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Recently I have been thinking a lot about the impacts of longtermist versus neartermist causes, the relationships between different generations, and the value or (lack there of) in longevity research.
With this mishmash, an interesting analogy occurred to me: When discussing longevity, people often make the distinction between lifespan and healthspan. What if not just humans as individuals, but humanity as a whole had a lifespan and a healthspan?
I wrote the following as a journal entry:
I don’t want to think about what happens or will happen to humans in 10,000 years. I want to think about what is happening right now, about things within my control, about securing the next hot meal for me and my family, about keeping a roof over my head.
I do like to imagine humans in the future, how there lives might be different or better. I want to leave this Earth a little better than I found for future generations, but I don’t think that involves solely focusing on existential risk. Talk of existential risks annoy me. How much does analyzing and researching existential risks actually mitigate them? What else can we actively be doing? What about all the people who are suffering now? Not tomorrow, not in ten thousand years. Right now.
To “ensure the future of humanity.” That is a losing battle. I’m not saying that I want humanity to have a premature death. I’m not saying that humanity shouldn’t try to live as long as it possibly can. I’m just saying that the end of humanity is not a question, it is a matter of fact, a certainty. One day humanity will die. One day this planet will die, one day this galaxy will die. Everything dies, everything changes. All good things must come to an end.
I see a parallel between discussions of longevity and aging research, and discussions of humanity’s future. In longevity research, people distinguish lifespan from health span. There is also controversy surrounding the idea of an “aging escape velocity.” Blatantly, some silly euphemism for immortality. I do believe that we should increase both our healthspans and lifespans, primarily healthspans though. A larger number of good quality years is preferable to a smaller number of good quality years. Although maybe not, depending on the total years.
Can individuals or can humanity ever fully escape aging or extinguishment? Intuitively, I don’t believe so. Assuming that humanity will end, the argument for longtermism is akin to the argument for increasing someone’s lifepsan, with less regard for healthspan (but in EA style longtermism, it seems there is a prerequisite belief in an “escape” of some kind). The argument for neartermism is akin to the argument for increasing someone’s healthspan, with also some small to moderate life extension as an unintended consequence. This analogy leads me to lean more towards near term causes.
However, underneath this analogy, there still exists an unanswered question. What is a healthy or thriving humanity? This question must be answered and healthspan must be defined before any discussion of humanity’s healthspan becomes truly meaningful.
The issues of ambiguous definitions and imperfect measurements are nothing new. EAs and outsiders have criticized the usage of QALYs and DALYs and called for better measurements of well being to try to perform better cost-benefit analyses of different causes. Healthspan for humanity might be a much trickier thing to measure (though I’m sure economists have all sorts of measurements for financial health of nations and the globe). Should we set out to further define or measure humanity’s health, or accept that we have to grapple with decisions that defy measurement? Both?
I wrote this journal entry while feeling disillusioned with Effective Altruism, longtermism, and rationalism, even though I agree and try to align myself with many of their central tenets.
I’m not very far into it, but currently reading a book called Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal, which has helped to combat my disillusionment.
Curated and popular this week
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Tl;dr:
In this post, I describe a concept I call surface area for serendipity — the informal, behind-the-scenes work that makes it easier for others to notice, trust, and collaborate with you. In a job market where some EA and animal advocacy roles attract over 1,300 applicants, relying on traditional applications alone is unlikely to land you a role.
This post offers a tactical roadmap to the hidden layer of hiring: small, often unpaid but high-leverage actions that build visibility and trust before a job ever opens. The general principle is simple: show up consistently where your future collaborators or employers hang out — and let your strengths be visible. Done well, this increases your chances of being invited, remembered, or hired — long before you ever apply.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Kevin Xia for your valuable feedback and suggestions, and Toby Tremlett for offering general feedback and encouragement. All mistakes are my own.
Why I Wrote This
Many community members have voiced their frustration because they have applied for many jobs and have got nowhere. Over the last few years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with people trying to break into farmed animal advocacy or EA-aligned roles.
When I ask whether they’re doing any networking or community engagement, they often shyly say “not really.” What I’ve noticed is that people tend to focus heavily on formal job ads. This makes sense, job ads are common, straightforward and predictable. However, the odds are stacked against them (sometimes 1,300:1 — see this recent Anima hiring round), and they tend to pay too little attention to the unofficial work — the small, informal, often unpaid actions that build trust and relationships long before a job is posted.
