All of saulius's Comments + Replies

Nice ^_^ One final thought. I mentioned that scale depends on multiple parameters:

  1. Current human population
  2. Expected growth in the human population
  3. Current animal production per capita
  4. Expected change in the production per capita

You account for 2,3, and 4 with a separate variable “expected growth in animal production” which would be something like “projected number of farmed animals in 2050 divided by the current number of farmed animals”. And then also have a variable “Current human population”. I think it makes sense to split because these two variables matter for different reasons, and someone may put weight on one but not the other.

Also, yes, I very much had the same dilemma years ago. Mine went something like this:

Heart: I figured it out! All I care about is reducing suffering and increasing happiness!

Brain: Great! I've just read a lot of blogs and it turns out that we can maximise that by turning everything into a homogenous substance of hedonium, including you, your mom, your girlfriend, the cast of Friends, all the great artworks and wonders of nature. When shall we start working on that?

Heart: Ummm, a small part of me think that'd be great but... I'm starting to think that ... (read more)

You don’t seem to apply your reasoning that our current values might be “extremely sub-optimal” to your values of hedonium/EA/utilitarianism. But I think there are good reasons to believe they might be very sub-optimal. Firstly, most people (right now and throughout history) would be terrified of everything they care about being destroyed and replaced with hedonium. Secondly, even you say that it “doesn’t make me feel good and it is in direct opposition to most of my values”, despite being one of the few proponents of a hedonium shockwave. I’m unsure why y... (read more)

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saulius
7d
Also, yes, I very much had the same dilemma years ago. Mine went something like this: Heart: I figured it out! All I care about is reducing suffering and increasing happiness! Brain: Great! I've just read a lot of blogs and it turns out that we can maximise that by turning everything into a homogenous substance of hedonium, including you, your mom, your girlfriend, the cast of Friends, all the great artworks and wonders of nature. When shall we start working on that? Heart: Ummm, a small part of me think that'd be great but... I'm starting to think that maybe happiness and suffering is not ALL I care about, maybe it's a bit more complex. Is it ok if we don't turn my mom into hedonium? My point is, in the end, you think that suffering is bad and happiness is good because your emotions say so (what other reason could there be?). Why not listen to other things your emotions tell you? Ugh, sorry if I’m repeating myself.

and if you are in Europe, CARE conference is great. I think people can get up to speed very fast at such conferences. They can seem scary when you don't know anyone there but I think animal advocates are generally friendly and welcoming to newcomers :)

I see. My personal intuition is that it wouldn't convince many people. I mean, cooked food includes cooked meat. So, unfortunately, their argument that we have evolved to have meat in our diets still stands.

I'm afraid I'm failing to connect the dots. How do you see this being related to veganism, and how do you see researching this making an impact?

-1
Dave Cortright
7d
One common argument against veganism is that humans are carnivores. We aren’t. We are designed to eat cooked food.

Also, perhaps it's a bit weird to use it as a benchmark because it's the consumers who pay most of the cost for chicken welfare reforms (and, to a lesser extent, farmers, retailers, and sometimes governments). So the comparison with something like AMF is not very clean. Corporate campaigns are a bit more similar to lobbying governments to distribute bednets. Ugh, I notice that I'm a bit confused about this right now.

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Vasco Grilo
6d
Nice point. I suspect your confusion comes from wondering whether the cost to the consumers and others should be considered as part of the cost or harms of the intervention. My understanding is that cost-effectiveness analyses only include in the cost of the intervention money coming from the people making the decision about whether to fund the intervention, so I would consider the cost to the consumers as part of the harms of the intervention. I also believe this would only minorly decrease the cost-effectiveness: * I would say the benefits to the chickens are way larger than the harms linked to having to buy marginally more expenside chicken meat and eggs (or no longer being able to buy these). * I assume there may also be beneficial health and economic effects to humans due to decreased consumption of chicken meat and eggs, depending on what foods are consumed instead.

