Thanks for posting about this; I hadn't heard about it. I chuckled at 'nothing ever happens' and realised how much weight I'm guilty of putting on that when deciding how much to worry about things like this.
But also, it apparently has a short incubation period of 1-3 days. I reckon if 200 close contacts were exposed and there are still no secondary symptomatic cases in a week from now, then we can be at ease on this particular GCR.
Happy birthday! As a present, here are a few thoughts I’d love your take on:
7. Efficiency still matters to producers even as societies get richer. If cultivated meat can deliver the same product more cheaply, lower prices and/or higher margins are still powerful competitive advantages over slaughter meat.
23. Yes - and I wonder whether directly funding things like wildlife rehabilitation could outperform some current WAW research, which seems several steps removed from actually helping animals. Is there a funding level or time horizon at which you’d want to see the field shift more heavily from research/field-building toward interventions?
34. Shouldn’t we focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score? Presumably the portfolio shouldn’t be evenly spread if some approaches look more promising than others.
If he switched to criticising the rescuers, while citing others who’d made the same criticism recently, I’d ask what additional value that repetition was adding, too.
I think I’m getting lost in the intermediate outcomes. I understand there are signs that you’re succeeding at building the field. But I keep coming back to a basic question: what is the causal pathway from this work to animals actually being better off? I’m struggling to identify it beyond 'a stronger field may eventually discover interventions', and I find that difficult to evaluate against alternative uses of the funding.
I’m also not sure the examples you give make the case for building an entirely new academic field as strongly as you say. Avian botulism, wildlife contraception, fish welfare etc appear to already be established areas of research to varying degrees; what seems novel is applying a welfare-oriented lens. That makes me wonder why the right response is to build a new field at substantial cost, rather than fund targeted intervention development using knowledge that already exists in adjacent disciplines.
So no, the key question for me isn't how important I happen to think WAW is in general. It's 'how have animals benefitted so far, and if not at all yet, then on what sort of timeline can we expect concrete outcomes, and at what further cost?'
I wouldn’t say that I require short timelines or immediate effects. If that were the case, I wouldn't support cultivated meat. I understand the argument for funding very speculative work where I can see the causal chain from research to an intervention with enormous potential impact. My concern with WAI is that they are still trying to discover both what the relevant welfare problems are and what interventions might eventually follow from understanding them. This seems to me an absurdly vague proposition for the level of funding involved.
You seem to find value in producing knowledge in an enormous, neglected domain because unknown future interventions could be extraordinarily valuable. Whereas I want more evidence that the knowledge-production process - or any other strategy - is actually converging on interventions. Until then, the theoretical upside is too abstract for me to treat it as competitive with cultivated meat, because the latter is at least clear and in existence.
And it existed before EA got involved. I think it was around 2013 that the first cultivated meat burger was tried - it was an extremely crude, mega expensive proof of concept - but nevertheless a tangible starting point. Meanwhile WAI is seven years in with no concrete interventions on the table.
A quick question I have for you; at what point would you decide that WAI isn’t worth funding anymore?
I hope those measures are precautionary only. If there is a cover-up, it doesn’t seem to be going well.
Thanks for posting about this; I hadn't heard about it. I chuckled at 'nothing ever happens' and realised how much weight I'm guilty of putting on that when deciding how much to worry about things like this.
But also, it apparently has a short incubation period of 1-3 days. I reckon if 200 close contacts were exposed and there are still no secondary symptomatic cases in a week from now, then we can be at ease on this particular GCR.
Happy birthday! As a present, here are a few thoughts I’d love your take on:
7. Efficiency still matters to producers even as societies get richer. If cultivated meat can deliver the same product more cheaply, lower prices and/or higher margins are still powerful competitive advantages over slaughter meat.
23. Yes - and I wonder whether directly funding things like wildlife rehabilitation could outperform some current WAW research, which seems several steps removed from actually helping animals. Is there a funding level or time horizon at which you’d want to see the field shift more heavily from research/field-building toward interventions?
34. Shouldn’t we focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score? Presumably the portfolio shouldn’t be evenly spread if some approaches look more promising than others.
72% end up in a serious relationship within six months... with each other/another date from Settled? If so, that's remarkable!
If he switched to criticising the rescuers, while citing others who’d made the same criticism recently, I’d ask what additional value that repetition was adding, too.
I think this point has been made repeatedly and I'm not sure what there is to gain by dunking on vegans any further.
The reason is that eligible charity-owned businesses in Australia don't pay corporation tax. There's a 'why Australia?' section in the FAQ's here.
Super interesting, thank you! I had 0 conflicts, 1 bullet, which was accepting the repugnant conclusion that Z is better than A.
I think I’m getting lost in the intermediate outcomes. I understand there are signs that you’re succeeding at building the field. But I keep coming back to a basic question: what is the causal pathway from this work to animals actually being better off? I’m struggling to identify it beyond 'a stronger field may eventually discover interventions', and I find that difficult to evaluate against alternative uses of the funding.
I’m also not sure the examples you give make the case for building an entirely new academic field as strongly as you say. Avian botulism, wildlife contraception, fish welfare etc appear to already be established areas of research to varying degrees; what seems novel is applying a welfare-oriented lens. That makes me wonder why the right response is to build a new field at substantial cost, rather than fund targeted intervention development using knowledge that already exists in adjacent disciplines.
So no, the key question for me isn't how important I happen to think WAW is in general. It's 'how have animals benefitted so far, and if not at all yet, then on what sort of timeline can we expect concrete outcomes, and at what further cost?'
I wouldn’t say that I require short timelines or immediate effects. If that were the case, I wouldn't support cultivated meat. I understand the argument for funding very speculative work where I can see the causal chain from research to an intervention with enormous potential impact. My concern with WAI is that they are still trying to discover both what the relevant welfare problems are and what interventions might eventually follow from understanding them. This seems to me an absurdly vague proposition for the level of funding involved.
You seem to find value in producing knowledge in an enormous, neglected domain because unknown future interventions could be extraordinarily valuable. Whereas I want more evidence that the knowledge-production process - or any other strategy - is actually converging on interventions. Until then, the theoretical upside is too abstract for me to treat it as competitive with cultivated meat, because the latter is at least clear and in existence.
And it existed before EA got involved. I think it was around 2013 that the first cultivated meat burger was tried - it was an extremely crude, mega expensive proof of concept - but nevertheless a tangible starting point. Meanwhile WAI is seven years in with no concrete interventions on the table.
A quick question I have for you; at what point would you decide that WAI isn’t worth funding anymore?