Yep Ben is right. We did turn the tabloid coverage into further deeper coverage and were on our way to the North Star but leaned out of controversy to a degree that killed our momentum. Of course we don’t know what would have happened otherwise, and it should certainly be characterized as a “low probability bet” because trying to land media hits is inherently “hits-based”, but this was a reasonable PR strategy that our two staff who both have ample PR experience devised. I don’t think we should put much stock in our armchair PR intuitions

Knowing Matt, I’d wager he’s asking why your p(bee sentience) is so low 

Read the Rethink research in its entirety and you’ll see the section with our reflections on the findings. It explains how the research influenced our strategy, and why campaigns like this can still make sense in light of it. We care a lot about what will actually work to drive donations — that’s why we requested this piece of research be done in the first place 

Also our thousands of donors over the past 12 months. Many of them email us expressing that our compassion calculator is exactly what they’re been looking for and/or that they’ve been put off by other animal advocates in the past and find our website refreshing.

I took a ~3/4 pay cut to work in EA (and that's before accounting for the upward trajectory of my previous salary versus my static one working in EA). Most EAs I know could be earning a lot more if they worked in the for profit sector based on their education and experience.

I don't think this is the right question, as we should be just trying to encourage everyone to do more good rather than telling everyone to get to one "good enough" point and then stop. Also, being vegan is not the biggest thing someone can do for animals, so focusing our commendations on that seems like setting the wrong norm/incentive

“Are FarmKind claiming that Veganuary is one of those organisations?” — No

"I think if EA's on the forum feel uncomfortable about this, the general public is likely to take it even worse than us" -- I really disagree with this. EA's values and sensibilities are very different to the average person. Things that EAs consider horrifically callous are normal to the average person and vice versa.

Examples of the former: eating meat, keeping all your wealth for yourself, 'charity begins at home'

Examples of the latter: measuring impact and saying we shouldn't give resources to organizations that don't perform well against these measureme... (read more)

Haha kayfabe is exactly right. Let's not spoil it for the fans

Veganuary seeming against it is part of the bit. These media outlets hate Veganuary and wouldn’t cover it if they thought it was what they wanted. We (FarmKind) have an announcement coming tomorrow explaining the context behind this campaign but the TL;DR is that it is not encouraging meat eating, it’s encouraging donating as another option for people who aren’t willing to change their diet, and generating coverage for Veganuary who have a harder time getting in the media each year without a new hook 

Strong agree from FarmKind’s perspective. An equal bugbear for me is that to the extent EA orgs focus on comms, they’re insufficiently focused on how to communicate to non-EAs. There seems to be a resistance to confront the fact that to grow we need to appeal to normal people and that means speaking to them the way that works for them, rather than what would work for us

One very important problem (that I don't have the solution to) is that being "an EA funder" is not binary -- all sorts of funders make grants to charities that would be considered EA (and "EA charity" is a fraught definition itself but let's bracket that). It seems entirely plausible to me, nay perhaps probable (given that the Randomstas and evidence-based GHD predates EA) that the majority of "EA funding" is coming from grantmakers that aren't being counted here. This would render any trends we see in the data in this post not reflective of what's actgual... (read more)

For those excited about Shrimp Welfare Project, FarmKind is hosting a fundraiser for them from International Shrimpact Day™ (25th November, 2025) through until Giving Tuesday (2nd December, 2025). 

There will be ~25 blog posts on Substack making the case for donating to shrimp, as well as a live debate between Jeff Sebo and Lyman Stone (moderated by Peter Singer) on whether donating to shrimp is a good idea, and a light-hearted debate between Bentham's Bulldog and Jeff Maurer (moderated by Josh Szeps) on whether donating to SWP or GiveDirectly is a the... (read more)

Thanks for writing this! It seems all the more important to get this right given the trend that the beings on the edge of our moral circle tend to be the most numerous, meaning that if we take the possibility of their sentience seriously, we may spend quite large amounts of resources trying to help them. Seems worth trying to figure out whether beings on the edge of our moral circles are basically all that matters or don't matter at all!

Agreed! We're trying to find people with audiences who are sympathetic the cause but unwilling or unable to change their diet (e.g. Sam Harris) and provide them with a non-diet-related solution that they can speak to their audience about without having to fear backlash due to perceived moralising about people's diets

I have no idea about that. I’m not talking about whether cage free or broiler work is a better idea for a new organization — I’m answering your question about whether an org that started off doing caged free might expand to broiler :)

No, not to many animal advocates and vegans. I’ve had plenty reach out to check my “vegan credentials” to determine whether (in their view) I’m “on their side”

It’d be up to the founders, but I’d guess it would make sense to focus on layers in the Middle East until hitting diminishing returns there. After that, how to scale would likely depend on what the team’s comparative advantage is: Expertise and connections within the Middle East context (such that different asks in that context makes sense) or expertise at cage free campaigns specifically (such that the same ask in a different context makes sense) 

It is valid but I think it’s being downvoted because (a) Vasco posts the same point so often and so widely that some people come to view it as spam, (b) this is on a public forum and is the kind of view that is perfect to be used by bad-faith EA critics and journalists to paint EA in a negative light in media.

