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As a community builder, I've started donating directly to my local EA group—and I encourage you to consider doing the same.
Managing budgets and navigating inflexible grant applications consume valuable time and energy that could otherwise be spent directly fostering impactful community engagement. As someone deeply involved, I possess unique insights into what our group specifically needs, how to effectively meet those needs, and what actions are most conducive to achieving genuine impact.
Of course, seeking funding from organizations like OpenPhil remains highly valuable—they've dedicated extensive thought to effective community building. Yet, don't underestimate the power and efficiency of utilizing your intimate knowledge of your group's immediate requirements.
Your direct donations can streamline processes, empower quick responses to pressing needs, and ultimately enhance the impact of your local EA community.
I also do the same - small amounts really do go long ways. Grant applications are a separate skill from community engagement, often not that scope-sensitive (i.e. too much work for the small sums involved), and getting any funding awards is difficult right now/being turned down for funding can be really off-putting. The empowerment of an invested volunteer is generally a pretty good use of materials money.
In this post, I share some thoughts from this weekend about the scale of farmed animal suffering, compared to the expected lives lost from engineered pandemics. I make the case that animal welfare as a cause has a 100x higher scale than biorisk. I'd happily turn this in to a post if you have more you'd like to add either for or against.
Scale Comparisons
Farmed Animal Suffering. I was thinking about the scale of farmed animal suffering, which is on the order of 1011 lives per year. These animals endure what might be among the worst conditions on the planet, considering only land animals. My estimate for the moral weight of the average land animal is approximately 1% to 0.1% that of a human. At first glance, this suggests that farmed animal suffering is equivalent to the annual slaughter of between 100 million and 1 billion humans, without considering the quality of their lives before death. I want to make the case that the scale of this could be 100x or a 1000x that of engineered pandemics.
Engineered Pandemics. In The Precipice, Toby Ord lists engineered pandemics as yielding a 1 in 30 extinction risk this century. Since The Precipice was published in 2020, this equates to a 1 in 30 chance over 80 years, or approximately a 1 in 2,360 risk of extinction from engineered pandemics in any given year. If that happens, 1010 human lives would be lost, resulting in an expected loss of approximately four million human lives per year.
Reasons I might be wrong
Tractability & Neglectedness. If engineered pandemic preparedness is two orders of magnitude higher in neglectedness and/or tractability, that would outweigh the scale and make them tractable. I'd be happy to hear someone more knowledgeable give some comparisons here.
Extinction is Terrible. Human extinction might not equate to just 1011 lives lost, due to future lives lost. Further, the The Precipice only discusses extinction level pandemics, but as suggested by Rodriguez here, one in 100k people surviving might only stand a ~50% chance of further survival. I personally don't ascribe much value to future people not existing as I subscribe more to the Person-affecting View. Under moral uncertainty, that's relevant even if you mostly don't agree about that view.
Collapse Facilitating Lock-in. A sufficiently large population loss could mean that in re-building civilization, a system is constructed which can centralize enough for a value lock-in. This could be in the shape of an authoritarian system oppressing everyone, or a lock-in of a system similar to the current one with an equal or greater amount of animals slaughtered annually.
When EA Lund does tabling at student association fairs, one thing that's gotten a laugh out of some people is having two plates of cookies people can take from. One of them gets a sticky saying "this cookie saves one (1) life", and the other gets a sticky saying "this cookie saves 100 lives!"
As a community builder, I've started donating directly to my local EA group—and I encourage you to consider doing the same.
Managing budgets and navigating inflexible grant applications consume valuable time and energy that could otherwise be spent directly fostering impactful community engagement. As someone deeply involved, I possess unique insights into what our group specifically needs, how to effectively meet those needs, and what actions are most conducive to achieving genuine impact.
Of course, seeking funding from organizations like OpenPhil remains highly valuable—they've dedicated extensive thought to effective community building. Yet, don't underestimate the power and efficiency of utilizing your intimate knowledge of your group's immediate requirements.
Your direct donations can streamline processes, empower quick responses to pressing needs, and ultimately enhance the impact of your local EA community.
Thank you!
I also do the same - small amounts really do go long ways. Grant applications are a separate skill from community engagement, often not that scope-sensitive (i.e. too much work for the small sums involved), and getting any funding awards is difficult right now/being turned down for funding can be really off-putting. The empowerment of an invested volunteer is generally a pretty good use of materials money.
Introduction
In this post, I share some thoughts from this weekend about the scale of farmed animal suffering, compared to the expected lives lost from engineered pandemics. I make the case that animal welfare as a cause has a 100x higher scale than biorisk. I'd happily turn this in to a post if you have more you'd like to add either for or against.
Scale Comparisons
Farmed Animal Suffering. I was thinking about the scale of farmed animal suffering, which is on the order of 1011 lives per year. These animals endure what might be among the worst conditions on the planet, considering only land animals. My estimate for the moral weight of the average land animal is approximately 1% to 0.1% that of a human. At first glance, this suggests that farmed animal suffering is equivalent to the annual slaughter of between 100 million and 1 billion humans, without considering the quality of their lives before death. I want to make the case that the scale of this could be 100x or a 1000x that of engineered pandemics.
Engineered Pandemics. In The Precipice, Toby Ord lists engineered pandemics as yielding a 1 in 30 extinction risk this century. Since The Precipice was published in 2020, this equates to a 1 in 30 chance over 80 years, or approximately a 1 in 2,360 risk of extinction from engineered pandemics in any given year. If that happens, 1010 human lives would be lost, resulting in an expected loss of approximately four million human lives per year.
Reasons I might be wrong
Tractability & Neglectedness. If engineered pandemic preparedness is two orders of magnitude higher in neglectedness and/or tractability, that would outweigh the scale and make them tractable. I'd be happy to hear someone more knowledgeable give some comparisons here.
Extinction is Terrible. Human extinction might not equate to just 1011 lives lost, due to future lives lost. Further, the The Precipice only discusses extinction level pandemics, but as suggested by Rodriguez here, one in 100k people surviving might only stand a ~50% chance of further survival. I personally don't ascribe much value to future people not existing as I subscribe more to the Person-affecting View. Under moral uncertainty, that's relevant even if you mostly don't agree about that view.
Collapse Facilitating Lock-in. A sufficiently large population loss could mean that in re-building civilization, a system is constructed which can centralize enough for a value lock-in. This could be in the shape of an authoritarian system oppressing everyone, or a lock-in of a system similar to the current one with an equal or greater amount of animals slaughtered annually.
When EA Lund does tabling at student association fairs, one thing that's gotten a laugh out of some people is having two plates of cookies people can take from. One of them gets a sticky saying "this cookie saves one (1) life", and the other gets a sticky saying "this cookie saves 100 lives!"