I'd say there's about 30% probability I will do it in the next two years. I've just started a project for Open Philanthropy about estimating what should be the speed-up values in cost-effectiveness estimates for corporate and legislative welfare reforms, as that is the most uncertain aspect of these estimates. Open Philanthropy is the main target audience for this type of stuff and I don't think that putting the rest of the numbers together for a cost-effectiveness estimate would influence them much. I'm unsure if another cost-effectiveness estimate is wha... (read more)

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Vasco Grilo
7d
Thanks for the reply! Cool! I am looking forward to the results. I was thinking that it could still be useful to inform Open Philanthropy's allocation between animal and human welfare interventions in their global health and wellbeing portfolio.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Some thoughts.

 As long as we don't have an indication that it is significantly less likely to be successful in higher-population countries, it seems fair to focus on the factor that we know will be important: the expected impact, if successful.

Lobbying smaller bodies of government is definitely easier. Whoever decides on policies in small countries has fewer bids of attention and is targeted by fewer lobbyists. You might need a lot of connections and effort to make your voice heard to a decision-maker in a big body... (read more)

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Moritz Stumpe
4d
Yes, this has certainly updated my view on prioritisation between big and small countries. So thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think it's a good idea to reduce the weight of scale, though probably not as much as you might. Aashish and I might update this as soon as we got around to talking about it and are aligned. In any case, we encourage people to just take the model, make a copy, and change parameters themselves, if it seems useful for their purposes.

I relate to that a lot, and I want to share how I resolved some of this tension. You currently allow your heart to only say “I want to reduce suffering and increase happiness” and then your brain takes over and optimizes, ignoring everything else your heart is saying. But it’s an arbitrary choice to only listen to the most abstract version of what the heart is saying. You could also allow your heart to be more specific like “I want to help all the animals!”, or even “I want to help this specific animal!” and then let your brain figure out the best way to d... (read more)

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Jordan Arel
7d
Mmm yeah, I really like this compromise, it leaves room for being human, but indeed, I’m thinking more about career currently. Since I’ve struggled to find a career that is impactful and I am good at, I’m thinking I might actually choose a career that is a relatively stable normal job that I like (Like therapist for enlightened people/people who meditate), and then I can use my free time to work on projects that could be maximally massively impactful.

Also, it seems that EA forum gets about 14,000 views per day. So you spend about $2,000,000/(365*14,000) = $0.4 per view. That's higher than I would expect. 

Note that many of these views might not be productive. For me personally, most of the views are like "I open the frontpage automatically when I want to procrastinate, see that nothing is new & interesting or that I didn't even want to use the forum, and then close it". I also sometimes incessantly check if anyone commented or voted on my post or comment, and that sort of behaviour can drive up the view count.

Also, 4000 users is an underestimate since the majority of people benefit from the EA Forum while logged out (on LW about 10-20% of our traffic comes from logged-in users, my guess is the EA Forum is similar, but not confident), and even daily users are usually not logged in.

You posted this graph

If I understand it correctly, it shows that about 50% of EA forum traffic comes from logged-in users, not 10%-20%. 

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Habryka
6d
That is definitely relevant data! Looking at the recent dates (and hovering over the exact data at the link where the graphs are from) it looks like its around 60% logged-out, 40% logged in.  I do notice I am surprised by this and kind of want confirmation from the EA Forum team they are not doing some kind of filtering on traffic here. When I compare these numbers naively to the Google Analytics data I have access to for those dates, they seem about 20%-30% too low, and it makes me think there is some filtering going on (though my guess is that 80%-90% logged-out traffic definitely still does not seem representative)

Also, it seems that EA forum gets about 14,000 views per day. So you spend about $2,000,000/(365*14,000) = $0.4 per view. That's higher than I would expect. 

Note that many of these views might not be productive. For me personally, most of the views are like "I open the frontpage automatically when I want to procrastinate, see that nothing is new & interesting or that I didn't even want to use the forum, and then close it". I also sometimes incessantly check if anyone commented or voted on my post or comment, and that sort of behaviour can drive up the view count.

Invertebrate sentience table (introduced here) has "Self-administers analgesics" as one of the features potentially indicative of phenomenal consciousness. But it's only filled for honey bees, chickens, and humans. I agree that more such experiments would be useful. It's more directly tied to what we care about (qualia) than most experiments.

