How do you deal with the "meat eater" problem

Im worried that the chunk of EA that is concerned with effective human nearterm charities are all at risk of being net negative

Tangentially, this conversation illustrates how (if person-affecting views are false), the sign of Family Empowerment Media (FEM) is the opposite of AMF and other life-saving charities. FEM prevents human lives and AMF saves lives, and they have the opposite downstream effects on human lived experience, farmed animal welfare, and so on.

Therefore, I would not suggest anyone split their donations between life-preventing charities like FEM and lifesaving charities like AMF, because their effects will offset each other. People who are sympathetic to FEM (as opposed to AMF) because of farmed animal effects should probably just donate to animal welfare charities which I would expect to help animals even more.

Beans is How Coalition

Cool org I've not heard of, thanks!!

EDIT: Thanks Richard, slightly silly question in retrospect!

Thanks Constance, how is FEM better (I think Family not Female :D) from this perspective than any other "saving life" org, like AMF?

You would still have to deal with the increase in factory farming and per capita meat consumption that comes with societal development.

I have recently done a bit of research on the intensification of animal agriculture in Africa. I have a few comments to make in response to yours.

I am very confident that people in poor countries like Uganda eat way less animal products than the global average. But I am not sure that they all don't eat factory farmed animal products. I think I have quite a high level of belief that your claim about the meat consumption patterns of the people in the areas in Uganda you work in. But I don't think we should generalise to: "All people in very poor countries don't eat factory farmed meat".

I think a very important fact we should recognize is that factory farming clearly exist and is booming and intensifying quickly in Africa, including Uganda, or even poorer countries such as Burundi and South Sudan. This means that the meat-eating problem (convinced by JWS's comment that we should change the wording, even though I don't agree about all the things said in the comment), if it is a problem at all, is going to get worse in Africa and other parts in the world with many people in extreme poverty.

A very important note needs to be introduced here: I think we one species of farmed animals we should focus a lot on is the chicken (and also fish farming, maybe in 3-5 years time). Some facts about chicken farming in Africa: 

• It's one of the cheapest type of meats poor people can afford, in a lot of regions.
• Many aid providing foundations/agencies/charities are interested in, if not executing, using chicken farming as a poverty aid intervention. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• While it's hard to find a single broiler chicken farm in North America and Europe raising broiler chickesn in cages (with the exception of Russia and Ukraine - no intention to create drama), there seems to be currently a large wave of new broiler farms emerging in Africa that are going for caged broiler systems
  • For instance, chicken farming equipment producers in China are very actively trying to sell broiler cages to Africa, and according to my research, 10 broiler cage producers from China (out of 18 I found) are trying to do that. 
  •  (Sorry, I can't share the links or details of my research on this topic here, as I worry about potential info hazards.) 
• The emergence of new technologies (such as modern caged broiler systems, digital gadgets, and eventually AI) and the popularization of both newer and older technologies (such as vaccines, drugs, feed formulas, and caged layer systems) will drive costs down further.

I think the rise of intensified, caged system raised chickens (both layers and broilers) in Africa (also some countries in Asia and Latin America) should alert and worry us that the "meat eating problem", if it does not pose a huge problem now, could become much more severe in the future because of the rising per capita consumption of animal products coming from horrific systems. While there might be a lot of strategic/signalling/philosophical issues thinking and calling life-saving or poverty alleviating interventions as "saving meaters/people who harm animals". I think we should definitely oppose to making things worse for animals in order to lift people out of poverty. 

A less important response to your another point: I think it's very unclear whether farmed animals raised in free range condittions in poor countries live net-positive lives. Firstly, many deadly diseases are very common among free-range (and intensive) chicken farming, such as Newcastle Disease. And awareness to use vaccines to reduce such diseases is nowhere near widespread. Secondly, debeaking of chickens is very common (including in Uganda), and presumably mostly without anesthesia/pain relieve. Thirdly, it seems very common to transport chickens like this (and in some cases kept tied like this even after arriving at the market, until they are sold) in Africa and poorer parts of Asia. Fourthly, I saw some nasty slaughters - let's say they are at least as nasty as most chicken slaughters in the world. Finally, we have to consider that chickens raised for meat don't live for many days in their life to compensate for these pretty intense suffering. IMO it's more likely than not that most chickens raised in free range conditions in poor countries live net-negative lives. 

(I weak upvoted your comment and chose "disagree", even though I don't 100% disagree with you.)

Nice point, Nick! Even considering the conditions are as bad as in high income countries (pessimistic), I Fermi estimated accounting for the meat-eater problem only decreases the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell's top charities by 8.72 %. On the other hand, I did not account for future increases in the consumption of animals throughout the lives of people who are saved (optimistic), which usually follow economic growth. For reference, I also Fermi estimated the badness of the experiences of all farmed animals alive is 4.64 times the goodness of the experiences of all humans alive, which suggests saving a random human life results in a nearterm increase in suffering.

Even if the current population isn't consuming much factory-farmed meat, if it's children's lives being saved, the amount they consume over the next half century or so may be substantial as the countries develop and adopt more industrialised food production. Also, saving lives today seems likely to increase population in future (I recall a GiveWell-commissioned study on this), so potentially leading to greater factory-farmed meat consumption.

I feel like this answer to the problem is easily forgotten by me, and probably a lot of similar-minded people who post here, because it's not a clever, principled philosophical solution. But on reflection, it sounds quite reasonable! 

Thanks for sharing that, Karthik.

I have a lot of uncertainty about the moral weight of animals, and I see funding/working on both animal welfare and global development as a compromise position that is good across all worldviews.

