Hi Pablo, thank you for bringing in the COM-B model. :) I wasn’t familiar with it, but it reminded me of Robert Gass’s Wheel of Change, which says lasting change requires working on three interacting domains: Hearts & Minds (what people think and feel), Behavior (what people do) and Structures (the systems around them). Changing only one tends to pull the system back to where it started. It also echoes the Movement Ecology framework from the Ayni Institute, which describes five complementary theories of change (alternatives, personal transformation, structure-based organizing, mass protest and the inside game) that a movement needs in balance.
The essence of both is that change is complex, and that we need to target different types of intervention so the system can shift. This doesn’t mean “anything goes”; we still need to assess the effectiveness of each intervention. But the interventions do need to target different areas of society, which is why I think your point about not building the movement on Opportunity and Motivation alone, without Behavior, is very important. Thank you!
Hi Vasco, and sorry for the slow reply, I'm still getting used to the EA Forum. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. :)
I think part of where we land differently comes down to the exchange rate between animal welfare and other outcomes like GHG, which depends on moral weights as well as evidence. You give animal welfare more weight, and that's a reasonable position. Other donors and researchers will weigh things differently, which is why I'd like those assumptions to be explicit rather than buried inside single-lane metrics.
What I'm arguing is that if we can measure one intervention across several areas, we can compare impact across causes, and compare multi-benefit interventions fairly against single-lane ones. You're already doing a version of this in your chicken vs beef/pork analysis, so I think we agree on the method. My hope is that it gets applied more widely, including to things like School Plates, whose co-benefits your estimate doesn't count.
Hi Pablo, thank you for bringing in the COM-B model. :) I wasn’t familiar with it, but it reminded me of Robert Gass’s Wheel of Change, which says lasting change requires working on three interacting domains: Hearts & Minds (what people think and feel), Behavior (what people do) and Structures (the systems around them). Changing only one tends to pull the system back to where it started. It also echoes the Movement Ecology framework from the Ayni Institute, which describes five complementary theories of change (alternatives, personal transformation, structure-based organizing, mass protest and the inside game) that a movement needs in balance.
The essence of both is that change is complex, and that we need to target different types of intervention so the system can shift. This doesn’t mean “anything goes”; we still need to assess the effectiveness of each intervention. But the interventions do need to target different areas of society, which is why I think your point about not building the movement on Opportunity and Motivation alone, without Behavior, is very important. Thank you!
Hi Vasco, and sorry for the slow reply, I'm still getting used to the EA Forum. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. :)
I think part of where we land differently comes down to the exchange rate between animal welfare and other outcomes like GHG, which depends on moral weights as well as evidence. You give animal welfare more weight, and that's a reasonable position. Other donors and researchers will weigh things differently, which is why I'd like those assumptions to be explicit rather than buried inside single-lane metrics.
What I'm arguing is that if we can measure one intervention across several areas, we can compare impact across causes, and compare multi-benefit interventions fairly against single-lane ones. You're already doing a version of this in your chicken vs beef/pork analysis, so I think we agree on the method. My hope is that it gets applied more widely, including to things like School Plates, whose co-benefits your estimate doesn't count.