I think that animals might not eat painkillers until they are unconscious out of their survival instinct. There are substances that act as painkillers in nature, and the trait "eat it until you're unconscious" would be... (read more)

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AidanGoth
5d
Interesting – thanks for sharing. Yes, agreed on all of this

One Tibetan lama encouraged me against thinking in terms of "should" or "ought"s, and that, instead, a better psychological framing for my day-to-day actions is "would like"

This is common advice:

  •  In Nonviolent communication, they say that there is no right and wrong and that it's better to reframe everything as needs.
  •  In Radical Honesty, we do exercises to stop being led by "shoulds". Instead of “shoulds”, we simply talk about our sensations in the body, what we feel, and what we want.
  •  In CBT, they see “shoulds”, “musts”, “oughts” as cogniti
... (read more)
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charlieh943
6d
Interesting! Makes sense that this is common advise. I’ve heard similar stuff from CBT therapists, as you mention. That point was fairly anecdotal, and I don’t think contributes too much to the argument in this section. I place more weight on the Stanford article/Chao-Hwei responses. I don’t think that the quote you mention is exactly what Singer believes. He’s setting up the problem for Chao-Hwei to respond to. His own view is that the view “suffering is bad” is a self-evident perception. Perhaps this is subtly different from Singer disliking suffering, or wanting others to alleviate it. Perhaps self-evident in the same way colour is. I think moral realists lean on this analogy sometimes.

Hi. Thanks for sharing the model. I’d like to question you putting 32.5% weight on the scale, which you define as “Number of land animals projected to be farmed in 2050 under business-as-usual conditions”. The value of this variable depends on:

  1. Current human population
  2. Expected growth in the human population
  3. Current animal production per capita
  4. Expected change in the production per capita

I think that the 2, 3, and 4 are relevant and should be in the metric. But of these four, I’d bet it depends on the 1 (current human population) by far the most. No ... (read more)

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Moritz Stumpe
11d
Thanks for your comment! And no worries about not polishing, I will do the same, so it will also be a bit long :) I agree with your concern and it is something I've also thought about before (in other contexts as well). However, I see two reasons for why working in high-population countries should indeed be favoured: 1. At Animal Advocacy Africa we're currently working on recommendations and implementation guides for advocates that aim to mitigate the rise of industrial animal agriculture in Africa. Based on our research, policy work is the top recommendation and I do think the expected value of this is higher in high-population countries. The reason is that it is hard to know where policy work is more likely to be successful (which you also mentioned). As long as we don't have an indication that it is significantly less likely to be successful in higher-population countries, it seems fair to focus on the factor that we know will be important: the expected impact, if successful. 2. For work besides the area of policy/regulations (e.g. working with farmers or certain public outreach interventions, which are our recommendations #2 and #3), I agree that scale considerations can be overblown. If we cannot cover the whole population anyway, there is no limit that should really matter. However, I think scalability and potential flow-through effects are important to consider here. If we can get a successful model to work for some part of a large country, there is the potential to scale this much further or to have it scale automatically across the country (e.g. word of mouth). In short, there is a lot of upside to working in such large countries and as long as I don't have evidence that working in smaller countries is much more tractable I would keep focusing on the large ones. However, if there is clear evidence that working in a specific country is likely to be significantly more tractable, we should give this consideration a lot of weight. Unfortunately our rough m

Thanks so much for this work! I think it’s high quality and useful. Some thoughts:

  • I’m curious, why you are not also suggesting corporate campaigns against pet stores that sell feeder mice? Pet owners who shop there probably think of themselves as animal lovers so it might work. Is it because most feeder rodents are ordered online? Also, whether you campaign against pet stores or zoos, there might be a need to include third-party auditing in the commitment, just like it’s included in the Better Chicken Commitment. If campaigns against zoos or pet store
... (read more)

I understand and emphasise with you. The possibility of doom can cause paralysing fear. But it can also free us, shedding all pretense, awakening us to focus on what truly matters without wasting time, and reigniting the love for life. And the love of life seems like a better motivator for working on x-risks than the fear of death. Movies where characters rediscover life after a terminal diagnosis like Living (2022) and songs/poems like this (content warning: some nudity) inspire me to reframe the possibility of doom and death in this way.

I think that this already did a decent job, not sure there's more to say

Feed costs usually constitute between 50% to 70% of the total livestock production costs. Reducing the costs of farming crops used for feed (like soybeans and corn) would likely make animal farming more efficient and hence increase the number of farmed animals. 

