Browsing "The Good It Promises, the Harm it Does", there's mention in the introduction that EA is prominent in animal advocacy. I'm curious about how true that is.
Where should I be looking to find out? Should I read this critical book to learn more?
Thank you for the chapter pointers.
You mention obvious reasons. The reasons are not obvious to me, because I am ignorant about this topic. Do you mean that these critics are being self-serving and that some animal advocacy orgs lost funding for other reasons than EA competition or influence?
The book's introduction proposes:
Disclaimer: I follow animal welfare news as a hobby and out of curiosity so I definitely am getting things wrong on the object level. Please feel free to push back.
A lot the analysis relies on empirically unproven claims as to the counterfactual. A few examples:
- In arguments against alt-proteins the authors argue that a theoretical problem with impossible meats is that they drive more meat consumption because people who would have become vegans become flexitarians (which I guess is a transitive consumption jump I don't buy) or that a family with a vegan teenager is more likely to go to burger king because impossible burgers mean the teenager won't throw up a fuss about going. I think I just think the substitution effect doesn't work like that because I can't imagine the conditions to be:
- On the institution level it's something like sanctuaries lose funding and the value of cows roaming is a value that can't be measured in QUALYs compared to chickens. The EA memeplex around animal welfarism means young would be activists go towards EA rather than an
... (read more)no. of vegan consumers success rate of moving family > no. of reducetarians * consumption reduction by substitution of meal