Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving 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.
Subtitle: On vegan advocacy, effective altruism, and FIFA
I turn 40 today. Here are some hot takes.
On factory farming
1. Our biggest challenge is salience. If factory farming led the evening news, it wouldn’t last lo...
Impressions from the 21st Annual U.S. Cluster Headache Patient Conference, organized by Clusterbusters.
On the morning of the last day of the conference, E. was hanging out with other “clusterheads” outside the conference hotel when he started having a cluster headache attack. Before he could go back to his hotel room, J. offered E. his DMT v...
TL;DR:
The movement has an evidence problem. To solve it, for each intervention we need to know:
* What types of evidence that intervention needs
* What types of evidence different sources can give us
In this post, we outline a framework for evidencing an intervention through five stages:
...
Some random thoughts on psychology and EA. We need to make some distinctions.
On the one hand you have a theory about suffering. CBT doesn't have a clear fixed theory, it updates given the evidence. Most refer to these evolutions as first wave (behaviorism) vs second wave (revolution of cognitions, Beck, 'typical' CBT) and third wave (mindfulness-based (MBCT) & value-based (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT, a contextual behavioral science). The discussion continues.
Psychoanalytical and psychodynamisch therapies have different theories about suffering as well, but have some fixed ideas on the importance of early experiences.
There shoud be a difference between evidence based vs science based. Psycho-analytical (Freud, Lacan) theories aren't science based, although some interventions might be evidence based.
The dodo-bird effect is overrated and mostly people with different agenda's (promoting non science based interventions) misuse it to make their point. Be careful. Different forms of interventions do matter.
But psychology is a young science and a lot of things need to be fixed, updated and worked upon. Hope EA will contribute to this by taking a decent theory on psychological suffering into account. Before looking at evidence of different interventions. Contextual behavioral science might be a great place to start.