Wild sardine and anchovy fishing also results in very low bycatch.^[23] As pelagic fish that swim in dense shoals near the surface, they are caught with purse seine nets rather than bottom trawls, avoiding seabed damage and minimising the risk of plastic pollution through ghost gear.

I would say this is the crux of the issue for me and I appreciate your addressing it directly. Looking at the cited research:

This paper presents a study of the Spanish purse-seine fleet operating in the Bay of Biscay during the years 2016–2019. It considers the species selectivity and the effect of fishing activities on the pelagic community by assessing the interactions with the endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species and estimating the discard sizes. For the purpose of this study, the metiers were defined by grouping similar catch profiles, using hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. This definition of metier goes beyond the Data Collection Framework (DCF) concepts; it includes specific target species, thus increasing the accuracy. Sampling conducted at sea during the four years of the study demonstrated that; 1) the discards were scarce both in terms of overall values and the proportion of the catch (below 1% for almost all metiers and years); 2) The studied purse-seine fishery is one of the most selective among those harvesting the pelagic domain in the Bay of Biscay; 3) The results also showed that the fleet avoided the unwanted catches, mostly by practising slipping;4) The interaction with the ETPs was almost non-existent. Only a single case of a yellow-legged gull entanglement was recorded, and the bird was released alive. Notably, more than 7500 individuals of 16 species of seabirds and marine mammals were recorded in the vicinity of the fishing grounds. Thus, we conclude that this purse-seine fishery has only a slight impact on the main species of the pelagic ecosystem, due to the purse-seine slipping practices.

I don't know this branch of work well. Do you consider these estimates credible? Generalizable? if I buy anchovies at the grocery store where i live in Brooklyn, will they be caught the way these were, or worse?

My general thought on this is that because I'm not expert in these issues I should err on the side of abstaining. But I am persuadable. 

(My other big question for this line of thinking is, why anchovies/sardines when oysters/mussels are widely available, provide many of the same nutritional benefits, and are more clearly nonconscious.)

This was also the book that persuaded (and alerted) me to ostrovgegansim 

Nice! I replied on substack. Your suggesitons largely jive with my experience.

I worry that the pro-AI/slow-AI/stop-AI has the salient characteristics of a tribal dividing line that could tear EA apart:

• "I want to accelerate AI" vs "I want to decelerate AI" is a big, clear line in the sand that allows for a lot clearer signaling of one's tribal identity than something more universally agreeable like "malaria is bad"
• Up to the point where AI either kills us or doesn't, there's basically in principle no way to verify that one side or the other is "right", which means everyone can keep arguing about it forever
• The discourse around it is more hostile/less-trust-presuming than the typical EA discussion, which tends to be collegial (to a fault, some might argue)

You might think it's worth having this civl war to clarify what EA is about. I don't. I would like for us to get on a different track.

This thought prompted by discussion around one of Matthew_Barnett's quick takes.

I think if I end up writing something that's particularly EA-aligned, e.g. a cost-benefit analysis of some intervention, I'd do that. as is I'm happy to err on the side of not annoying people when promoting my stuff 😃 

Hi Sarah, 

In general I'm grateful that you've put a lot of thought into this, I think it shows in a high-quality forum experience. A few observations:

1. I agree that changing the default Karma settings is fine, in part because it's easy for users to revert.^[1]
2. As to churned forum users who forget the forum exists -- EA is not for everyone. It's ultimately some pretty serious questions and it attracts serious people. I know it's your job to worry about this, but for my money, I do not think that such folks were likely to have generated the kind of content we're looking for.
   1. We face an unavoidable sensitivity/specificity tradeoff in terms of attracting users. Right now things are slanted towards specificity rather than sensitivity. I like that because I am unapologetically picky about how I spend my time. I'd be less likely to contribute to a forum with a wider reach but a lower average quality of conversation. 

1. ^{^}

   Also I unironically like that you've changed the default but preserved the "Warning: Immediate karma updates may lead to over-updating on tiny amounts of feedback, and to checking the site frequently when you'd rather be doing something else."

I was just writing an email to a colleague about the difference between one-offs and repeated exposure. Just speculating here, but documentaries kind of are one-offs -- who in the world is going to watch Dominion a second time -- but op-eds, EA forum posts, etc. are more a a "repeated, spaced exposure" model of behavioral change. And that's going to mean a very different evaluation strategy.

As to personal connection to the material, you might enjoy 

Which basically tells people how much meat they're eating in comparison to a norm, and then gives them a 😃 or a :( depending on whether they're above or below average. So that's kind of an attempt to get people personally connected to the broader mission.

For more on this literature in general, see Meaningfully reducing meat consumption is an unsolved problem: meta-analysis 

👋 I have joined the modern world and am writing a Substack about research on ending factory farming 😃

Here's a post on a strong study about the effects of watching an especially upsetting documentary.

👋 thanks for all you do!

Regarding “There are various ways that the EA Forum falls short of other sites that better engage users, like Substack, Reddit, and Twitter” — I for one much prefer the forum to any of those platforms, and when you say “engage,” I hear “try to elicit compulsive behavior from.” I know that’s not what you mean, but for twitter and Reddit in particular, engagement looks like addiction for a lot of folks, as well as a profit model driven by outrage & slop. I would not like to see the forum imitate them.

Put differently, a lot of platforms are designed at the outset for specialists & connoisseurs, and when they get (pressured to become) big, they lose what’s special about them and just end up shoving short-form video content in an endless scroll in front of an undifferentiated mass of users. I don’t think folks generally want this when they start platforms, but it seems to happen when they heed the siren’s call of engagement. I like that the forum is still for a small, specialized group. (Likewise I hope the forum doesn’t move to Reddit.)

I see this issue as:

1. you're trying to gain traction among EAs
2. EAs have a norm of reaching out to groups for comment before publishing criticism of them
3. By not following that norm, you are alienating yourself from the community you're trying to woo

As to whether this norm is good or not, that ultimately boils down to the assumption of good faith. EAs tend to make that assumption about people who talk the talk, sometimes to our discredit.  I'd be interested in more discussion of this assumption, which I think is part of the "implicit curriculum" of joining the community. But adopting a more adversarial stance, and expecting the community to get onboard without actually litigating the underlying point, seems unlikely to succeed and therefore inconsistent with your goals.

Another thought: I also object to the maximalist marketing that nonprofits often adopt when they solicit donations. But from their POV, it's a total prisoners' dilemma: everyone else is pushing the boundaries, so if you don't, you get left behind. I don't see how criticizing one group, or even a handful of them, is going to change that dynamic. It would require culture change, which is a hard problem.