All of MattBall's Comments + Replies

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 contribut... (read more)

2
Brian_Tomasik
10mo
Thanks! Good to know. If you're just buying eyeballs, then there's roughly unlimited room for more funding (unless you were to get a lot bigger), so presumably there'd be less reason for funging dynamics. (And I assume you don't receive much or any money from big EA animal donors anyway.)
6
alene
10mo
Super glad that One Step exists. It’s really scary to think about people switching from beef to chicken. ❤️🐥

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.

6
Vasco Grilo
1y
Thanks for sharing, Matt! I started following a plant-based diet roughly 4 years ago mostly due to finding out about the badness of factory-farming (and also because I think it mitigates global warming, and is healthier). Meanwhile, I have gotten confused about the overall impact of a plant-based diet, given the uncertain effects on wild animals and in the longterm. I think I continue plant-based because (descending order of importance): * It feels intuitively wrong to be responsible for some visible torture based on unclear overall effects which are quite uncertain. * I think I should feel fine about doing something with overall unclear effects even if the most visible effects are bad.  * However, I do not, and I suppose it makes sense to avoid conflicts with intuitions to some extent. For example, if in theory eating animals was super good overall, and I could not internalise that, still feeling bad about contributing to factory-farming, it is possible the overall best option for me would be continuing not to eat animals, such that I could remain productive working on other matters. * I believe a plant-based diet is healthier, and can extend my life for a few years. Since I think my work is positive, having the chance to do more of it is good! * I no longer like the taste of animals. Switching at this point would be hard, especially given the above. * I think a plant-based diet is more practical (e.g. generally involves less cooking time, and less cleaning due to less fat). There would typically be factors contributing to it being less practical, but I do not think those affect me much. For example, for (rare) family meals in restaurants, I am fine with just eating soup, rice and lettuce, or whatever is available.

>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 )

Fai
1y11
7
0

But didn't the OP also use expected value calculation to conclude that digital minds are going to dominate the value in the future, while admitting the tractability for helping digital minds might be even lower than helping wild animals?

I appreciate Lewis Bollard and all his focused work to reduce suffering.

I love this post, and I'm not convinced by some of the counters in the comments. (e.g., I don't think LLMs will help persuade anyone of anything.)

This Ezra Klein podcast is really good, if you haven't heard it.

This is extremely interesting and thought-provoking, but bees beating salmon really does undermine any attempt I can make to give this a lot of credence.

Moreso, though, I object to saying we can trade one week of human life for six days of chicken torture (in the comments). But this is more my critique of utilitarianism, as I lay out in "Biting the Philosophical Bullet" here.

Thanks, Matt. As we say, though, we don't actually think that bees beat salmon. We think that the vertebrates are 0.1 or better of humans, that the vertebrates themselves are within 2x of one another, and that the invertebrates are within 2 OOMs of the vertebrates. We fully recognize that the models are limited by the available data about specific taxa. We aren't going to fudge the numbers to get more intuitive results, but we definitely don't recommend using them uncritically.

I hear--and sometimes share--your skepticism about such human/animal tradeoffs. ... (read more)

Upvote just for the memes / images!  And great content and comments; wish I had seen something like this 35 years ago.
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ 

Hi Michelle - thanks for writing this. It is exceedingly thoughtful, compelling, and thorough.

Our kid is 28* - so almost everything we went through was before EA (and before we met Jason Gaverick Matheny). We met at an animal rights group I was running, and we went on to found several animal-focused charities (including One Step for Animals). 

One of the reasons I wrote Losing My Religions last year (and have made the eBook free) was to give people an opportunity to live that process and understand the various pressures biology, family, and society pla... (read more)

>it has assumed with insufficient reason that all abolitionist thinking and approaches are ineffective

I appreciate this post, but this statement is, IMHO, simply not true. Many of us were "abolitionists" at one point. Many of us have decades of experience and have studied what has and hasn't moved the needle over the years. See, for example, "The End of Veganism" chapter here

