This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Hey Bryan, agree that this is a really interesting cause area in high-income countries. I've written a report on UK planning reform for Founders Pledge. We've recommended London YIMBY, who are working to strengthen Johnson's proposed reforms and design politically-palatable proposals that will actually get through Parliament.
As you know, proper land use reform could have very large welfare benefits so I'm excited to see more work bringing attention to the issue! Now the trick is finding policy proposals that overcome the huge political barriers to reform. I'm glad you think Biden's proposals are decent.
Very interesting report! Thanks for reading.