Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA
I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes.
On factory farming
1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...
On October 22nd starting at 10:00am Pacific Time, Every.org is matching donations to select animal welfare organizations at a 2:1 rate, up to $2,000 per donor per nonprofit (so if you give up to $2,000, they will contribute up to $4,000 and the nonprofit will get up to $6,000). The first donation a donor makes to each eligible nonprofit will be matched, and donors can get the match for multiple $2,000 donations. So, you can get more than $2,000 matched by donating $2,000 one time to multiple...
When speaking to candidates who are considering working with us at 80,000 Hours, I often hear people worry about replaceability.
The familiar version of the worry is about whether the organisation will hire someone else in your place. If it will, then the difference you make by taking the job is only the difference between you and them.
There are a couple of well-known answers to that. The person hired in your place probably cares about the world too, and would go on to do somethi...
It is unusual for a community as small as rationalism to have produced multiple instances of cult-like groups. And while this particular group is technically opposed to mainstream rationalism, they are still knee deep in rationalist epistemology (justifying extreme acts with "timeless decision theory" and so on). Something about the epistemics or community of rationalism is probably making these types of incidences more likely.
As long as EA is associated with rationalism, expect to continue getting second order splashback from these kind of incidences.
I don't think rationalism is that small a subculture in the Bay at this point, and the Bay Area rate of cult creation has historically been pretty high since the 1960s at least. Watching Slimepriestess' interview (linked in the LW thread comments), my impression is that the Zizians' beliefs and actions stemmed from a fusion of rationalist/EA beliefs, far-left anarchist politics, and general Bay Area looniness.