Jakub Stencel
Participation2
- Attended an EA Global conference
- Attended more than three meetings with a local EA group
Posts 2
Comments35
This seems true to me, although I don't have great confidence here.
For some years at times I had thought to myself "Damn, EA is pulling off something interesting - not being an organization, but at the same time being way more harmonious and organized than a movement. Maybe this is why it's so effective and at the same time feels so inclusive." Not much changed recently that would make me update in a different direction. This always stood out to me in EA, so maybe this is one of its core competencies[1] that made it so successful in comparison to so many other similar groups?
It's possible that there is a limit on how long you can pull it off when community grows, but I would be a bit slow to update during turbulent waters - there is for sure valuable signal during these (like "how well are we handling harsh situations?"), but also not so valuable ("is our ship fast?").
- ^
Good explanation of core competencies - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kz3Czn5ndFxaEofSx/why-cea-online-doesn-t-outsource-more-work-to-non-ea
Thank you Shakeel, very good criticism.
My title was a bit gimmicky, I flagged it as such, but it was accepted (I think by Ben West to incriminate him). I like such titles, so it may be my bias. Nevertheless, it was built from a very true disappointment (or something along that) of people not mentioning/celebrating the wins of EA when discussing and criticizing it, but I think this "frustration" was built more on reading the external takes rather than the internal ones - which internally was hard to disentangle for me. I think I failed to make this clear in the post. And my disappointment touches all cause areas (I'd imagine all those lives saved would make a stronger impression on people), but I feel qualified the most to talk about animals one.
Interesting point about perpetuating the negative framework by the title phrasing - in hindsight, I would probably choose a different one if I had considered that risk. Thanks for this perspective.
It's a very hard question to answer without much doubt, as I didn't witness how things unfolded in crucial places, like US. My intuition is that it would not be the same, and EA itself had significant contributions, but some of the recent and big wins would still be achieved. This is especially true for wins secured by The Humane League (and probably other major groups, like Compassion in the World Farming at EU level), seeing how laser focused they were. I think someone from more Western countries would be better to answer here though. But I also think that if EA continues then most of its wins for animals are in the future and then the context of its culture matters more.
Locally, in our org I think engagement with EA culture (also in the form of mentioned forums, groups, conferences) makes our activists and our campaigns better. Also cross-pollination from other cause areas seems helpful, but I'm not that confident here and would need to think more about it. Overall, I'd rather bet that splitting EA from effective animal advocacy would be overall negative to the animal advocacy movement, even if there was no OP.
But for sure, Open Philanthropy's effect is a very strong one, they seem to have been delivering exceptional results. And the funding was most likely the biggest driver of success here, because of how severely underfunded the space was (and still is). It's also a bit hard to divorce in my mind EA from funding as one of the main premises of EA for me is to reallocate resources, like funding, effectively.
In the end, I think in its core, this question asks whether Open Philanthropy and their animal welfare team would be so effective without EA (and it's worth noting that they have a whole team right now working on the animal cause area, so it's not only Lewis on the pedestal). I feel deeply unqualified to answer this - I'm too separated from context and history here. You are probably better to answer.
BTW I want to point out that a random billionaire example would not work. While I have very limited insight into the representative billionaire's mind, my intuition is that the people in this category are rather opinionated and pushing their ideas (for example a pet cause area). I think in this regard, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna are unique in their intellectual humility and deferring to experts they hire, at least this is my impression of them as people. It seems that without them not much would be possible.
I enjoyed this post (upvoted, but disagree-voted). I think skepticism about animal charities is well-placed for the reasons you outlined - we don't really have robust evidence. But I wanted to quickly comment on your description of corporate outreach. I won't go into details, especially because people like Fai provided more elaborate answers, but I want to provide some anecdata to counter your partner's one.
As a person who have seen corporate work from animal advocacy from inside for the last 10 years. I can tell you just a different tactic can produce outsized difference. In Poland, we have tried different tactics - trained by The Humane League - and in a few months we had enormous wins from the biggest national players. I also saw Open Wing Alliance training groups and after just few weeks of such training they were delivering wins when before that they were stuck sometimes for years. I think the counterfactual impact of groups like The Humane League was vast.
I think it's good to think about corporate work as a coordination problem with multiple agents having their own goals and incentives, especially big companies, so how it works is not as straightforward as you described.
This is not to say that any corporate outreach work is tractable or that you should donate to animal charities. There are other conditions that need to be fulfilled for things to work, etc. But my main point is that we should not simplify or downplay these changes, at least in cage-free cause area.