Ronen Bar

Karma: 488

I am a social entrepreneur focused on advancing a new community-building initiative to ensure AI development benefits all sentient beings, including animals, humans, and future digital minds. For over a decade, my work has been at the intersection of technological innovation and animal advocacy, particularly in the alternative protein and investigative sectors.

I am the co-founder and former CEO of Sentient, a meta animal rights non-profit. My background includes work as an investigative journalist on television and undercover employment in slaughterhouses.

This is my website: The Alien Journalist
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or email (ronenbar07@gmail.com).

I am looking for a co-founder and collaborators for the new initiative to ensure AI development benefits all sentientkind. I am happy to share ideas and receive feedback.

I have been practicing Vipassana meditation for several years.

Ronen Bar 6 Sep 2026 3:44 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Tandena Wagner’s comment on: The Reified Referent: How the Saturation View Values the Taste of Someone Who Does Not Exist
imo truth (which I find extremely important) has value as so far as it is an experience or relating affecting experience. Same with variety, and consciousness is the basis for experience. So as far as those things are at the individual level, they exist and have meaning, but there is no meaning to this as far as it is viewed not at the individual level, e.g. variety between lives (unaware of each other) , truth as viewed from above by some god (though from a practical perspective it is good and wise that we value truth this way).

I agree morality like rights is not something that exists outside experience, nothing does (or nothing meaningful does, I use the word exist only for experiences), but as far as morality is a thought experiment we use to better experiences, that is a useful tool

Ronen Bar 30 Aug 2026 7:09 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Tandena Wagner’s comment on: The Reified Referent: How the Saturation View Values the Taste of Someone Who Does Not Exist
Thanks for putting your thoughts in detail about all this! For me it comes down to the question: Is there any value in something that doesn’t exist? I think there isn’t. A variety which is between lives, which is experienced by no one, doesn’t exist. On the other hand when I calculate welfare and I sum them up, I am doing an operation on the welfare but I am only playing with things that really exist. I’m not adding anything fictional. I think our language in many ways promote caring for fictional not existing things. imo this is a philosophical mistake. We should only care about reality.

The Reified Referent: How the Saturation View Values the Taste of Someone Who Does Not Exist

Ronen Bar25 Aug 2026 8:13 UTC

21 points

4 comments6 min readEA link

Ronen Bar 24 Aug 2026 14:36 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Tristan Katz’s comment on: Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit
Thanks Tristan. I agree local branding has a big advantage for urban animals. The global org is there for the other half: research, and helping with collaboration, community, and connections between the local groups. It could also do some local interventions itself, based on its research and for a specific global purpose, in partnership with a local org. I think that is something to try and figure out later rather than decide now. Many global non-profits have local chapters too.

Ronen Bar 3 Aug 2026 18:24 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Cat Kerr’s comment on: Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit
Thanks so much Cat! I will add this to the post, I see Wild Animal Initiative are funding many urban animal related studies .

What do you think about the branding of urban animals vs wild animals? do you see more gains in urban animals being inside the wild animals field, having their own “branding”, or perhaps both?
And where should we “put” the animals that are somewhere on the spectrum between urban and wild

Ronen Bar 3 Aug 2026 13:44 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Grace Szonn 🔹’s comment on: Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit
I agree cities seems like a very high potential grounds for effective interventions for EA people

Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit

Ronen Bar2 Aug 2026 19:08 UTC

47 points

7 comments11 min readEA link

Ronen Bar 14 May 2026 7:22 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Time Sensitive: Stop One of Biggest Threats for Animal Welfare
Thanks for the post, this is SO CRUCIAL!

Ronen Bar 3 Feb 2026 11:25 UTC
3 points
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on: The Vegan Filter: Overcoming the Leading Barrier to Veganism
Sounds like a great idea to me!

Ronen Bar 11 Oct 2025 19:46 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: tobytrem’s Quick takes
Do we need a yearly strategy paper of the EA movement?