I guess that increasing the efficiency of crops farmed directly for human consumption would barely impact the number of farmed animals. Maybe people would produce and consume more non-meat products because they are more profitable and/or cheaper. Hence, they might consume a bit fewer animal pro... (read more)

I see. In that case, it might be good for someone else to do the project of determining what weights for your pain categories would be most reasonable, and perhaps you could review that. I'm now considering doing it but it's unlikely that I will.

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cynthiaschuck
1mo
Sure, we would be glad to review a project like this. Coincidentally, today I came across an EA post where four people from RP articulated their reasons for choosing to present, or not to present, sentience weights for invertebrates. Our rationale for not providing intensity equivalence weights are very much aligned with the views of Jason K, particularly the notion that any weights we use would be overemphasized and reduce our credibility with potential collaborators. That said, we are not advocating for giving up on this area, it is just that we think we are not there yet.

I see why you made your decisions, but I still think that it would be very useful if people could cite you to say stuff like “According to Welfare Footprint Project, broiler reforms decrease chicken suffering by very roughly 40%-60%”. It’s not for researchers at places like OpenPhil to decide what should be the next welfare ask. It’s for donors, volunteers, researchers who want to mention your conclusions in passing, and even retailers considering whether to sign the Better Chicken Commitment. I don’t know if animal charities would do it, but such a senten... (read more)

Thanks for your nice words about our work :) . Yes, I see it can be frustrating to have estimates disaggregated (it is very much for us too), and that it can reduce the use and impact of the work. At this moment though we feel it is important to have a solid evidence-based model to quantify animal suffering. That is, a model that is very robust to scrutiny by academics (so they are more likely to adopt it) and by the industry, one in which all estimates can be justified thoroughly.Traction in the academic community is important because as a small team, we ... (read more)

Thanks for the post, it's an interesting idea. I slightly worry about corruption in "unannounced animal welfare audits by accredited and independent third parties". Someone told me years ago that such audits by government agents in Lithuania were a farce. Do you know if such audits work well in practice? One way I see it working is if the auditor is an animal advocate. Is that what tends to happen in practice?

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cynthiaschuck
1mo
You are absolutely right. From my personal experience in Spain, animal welfare audits are often announced to farmers weeks in advance, so even if they happen (often they only happen in the paper, without the actual visit) farmers have time to correct whatever needs to be corrected, just for the visit. Hence the idea of creating mechanisms to enable auditing by independent parties (other than the companies' own vets or governmental auditors). There is also potential for corruption here, but if there is an organization behind certifing auditors, creating standards for how these audits should happen, or simply reporting the willingness of companies to adhere to these standards (e.g., through a transparency index or something of the sort), the risk could be reduced somehow.
Answer by sauliusJan 31, 202429
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TLDR: Former animal advocacy researcher and programmer looking for part-time or contractor work. 

Skills & background: generalist research, cost-effectiveness estimates, knowledge about animal advocacy, programming. See my EA forum profile for work examples.

Location/remote: I live in London, can work in an office or remotely, somewhat open to relocating

Availability & type of work: part-time or contractor work. Might be open to a full-time job for an exceptionally good fit. Can start whenever. 

Resume/CV/LinkedIn: https://www.linke... (read more)

Answer by sauliusJan 31, 20244
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I'll provide some quick thoughts in case no one else answers in a better way.

I don't know anything about farming in Pakistan in particular, but I'd be surprised if there weren't the same welfare issues as elsewhere. E.g., egg-laying hens are probably raised in cages which is very bad for them. So by being vegan, you would save tens or hundreds of animals per year from suffering in expectation. It's particularly important for animal welfare to avoid eating chicken, eggs, some types of fish, and other small animals. 

However, you could potentially help m... (read more)

Hi Nathalie. Thank you for engaging with my post. I’ll clarify my thinking.

As I clarified here, I do think that humane slaughter reforms for wild-caught fish and invertebrates are promising. This type of work preceded the WAW movement so I didn’t really associate the two. 

