MattBall
Bio
Matt is the author, co-author, secondary-author, ghost-author, and non-author of articles, speeches, book chapters, and even entire books! The most recent is his blockbuster* The Accidental Activist (which Amazon claims is by his wife Anne Green. So it goes.). Currently, he is President of One Step for Animals; previously, he was shitcanned from more nonprofits than there is room to list here. (Although there’s still time for more!) Before Matt’s unfortunate encounter with activism, he was an aerospace engineer who wanted to work for NASA (to impress Carl Sagan).
His hobbies include photography, almost dying, and XXXXXX (Hey! This is a family-friendly website! -ed). He lives in Tucson with Anne, along with no dogs, no cats, and no African tortoises, although he cares for all of these via friends and family.
*JK
Posts 3
Comments82
This is a very reasonable argument, and one we should take seriously. It is one of the driving forces at https://fairstartmovement.org/
Having worked in animal advocacy for 35 years, I've only seen the number of animals consumed per person go up and up and up. (In the US and globally.) You know what they say is the definition of insanity....
Honestly, I think the answer to your question is that humans are, on average, completely and utterly self-centered. Look at how many people concerned with AI safety are totally indifferent to the plight of non-human animals.
I know this is obvious and noted, but uncontrolled suffering is far different. Suffering such that you want to die. (I write about that, in the Worsts, in https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ )
I would ask everyone to check out https://www.preventsuffering.org/
Thanks, Vasco. I find it very difficult to imagine a scenario where I would support the active torture of factory farming chickens for any unknown / theoretical counterpoint. I'd certainly rather be a wild animal than a factory-farmed chicken.
Take care.
Really enjoyed this piece. It is somewhat painful to read, given that I believe most of my professional life did more harm than good.
I do think that partially rationalizing torturing billions of sentient beings every year for more corn in silos in case of a nuclear winter - that's really a stretch.
>Almost every old-school vegan or vegetarian should instantly "get" that people will just lie about you.
I was sure you were going to talk about other vegans attacking you for not being "pure" enough.
Thanks so very much for this. I wish I could give it more upvotes. As I've written about elsewhere, the obsession with expected value while ignoring traceability is one of the worst aspects of that corner of EA. (Why I love https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GXzT2Ei3nvyZEdWef/every-moment-of-an-electron-s-existence-is-suffering )
Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for mentioning One Step for Animals. Having spent decades promoting dietary change, I know my efforts at my previous nonprofits have ended up leading to more chickens suffering. (This for those not familiar, and this is what got me fired from "Animal Asylum".) One of the reasons I wrote Losing My Religions - hoping readers won't make the same mistake.
As far as funding for One Step, we reach more people with our short video the more people contribute. There seems to be no correlation between current contributions and future contributions. We just put money into outreach; we don't have a development team, we don't send out fundraising letters, we just buy more eyeballs. Since our founding in 2014, One Step has raised anywhere between ~$300k and $112k. We're currently looking at ~$150k for the current fiscal year.
One note: One Step's matching donor only contributes to double what we raise elsewhere. They don't donate at all otherwise. Working for other orgs, I took part in "matching" campaigns where the org knew they were going to get the "matching" money regardless.
Again - thanks for the shout-out. I have a lot of work to do to make up for my past mistakes.
-Matt