Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand the example of women dying in childbirth is a good point. On the other hand, minimum wage was raised by economic growth, and people in power would have been against raising the minimum wage if it was done without increases in productivity to go with it.
I've heard here and there that the anti-slavery movement took root in parts of the world and US that were less economically dependent on slavery.
Out of personal curiosity, this appears to be a big shift from your previous position on diet change advocacy. I've listened to you talk in the past and recall you were quite negative on the value of diet change. What has led to the shift? Or let me know if I'm misunderstanding.
Then I went to work at PETA in 1996 and I thought everybody loves animals. All we really have to do - we don't have to win an argument with a meat eater - all we have to do is show people what's happening and obviously people will want to align their values and their actions. Everybody's going to go vegan. We just need to tell them, and again, it didn't happen.
What I've come to understand is that the vast majority of people are not going to radically change their diet on the basis of really anything other than price, taste and convenience. Maybe health. There appears to be something in human nature. I don't know if it's emotion or physiology or biology or psychology. I don't know what it is, but the vast majority of people just aren't that interested in changing their diet, and they're not interested in hearing from me about why they should change their diet.
Thanks for the clear post Bruce. To add to your points, it also seems that campaigning and advocacy also created the conditions by which lots of passionate young advocates built up experience and became many of the leaders of the movement today, and that this is happening less today.
One point of disagreement I do have with this framing is that if you focus specifically on the justice movements that succeeded and then ask "Did any of them succeed by only focusing on welfare improvements?" You've made an artifically constrained reference class to compare it with, being reforms we remember as justice movements that famously won as justice movements.
I think the better reference class is all attempts to radically improve the wellbeing of others. Using this reference class there are many successes including that focused on technological solutions to problems that could be framed as liberation or justice issues: child mortality reduction via global health innovations, famine reduction via green revolution, extreme poverty alleviation via economic development, women's empowerment and family planning via oral contraceptives, etc.
There's also many liberation/justice movements that failed or stalled despite decades of intense effort and focus.
FWIW I think you do outline some of the reasons why this particular effort is promising. I think that's the most important part to flesh out. Not all liberation efforts are equal. Each needs to be argued on their merits.
In addition to the other comments which I agree with, I think substack is also playing a role. Seems in the past few years everyone went and got a substack, and now many posts just live there, and for the ones that are posted in both places, half the comments happens there.
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.
Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand the example of women dying in childbirth is a good point. On the other hand, minimum wage was raised by economic growth, and people in power would have been against raising the minimum wage if it was done without increases in productivity to go with it.
I've heard here and there that the anti-slavery movement took root in parts of the world and US that were less economically dependent on slavery.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I appreciate the full engagement and answer
Out of personal curiosity, this appears to be a big shift from your previous position on diet change advocacy. I've listened to you talk in the past and recall you were quite negative on the value of diet change. What has led to the shift? Or let me know if I'm misunderstanding.
For example this talk you gave at EAG in 2018:
Thanks for the clear post Bruce. To add to your points, it also seems that campaigning and advocacy also created the conditions by which lots of passionate young advocates built up experience and became many of the leaders of the movement today, and that this is happening less today.
One point of disagreement I do have with this framing is that if you focus specifically on the justice movements that succeeded and then ask "Did any of them succeed by only focusing on welfare improvements?" You've made an artifically constrained reference class to compare it with, being reforms we remember as justice movements that famously won as justice movements.
I think the better reference class is all attempts to radically improve the wellbeing of others. Using this reference class there are many successes including that focused on technological solutions to problems that could be framed as liberation or justice issues: child mortality reduction via global health innovations, famine reduction via green revolution, extreme poverty alleviation via economic development, women's empowerment and family planning via oral contraceptives, etc.
There's also many liberation/justice movements that failed or stalled despite decades of intense effort and focus.
FWIW I think you do outline some of the reasons why this particular effort is promising. I think that's the most important part to flesh out. Not all liberation efforts are equal. Each needs to be argued on their merits.
In addition to the other comments which I agree with, I think substack is also playing a role. Seems in the past few years everyone went and got a substack, and now many posts just live there, and for the ones that are posted in both places, half the comments happens there.
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.