AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
EAs should be aware that it is easy to traumatize (their own) kids with apocalyptic narratives.
EAs population is getting older: we are no longer in our early twenties but at a more respectable age. That alone will lead to more and more children being born to EAs. MacAskill recommends in WWOTF having children. Not sure how many babies will his endorsement ensure, but likely nonzero.
Raising a child is hard, but EAs have probably one additional opportunity to mess it up a bit more than the average parent. Since we believe the world might end if we don't do enough, we might traumatize our children with that.
Many, many apocalyptic movements do that. On the religious side, you have cults like (Jehovah's witnesses)[https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/religious-trauma-is-real-and-more-survivors-need-to-speak-up-about-it-39429c677756] and (mainstream religions)[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/religion-evangelical-christian-apocalypse-josiah-hesse] with their Armageddons (i am not saying EA is a cult, I am saying there is a similarity and potential risk in this specific thing, nothing more). Climate change movement has its (own share )[https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/19/our-children-face-pretraumatic-stress-from-worries-about-climate-change/]
This is not inevitable. Climate movement produced guides (e.g. (this one)[https://media.ourkidsclimate.org/2021/06/Talk-about-climate-guide-for-parents-2021-06-01.pdf] which is very similar to other lists when googling "how to talk to kids about climate change") and probably more material about this topic. (which I know nothing about)
this is literally just random though I had which I haven't seen discussed yet. I spent effectively 0 minutes of my life thinking about raising children, child psychology, whether EAs should have children, etc.