All of alene&#x27;s Comments + Replies

Animal farming impacts soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than directly affected animals?

Got it. Thank you so much for explaining so patiently!

Animal farming impacts soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than directly affected animals?

Got it. I think I understand what you're saying. I'm not as good with math so I'm not sure if I followed the calculations. But to try to put what you're saying in less mathy terms, I think you're basically saying:

1) There are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals.

2) Nematodes are significantly less likely to be sentient than farmed animals.

3) But the fact that there are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals still means that, from an expected value perspective, one would still expect the effect of farming on nematodes to be muc... (read more)

Vasco Grilo🔸

8mo

Yes, that is basically right[1]. For example, I estimate nematodes are 7.76 % (= 0.068/0.876) as likely to be sentient as chickens ("significantly less"), but that there are 16.7 billion (= 4.89*10^20/(29.2*10^9)) times as many soil nematodes as farmed chickens ("WAY WAY WAY more"). Yes, I think that analogy illustrates why I think broadly advocating for decreasing the consumption of animal-based foods tends to be harmful to animals. 1. ^ With the caveat that what matters besides population is the welfare per animal-year, which is the product between the probability of sentience, welfare range given sentience, and welfare per animal-year as a fraction of the welfare range.

alene8mo8

Thank you for this interesting, weird, surprising, and important post. It is a mind f*ck.

Question: You say, "In particular, it is crucial to know whether [soil nematodes, mites, and springtails] have positive or negative lives."

Is another crucial question to find out whether soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are sentient at all?

To me, reading this, the main emotional / System 1 reaction I had was, "But those animals are SO small and SO different from me. I can't even see them! It's hard for me to believe they're sentient." I looked ... (read more)

Vasco Grilo🔸

8mo

Thanks for the comment, Alene! I will focus on nematodes because I calculated the increase in the welfare of soil nematodes from increasing cropland to range from 90.5 % to 94.3 % of the increase in the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails, depending on the original biome. I think decreasing the uncertainty about the probability of sentience of nematodes is less important than decreasing the uncertainty about whether they have positive or negative lives. I believe it would have to be unreasonably low for the effects on farmed animals to dominate. For example, I estimated eating chicken meat benefits soil animals 4.81 k times as much as it harms directly affected animals, so the effects on soil animals would have to become less than 0.0208 % (= 1/(4.81*10^3)) as large for the effects on directly affected animals to be larger. This could be achieved, for instance, if both the their probability of sentience, and welfare range given sentience became 1.44 % (= (2.08*10^-4)^0.5) as large. RP estimated a probability of sentience for nematodes of 6.8 %, 6.8 % that of humans of 100 %. As a result, for the effects of eating chicken meat on directly affected animals to be larger than those on soil animals, the probability of sentience of nematodes would have to drop by a factor 4.72 (= 0.068/0.0144) times as large as the factor linked to decrease in RP's probability of sentience from humans to nematodes. I assume there is a probability of 93.2 % (= 1 - 0.068) of soil nematodes having practically negligible welfare based on RP's probability of sentience for nematodes of 6.8 %. However, whether they have positive or negative lives in expectation is determined by what happens given sentience. RP's probability of sentience for nematodes of 6.8 % may seem low, but people take care to decrease way smaller risks. For example, travelling 370 km by car only increases one's risk of death by around 10^-6, but people still wear seat belts.

Animal advocates are too reluctant to sit at the industry's table

Vegan Challenges Are An Underrated Lever For Diet Change

This is SUCH a great post. Very needed. Thank you Aaron!

Don’t update too much from EA community involvement

Woah! This is really interesting and surprising to me. Thank you so much for letting people know!

Björn 🔹

8mo

I'm glad you like this research! Thanks for the comment!

alene9mo2

This is a REALLY good point. Thank you for posting this. I come from the animal rights movement. We have a similar problem in that movement. People in the AR movement tend to feel isolated, because they care so much about animals and perhaps they feel that the rest of the world, their family, and their society doesn't get it. So they are so eager to meet and befriend another AR person. It's really fun to make friends so easily! I love how quick other AR people are to trust me when they find out I'm an animal advocate. But there's also a downside to the tru... (read more)

Rescaling and The Easterlin Paradox (2.0)

alene9mo4

This is such a cool and interesting post. And it totally helps understand why things for humans seem like they're materially getting better in many ways, but our culture involves a lot of people saying a lot of negative things about how humanity is doing. I love that you're challenging the assumption that people accurately remember, or accurately report their memory of, their own happiness! This is super smart and matches my own experience of what it's like to be a human. Often, I'm not super sure how happy I've been over the past week, or the past day. Wh... (read more)

Charlie Harrison

9mo

Thanks, Alene! I appreciate that :)

Am I missing US government-level broiler chicken welfare initiatives?

Answer by aleneMay 30, 20254

Thank you for posting this important question—and for mentioning Legal Impact for Chickens.

We have done some work to attempt to improve broiler chicken welfare through the U.S. government's executive branch, by submitting comments on proposed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations. We asked USDA to address broiler welfare in its salmonella response, and to make chicken-meat companies warn growers about animal-welfare issues. And we asked the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) to give birds more space in order to avoid ... (read more)

Discussion Thread: Existential Choices Debate Week

alene1y10

100% disagree

Most people have a strong drive to perpetuate humanity. What makes EAs special is that EAs also care about others' suffering. So EAs should focus on trying to make sure the future isn't full of suffering.

Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickens’s room for funding & marginal impact

Reducing x-risk might be actively harmful

Update on Harvey's Market: A quick victory!