1
Dhruv Makwana
1y
Hi Matt, thanks for commenting. I think it would be helpful if this disagreement was more specific. I list three reasons in the following sentence, go into detail about the first two reason in posts 3 and 2 respectively. From reading the chapter you pointed to, it seems like you have had some frustrating experiences with the community, who prioritise purity over effectiveness. I relate, and end up avoiding engaging in those cases. I address some of the points made in that chapter and more in the 3rd post, except for the old liberation pledge, for which the chapter assigns a pretty uncharitable motivation. Afaict the internal logic (based on the end of foot-binding girls in China) was sensible, whether or not it works is different: even they have realised it doesn't and have since changed tactics https://paxfauna.org/rethinking-the-liberation-pledge/ Which I think illustrates my overall point: there are advocates out there who are pragmatic, but have an abolitionist-leaning mindset (and sometimes have ideas which are worth considering)

I didn't vote it down, but I think giving the Catholic Church the "benefit of the doubt" is off-base. You could say the same about anyone doing bad -- "Maybe they're right on some level." The Catholic Church has simply done tons and tons of bad. And I think I'm saying this not just because of my personal hatred of the Catholic Church. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ 

4
Geoffrey Miller
1y
Matt -- I'm not arguing that we should give the Catholic Church the 'benefit of the doubt'. Only that if -- big if -- their theology and metaphysics are correct, and if they actually managed to 'save some souls' (switching their fate from infinite suffering in hell to infinite bliss in heaven), then their net consequentialist impact in the afterlife would totally swamp any evil they've done on Earth.  You may think there's zero % chance their theology and metaphysics are correct, but their beliefs are basically a variant of a Simulation Hypothesis, in which human actions 'in simulation' (during mortal life) determine rewards 'out of simulation (in the 'real' afterlife).  There's obviously a variant of Pascal's wager that raises some thorny problems here. And it applies equally to every other religion that posits reincarnation or an afterlife....

I'm down with a lot of this, but I'm not sure about the EU. Given the history of war on the continent, I think the EU is a totally reasonable response. Hard to run the counter-factual.

Thanks for writing this. It isn't exactly in the same line, but when I examine my career, I believe I have done more harm than good. It was writing Losing My Religions that really firmed up that conclusion.  I hope posts like these -- and the fascinating discussion -- help others to do more good than harm. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ 

Great, clear summary at the top, and a well-thought-out post. Thanks!

Title: Working with the Beef Industry for Chicken Welfare

Author: RobertY

URL: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5XKAsEBMuxiycTHL7/working-with-the-beef-industry-for-chicken-welfare

Why it's good: Correct focus on a source of immense, totally unnecessary suffering, with outside-the-box thinking to help mitigate the suffering. Thanks, Robert!

This is really great, Holden. Well-structured piece, too.

Thanks for the comment about the Catch-22 situation facing AI development -- that caution by one group could let a reckless group get there first.  I make that point in the Longtermism chapter here, and I wish it would get more consideration.

I find the discussion of these claims interesting. I would also warn about extrapolating this to any other issue. Climate issues are well supported over there. But this doesn't mean the same would be true for issues with minority support. Just in my field, I've seen a minority of animal advocates poison the word "vegan" in the United States, as I document in Losing My Religions.

Thanks for this, Richard. Very thoughtful. 

However, after being a ~total utilitarian for decades, I've come to realize it is beyond salvage. As I point out in the chapter "Biting the Philosophical Bullet" here

Take care!

2[anonymous]1y
Hi Matt! I don’t think that follows. At best, those premises cut off one way that functionalism could support spending more on small invertebrates (namely, via Conscious Subsystems), leaving many others open. Functionalism is such a broad view that it probably doesn’t have any practical implications at all without lots of additional assumption—which, of course, will vary wildly in terms of the support they offer for spending on the spineless members of the animal kingdom.

Great post. I'd love to see an entire post on this:

Acknowledging good-faith intentions and attempts to help others

Maybe have it pinned to the top of every page.  :-)

I'm not saying the analysis is wrong. I'm just curious if the analyst has ever suffered from depression. Or had someone they love suffer from depression. 

It is easy to empathize with polio or malaria, but not as much depression. And when a cheap drug (as noted by other comments) can take one from suicidal to life worth living....

