I am sure someone has mentioned this before, but…

For the longest time, and to a certain extent still, I have found myself deeply blocked from publicly sharing anything that wasn’t significantly original. Whenever I have found an idea existing anywhere, even if it was a footnote on an underrated 5-karma-post, I would be hesitant to write about it, since I thought that I wouldn’t add value to the “marketplace of ideas.” In this abstract concept, the “idea is already out there” - so the job is done, the impact is set in place. I have talked to several people who feel similarly; people with brilliant thoughts and ideas, who proclaim to have “nothing original to write about” and therefore refrain from writing.

I have come to realize that some of the most worldview-shaping and actionable content I have read and seen was not the presentation of a uniquely original idea, but often a better-presented, better-connected, or even just better-timed presentation of existing ideas. I now think of idea-sharing as a much more concrete, but messy contributor to impact, one that requires the right people to read the right content in the right way at the right time; maybe even often enough, sometimes even from the right person on the right platform, etc.

All of that to say, the impact of your idea-sharing goes much beyond the originality of your idea. If you have talked to several cool people in your network about something and they found it interesting and valuable to hear, consider publishing it!

Relatedly, there are many more reasons to write other than sharing original ideas and saving the world :)

Great point, Michael! I agree on discounting potential counterfactual impacts of current interventions past X years and think that short-term large payoffs are a very good way of dealing with the overall situation. In addition to that, I'd argue that cheaper higher animal welfare and alternative proteins in X years suggest that interventions will be more cost-effective in X years, which might imply that we should "save and invest" (either literally, in capital, or conceptually, in movement capacity). Do you have any thoughts on that? 

To me, this suggests prioritizing (1) short-term, large payoff interventions, (2) interventions actively seeking to navigate and benefit animals through an AI transition (depending on how optimistic you are about the tractability of doing so), (3) interventions that robustly invest in movement capacity (depending on whether you think interventions are likely to be more cost-effective in the future), and perhaps (4) interventions that seem unlikely to change through an AI transition (depending on how optimistic you are in their current cost-effectiveness and how high your credence is in their robustness). 

Thank you for writing this up, Max! The more I dive into AI for Animals, the more it seems to be just about the most important (and drastically underdiscussed) topic within the farmed animal movement, both in terms of risks and opportunities.

I don't think the concept of moral responsibility in the way I use it requires judgment (i.e., I wouldn't want to hold someone morally responsible for the sake of their responsibility). Rather, I think moral responsibility here should act as a vehicle to determine where change needs to happen - I think this aligns with my understanding of consequentialism too - in which case, there is no apparent need for free will. Hope this makes sense!

Yes! These are instances in which we use Slack's @channel function, which we try to do as rarely as possible, as it notifies basically everyone.

I think you make a really important point! You/anyone else interested in this may be interested in talking to @Constance Li and her work with @AI for Animals (Website)

I donate 10% in the form of a salary sacrifice to Hive. In addition, I regularly donate  ~10% spread across other Meta Organizations and Expert-managed funds in the animal space (roughly in order): EA AWF, AAC, Rethink Priorities, and the ACE Movement Grant. I have also made some smaller donations throughout the year to opportunities that I find promising and hope to look further into next year, namely AI for Animals, Animetrics and the Profit for Good Initiative.

I think you might refer to SouthWings? Someone shared it on Hive a while ago, saying

"I wanted to let you know about an organization, SouthWings, that offers small airplane flights to activists and organizations in 15 U.S. states (mainly in the Southeast) - they primarily focus on helping orgs document environmental pollution from the air but I'm sure would be happy to work with animal advocates too. I found this service incredibly helpful for my documentary, The Smell of Money, in which we show factory farm pollution captured from a plane."

I took the 10% Pledge earlier this year, but was contemplating it a lot for a while before. After taking the pledge, I noticed a couple of insights that I think would have probably made me pledge earlier. I think these insights most directly apply to people who were in a similar situation as I was^[1]-  but they might be useful for others as well:

• You don’t have to donate 10% right away. Today (!) I learned that "while studying or unemployed, it is within the spirit of the Pledge to give 1% of spending money instead of the income-based pledge amount" and the 10% kicks in once you start earning a stable income. When I first learned about the pledge, I was still at uni and thought I should wait until I had a full-time job and some comfortable savings. However, even if I were already full-time employed at the time and wouldn’t donate at all for the next 4 years, I’d only have to donate ~11%^[2] for the rest of my career to compensate for the lack of donations over my lifetime. As someone having a ~median income in a high-income country, I believe that 11% is very doable. In fact (hot take!) I believe that 15-20% should be the norm for people in my situation. 
• 10% is not as much as you might think. I think for me, there was a strong anchoring effect here - in my city, most people I know donate something like 30-50€ a month, so 10% (100+ €/month at the time I learned about the pledge) felt like a huge step. Instead of pledging, I decided to just donate what I could “easily miss”. This included instances in which I surprisingly saved money, birthday and Christmas gifts and occasionally deliberate decisions to not purchase “luxuries”. Tracking all of these was a bit tedious, but it showed me how I could easily donate more than 10%, by reframing my donations around what I could genuinely “easily” give away, instead of seeing it in relation to what other people give.
  • Nowadays I'd recommend people to take the trial pledge, but doing so at 10% for say 6-12 months. My impression (out of my social bubble) is that many people take the trial pledge for 1%; which isn't bad, but it doesn't really give you a "trial" of what the 10% pledge would practically look like.
• Probably, the earlier you pledge the better. I have always been a bit of a nerd for social psychology and social norm-setting; and I think there is a plausible case to be made that the earlier you can help cultivate a norm, the more important it becomes to do so. I think Misconception #4 in this post (strongly recommended read!) summarizes the case quite well. Relatedly, as you move through life, you’ll probably always find a reason not to pledge yet - whether you are waiting to enter your first full-time career, building up your safety net, facing a career transition, saving for your first own house, etc. 

My tentative conclusion from all of this is that, assuming you expect to have a ~normal salary for the majority of your career and live in a high-income country, it is probably not too early to pledge.

1. ^{^}

   Part-time student in a high-income country, no real financial risk, because parents are sufficiently well off, expected to earn at least a median income over my lifetime.

2. ^{^}

   Assuming a forty-year career with the same income - but likely, your income would increase throughout your career and it would be less than 11%.