Cross-posted from my Substack.
Epistemic status: I’ve puzzled over this for a long time but I’m not sure I came to the right answers. I'm sharing this partly because it might help others work on resource allocation, but mostly because some smarter reader might tell me how to do it better.
TL;DR:
* I he...
With the AI windfall, mental health may be taken increasingly seriously by mainstream EA. There’s increasingly room to explore the cause area and answer some of the biggest uncertainties; at the same time, costs of the most effective interventions are continuing to fall. StrongMinds is now treating for ~$35, about a third of GiveWell’s best guess from a few years ago, and is expected to...
Humans have actively worked against promoting the welfare of wild city rats throughout history. Aside from primates, they are some of the most closely related non-human animals to H. sapiens, yet we know very little about how they live outside of laboratory settings (i.e., often dystopian, prison-like conditions). In order to enhance their welfare in the wild and in laboratories, there is a huge need to develop and deploy technologies to study their behavior. Such studies would also benefit global human health and biosecurity efforts because rats can serve as vectors of disease, sources of infrastructural damage, and pose a threat to stored foods.
There are very few researchers working in this space across the globe, and I am one of the few (pre-PhD, looking for programs where I can complete my doctorate) who has the experience with + concern for rats and software/hardware/IoT development & design skills necessary to push this area of research further in a manner that embraces total harm-reduction (as opposed to eliminationist) thinking/strategies. Am I in the right place for starting conversation(s) on this topic? Should I repost this some other way?
Hopefully I'm posting this in the correct context + idea development status, it's my first post on the site. I found out about the potential for research funding opportunities last weekend while attending a conference at GWU Law School and figured it is worth a shot, given the sad state of affairs with research funding lately.
You are indeed in the right place! I do like to see more wild animal welfare discussions happening here. Regarding the forum norms, the animal welfare and opportunities tags are most appropriate for this, but it's not a big deal. If you feel like writing a longer post outside quick takes, you may find the wild animal topic tab helpful to see what others have written.
@Wild_Animal_Initiative may also be relevant for you: https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/grants
Plus there's some wild animal topic conversation on the Sentient Futures slack.
Thanks, Dylan, I'd have sent you a direct message, but I do not currently have sufficient karma to enable that feature. I'll be working on a longer post for the wild animal welfare page that details the relevant contextual issues and outlines research needs, plans, goals, etc. within the next week or so. Let me know if you like to contribute/collaborate/assist in some other way on that!