AxellePB 🔹
Bio
Participation3
I'm a science journalist, based in France, most interested in covering effective animal advocacy issues like chicken and fish farming, invertebrate sentience, wild animal welfare, alt-proteins. I sometimes write articles about effective giving and AI safety.
Comments9
Super interesting to read this list. I didn't know half of the tools you mention. I work as a journalist, and although I sense the potential of using AI in my work, so far I've limited myself to some minor uses of ChatGPT. I think applying gwern's advice, and reflecting carefully on the valuable tasks an hypothetical outsourced human could perform for me, will help me in this area. So thanks for sharing!
Thanks for writing this. I've been interested in the suffering of farmed animals for ten years now, and I'm still discovering terrible things about their fate. One example is the treatment of breeding females chickens in the fast-growing broiler industry. The industry is facing what it calls the ‘broiler breeder paradox’, i.e. the fact that it has developed strains of chickens that put on weight very quickly, which is exactly what they are looking for to produce large volumes of cheap meat, but which has consequences for the reproductive performance of the breeding animals (who obviously share the same genetics). One of their way of 'dealing' with this paradox is to subject breeding females to severe food restriction, which causes them chronic, distressing hunger. The Welfare Footprint Project has written on this.
In the case of human populations, the aversive nature of the sensation that accompanies food deprivation has been long used as a method of punishment and torture. Prolonged food deprivation has been described as “excruciating until the point of becoming an unbearable source of pain”, with the obsession with food dominating all thoughts, to a life-threatening point where one would risk their life for a small piece of bread.
Thanks for sharing this! One of the points that resonates most with me is the idea that animal advocacy has to deal with situations where the threshold for reaching the ‘next level’ might be too high at the moment. We've all seen cases where animal advocates have gone to great lengths to create innovative, well-informed campaigns, but which failed to gain the traction needed to drive meaningful progress. It’s like their efforts create ripples but no tsunami. It’s sobering to see that you can put lots of smart work into the cause, and don't get any substantial results because of external factors. It's also dangerous because advocates might cling to the hope that the threshold is within reach, or that they're getting closer and closer, so they continue pouring resources into something that ultimately won't deliver.
I feel like this threshold thing is one reason why synergy between the various parts of the ‘ecosystem of social change’ is promising. If each group within this ecosystem is trying their best, but independently, they may never gather enough momentum to break through the inertia and status quo. But by coordinating around a topic or campaign, a movement might be able to create sufficient waves to get to the ‘next level’, and get ambitious reforms passed that seemed unattainable years ago. I’ve recently come across some interesting initiatives on this front via the Social Change Lab, including organizations like The Ayni Institute, Breakthrough, Changing Ideas. Their goal is to build strong, mass social movements and to train and propel effective movement leaders. There's also Link for Change, which connects activists, lawyers and journalists to create synergy and amplify the impact of social movements.
Money is probably not the limiting factor here. What I’d love to see is a team of people crafting this kind of synergy among various actors for a major national campaign (perhaps around broiler chickens?). The skills required would include excellent project management, a network in various influential circles, a good grasp of the ways cultural change might happen, experience in the media and PR… And yet, I agree that it may still not suffice.
Hi Ben! I found your account of the MHI shut down in Asterisk Magazine very inspiring.
I'm curious how, in your opinion, a charity culture could be foster in which this kind of courageous decision (shuting down projects that fail to meet the bar) is made more often and more easily, despite all the powerful incentives not to follow the evidence that you mention in the article.
I find that publicly sharing the shut down process plays a role in setting an example and fostering accountability on this matter (I also really liked the post about the Center for Effective Aid Policy shut down). Can you think of other ideas?
What role do you think journalism can play in advancing the cause of farmed animals? Can you think of any promising topics journalists may want to prioritize in the European context in particular, i.e. topics that have the potential to unlock important gains for farmed animals if seriously investigated and publicized?
The urgency factor reminds me of a Charity Entrepreneurship blog post from a few years ago (which I can't locate now) that emphasized the importance of considering windows of opportunity when prioritizing causes. For example, preventing the development of a new industry, like octopus farming, is particularly pressing now, because the industry is still nascent. Acting now could be far easier than trying to challenge a well-established industry 5 to 10 years down the line. By having the opportunity to intervene early, we may prevent more suffering, something that may be less accessible for mature industries. So I think I would place this "opportunity/urgency factor" within "tractability", as it influences our ability to address the issue effectively at a given point in time.