[crosscommenting from Substack]

Wow! I'm not emotional (and unsure if I get the same emotions from EAG conferences) but this post did make me feel a bit sappy. I met many people that I find really impressive at the conference (including you), and was baffled to see that their personality is as agreeable and entertaining as their work is thorough. Aaron and Jack were particularly cool. But the highlight of the post was seeing the amazing Joanna shouted out - if she can help invertebrates as well as she can draw them, I'm hopeful for the future!

Really hope to see you at more UK events before you move back... In any case, it was a pleasure to see you again... especially the part where you Benthsplained shrimp welfare work to a barman at 1AM.

Concise, concrete, helpful: much appreciated, thank you!

I appreciate the shortness of this post: plus, that makes it more convenient to use as a link if I ever find myself making this point in a discussion.

Morality for me is about crying out at the horrors of the universe and pleading for them to stop.

I think about this quote on a nearly daily basis, it sits close to my heart. I agree that this is one of your most important articles!

(Not a very high-effort comment, reposting it from Substack for encouragement)^[1]I

Super excited to see you going into this area. It's a thorny field where a lot of speculation is currently needed, and it seems most people who care about this (not that there are many of us), still defer to Brian Tomasik articles from fifteen years ago. It's cool to see someone with your degree of visibility carrying the torch, and it motivates me to speak up on this topic too. I applied to give a talk about how to reduce wild animal suffering now (and considerations for wild animal suffering in the future) at an animal advocacy conference this summer, and while I have no confirmation that I'll be able to do it, you played a role in me proposing this topic. 

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   I must confess that I comment early whenever I see a Bentham's Bulldog post about invertebrates or other animals, to send a signal that some dedicated readers do care about the subject and want to see more of it. Let's just say that for now, my positive reactions still stick out amidst the comments, sadly.

(my answer is kind of messy as I probably misunderstood some of your points while first writing it, and then edited in a disorderly fashion)

What will shape the future is always unclear. Naively predictable factors that seem much larger than animal advocacy to me are:

• Caring about the environment / sustainability: it's likely that if these factors remain important in society, some forms of farming could be severely restricted (cow farming, but also perhaps some forms of fish farming?)
• Cultural / commercial contingencies: stuff like the popularity of sushi in the west, successful ad campaigns by red lobster, seem to have significantly influenced the demand for small animals
• Technological development: current developments may make cow farming more sustainable (good for small animals), but productivity developments will probably be more significant for small animal farming, which is much less efficient currently and has more room for improvement.

Sure, animal advocates could strategically try to influence these factors in one direction or the other, but I'd see at possible marginal impact over force currently beyond their control. Regarding second-order effects of the moral advocacy / cultural influence aspect of animal advocacy, I can't remember ever encountering any indication of the fact that people in the west were eating more chickens^[1], crustaceans and fishes because of culturally-encouraged empathy for large animals. Maybe there are non-consumer cases where a link can be drawn, such as ethical criticisms of meat from large animals being leveraged by the insect farming industry, but this is more of an imaginary example as I'm not sure this has been the case.

As for whether animal advocates are still likely to influence SARP: yes, but plausibly only marginally, unless they act with a strategic mindset in some key field (eg through getting a ban on the use of Precision Livestock Farming for large animals but not for small animals). I agree that it should be taken more seriously. However, I think whether current animal advocacy efforts increase or decrease SARP is very unclear to me. There are definitely strategic questions to be asked here, such as whether welfare reforms that drive up the prices of products from large animals will increase the consumption of small animals, or whether the movement should try to be aligned with the environmental movement (who seems to have a larger effect on SARP), and reminding advocates that SARP actually matters a lot is a good step in that direction. I wonder to what extent the big animal welfare orgs are currently thinking about this (it seems to be on L214's mind from what I've heard floating around, but it's unclear whether their current efforts are going in the right direction).

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   Matt Ball is definitely an interesting case, it's surprising that the person who's probably been the most outspoken about SARP is also the one anti-invertebrate sentience advocate in the movement.

Thanks for questioning my imprecise definition! I was thinking (too?) broadly of vegans in general or casual activists. Even within this community, few prioritize animal suffering as evidenced by low participation in animal advocacy events and careers. While we could narrow our focus to 'extremely dedicated animal advocates,' this represents just thousands of individuals worldwide against billions of consumers and thousands of highly motivated industry stakeholders who likely match or exceed their commitment level.

This makes important points about strategy in a field where a lot is yet to be mapped and defined, and this is potentially useful in order to do that. I appreciate your concision, too.

The most important asymmetry for animal advocates seems to be the truth asymmetry, especially moral alignment to consumers. One of the only reasons I can find to feel hopeful about farmed animal advocacy is that animal advocates are likely to be much more aligned with the general preferences of individual consumers than those who wish to encourage factory farming. Optimistic scenarios of AGI development allowing for better decision-making could increase the chances that these consumer preferences can be leveraged (though I'm not sure how hopeful I am about this for now). 

An asymmetry that seems more doubtful to me is the motivational asymmetry: I don't get the impression that the majority of animal advocates are strongly motivated by reducing animal suffering, and there might be a sufficient number of stakeholders (in a broad sense) in animal agriculture who are likely to be as motivated as the minority of "highly motivated" animal advocates.

This will probably be helpful for my own strategic thinking on this question, so thank you for posting this!

I found this post excellent and original. SARP is an immense problem and still seems crucially neglected within EA animal advocacy, perhaps because it's still difficult to find good theories of change aimed at preventing it. This also might be the first piece I encounter that treats SARP as more than a short-termist concern.

While I superficially agree with the overall point, I do have a few cruxes. "[...] advocacy towards considering the suffering of mammals farmed for their meat, seems to be contributing to the growth of the farming of smaller animals" seems like a core claim, and yet there's no link or footnote for tentative evidence^[1]. Yes, vegan advocacy and SARP have both grown in the past ten years, but does correlation imply causation?

My second crux ends up being kind of the same as the first one. I find both Sentientia and Reversomelas implausible, because I find it unlikely that the values of a tiny minority of present-day humans (animal advocates) will have a strong effect on the values of society in the future. 

Overall, while I found the post enriching, I find myself disagreeing with the premise somewhat. Your description of the present, as well as those of both futures, seem to give too much weight to moral adovcacy, compared to other factors. While I think that the size of animals that will be farmed in the future matters a lot, I think that the factors that will determine that are neither the way current vegans talk about animals, nor the choices we make in welfare campaigns during this decade.

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   Since veganism / antispeciesism opposes the farming of small animals, by contrast with environmentalists who are likelier to be favorable to insect farming for pet feed or honey production while being critical of the farming of large animals, there is a strong "superficial" case for thinking that the vegan / sentientist meme is likelier to attenuate SARP than to worsen it. Another point would be the (very minor) waves that shrimp welfare campaigns have made recently.

   There are obvious counterpoints to my position though: cow-focused environmental / leaning vegan material like Cowspiracy has probably worsened SARP on the margin.

I thought of insect farming, but this is definitely one too!