Also, removing wild animals in large quantities from its environment has severe ripple effects to its environment and all other animals (and humans)

I agree. Also, humans reduce animal populations way more with things like habitat destruction. According to this report, “popu... (read more)

This kurzgesagt video argues against anti-natlism in a way that was convincing to me. It says that fewer babies eventually lead to an ageing population where a small number of working-age people have to support a lot of pensioners and that this is already happening. This can cause loads of problems, like poverty and democraticly-elected governments representing pensioners leading to focus on short-term thinking. That does not sound like the kind of population that would deal well with the effects of climate change because it needs massive investment and fr... (read more)

No, sorry, I wasn't saying that. My manager was Jacob Peacock, he was a great manager. He didn't put any unwelcome pressure and wasn't the one who talked to me about the email to OpenPhil. He said that I can publish my WAW articles on behalf of RP but then Marcus disagreed.

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weeatquince
3mo
Thank you for the correction

It sounds like Rethink stopped Saulius from posting a WAW post (within a work context) and it also looks like there was a potential conflict of interest here for senior staff as posting could affect funding

It is true that I wasn’t allowed to publish some of my WAW work on behalf of RP. Note that this WAW work includes not only the short summary Why I No Longer Prioritize Wild Animal Welfare (which got a lot of upvotes) but also three longer articles that it summarises (this, this, and this). Some of these do not threaten RP’s funding in any way. ... (read more)

0
weeatquince
3mo
Thank you Saulius. Very helpful to hear. This sounds like a really positive story of good management of a difficult situation. Well done to Marcus. If I read between the lines a bit I get the impression that maybe more junior (be that less competent or just newer to the org) managers at Rethink with less confidence in their actions not rocking the Rethink<->funder relationship were perhaps more likely to put unwelcome pressure on researchers about what to publish. Just a hypothesis, so might be wrong. But also the kind of thing good internal policies, good onboarding, good senior example setting, or just discussions of this topic, can all help with. 

OpenPhil email was sent to my RP email address, so I think that means that I was representing RP

If you do decide to pose a question, I suggest focusing on whether employees at EA organizations feel any direct or indirect pressure to conform to specific opinions due to organizational policies and dynamics, or even due to direct pressure from management. Or just don't feel free to speak their minds on certain issues related to their job. People should have an option to answer anonymously. Basically to find out if my case was an isolated incident or not.

saulius
3mo68
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Thanks Vasco. Personally, I won't do it. Actually, I pushed this issue here way further than I intended to and I don't want to talk about it more. I'm afraid that this might be one of those things that might seem like a big deal in theory but is rarely relevant in practice because reality is usually more complicated. And it's the sort of topic that can be discussed for too long, distracting busy EA executives from their actual work. Many people seem to have read this discussion, so arguments on both sides will likely be considered at RP and some other EA orgs. That is enough for me. I particularly hope it will be discussed by RP's cause prioritization team. 

saulius
3mo119
23
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Thank you for your answer Marcus.

What bothers me is that if I said that I was excited about funding WAW research, no one would have said anything. I was free to say that. But to say that I’m not excited, I have to go through all these hurdles. This introduces a bias because a lot of the time researchers won’t want to go through hurdles and opinions that would indirectly threaten RP’s funding won’t be shared. Hence, funders would have a distorted view of researchers' opinions. 

Put yourself into my shoes. OpenPhil sends an email to multiple people askin... (read more)

Great points, Saulius! I think it would be pretty valuable to have a question post asking about how organisations are handling situations such as yours (you may be interested in doing it; if you or other person do not, I may do it myself). I would say employees/contractors should be free, and ideally encouraged, to share their takes with funders and publicly, more of less regardless of what are the consequences for their organisation, as long as they are not sharing confidential information.

Uh, didn't expect people to notice this old thread. Just to make the situation sound less dramatic, I should've said that I had informed RP that I wanted to quit RP in three months. Then a situation arose after which the person I was supposed to work closely with for those three months didn't want to work with me. I think that was the main reason why I was asked to resign right away instead of after those three months. It makes sense.

saulius
3mo166
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When I was asked to resign from RP, one of the reasons given was that I wrote the sentence “I don't think that EAs should fund many WAW researchers since I don't think that WAW is a very promising cause area” in an email to OpenPhil, after OpenPhil asked for my opinion on a WAW (Wild Animal Welfare) grant. I was told that this is not okay because OpenPhil is one of the main funders of RP’s WAW work. That did not make me feel very independent. Though perhaps that was the only instance in the four years I worked at RP.

