Would it not make more sense that do a campaign encouraging the vegan community to donate (and donate more effectively)? It seems the vegan community is well primed to want to use their money to help animals, rather than meat eaters. So it seems like a much lower hanging fruit to hold a campaign for this purpose rather than hold an anti-vegan campaign to get meat eaters to donate to help animals. I also somehow feel anti-vegan meat eaters would simply resonate with the anti-vegan sentiment of the Forget Veganuary campaign, rather than actually end up donating (though this is just a hunch). It might also give them "license" to eat more meat as they can now simply "offset" their consumption, but that sounds a lot like "start a fire and donate to the fire brigade" kind of situation.
I very strongly agree with integrating the likelihood of TAI with other cause areas.
Animal welfare being my primary cause area, I have found it somewhat odd that this is a separate cause area in itself to the other anthropocentric cause areas (though it makes sense for it to be for emphasis' sake). In reality I think there's inevitably an intersection between cause areas like AI safety x Animals and Longtermism x Animals; it's just that AI safety and longtermism currently hold a very anthropocentric focus, but in principle these could be applied to animal welfare.
That's an interesting distinction between radical actions and radical asks; I think subconsciously I have been thinking about the two interchangeably.
In terms of asks, I think we'll most likely be sticking to non-radical asks.
In terms of actions, I think we'll most likely be sticking to non-radical actions. While I see the importance of a pluralistic approach to animal advocacy, we're thinking about this from the perspective of filling a gap; there already seems to be many activist groups engaging in radical actions.
This is how we're currently thinking about it, but very happy to be convinced otherwise.
We prioritised these two tasks after consulting with some experts here in Australia. We broadly looked at the scale of impact (should that ask be sufficiently met), the amount of suffering an intervention reduces, and how likely it is for an ask to be met.
Establishing an independent office for animal welfare would affect all animal species, and not just pigs, so the scale of impact here is large. Moreover, the state of NSW has already committed to an independent office for animal welfare, so we thought this might be a relatively easy commitment to get from the Victorian government as another Australian state has already committed to it.
As for banning farrowing crates, we chose this ask because it is a large source of suffering for mother pigs and are used when the urge to act on maternal instincts is the most intense. This ask is a lso a sufficiently concrete ask compared to other recommendations mentioned in the inquiry report.
We say the marginal return from the final few participants was low because we already had participants in the districts the final participants were from. If they had been from districts where we didn't already have participants engaging in this campaign, then the marginal return would have been higher. However, this wasn't the case.
I've recently been coming across content that on some level discuss how some aspect 'X' is / shoud be different in the pro-animal movement.
One example is the disproportionate amount of focus that goes into consumer activism over institutional change. I'm not an expert in social movements, nor have I spent much active time studying them, but the sense I get is that other social movements like ending slavery, and feminism have involved focusing on institutional and scalable changes. In this example, X = type of change we should focus on.
In this post, I would say X = the goal of the pro-animal movement.
In both instances, X is different for the pro-animal movement than in other forms of social movements.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that nonhuman animal oppression is a beast that none other parallels so there ought to be some differences in the way we approach bringing about change in this area. But I inevitably also wonder if there is some level of embedded speciesism involved when we differentiate nonhuman animal oppression from human-specific oppressions.
I'm Aditi Basu and I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. I quit my full-time job last week to do more impactful work in the animal welfare space. It's something I have been very passionate about but just didn't have the guts to make the leap of faith (due to reasons falling under the low income high uncertainty umbrella). The Effective Altruism movement & community have played a big part in my decision to make this leap. In the one year I've been a part of this community, it has significantly changed the way I approach my life and make decisions.
I'm taking up to a year off to identify gaps in the pro-animal movement and work on (unpaid yet impactful) projects and at the same time make connections and forge collaborations with other similarly oriented individuals working in this space.
I'll also aim to create a post on this forum in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out!
Fun facts about me: I'm very much into Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In the past, I've enjoyed long distance running and rock-climbing. I have three cat babies who I absolutely adore and love.
Would it not make more sense that do a campaign encouraging the vegan community to donate (and donate more effectively)? It seems the vegan community is well primed to want to use their money to help animals, rather than meat eaters. So it seems like a much lower hanging fruit to hold a campaign for this purpose rather than hold an anti-vegan campaign to get meat eaters to donate to help animals. I also somehow feel anti-vegan meat eaters would simply resonate with the anti-vegan sentiment of the Forget Veganuary campaign, rather than actually end up donating (though this is just a hunch). It might also give them "license" to eat more meat as they can now simply "offset" their consumption, but that sounds a lot like "start a fire and donate to the fire brigade" kind of situation.
Hi Ben, thanks for these questions.
To make the tournament as decision-relevant as possible, would you be able to add:
Hi Dylan, thanks for these questions.
To make the tournament as decision-relevant as possible, would you be able to add:
I very strongly agree with integrating the likelihood of TAI with other cause areas.
Animal welfare being my primary cause area, I have found it somewhat odd that this is a separate cause area in itself to the other anthropocentric cause areas (though it makes sense for it to be for emphasis' sake). In reality I think there's inevitably an intersection between cause areas like AI safety x Animals and Longtermism x Animals; it's just that AI safety and longtermism currently hold a very anthropocentric focus, but in principle these could be applied to animal welfare.
That's an interesting distinction between radical actions and radical asks; I think subconsciously I have been thinking about the two interchangeably.
In terms of asks, I think we'll most likely be sticking to non-radical asks.
In terms of actions, I think we'll most likely be sticking to non-radical actions. While I see the importance of a pluralistic approach to animal advocacy, we're thinking about this from the perspective of filling a gap; there already seems to be many activist groups engaging in radical actions.
This is how we're currently thinking about it, but very happy to be convinced otherwise.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for stating what you found informative from this post and for also sharing learnings from your campaigns!
I've fixed the UK Voters for Animals link - appreciate the flag!
I've recently been coming across content that on some level discuss how some aspect 'X' is / shoud be different in the pro-animal movement.
One example is the disproportionate amount of focus that goes into consumer activism over institutional change. I'm not an expert in social movements, nor have I spent much active time studying them, but the sense I get is that other social movements like ending slavery, and feminism have involved focusing on institutional and scalable changes. In this example, X = type of change we should focus on.
In this post, I would say X = the goal of the pro-animal movement.
In both instances, X is different for the pro-animal movement than in other forms of social movements.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that nonhuman animal oppression is a beast that none other parallels so there ought to be some differences in the way we approach bringing about change in this area. But I inevitably also wonder if there is some level of embedded speciesism involved when we differentiate nonhuman animal oppression from human-specific oppressions.
Hey everyone!
I'm Aditi Basu and I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. I quit my full-time job last week to do more impactful work in the animal welfare space. It's something I have been very passionate about but just didn't have the guts to make the leap of faith (due to reasons falling under the low income high uncertainty umbrella). The Effective Altruism movement & community have played a big part in my decision to make this leap. In the one year I've been a part of this community, it has significantly changed the way I approach my life and make decisions.
I'm taking up to a year off to identify gaps in the pro-animal movement and work on (unpaid yet impactful) projects and at the same time make connections and forge collaborations with other similarly oriented individuals working in this space.
I'll also aim to create a post on this forum in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out!
Fun facts about me:
I'm very much into Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
In the past, I've enjoyed long distance running and rock-climbing.
I have three cat babies who I absolutely adore and love.
Aditi