This post is my attempt to name and explain that hidden layer of how hiring often happens, and to offer a more proactive, human, and strategic path into the work that matters.
This isn’t a new idea, but I’ve noticed it’s still rarely discussed op
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I wrote a reply to the Bentham Bulldog argument that has been going mildly viral. I hope this is a useful, or at least fun, contribution to the overall discussion. Intro/summary below, full post on Substack.
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“One pump of honey?” the barista asked.
“Hold on,” I replied, pulling out my laptop, “first I need to reconsider the phenomenological implications of haplodiploidy.”
Recently, an article arguing against honey has been making the rounds. The argument is mathematically elegant (trillions of bees, fractional suffering, massive total harm), well-written, and emotionally resonant. Naturally, I think it's completely wrong.
Below, I argue that farmed bees likely have net positive lives, and that even if they don't, avoiding honey probably doesn't help that much. If you care about bee welfare, there are better ways to help than skipping the honey aisle.
Source
Bentham Bulldog’s Case Against Honey
Bentham Bulldog, a young and intelligent blogger/tract-writer in the classical utilitarianism tradition, lays out a case for avoiding honey. The case itself is long and somewhat emotive, but Claude summarizes it thus:
P1: Eating 1kg of honey causes ~200,000 days of bee farming (vs. 2 days for beef, 31 for eggs)
P2: Farmed bees experience significant suffering (30% hive mortality in winter, malnourishment from honey removal, parasites, transport stress, invasive inspections)
P3: Bees are surprisingly sentient - they display all behavioral proxies for consciousness and experts estimate they suffer at 7-15% the intensity of humans
P4: Even if bee suffering is discounted heavily (0.1% of chicken suffering), the sheer numbers make honey consumption cause more total suffering than other animal products
C: Therefore, honey is the worst commonly consumed animal product and should be avoided
The key move is combining scale (P1) with evidence of suffering (P2) and consciousness (P3) to reach a mathematical conclusion (
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Is now the time to add to RP’s great work?
Rethink’s Moral weights project (MWP) is immense and influential. Their work is the most cited “EA” paper written in the last 3 years by a mile - I struggle to think of another that comes close. Almost every animal welfare related post on the forum quotes the MWP headline numbers - usually not as gospel truth, but with confidence. Their numbers carry moral weight[1] moving hearts, minds and money towards animals.
To oversimplify, if their numbers are ballpark correct then...
1. Farmed animal welfare interventions outcompete human welfare interventions for cost-effectiveness under most moral positions.[2]
2. Smaller animal welfare interventions outcompete larger animal welfare if you aren’t risk averse.
There are downsides in over-indexing on one research project for too long, especially considering a question this important. The MWP was groundbreaking, and I hope it provides fertile soil for other work to sprout with new approaches and insights. Although the concept of “replicability” isn't quite as relevant here as with empirical research, I think its important to have multiple attempts at questions this important. Given the strength of the original work, any new work might be lower quality - but perhaps we can live with that. Most people would agree that more deep work needs to happen here at some stage, but the question might be is now the right time to intentionally invest in more?
Arguments against more Moral Weights work
1. It might cost more money than it will add value
2. New researchers are likely to land land on a similar approaches and numbers to RP so what's the point?[3]
3. RP’s work is as good as we are likely to get, why try again and get a probably worse product?
4. We don’t have enough new scientific information since the original project to meaningfully add to the work.
5. So little money goes to animal welfare work now anyway, we might do more harm than good at least in the short t
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the impacts of longtermist versus neartermist causes, the relationships between different generations, and the value or (lack there of) in longevity research.
With this mishmash, an interesting analogy occurred to me: When discussing longevity, people often make the distinction between lifespan and healthspan. What if not just humans as individuals, but humanity as a whole had a lifespan and a healthspan?
I wrote the following as a journal entry:
I wrote this journal entry while feeling disillusioned with Effective Altruism, longtermism, and rationalism, even though I agree and try to align myself with many of their central tenets.
I’m not very far into it, but currently reading a book called Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal, which has helped to combat my disillusionment.