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...
AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
It seems as though event cancellation is now the general norm, so hopefully the situation you outlined is quickly changing.
I don't know what the circumstances were behind any given cancellation, but it might be valuable to look for stories about contentious events (e.g. St. Patrick's Day parades in large East Coast cities) and see if you can pinpoint the reasons that they were shut down.
Similarly, you could look at statements from prominent companies that now encourage employees to work from home (e.g. Alphabet) and see how they explain themselves. (The prestige of those companies may also be a good selling point for other business leaders.)
Thanks! Yes, fortunately the message to cancel everything has gotten out.