Thanks for writing this. I enjoyed reading it and for myself I'm turning over in my head whether or not I think welfare tech is a bubble in the same way that leafleting and clean meat were. I recall the movement going all in on scaling up leafleting when the evidence didn't support it yet. The predictions and promises made about when cultivated meat would hit stores and total market share again were overpromising on the evidence.
I guess from my point of view I feel like I haven't seen the same claims being made about welfare tech. Perhaps you could argue that people are claiming success at a level that is not warranted by the evidence, given the complexity of these problems and the uncertainty we have about whether or not they are net positive. Is the claim here that some of these claims are premature and overstating the case or is the claim that some of these new venture studios or calls for new founders are overstating how promising or straightforward these interventions are? Or both? Either way it doesn't seem like this is the same kind of bubble as leafleting or clean meat predictions.
I think the picture is (mostly) bleak if you look at the denominator (total animal suffering), and how little we can do to end suffering of all farmed animals. If you look at the numerator, there are millions and sometimes even billions of individuals whose lives you can help, even in expectation.
Nice. This is definitely a useful concept, and is similar to the ladder of engagement which is discussed in the context of volunteer organising. One thing the ladder adds is how reliable are they? This makes more sense for engaging volunteers specifically, where someone can be skilled aligned, and high-context, but not very reliable at doing what they agree to.
Also this is not me saying this is not a big problem. And of course there are other reasons why we should tackle this, not just for the instrumental value of lost productivity.
It estimated a loss of roughly 6–7% of total workforce output
I think one issue with this claim is that I think stress and anxiety is downstream of something that also causes a huge amount of upside and that is people are persuaded by this being an incredibly high-impact opportunity. This is high impact because the stakes are high. Things could go catastrophically wrong. Not enough people are working on it. This causes people to make big career pivots and work hard, and also create stress and anxiety with the resulting psychological downsides.
Of course we should try to maintain motivation and interest in the cause area while reducing stress, anxiety, burnout, etc. But I think one of the reasons this is tough is that they are both downstream of a third factor.
Despite this, I do agree with most of your proposed solutions.
Curious what Grace thinks but I'll chime in that Australia has a similar number of EAs and overall population across a landmass 186 times larger than the Netherlands. 2/3 live in Melbourne and Sydney, which are a 10 hour drive apart. IMO a geographic hub where it's easy for people to congregate is one of the determinants of hub success. Not to say Australia isn't a hub, but IMO its less of a hub than EU countries with similar number of EAs.
Thanks for raising this. I should clarify that the generalisation I've made largely applies outside of EA spaces, and the reverse tends to be true in EA spaces, where I find most people, vegan or otherwise, take the suffering of farmed animals pretty seriously.
I agree this is a challenge in EA, and I'm sure its gone well and poorly at different points in time. FWIW my experience over the last few years has been pretty positive where I have felt supported by friends and collaborators who are not vegan in my work as an animal advocate and personally as a vegan. Compared to other spaces I think overall we handle what is a tough dynamic fairly well.
Sorry I was imprecise when I said "ending factory farming", I should have said "ending the consumption of all animal products/meat", which I do think is what most orgs and org leaders would ultimately want, and would be seen as radical.
I agree that ending factory farming, if we mean to replace it with smaller very high welfare farming, is more agreeable, although again I doubt most people would support it if they knew the amount of meat they could consume and the accompanying price tag.
One thing I think is worth clarifying and I'm curious what others think: while it's good to de-emphasize each individual's personal diet choices, I'm less sure if it's good to de-emphasize the overall mission. There is the appeal of presenting a more accessible/less radical message
For example I know many of the leaders/organizations ultimately want to see an end to factory farming. But since this could also alienate people, instead we could talk about freeing dogs, and giving states the right to end the sale and import of cruel practices like caged hens. Those individuals might get more involved only to discover later that the end goal of the orgs they volunteer with is far more radical than initially stated.
On the plus side this means that some of the more agreeable goals have a broader coalition of supporters. On the downside this can lead to people feeling duped and perceiving the movement as lower integrity; like there was a bait and switch. What do people think about this trade-off/risk?
