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...
“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...
This post is far too assertive considering the weak evidence given in the post.
The blog points out that it may be hard to measure the success of campaigns towards customers. Unfortunately it makes a large unjustified logical leap to assume this means that these campaigns are unsuccessful. As referred to in the EA's [Hits-based giving] post, it "arrogantly" places one solution over another shortly after the very experts they consulted say "there's no real answer" and "we need more research". In fact, there's no hard evidence given to support the posts headline at all.
Some of the links seem tenuous too, and here's an example. The point is made that "60 percent of Americans who say they’re vegetarian on surveys also say that they’ve eaten meat in the past 24 hours". This links to a BusinessInsider post which links a PsychologyToday post, which quotes a CNN poll which I can't find anywhere (feel free to link below if you find it). The PsychologyToday post also cites a 20 year old study in which a small number of respondents claim to eat <10g of meat per day in an initial poll, but not in a follow-up 3-10 days later. While the study does not claim that this is due to dishonesty or bias, the linking posts claim both lies and social desirability bias.
This example shows how the author is writing their own narrative onto an tertiarily linked study, and greatly lowers the confidence I can have for the links I didn't check (Brandolini's law).
I'd really like to see some sort of justification of having this low-quality post linked among the otherwise well-written blogs on this forum.
Also, I don't see it justify that targeting corporations works?
Is it more effective to convert high-profile individuals in animal slaughter-related corporations, to pass regulations for these corporations, to become experts working to create welfare standards from within, or what? It doesn't tell me much about where to orient my animal welfare charity towards.