[AI Use Disclosure: Asked Claude to draft this, then entirely rejected its suggestions]

I laughed out loud at this xD excellent use of the AI disclosure tag.

I'm SUPER excited for this one. I find trying to think sanely about cluelessness hard and a bit demoralizing at times (and I've heard that from others too). I'd really value reading more about ways people who've spent more time on this orient to the topic.

I'll be following along!

I really like this description and it resonates with me. +1 to “I hope we don’t lose you at the 4th step” :)

It’s so desperately sad to have uncertainty about extremely important things, and yet we still need to choose how to act. It feels very productive to discuss where to allocate marginal resources between “reduce our uncertainty further” and “take the best step according to our current evidence base”, and I’m glad to see it being discussed.

Just a note that I believe US permanent residents (green card holders) can make 501c4 donations as well as US citizens!

This reply made me smile :) Thank you for helping refine and spread so many simple, important ideas! I and many people I know owe so much to that work.

I really enjoyed the version of this post that you shared at EAG SF. For posterity, my reaction after listening to the EAG talk was: "Wow, that talk was annoyingly helpful."

Annoying because: the core premise is so obvious, and yet I found spelling out the implications surprisingly clarifying! I think listening to that talk may have substantially accelerated my thinking on a key life decision I have been mulling on.

Thank you so much, @Toby_Ord :) I strongly upvoted.

So interesting, thanks! :)

I am really glad for your engagement on this question, Mia! I found this part of your comment interesting, especially the bolded part:

We have seen in Europe that welfare in cage-free systems improves over time as producers gain experience. The cage-free system has a high ceiling for welfare potential; the furnished cage has a very low one.

Do you have a quick explanation for why this is the case? I guess it makes sense intuitively to me (e.g. cages impose a fixed physical restriction on how much space a hen can have).

It is also really interesting and encouraging to hear that you think welfare in some cage-free systems is continuing to improve over time. I didn't realize that! If you have a quick sense for how much you think welfare is empirically improving in the European context, I would find this very interesting.

No worries if you don't have capacity to respond :)

That's really interesting, thanks for sharing! I'll pass it on :)