Although, to Vasco’s credit, this comment is much improved on the optics front compared to previous ones

Finally, some quantitative analysis to confirm a nagging suspicion I've had, but have been unable to prove: Vasco likes to write about soil nematodes <3 

Good question! I think (a) having to think about which is the 10% and “should I eat this” every meal uses too much bandwidth. I find a simple rule easier overall. It’s kind of like how I don’t calculate the consequences of my actions at every decision even though I’m consequentialist. I rely on heuristics instead. (b) I found it really hard to get to my current diet. It took me many years. And I think that personally I’ll find it hard to re-introduce 10% of the animal products without being tempted and it becoming 50%. (c) I think the things I say about veganism to other vegans / animal people are more credible when I’m vegan [as I’m clearly committed to the cause and not making excuses for myself].

This couldn't be more salient for my partner and me, literally trying to decide between staying indefinitely in London and returning to Australia, with kids and aging parents being key considerations. We've been staring the abyss dead in the eye and it's not backing down! :S

They're probably less judgmental than average. Also perhaps poorer social skills on average. Do I back us to have the required tact? :P

But in all seriousness, the answer to "is it positive for social signalling to have an extra vegan EA forum reader" could defs be different to "is it positive for social signalling to have an extra vegan". I had the latter in mind when I questioned the signalling value

To be clear, I want to see factory farming ended, I’m vegan (except occasional bivalves), and co-founded an animal welfare charity. 

I’m with you on the goal. 

But while all the vegans I know seem to take it as self-evident that being vegan is the best diet choice in terms of social signalling, I’m not convinced.

You’re right that it’s possible to be a non-judgmental strict vegan, and everyone should aspire to be. But in my experience, the average vegan doesn’t meet this standard. And so rather than assuming a marginal vegan will be the best case sc... (read more)

What are transaction fees? If sufficiently low, this could enable some use cases I’ve had personally where I want to, for example, donate $2 to charity at the click of a button every time I’m begged for change, or if I find myself somewhere remote and unable to access vegan food or something 

This! I think an important way this posts’ recommendation can backfire is if non-drinkers become like vegans: socially isolated from drinkers, judgmental of drinkers.. this will likely be counterproductive and knowing human nature, I think people are  at significant risk of becoming socially isolated from drinkers if they quit.

My guess is that the signaling value of 2 people halving their drinking is higher than the signaling value of 1 person quitting 

I agree that removing the 10% of animal products from your diet that causes the least suffering is not that important, and otherwise clear-headed EAs treat it like a very big deal in a way they don’t treat giving 10% less to charity as a very big deal (even though it only takes small amounts of base giving for the latter to be a far bigger deal). There is a puritanical attitude to diet that is surprisingly pervasive on the forum which I think is counter-productive.

Another commenter (Tristan) is right to point to other and second-order benefits of veganism,... (read more)

You might like this diet offset calculator, Kat: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bc6E6AeWesmeobeKq/beyond-go-vegan-a-video-introducing-omnivores-to-another

I totally relate with the emotional difficulty of putting aside feelings about others harming animals in order to best enable them to make the world better, in whatever ways are both realistic and most impactful for them. It’s hard! But I think it’s really important and I think is making me a more effective advocate within my real-world social interactions 

Thanks for writing this Max! The likelihood that my and other advocates' work could be made completely irrelevant in the next few years has been nagging at me. Because you invited loose thoughts, I wanted to share my reflections on this topic after reading your write-up:

If AI changes the world massively over the next 5-10 years but there's no sci-fi-style intelligence explosion:

• Many/most of the specific interventions that animal advocates are using successfully today will no longer work in a completely different context.
  • This means we should 'exploit' prov

Thanks for writing this Sam! This is a topic I've been giving some thought to as I read pro-PLF pro-animal-welfare writers like Robert Yaman (The Optimist's Barn). 

There are two assumptions you make that I think are worth interrogating.

