Of course, no pressure. I hope it’s nothing permanent, and get well soon.
SiobhanBall
Karma: 616
This is exciting! The policy focus, specific levers, and concrete interventions laid out here are exactly what the space has been missing. This fills a real gap and I’m glad to see this direction being taken.
Hi Cameron, since you’ve invited questions, I’m just flagging that I’d still be interested in your thoughts on the questions I raised when replying to your comment on my post, whenever you have time.
Thanks for laying those out. I’d agree that if even one were executed at scale it could be a major win for animals. However, WAI doesn’t appear to have a pathway for turning any of those into reality. The reason for this seems to be ‘we’re not certain enough yet’, but there isn’t a defined threshold for what ‘certain enough’ means.
Field-building has value, but it shouldn’t be the default answer indefinitely, especially when the projected timelines for impact seem to shift so dramatically (suggesting that the original thesis was off, albeit in a direction that’s good for animals). There also isn’t a clearly defined threshold for how much field building is sufficient.
At some point, the movement ought to have clarity on when possible interventions graduate from speculative ideas to actionable programs.
Let’s see where things stand in a few years.
Hi Abraham, thanks for your comment. A quick clarifying question: when you say timelines have gone from 50+ years to a few years, what interventions are you referring to?
Cameron mentioned examples such as bird-feeder design changes and rodent fertility control. Are those the interventions you had in mind when saying that the field is much closer to actionable work?
It would be helpful to understand what fits the updated timeline, and how this aligns with Cameron’s explanation.
I can barely contain myself. :)
Thanks for laying these out. I have to be honest: I don’t think these examples justify the current scale of investment.
A backyard bird-feeder optimisation study isn’t remotely proportional to the millions deployed so far, nor to the moral stakes that originally motivated WAI’s existence.
The rodent fertility control pathway sounds more promising, but again: a best-case 4–7 year pathway if funding materialises, if the competition succeeds, and if a viable product emerges.
If these are the strongest examples of expected real-world impact this decade, then that reinforces my original concern: the current spend-to-impact ratio looks extremely low, and the strategic timeline still feels unanchored.
I explicitly acknowledged your stated strategy and the need for foundational research. My question is when you expect that strategy to translate into real-world impact.
To move this forward, let’s try to crystallise what you’ve said:
1. What exactly counts as a self-sustaining academic field for wild animal welfare?
Is that defined by number of labs? Funding sources? Course offerings? Publication volume? ‘Self-sustaining’ risks becoming an unending horizon.
2. What does ‘the long run’ mean in practice?
A strategy without a time-bound target is very difficult to evaluate. Is the honest answer simply ‘as long as it takes’? As long as people are willing to fund it?
3. How much funding do you estimate is required to reach this self-sustaining point?
If the answer is ‘we don’t know’, that’s fine—but then we need some proxy indicators or budget ranges that would count as reasonable expectations.
Is the reality that donors are effectively funding an open-ended research project with no agreed stopping rule? Your answers make it hard not to reach that conclusion.
I’m not trying to exhaust you with relentless questions. I’m trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in what you’ve said. Long replies run the risk of diverting away from the central thrust of discussion.
Hi Cameron, thank you for engaging in the spirit in which my post is intended. You could’ve just ghosted it and hoped nobody noticed. Really, I appreciate your time here.
I relate to your experience. I think it would be helpful if the numbers passed through each round were clear at the start, or if candidates at each stage were told how many others are still in. That should help manage expectations. I think personal outreach shouldn’t happen unless the benefactor is going to put a number on it as well i.e ‘I think you are a strong candidate. You, and the 49 other people I sent this email to.’
It seems to me the general slant is to get as many people as possible excited about the prospect of a high-impact career, hype them up, then hope they stick around after rejection. That’s usually when E2G becomes the focus. From ‘career accelerator’ to ‘just donate your money from a different job instead’.
Wild Animal Initiative: When does research become impact?
Fantastic post. I appreciate how it lays out the tradeoffs between short-term pragmatism and long-term vision.
For my part, I think cultivated meat is by far the most promising route to ending factory farming ASAP. Every animal advocate should, in my view, be doing everything possible to get it to market faster—through policy, funding, comms, or talent pipelines. I think other approaches pale in comparison.
Word up. EA massively underestimates how much presentation shapes whether ideas hit their target. You can have airtight arguments and still lose the room if the delivery feels waffly and bloodless (as most, but not all, EA presentations do).
I do think your example there is over-promising, however. I’d put it like
Some of the world’s best-proven charities can save a child’s life for $3,000. This is among the highest-impact uses of money we know of. [See our evidence base]
Re: diversity, I don’t put stock in it. There’s nothing stopping brownish women like me from participating.
I really appreciate this post. From being on the candidate side recently, and from hiring in smaller org settings, I’ve seen a lot of friction come from a reluctance to say out loud what excellence actually looks like for a given role.
When teams try to keep the funnel broad, they get hundreds of earnest applicants who were never going to be close to the bar. Candidates lose time, the signal gets lost, and everyone feels worse. Clear expectations up front, even if they narrow the pool, make the whole thing more honest and efficient.
I agree completely on treating hiring as a living system. We iterate everywhere else in EA, yet hiring often stays fixed and opaque. There’s a lot of benefit to experimenting, testing assumptions, sharing what works, and building more transparent models over time.
I’m very interested in this problem, especially approaches that combine clear bar-setting, structured evaluation, and genuine care for candidates. If you’re exploring ideas here, happy to chat.
Well, you just have told them, I guess! I’m all for people negotiating freely based on their individual circumstances, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. But, it sends signals that might not increase your chances. The incentives in EA are different to for-profit, and the question in my mind would be ‘why not just work part-time and volunteer?’
Hi, thanks for bringing this to our attention! I’m generally in favour of any new measure which increases transparency within EA, as I think the movement has somewhat deviated from its focus on cost-effectiveness (at least in animal advocacy).
Will CEA be adopting INPAS?
I think impact compounding is less reliable than stock market returns. The first stunner might be much more impactful (in shaping norms) than the 1000th. The impact of AI safety orgs remain to be seen. Meanwhile, that 6-7% in stock returns is somewhat consistent (though I think it’s closer to 5% in real terms. Also, I’m assuming you would donate the assets directly to avoid tax).
I’m also unsure of what skill can only be learned by the practice of donating as opposed to, for example, reading grant reports to understand funders’ reasoning. I suppose you learn more about yourself and how you think about giving, and you develop better habits, but that isn’t a skill.
However, I think now is generally better than later and agree that death is an arbitrary cash-in point.
Congratulations on the new name! I think it’s a great name; it immediately conveys the relationship between the ethical and environmental impacts of farming animals.
May I ask what the total cost was of this rebrand? The UK government recently got flack about spending £500m on a rebrand of their main website. I’m curious about how EA-aligned funders like Senterra think about cost effectiveness i.e how much went in, and what you’re hoping the rebrand will achieve for unlocking new audiences.
Also, are you in any way affiliated with this investment group? https://senterra.com/
I’m not there, but yes, I would support this idea!
Male on male violence is a numerically larger problem. The fact that men commit it doesn’t negate the suffering of male victims.
For cause prioritisation, it doesn’t matter whether the source of suffering is a man or a mosquito, beyond how it affects tractability. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether reducing violence in general ought to be a cause area.
The interventions you mention for IPV/femicide don’t yet have the profile of being cost effective and scaleable; or if they do, the evidence hasn’t been demonstrated at the level EA funders typically require. It could be worthwhile to look into the cost effectiveness of existing interventions more closely, but I’m doubtful.