In the fourth decade of animal advocacy, I honestly wonder what has hurt animals more than AR advocates pointing to polls. 

Why would we ever, ever, ever look at opinion polls, when every day, everyone is casting an actual ballot at the grocery store and restaurant? 

This reminds me of all the interviews where Beyond Meat's Ethan Brown said, "People tell me they don't want GMOs." He is simply talking to the wrong people. Nearly everyone only cares about cheap meat. Full stop. Nothing else matters, no matter what they say.

4
MichaelStJules
1y
I think polls can be useful indicators for the likelihood of success of a ballot measure (e.g. banning intensive confinement, like some US states have), but they have to be framed concretely and with enough context to emphasize the costs to consumers. Also, people have voted to ban cages and crates despite it increasing their costs and not already really buying cage-free or crate-free. See this for some discussion: https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2019/2/18/why-dont-we-vote-like-we-shop

Once again, researchers fail to distinguish between "pain" and "suffering." 

https://www.mattball.org/2022/10/ed-yong-on-insects.html 

Open Phil is pretty much the only place I've seen that's done a good job of honestly exploring this distinction:

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2017-report-on-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood/

What indicators of consciousness do you expect mammals and birds to have that insects don't? (Edited to avoid suggesting I'm only asking about the criteria in this post.)

I think criteria 5-8 suggest it's not mere nociception. Of course, they might not establish consciousness, but what more do you expect to do so?

Personally, I'm very sympathetic to Luke Muehlhauser's views in that report and, in particular, illusionism and AST (he doesn't explicitly endorse AST, but I think he said it was the closest attempt), and I still don’t think they rule out insect co... (read more)

I fail to see any lack of distinguishing as I do not see any claim on suffering or capacity to suffer in insects, only on insects' abilities to feel pain.

How physical pain relates to subjectively perceived suffering is a whole other topic, and as far as I can tell no subject to this review. (Though I've only read this post, not the review itself.)

I do see that pain-feeling is usually perceived as something innately suffering-inducing, and I see why that's the case. If pain is not somewhat negative for the organism experiencing it, why would that mechanism ... (read more)

I think we should just stop overreacting, period. This guy's money doesn't mean he is EA. No one person is EA. 

If we spent as much time figuring out how to better be more effective as we do on self-loathing and self-over-analysis, we'd be further along.

IMHO. Of course, I could be wrong.

Hey Vasco,
As a founder of One Step for Animals, you don't need to convince me we should be looking to help chickens.  :-)
It is when we say that X chickens = 1 human, or Y mosquitoes = 1 human, or Z electrons = 1 human -- that's where I get off the train (as I lay out in Losing My Religions).
Thanks again and keep up the great work!

1
Vasco Grilo
1y
Ah, I know I need not convince you of that! I think the relevant chapter from Losing My Religions is "Biting the Philosophical Bullet". From I understand, you think the Repugnant Conclusion (RC) is sufficiently against your intuitions for the total view (which implies the RC) to be wrong. The RC follows from 3 premises (see here). I would be curious to know the extent to which (and why) you disagree with each of them.
1
Corentin Biteau
1y
Yeah, I intend to if I have some time ! From the outside it seems very interesting

What Jamie said -- the number of neurons across a population is irrelevant. What matters is the capacity for suffering, and that is dependent on the number (and arrangement) of neurons in an individual. This is my favorite discussion:

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2017-report-on-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood/

I fear that thinking in the terms above (total neurons in some group) does significant harm.
 

2
Vasco Grilo
1y
Hi Matt, Thanks for commenting! I agree the capacity for welfare of one individual does not depend much on the number of individuals. However, when prioritising solutions to improve animal welfare, I think we should take into account the number of individuals (amongst many other factors).  For example, developping a cheap and tasty meat subsitute for chicken is arguably more pressing than for turkeys. Factory-farmed (FF) chickens and turkeys have roughly the same welfare according to the Weighted Animal Welfare Index from Charity Entrepeneurship (-56 and -57, in a scale from -100 to 100), but there are about 50 times as many chickens as turkeys (see here). So the total suffering of all FF chickens is much larger than that of all FF turkeys.

