Effective Altruism Forum
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All of kewlcats's Comments + Replies

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ben.smith
4mo
I feel like I should be writing and reading posts about AI but honestly I am too intimidated to go near that topic.
Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production
kewlcats5mo0
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Actually Shiok Meats is working on cultivated meat for shrimp. They're a promising startup. 

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The scale of direct human impact on invertebrates
kewlcats4y8
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A very excellent post!!! A huge kudos to you.

I'm suspecting more and more that synthetic biology may be an effective career path for insect welfare--producing these compounds from cells as opposed to animals. A proof of concept already exists for carmine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30816-9

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What values would EA want to promote?
Answer by kewlcatsJul 11, 202011
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Not exactly answering your question, but I think EA has really good communication norms--such as steelmanning your opponent, focusing on empiricism, open discussion, double crux, no persona attacks, etc.

I do think the broader society can benefit significantly in discussing thorny topics (i.e. politics) if they adopted these communication norms.

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Genetic Enhancement as a Cause Area
kewlcats4y1
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I'm wondering if there are any updates here?

A plausible next step seems to be quantifying the counterfactual impact that EA could have, and comparing that to other cause areas.

China seems to be doing a lot of secretive research in this domain.

IMHO, I think this is an excellent cause area, and would be interested in brainstorming further steps with like-minded folks.

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Announcing Wild Animal Initiative
kewlcats5y6
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Hi!

This initiative sounds really cool! You guys are seriously amazing to take up such a difficult task, and major kudos to you.

I've felt that wild animal suffering research agendas tend to focus more on research reports as opposed to lab research. Given that the fundamental goal is to raise the hedonic level of wild animals, my opinion is that research into modifying pain pathways + propagating those modifications is essential. The only person who is doing research in this area is Prof. Kevin Esvelt at MIT, who has written about wild animal suffering ... (read more)

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abrahamrowe
5y
Thanks for this - we definitely agree that there needs to be more work in the field. However, I think it's unlikely that we are best positioned to do that work. This is the reason that academic field building is such a major part of our focus. Both WASR and UF tried this for the last year (UF has a write up on this here - https://www.utility.farm/words/academic-outreach. Neither had much success with this, both through offering funding for research directly and trying to shift values. We are taking a new approach to this now, working with early career academics who are less likely to have their reputation staked on certain approaches, etc. Hopefully, this will be a lot more fruitful for generating novel and relevant lab and field research. Also, this research would likely be funded outside EA / animal advocacy, which adds additional value. Lab research is significantly more expensive than literature reviews / things within our capabilities. Since we don't have a strong sense of what the most important questions are to answer first, shifting those costs to external organizations reduces risk in some ways for us, while allowing us to still help shape the direction of the research to some extent.