Because of this instance, I was also con... (read more)

Hey Saulius,

I’m very sorry that you felt that way – that wasn’t our intention. We aren’t going to get into the details of your resignation in public, but as you mention in your follow up comment, neither this incident, nor our disagreement over WAW views were the reason for your resignation.

As you recall, you did publish your views on wild animal welfare publicly. Because RP leadership was not convinced by the reasoning in your piece, we rejected your request to publish it under the RP byline as an RP article representative of an RP position. This decision... (read more)

Uh, didn't expect people to notice this old thread. Just to make the situation sound less dramatic, I should've said that I had informed RP that I wanted to quit RP in three months. Then a situation arose after which the person I was supposed to work closely with for those three months didn't want to work with me. I think that was the main reason why I was asked to resign right away instead of after those three months. It makes sense.

I obviously have no inside knowledge of the situation @saulius describes here, but I do think it touches on a potential concern of mine that RP could become (or could already be) too influential in the cause prioritization domain. This is not based on anything about RP other than its size: I think it's almost inevitable that any organization that exists (or could plausibly exist) in an RP-like space will have its own private institutional interests that could reasonably be expected to influence its outputs. Allowing those interests to affect outputs seems ... (read more)

It wouldn't solve the "Aging populations with lower percentages of working age adults threaten developed economies" problem, which I think is low-key one of the biggest problems in the world and the strongest argument to work on aging.

I remember talking about screwworms with @kcudding and @Holly_Elmore, I don't know how deeply they looked into it but maybe they could comment.

Yes! The biggest issue with eradication in the US and Central America is that it has to be maintained with pretty massive international effort. It uses a non-genetic sterile male technique, which means rearing huge amount of males (which require meat and certain conditions to grow), sterilizing them with x-rays, and releasing them by helicopter over the line Panama/Colombia border where the eradication is maintained. The US needs the cooperation of the rest of the North American countries in providing facilities and granting access to distribute the worms ... (read more)

As I understand it, all this data about the impact of events is collected through surveys that are attendees fill immediately after an event. I think that this might introduce some biases. For example, maybe attendees get excited about new connections they made and think that they will collaborate but then never do. If that's not done already, one way to somewhat mitigate this bias would be to also ask at the annual EA survey about the impact of EA events (that year, and in their lifetime). I wonder if conclusions like the one in this article would hold up.

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David_Moss
9mo
I have added the results from the EA Survey below.  Connections actually seem somewhat more important in the EAS results than in the results reported here. That said, that could be partly because the analysis in this post combined more things into the "Learning" option (e.g. “Finding specific sessions interesting or valuable” and “Learning more about EA cause areas or taking them more seriously”), whereas the original survey question just asked about whether they "chang[ed] their mind or learn[ed] something important regarding their path to impact." Another difference between the EAS analysis and this one, is that the EAS asked about the most important new Learning/Connection, rather than whether people received any new Learning/Connection from a given source. So it is possible that the events account for a disproportionately large number of people's most important new connections (per the EAS analysis), but that people are nevertheless also receiving a comparable number of new Learnings.
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OllieBase
9mo
No, it's actually from surveys that were filled 3 - 8 months after the events took place. Sorry that wasn't clear. 

I have a nitpicky comment that may not be very important in the end. 

It seems that estimates of how long cage-free and caged hens live and how many eggs they lay are partially based on Norwood and Lusk 2011. I once did that as well but I was told that the book describes small scale cage-free systems that don’t use optimal genetics. Large scale cage-free systems (which perhaps didn’t exist at the time to the same extent) are likely much more similar to current caged systems, especially after industry will have some time to optimize things. If it w... (read more)

Thank you very much for doing this. However, I'm surprised by the claim that "research organizations have trouble filling a senior-level researcher talent gap". I've worked as an animal advocacy researcher in EA orgs for five years and had the title of senior researcher. I am looking for a researcher job right now and I can't even find anywhere to apply for, at least without a PhD. Well, GiveWell is hiring but I don't want to work in global health. I was loosely following animal welfare researcher and non-longtermist generalist researcher open jobs at EA o... (read more)