Ronen Bar 24 Sep 2025 16:15 UTC
1 point
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on: Ethical co-evolution, or how to turn the main threat into a leverage for longtermism?
I think Ethical co-evolution of humanity and AI is a very interesting concept, that on the one hand points out to humans staying in control and not handing over power and knowldge of what is “right” to AI, but on the other hand willing to learn and develop, understanding we are shortsighted when it comes to morality, and also may have a lot to learn from AI!

Ronen Bar 26 Jul 2025 9:54 UTC
1 point
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on: Why Moral Weights Have Two Types and How to Measure Them
@Beyond Singularity Another issue is how you calculate positive vs negative valence. David Pearce thinks ethics is only about reducing negative experiences, and although it is good to make beings have more positive ones, it is not within ethics. So his view is, I think, the more extreme side of negative utilitarianism.

I think positive experiences are within the ethical realm, and although reducing suffering is more important than increasing happiness, I would still try calculate how much beings are happy as well and how to optimize that.

Addressing the nonhuman gap in intergovernmental AI governance frameworks

Alistair Stewart15 Jul 2025 21:13 UTC

77 points

2 comments8 min readEA link

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 14:42 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Debate: Morality is Objective
I don’t think this large-scale cooperation or society or groups function is morality. It is linked to morality but it is fundamentally something else. A society can “function” well with having part of it suffer tremendously for the benefit of another group. There is nothing objective with longing for a world with less suffering, it is basically in another realm, not in the one of math or rational, though it is tied to rationality in some way

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 6:34 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Interstellar travel will probably doom the long-term future
I agree when thinking about the long future we have to have better more robust moral frameworks and the time and moral circle expansion are very crucial factors that have to be taken into consideration

Ronen Bar 29 Jun 2025 6:29 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Beyond Singularity’s comment on: Debate: Morality is Objective
I tend to think the word objective doesn’t fit morality from a philosophical standpoint. “objective” truths are arguments that we can decide upon who is right by checking predictions, each of them is evidence for the validity of a claim. If I say earth is round, we can check this claim by talking to experts or flying to space and looking at earth, etc. All of which are prediction of subjective experiences we will have.

So “objective” argument means I am guessing something about the future world, that it will look one way and not another. Morality is in a totally different domian. I would like the future world to be with less suffering and not more, but this is a longing, not a prediction that can be refuted. So with morality there is some sense of logic and being systematic, but at the core it is not an objective question becasue it can’t be decided upon with predictions

Ronen Bar 26 Jun 2025 15:11 UTC
1 point
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on: Should we launch the “Animal Advocacy Corps”? Seeking Feedback and a Founder
Very interesting idea that could improve the worldwide interconnectedness of the movement. I like it very much.

Ronen Bar 24 Jun 2025 8:13 UTC
2 points
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on: Beyond Short-Termism: How δ and w Can Realign AI with Our Values
Thanks. I think as time horizon gets bigger, uncertainty may also get bigger, and this should be calculated into the expected value formula.

Ronen Bar 18 Jun 2025 17:37 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: nathan98000’s comment on: Moral Alignment: An Idea I’m Embarrassed I Didn’t Think of Myself
I don’t think we need to solve ethics in order to work on improving the ethics of models. Ethics may be something unsolvable, yet some AI models are and will be instilled with some values, or there will be some system to decide on the value section problem. I think more people need to work on that.
Just now a great post relating to the value selection problem was published :
Beyond Short-Termism: How δ and w Can Realign AI with Our Values

Ronen Bar 18 Jun 2025 8:51 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Chris Percy’s comment on: Will Sentience Make AI’s Morality Better?
An ASI may be much smarter in helping oneself not feel so much suffering. We as humans are good in engineering our environment, but not the inside. AI may excel in inner engineering as well… very speculative

Ronen Bar

The Reified Refer­ent: How the Sat­u­ra­tion View Values the Taste of Some­one Who Does Not Exist

Ur­ban An­i­mals De­serve a Global Nonprofit

Ad­dress­ing the non­hu­man gap in in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal AI gov­er­nance frameworks

The Reified Referent: How the Saturation View Values the Taste of Someone Who Does Not Exist

Urban Animals Deserve a Global Nonprofit

Addressing the nonhuman gap in intergovernmental AI governance frameworks