1. Factory farming cannot be 'fixed'? Some animal advocates believe that one of the possible end games for animal suffering in factory farming is making welfare so good that animals lives are net positive. I'm unsure if I think this is possible even in principle (it depends on one's philosophy of wellbeing), but I'm open t

One thing that we at FarmKind have been thinking about is partnering with student groups who are advocating for their schools to improve the animal welfare and climate cost of their dining halls. Student groups are making great headway convincing administrations to move closer to plant-based, but in almost all cases college administrations aren't willing to go all the way yet. In these cases, they could offset the remaining animal welfare and climate cost through donations to effective charities (see here for a write-up, and here for the tool itself). If y... (read more)

Far from convinced that continued existence at currently likely wellbeing levels is a good thing

I have a somewhat basic question: If I'm currently of the view that OpenAI is reckless and I'd choose for them to stop existing if I could, does it follow that I should want Musk to win this? Or at least that I should want OpenAI to fail to restructure?

(Also, if you want OpenAI to successfully restructure, I'd love to know why. Is it just a "we need to US to win the race with China" thing?)

Great idea! I will add this to the product backlog. We're currently trying to add the carbon emissions from one's diet :) 

Thanks Saulius! The in-some-cases 100% adjustments for conservatism should easily cover considerations like this. I agree they exist and matter

From first hand experience, I think critics should make more of an effort to ensure that the charities have actually received your communications and had a chance to review it. When my organization was the subject of a critical post, the email from the critic had landed in my spam, so I only learned of the critique when reading it on the forum. 

What's more, as an organization of 2 people, one of which was on leave at the time of the notice, we couldn't have reasonably responded to it without stopping critical work to keep the lights on. The smaller the organization being critiqued is, the less flex capacity they have to respond quickly to these sorts of things, and so they should be given a longer grace period.

I can't believe how often I have to explain this to people on the forum: Speaking with scientific precision makes for writing very few people are willing to read. Using colloquial, simple language is often appropriate, even if it's not maximally precise. In fact, maximally precise doesn't even exist -- we always have to decide how detailed and complete a picture to paint. 

If you're speaking to a PhD physicist, then say "electron transport occurs via quantum tunneling of delocalized wavefunctions through the crystalline lattice's conduction band, with ... (read more)

I think it's pretty safe to assume that the reality of most charities' cost-effectiveness is less than they claim. 

I'd also advise skepticism of a critic who doesn't attempt to engage with the charity to make sure they're fully informed before releasing a scathing review. [I also saw signs of naive "cost-effectiveness analysis goes brrr" style thinking about charity evaluation from their ACE review, which makes me more doubtful of their work].

It's also worth noting that quantifying charity impact is messy work, especially in the animal cause area. We ... (read more)

Great idea! 

Sure thing! Done!

I am also skeptical of small percentages but more so because I think that the kinds of probability estimates that are close to 0 or 1 tend to be a lot more uncertain (perhaps because they’re based on rare or unprecedented events that have only been observed a few times). 

I’m no statistician, but I’m not sure that we can say that small percentages tend to be exaggerated though… For one, I recall reading in Superforecasters that there’s evidence that people tend to underestimate the likelihood of rare events and overestimate the likelihood of common one... (read more)

Love this comment. This is an angle we’ve considered for encouraging vegans to donate

Oops here's the other one: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/28/contra-askell-on-moral-offsets/

Sorry I've been unclear -- let me clarify: When we use the term 'offset,' we mean it in a quantitative sense - doing an amount of good for animals that's comparable in magnitude to the harm caused by one's diet. Whether this good deed makes eating meat ethically equivalent to not eating meat is a complex philosophical question that reasonable people can disagree on. But for someone who is going to eat meat either way (which describes most of our users), adding a donation that helps farmed animals is clearly better than not adding that donation.

The calculat... (read more)

We do use moral weights, in the sense that the Suffering Adjusted Day (SAD) methodology considers both probability of sentience and welfare ranges :)

We agree that there may be morally relevant differences between carbon offsetting and meat offsetting. But as I mention in my FAQ comment, given how the calculator is actually being used (i.e. by people who had no intention of changing their diet), the important question isn't whether eating meat and then paying to offset it is morally equivalent to not eating the meat. The important question is whether eating meat and donating is morally better than eating meat and not donating. The answer to that seems like a resounding 'yes'

Good on your Mum!

Since we carved it out as it's own page in ~September 2024 it's had 4336 visits from 3169 visitors (that's just those who accepted cookies -- we can't see those who didn't).

Since we turned on the ability to track "offset donors" seperately in mid-December, we've had ~30 offsetters sign up. We also have reason to believe that a fair few people who were convinced to donate by the offset calculator ended up making normal donations, not through the calculator

Frequently Asked Questions

Is offsetting harms ethically the same as not doing them?

This is a fascinating question, which Scott Alexander has blogged about twice (here and here). But ultimately, it's not crucial to the value of this tool. The key question isn't whether donating while eating meat is as good as going vegan (since, we think it is likely that almost no one using the calculator will be planning to change their diet otherwise). The question is whether eating meat and donating is better than eating meat and not donating. We think the ans... (read more)