These were just some very conservative guesses rather than estimates. Also, I think that the effect depends on circumstances:

  • In the case of eggs and Prop 12, by the time it was passed, most companies in the U.S. had already committed to only use cage-free eggs, often by 2025 or 2026. So I guess you could say that Prop 12 made California do it sooner (2022) and hence sped it up (although it's unclear if that is even a good thing in itself).[1] But a more important effect of Prop 12 is that it increased the probability that California and the whole U.S.
... (read more)

Nice post. It reminds me that I want to consider this option. By the way, someone once tried to very roughly estimate the cost-effectiveness of volunteering at a suicide hotline here.

I'm the author of that post. Here is an edit I just added:

I don’t have better numbers than what I came up with here, but the overall rationale seems very similar to that of vegan leafletting, and I just don’t believe their numbers. I think people are in general likely to overestimate the effect of conversations they just had.

None of this means volunteering can’t be effective, or is worse than a given volunteer’s best alternative, but I don’t think “I felt helpful” is strong data.

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William Spaul
1y
Thank you, and for including the link to the other post. 

You may know this already, but No Means No Worldwide works with children and adolescents. E.g., the mean age of girls in this study is 12.3 years. Founders Pledge evaluated them (see here for a summary and here for a full report) and provisionally recommended them. I don't know if the person is particularly looking into tackling sexual abuse of younger children, but this charity seems worth mentioning as an option.

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Sanjay
1y
Thanks very much Saulius.  In SoGive's 2023 plans document, we said  "An investigation of No Means No Worldwide was suggested to us by a member of the EA London community, who was excited to have an EA-aligned recommendation for a charity which prevents sexual violence. We have mostly completed a review of this charity, and were asked not to publish it yet because it used a study which is not yet in the public domain." That said, part of the reason I didn't allude to NMNW is that my vague memory of the average was older (presumably my vague memory was wrong).

I want to illustrate the “larger organizations are much more risk averse” point. When I worked at Rethink Priorities, I felt less freedom to publicly share unpolished and controversial thoughts because that could hurt Rethink Priorities reputation. And the bigger Rethink Priorities grew, the more there was to lose, the more this became a problem. Because of this, articles that I didn’t think were very promising but worth publishing (e.g., aquatic noise) took more time to finish as every claim went through more scrutiny than it would be optimal if I wa... (read more)

Note that aggressively seeking a serious monogamous relationship within EA is also problematic. For example, it might be a bad idea to ask out every other EA woman you had a nice 30 minute conversation with (e.g., see this comment).

-4[comment deleted]1y
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Patrick Sue Domin
1y
Agree

Some EA parties (including some EA Global afterparties) involve cuddle puddles or hot tubs. The post made me wonder if that is also problematic. I've never heard anyone say that but some people might feel pressure to comply in order to fit in and possibly make important connections. It also probably increases the probability of various problems like touching without consent. Such things might also repulse some new commers from EA, especially after all the scandals. Perhaps people should consider whether such things are appropriate for a given gathering a bit more?

4
Amber Dawn
1y
I would feel surprised if people felt pressure to be part of a cuddle puddle just because there was one at a party, and inclined to say it was their problem if so. I think it's different obviously if people are verbally pressuring them to join (and I think "awww come on! it's fun" counts as verbal pressure). But I'd be sad if people stopped having cuddle puddles/hot tubs because of a worry that some hypothetical person might feel uncomfortable with them. 
4
Jgray
1y
I'm sure some people find hot tubs a bit awkward and I'm sure most people (at least outside of EA) would find "cuddle puddles" a little strange. You'll never be able to please everyone, you gotta just live your life.
3
Patrick Sue Domin
1y
Hot tubs at least seem fine. I can't imagine anyone feeling offended or creeped out by being asked at a party if they want to join a hot tub the way they might if they're propositioned for sex (at least, unless there's more going on in the situation). I've heard of the cuddle puddles at Bay Area parties but I'm not familiar enough with them to have an informed view there.
0
allskies
1y
I would be cautious of spending too many weirdness points on those things (to your point about newcomers finding them a bit weird), but I don't think anyone is feeling coerced to join a cuddle puddle/get in a hottub at those sorts of parties. Most of the EAG afterparties I've been to have mostly just been pretty standard drinking in someone's house or a bar.