The butcher shop says it stopped selling foie gras thanks to LIC' lawsuit.

“Harvey’s Market . . . discontinued the sale of foie gras once notice of this lawsuit was received,” according to the butcher shop’s answer to our complaint.

https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/foie-gras

Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickens’s room for funding & marginal impact

Thank you so much for posting this. This is something I worry about a lot but I’m terrible at explaining it. The way you explain it makes much more sense. Thank you. ❤️

alene1y8

I guess the main reason is because the arguments we're making are right on the law. So I feel that we are bound to eventually win.

The example that immediately comes to mind for me is how animal lawyers finally established that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) prohibits the abuse of captive endangered and threatened animals.

The ESA states that it's illegal to kill, harm, or harass any animal whose species is threatened or endangered. So if you read the law objectively, it looks like it should prevent the abuse of captive endangered or threatened anima... (read more)

Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickens’s room for funding & marginal impact

alene1y5

Hi Vasco Grilo! Thank you for being awesome. I’m so sorry but I don’t have anything quite like that right now.

The goal isn’t 'end factory farming', but reduce as much suffering as possible

alene1y12

This is such a good post, and I agree very much. You said so many things that I have been thinking and wishing I knew how to say. Thank you so, so much for writing this, @ElliotTep!

I agree we should focus on reducing suffering. And I have other reasons, too, in addition to the points you brought up.

Other reasons:

1. The problem with factory farming is the suffering it causes. So, we should focus on the real problem—the suffering. When we talk about fighting factory farming, we are actually only talking about a proxy for our real goal. (The real goal is to d... (read more)

ElliotTep

Thanks for the comment Alene. I think I agree with all of it and that it does a great job of articulating things I didn't get to or think of.

EA Animal Welfare Fund: 2024 Review, Changes, and Plans

How would your project use extra funding? (Marginal Funding Week 2024)

Woot woot! So extremely grateful to the AWF.

KarolinaSarek🔸

Thanks! We are grateful for all the work that our grantees do.

Answer by aleneNov 11, 20247

Hi! :-) I chose the option of creating an independent post, but thought maybe I should also comment here to link to it?

Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickens’s room for funding & marginal impact

Thank you so much for doing this, @Toby Tremlett🔹 !

Sage Max

Thank you, Alene! Legal Impact for Chickens also has a match for GivingTuesday: bit.ly/LICgivingtuesday

Hiring a writer to co-author with me (Spencer Greenberg for ClearerThinking.org)

Farmed animals may have positive lives now or in a few decades?

This seems like such a cool opportunity! Spencer is so smart and kind.

alene1y6

This is a really interesting article. Thank you for writing it. I hope it's true that farmed animal welfare will one day be net positive. I fear that the treatment of farmed animals seems to be getting worse, rather than better, over the course of human history. But I hope I'm wrong. Or maybe it'll be a boomerang-shaped change, where the treatment of animals is currently getting worse, but things are about to do a 180 and start moving in the other direction? I hope we EAs can make that happen.

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks, Alene! I think total animal welfare is currently decreasing because factory-farming is increasing in low and middle income countries due to population and economic growth. However, I believe animal welfare per person is already increasing in countries where welfare reforms have been successful, and I expect these to eventually spread globally. Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions also dramatically increased since the industrial revolution, started by going down in high income countries, and I expect they will eventually go down globally. In any case, even if positive factory-farming was inevitable (some time in the future), getting there faster would still be super valuable!

Are Organically Farmed Animals Already Living a Net-Positive Life?

Are Organically Farmed Animals Already Living a Net-Positive Life?

Oh, got it! I am so sorry. I'm American and have a very American-centric worldview. I was thinking of organic as referring to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Organic certification. I therefore feel like I pretty much totally missed what you actually meant by your post. I'm sorry! 🇪🇺

Discussion thread: Animal Welfare vs. Global Health Debate Week

This is an interesting and important post.

I don't know the answer to the question you pose about whether, on average, animals used for organic food production have net positive lives. I'm thinking there's probably a lot of variation based on animal species, what product the animal is being used for, and how well-run the organic operation is. All that makes it harder for me to try to compute an average in my brain.

But I have a question and a thought.

The question: I'm wondering why you chose to explore organic in this post, as opposed to other fo... (read more)

Christoph Hartmann 🔸

Thanks for your thoughts! On your question: I chose organic because I had initially planned to take the EU Organic one because it’s so wide spread here and has some animal welfare standards. In the end I chose Naturland though because it seems to be stronger on animal welfare, and I wanted to make a strong case. I am not aware of any reported malpractices as the one you cited for that label but of course there is always a chance to have these outliers.

alene1y9

Humans kill about 1 trillion animals every year. https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-food-every-day/#:~:text=Chickens:%20206%20million/day,existed%20is%20just%20117%20billion. Many of them lead harsh, painful lives in factory farms and/or die a brutal death. And this doesn't even touch on wild animals suffering from non-human causes.

To contrast, there are only 8 billion humans on Earth.

8 billion is less than 1 trillion.

Egregious Cruelty: Humboldt Farm Sued for Putting Salt in Cows’ Eyes, Starving Cattle

Farming groups and veterinarians submit amicus briefs against cruelty to chickens

Thank you for everything you do, James, and for this question!

We advocate for all farmed animals. We just have a special emphasis on chickens.

Farming groups and veterinarians submit amicus briefs against cruelty to chickens

Thank you Nithin!!

Farming groups and veterinarians submit amicus briefs against cruelty to chickens

Thank you Tyler!!!