This doesn't add much, but thank you for sharing this. I honestly believe that the world would be much better (and many people on this forum much happier) if more people did this. 

When I worked as a Department of Energy Global Change Fellow in the 90s, there was a well-known commentary that we're always at peak oil (coal, natural gas, etc.). It never turns out to be true.
Also, about 15 years ago, New Scientist ran a very convincing article that we were about to run out of the metals we need for modern society. It, also, didn't turn out to be true.
I think that posts like this will read like "The Population Bomb" in the future.

4
Corentin Biteau
1y
By the way, I read some of the stuff you wrote on your blog, and I really enjoyed it. I also checked the One Step for Animals website - this is a great job, I really like it ! I think it really makes sense .
4
Corentin Biteau
1y
Well, peak oil is unavoidable from a physical standpoint. If we extract a finite resource faster than it is replenished (which takes millions of years), we can't sustain exponential growth indefinitely. Same goes for peak coal and gas.  I agree that so far, when faced by the prospect of less oil, we've managed to switch to other sources : offshore oil, North Sea, shale oil... But it gets harder and harder to extract. Discoveries are at an all-time low, Saudi Arabia announced it would peak in 2027, Russia in 2019, 2/3 of US producers think oil has peaked in the US... I really don't see what country can compensate for the decline of everyone else. Maybe someone will step up, but who? I explain all of this at length here. For metals, their extraction depends on the amount of energy we have, so they don't deplete while we have an ever-growing amount of energy (which is why predictions on mineral depletion have turned out wrong most of the time, I agree). I can get where your line of thinking comes from - after all, making conclusions from how things went in the past usually makes sense. But it seems risky to me to assume that something  (no idea what) will save the day. I'd really like some good data on what exactly will step up to continue fossil fuels production, and how, and how fast, and at what amount.

Congratulations on being one of the winners of the contest. 
Having spent most of my adult life promoting veganism, it is pretty sad to know that ACE found "Around 1% of adults both self-identify as vegetarians and report never consuming meat. It seems that this percentage has not changed substantially since the mid-1990s." That is why One Step for Animals pursues a different path.
I think there is a deeper problem, though, at least in the United States, as I document in the "The End of Veganism" chapter in Losing My Religions.

Happy with every effort to help  reduce burnout. We would all do well to take ourselves a little less seriously. (I wish I had understood that decades ago.)

I'm in the same situation, having finally gotten to  One Step for Animals. 

The moral needs PBM. It is the only way to get there. Decades of moral arguments have left us with record-high per-capita consumption of animals.
https://www.mattball.org/2016/10/what-have-we-learned.html 

Love this. Would "trying to undermine the Catholic church" fall under this as well?

Our kid graduated HS in 2012. They and their best friend both got rejected from Stanford, while a classmate who was a legacy with significantly lower grades, SATs, and extracurriculars got in. It was fine; the friend went to MIT and EK went to Pomona (which is FANTASTIC OMG).
More: https://www.mattball.org/2016/04/ellen-stalwart.html 

This is the best  thing I've read on this Forum!

1
Kat Woods
2y
Aww. Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks for posting this. Good luck with finding a decent medical regiment!

Honestly, this is why I won't be engaging with comments. 

How is this a question based on anything I've written? I'm arguing that we should reduce unnecessary suffering that exists right now. So instead of addressing that, you accuse me of advocating of wanting to kill all humans?

Good faith, indeed. Yikes. 

Anyone with legit questions and insights (as I said, I could be wrong!) knows where to find me.

Over and out.

This is how I understand your argument.

P1: Humans are really bad for all other sentient beings. P2: AI can defeat humans. P3: AI would be better for other sentient beings than humans. C: It would be good for sentient beings if AI defeated humans.

I'm asking why "AI" is unique to this argument and why you couldn't replace "AI" with any other method that kills all humans but leaves other sentient beings alive, e.g. "engineered virus". I could be crazy but I genuinely don't see what part of your argument precludes that.

Edit: I should have made it clear in my o... (read more)

0
D0TheMath
2y
Strongly downvoted for reasons stated above.
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