I imagine that few people would say that it’s actively harmful to try to decrease s-risks to digital minds (especially when it involves trying to prevent escalating conflicts, sadism, and retributivism). Most people would say it’s just a waste of money and effort. Most people agree that it’s important that animals used for food are well cared for. Not everyone votes for welfare improvements in ballot initiatives but a significant proportion of people do. And if we had infinite money, I don't think anyone would mind improving conditions for farmed anim... (read more)

Hi again Brian. I agree that your vision for the WAW movement is different from what WAW organizations are currently doing. I criticized the latter and don’t have a strong opinion on your vision of focusing on very small animals and reducing populations. I said that I don’t want to reduce populations partly because that usually includes reducing plant productivity which in turn causes more climate change, which might increase s-risks, x-risks, poverty, etc. But perhaps some interventions in your list could reduce populations without causing more envir... (read more)

9
Brian_Tomasik
1y
(Sorry for being slow to return here!) Yeah, I think some ways of reducing plant growth are often supported by environmentalists, including * less growing of crops in dry areas requiring irrigation (and instead growing more crops in regions where rain provides more of the water) * less irrigation of pastures and lawns * fewer artificial fertilizers * less nutrient pollution into water bodies * lowering atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which reduces the "CO2 fertilization effect" (though as you note, the overall impact of climate change on wild-animal suffering is unclear) * not genetically engineering plants to have higher yields. Some other activities like encouraging palm-oil production (which destroys rainforests) are bad for the environment but may reduce poverty. (I should note that I'm unsure about the net impact of palm-oil production for wild-animal suffering.) I agree that the question of how to lobby for these things without seeming like weirdos is tricky. It would be easier if society cared more about wild animals from a suffering-focused perspective, which can be one argument for starting with philosophical advocacy regarding those topics, though it seems unlikely that concern for wild-animal welfare or suffering-focused ethics will ever become mainstream (apart from weak forms of these things, like caring about charismatic megafauna or Buddhist philosophy about suffering). These philosophical views would also help for various far-future scenarios. But from the standpoint of trying to reduce some short-term suffering, especially if we worry about cluelessness for longer-term efforts, then this approach of doing philosophical advocacy would be too slow and indirect (except insofar as it contributes to movement building, leading some other people to pursue more concrete interventions). So overall I may agree with you that for short-term, concrete impact, we should plausibly focus on things like stunning of wild-caught fish and so on. This is why

Sorry, I still plan to look into microbes someday but now I don’t know when I’ll get to it anymore. I suddenly got quite busy and I am extremely slow at reading. For now I’ll just say this: I criticized the WAW movement as I currently see it. That is, a WAW movement that doesn’t focus on microbes, nor on decreasing wild animal populations. I currently simply don’t have an opinion about a WAW movement that would focus on such things. There were some restrictions on the kind of short-term interventions I could recommend in my intervention search. Interventions that would help microbes (or help wild populations just by reducing their populations) simply didn’t qualify.

Ok, let’s consider this for each type of farmed animal welfare intervention:

  • Humane slaughter of farmed animals and wild-caught fish. I’m guessing that it doesn’t impact WAW that much.
  • Reducing animal product production. E.g., diet change advocacy, meat alternatives. Such interventions increase wild populations a lot. If you believe that wild animals live bad lives (which is questionable but I’d give it a 65% probability), then it follows that reducing meat production is likely bad for short-term animal welfare. I personally still think that reduci
... (read more)

Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Brian. I should’ve mentioned that I think that WAW might be tractable for people who think that reducing wild animal populations is good. I don’t think that reducing populations is good because:

  1.  I remain very uncertain whether wild animals experience more suffering than happiness (see this talk). I still think it’s more likely that there is more suffering due to painful deaths but not by much. This is partly because I give less weight to short but very intense pain than you do.
  2. Reducing wild animal population
... (read more)
3
Fai
1y
Hi Saulius, I wonder if have factored in your points 2&3 above in your view that you think digital beings are a priority for longtermism, and factory farming a priority for non-longtermist animal welfare. It seems that both cause areas, if taken consistently and seriously enough, would go against (organic) human interests and is not what most people want.
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