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Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
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> Why ending the worst abuses of factory farming is an issue ripe for moral reform
I recently joined Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast to discuss factory farming. I hope you’ll give it a listen — and consider supporting his fundraiser for FarmKind’s Impact Fund. (Dwarkesh is matching all donations up to $250K; use the code “dwarkesh”.)
We discuss two contradictory views about factory farming that produce the same conclusion: that its end is either inevitable or impossible.
Some techno-optimists assume factory farming will vanish in the wake of AGI. Some pessimists see reforming it as a hopeless cause. Both camps arrive at the same conclusion: fatalism. If factory farming is destined to end, or persist, then what’s the point in fighting it?
I think both views are wrong. In fact, I think factory farming sits in the ideal position for moral reform. Because its end is neither inevitable nor impossible, it offers a unique opportunity for advocacy to change the trajectory of human moral progress.
Not inevitable
Dwarkesh raised an objection to working on factory farming that I often hear from techno-optimists who care about the issue: isn’t its end inevitable? Some cite the long arc of moral progress; others the promise of vast technological change like cultivated meat or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which surpasses human capabilities.
It’s true that humanity has achieved incredible moral progress for humans. But that progress was never inevitable — it was the result of moral and political reform as much as technology. And that moral progress mostly hasn’t yet extended to animals. For them, the long moral arc of history has so far only bent downward.
Technology may one day end factory farming, just as cars liberated w
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This is a personal essay about my failed attempt to convince effective altruists to become socialists. I started as a convinced socialist who thought EA ignored the 'root causes' of poverty by focusing on charity instead of structural change. After studying sociology and economics to build a rigorous case for socialism, the project completely backfired as I realized my political beliefs were largely psychological coping mechanisms.
Here are the key points:
* Understanding the "root cause" of a problem doesn't necessarily lead to better solutions - Even if capitalism causes poverty, understanding "dynamics of capitalism" won't necessarily help you solve it
* Abstract sociological theories are mostly obscurantist bullshit - Academic sociology suffers from either unrealistic mathematical models or vague, unfalsifiable claims that don't help you understand or change the world
* The world is better understood as misaligned incentives rather than coordinated oppression - Most social problems stem from coordination failures and competing interests, not a capitalist class conspiring against everyone else
* Individual variation undermines class-based politics - People within the same "class" have wildly different cognitive traits, interests, and beliefs, making collective action nearly impossible
* Political beliefs serve important psychological functions - They help us cope with personal limitations and maintain self-esteem, often at the expense of accuracy
* Evolution shaped us for competition, not truth - Our brains prioritize survival, status, and reproduction over understanding reality or being happy
* Marx's insights, properly applied, undermine the Marxist political project - His theory of ideological formation aligns with evolutionary psychology, but when applied to individuals rather than classes, it explains why the working class will not overthrow capitalism.
In terms of ideas, I don’t think there’s anything too groundbreaking in this essay. A lot of the
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The fact that the ITN framework[1] can help us prioritize between problems feels almost magical to me.
But when I see ITN BOTECs in the wild, I’m often very skeptical. It seems really easy for these estimates to be inadvertent “conclusion-laundering” — regurgitating the author’s opinions in a quantitative or more robust-seeming form without actually providing any independent signal. And even when that’s not the case, the bottom-line estimates can seem so noisy and ungrounded that I trust them less than my fuzzy, un-BOTECed intuitions.
So I'm[2] sharing notes on some pitfalls that seem especially pernicious and common to (i) help BOTEC authors avoid these issues, (ii) nudge readers to be somewhat cautious about deferring to such estimates, and (iii) encourage people to supplement (and/or to replace) ITN BOTECs with other approaches.
Note: I expect the post will make more sense to people who are already somewhat familiar with ITN and estimation. (See other content for background on the ITN framework or on BOTECs/fermi estimates.) It's also a fairly informal post — more like “research/field notes” than “article”. As always, expect mistakes.
Brief outline of my views
* ITN BOTECs are useful for quick comparisons of well-defined, reasonably narrow problems that are of a similar kind (and that we can picture solving), like malaria and diabetes.
* The further we stray from this “safe zone” — e.g. if the problems we're evaluating are loosely scoped, very broad, or speculative/hard to picture, or if there are significant structural differences between them — the less we should update on the results.
* (Although the BOTECs can still be useful as exercises for prompting richer discussions and clarifying the problems)
Specificw pitfalls (outside the safe zone) include:
1. Illusions of tractability: ITN BOTECs may rely on (and obscure) unwarranted optimism about the fraction of a problem that we can realistically make progress on
* → Make sure the way
If you put a substantial amount of time into something, I think it’s worth considering whether there’s an easy way to summarize what you learned or repurpose your work for the EA Forum.
I find that repurposing existing work is quick to write up because I already know what I want to say. I recently wrote a summary of what I learned applying to policy schools, and I linked to the essays I used to apply. The process of writing this up took me about three hours, and I think the post would have saved me about five hours had I read it before applying. And I’m just one reader!
I get the sense that there are a lot of Forum readers who don’t vote or comment on posts, but still get value from what they read. Benefits from Forum posts are diffuse, and I think authors can find it difficult to internalize the full social value of their writing. I also expect that the residual value of certain posts (e.g., those with timeless, original, practical advice) may be underrated. I’ve been sending this post (and its previous iteration) to friends for years, and I’m pretty confident that next year it will still be my favorite piece of writing encouraging perseverance in pursuit of impactful work.
I find it handy to be able to send a bunch of people a link, rather than having the same conversation multiple times. For example:
Finally, it feels really cool to have a collection of your writing out in the world! EA is a pretty tight-knit professional community, and putting your writing out there can be a great way to build a reputation.[1]
I feel unabashedly proud when someone I meet asks “wait, are you the guy from the sportsbetting post?”