Thanks for writing this. I enjoyed reading it and for myself I'm turning over in my head whether or not I think welfare tech is a bubble in the same way that leafleting and clean meat were. I recall the movement going all in on scaling up leafleting when the evidence didn't support it yet. The predictions and promises made about when cultivated meat would hit stores and total market share again were overpromising on the evidence.
I guess from my point of view I feel like I haven't seen the same claims being made about welfare tech. Perhaps you could argue that people are claiming success at a level that is not warranted by the evidence, given the complexity of these problems and the uncertainty we have about whether or not they are net positive. Is the claim here that some of these claims are premature and overstating the case or is the claim that some of these new venture studios or calls for new founders are overstating how promising or straightforward these interventions are? Or both? Either way it doesn't seem like this is the same kind of bubble as leafleting or clean meat predictions.
I think the picture is (mostly) bleak if you look at the denominator (total animal suffering), and how little we can do to end suffering of all farmed animals. If you look at the numerator, there are millions and sometimes even billions of individuals whose lives you can help, even in expectation.
Minor feedback that I was surprised by the content of this post based on the title.
Nice. This is definitely a useful concept, and is similar to the ladder of engagement which is discussed in the context of volunteer organising. One thing the ladder adds is how reliable are they? This makes more sense for engaging volunteers specifically, where someone can be skilled aligned, and high-context, but not very reliable at doing what they agree to.
Also this is not me saying this is not a big problem. And of course there are other reasons why we should tackle this, not just for the instrumental value of lost productivity.
I think one issue with this claim is that I think stress and anxiety is downstream of something that also causes a huge amount of upside and that is people are persuaded by this being an incredibly high-impact opportunity. This is high impact because the stakes are high. Things could go catastrophically wrong. Not enough people are working on it. This causes people to make big career pivots and work hard, and also create stress and anxiety with the resulting psychological downsides.
Of course we should try to maintain motivation and interest in the cause area while reducing stress, anxiety, burnout, etc. But I think one of the reasons this is tough is that they are both downstream of a third factor.
Despite this, I do agree with most of your proposed solutions.
Curious what Grace thinks but I'll chime in that Australia has a similar number of EAs and overall population across a landmass 186 times larger than the Netherlands. 2/3 live in Melbourne and Sydney, which are a 10 hour drive apart. IMO a geographic hub where it's easy for people to congregate is one of the determinants of hub success. Not to say Australia isn't a hub, but IMO its less of a hub than EU countries with similar number of EAs.
Thanks for raising this. I should clarify that the generalisation I've made largely applies outside of EA spaces, and the reverse tends to be true in EA spaces, where I find most people, vegan or otherwise, take the suffering of farmed animals pretty seriously.
I agree this is a challenge in EA, and I'm sure its gone well and poorly at different points in time. FWIW my experience over the last few years has been pretty positive where I have felt supported by friends and collaborators who are not vegan in my work as an animal advocate and personally as a vegan. Compared to other spaces I think overall we handle what is a tough dynamic fairly well.
Sorry I was imprecise when I said "ending factory farming", I should have said "ending the consumption of all animal products/meat", which I do think is what most orgs and org leaders would ultimately want, and would be seen as radical.
I agree that ending factory farming, if we mean to replace it with smaller very high welfare farming, is more agreeable, although again I doubt most people would support it if they knew the amount of meat they could consume and the accompanying price tag.
Well said and broadly on board.
One thing I think is worth clarifying and I'm curious what others think: while it's good to de-emphasize each individual's personal diet choices, I'm less sure if it's good to de-emphasize the overall mission. There is the appeal of presenting a more accessible/less radical message
For example I know many of the leaders/organizations ultimately want to see an end to factory farming. But since this could also alienate people, instead we could talk about freeing dogs, and giving states the right to end the sale and import of cruel practices like caged hens. Those individuals might get more involved only to discover later that the end goal of the orgs they volunteer with is far more radical than initially stated.
On the plus side this means that some of the more agreeable goals have a broader coalition of supporters. On the downside this can lead to people feeling duped and perceiving the movement as lower integrity; like there was a bait and switch. What do people think about this trade-off/risk?