sexy topic for them. But maybe some workshops on how they can help in different ways, like giving some free tools, is a better way here. Anyway, thanks, that was inspiring.
Thanks Fai, I think you’re right. Somehow I didn’t notice James’s comment. James thanks for the clarification, I haven’t seen this risk before. Especially this part
This might mean we design superintelligent AGI that is okay with using animals as resources within their calculations, rather than intelligent and emotional beings who have the capacity to suffer.
I just thought that AI would take care of animal health in general, like the exact amount of food, humidity, water, etc. But I didn’t think about the raw calculations made by the AI.
alene thank you for this topic, I was thinking about this but never thought that this might realy happen. I just hope that some data about AI taking care more about farmed animals than humans do https://www.vox.com/22528451/pig-farm-animal-welfare-happiness-artificial-intelligence-facial-recognition, will be true in the future. But I also hope that Farming animals will change soon somehow or will end.
Thanks, Max Taylor, for this post. I wasn’t aware of the extent of the harm that can be caused by AI. I knew about the problems that could arise on large farms, the intensification of production, and the significant harm to animals, but I never thought about self-driving cars that can collide with small animals. This text perfectly summarized my lack of knowledge about AI, and I look forward to another post on this topic. The amount of sources is incredible; thanks to you, I learned about human-controlled insects, which raises another ethical issue.