Note stopping to support global health and developnent is not on the table. We are discussing marginal donations/spending. The global spending on global health and development would still be much larger than that on animal welfare after a small donor or even Open Phil changed to overwhelmingly supporting animal welfare.

Imagine you had to choose between donating 1 k$ to The Humane League (THL) or x k$ to GiveWell's top charities. How large would x have to be for you to pick the latter? I would be curious to know your reasoning too. I guess you reject expected value maximisation. For reference, I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 1.51 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell's top charities.

A lot of people in animal advocacy circles (inside and outside ea) choose not to have children and report that this is because humans tend to be meat eaters. There are far larger numbers of environmentally minded (mostly non-ea) people who claim to choose not to have children because their children will contribute to global warming or general environmental harms. Most such environmentally minded people are not particularly animal-welfare focused. Further, most such people are not committed utilitarians.

I am not defending this view, nor even claiming that these reasons are true drivers of personal decisions. However the frequency with which I hear similar suggestions about how having children is a moral wrong for the planet suggests to me that this sort of idea is not directed toward poorer people in particular, nor is it the result of considering animals as moral patients nor is it idiosyncratic to EA not does it stem from any strict interpretation of utilitarianism.

For better or worse, a certain type of misanthropy runs deep in modern culture.

[Epistemic status: diverse moral parliament with significant deontological and virtue-ethics representation, along with concern about fair distribution of good and bad things] 

• Rich people in the Western World saying that poor people in Developing countries do not deserve to live/exist? bad bad bad bad bad

Relatedly, I find it concerning that the initial jump is from "increased human population may be net negative due to effects on farmed animal welfare" to "maybe we should refrain from preventing death among infants and toddlers in Africa." I'm not advocating pro-death policies like withholding lifesaving medical care anywhere, but in a sense I would find it less objectionable if consistently applied rather than beng focused on developing countries? 

That sense is coming from various places, including the interest in impartiality, the concern about powerful people furthering their objectives by forcing powerless people to bear the costs, and a distaste for free-riding (not having oneself or even one's society share in the risk of death "needed" to achieve the objective). There are also the empirical weaknesses (e.g., that these kids aren't nearly as likely to be eating much factory-farmed meat in the future, that failing to prevent their death may have a minimal effect on total global population) that may not be immediately discernable, but don't need extensive reflection to see. 

Moreover, there are also other policies and practices I would expect to see well before withholding life-saving medical care to young children were anywhere near the table:

• In expectancy, the kids of EAs will likely consume more factory-farmed meat than young children in developing countries, so choosing to not have kids seems a fairly obvious step.
• Although I'm not usually one for calling non-billionaires out for not donating a large fraction of their income, "this problem is grave enough that we should consider saving the lives of innocent young children as a net negative" seemingly implies "this problem is grave enough that I am morally obliged to donate at least most of my material resources to mitigating it and should be criticized for failing to do so." If it's not worth a 51% donation rate from me, how is it possibly worth what we would be expecting the would-be AMF beneficiaries to sacrifice for the cause?

already in the thread we've got examples of people considering whether murdering someone who eats meat isn't immoral

If the question were about humans who cause an equivalent amount of harm to other humans, I would not expect to see objection to the question merely being asked or considered. When humans are at risk, this question is asked even when the price is killing (a lower number of) humans who are not causing the harm. It is true that present human culture applies such a double standard to humans versus to members of other species, but this is not morally relevant and should not influence what moral questions one allows themself to consider (though it still does, empirically. This is relevant to a principle introduced below).

I think that this question is both intuitive to ask and would be important in a neartermist frame given the animal lives at stake. It has also been discussed in at least one published philosophy paper.^[1] That paper concludes (on this question) that in the current world, it is a much less effective way of reducing animal torture compared to other ways, and so shouldn't be done in order to avoid ending up arrested and unable to help animals in far more effective ways, but that it would likely reduce more suffering than it causes.^[2] That is my belief too, by which I mean that seems to be the way the world is, not that I like that the world is this way. (This is a core rationalist principle, which I believe is also violated by other of your points in the 'pattern matches to dangerous beliefs' section.)

The Litany of Tarski is a template to remind oneself that beliefs should stem from reality, from what actually is, as opposed to what we want, or what would be convenient. For any statement X, the litany takes the form "If X, I desire to believe that X".

I think there are other instances of different standards being applied to how we treat extreme harm of humans versus extreme harm of members of other species throughout your comment.^[3]

For example, I think that if one believes factory farming is a moral catastrophe (as you do), and if discomfort originated from that one's morality alone, then the use of 'meat' over 'animals' or 'animal bodies' would cause more discomfort than the use of 'meat eater' over 'meat eating'.

That's not to say I don't think the term 'eating' instead of 'eater' is better, or rather, more generally, that language should not have words that refer to a being by one of their malleable behaviors or attitudes. I might favor such a general linguistic change.

However, if this were a discussion of great ongoing harm being caused to humans, such as through abuse or murder, I would not expect to find comments objecting to referring to the humans causing that harm as 'abusers' or 'murderers' on the basis that they might stop in the future.^[4] (I'm solely commenting on the perceived double standard here.)

There are other examples (in section three), but I can (in general) only find words matching my thoughts very slowly (this took me almost two hours to write and revise) so I'm choosing to stop here.

1. ^{^}

   https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/2/206

   In the Journal of Controversial Ideas, co-founded by Peter Singer. (wikipedia)

2. ^{^}

   I think this also shows that this question is importantly two questions:

   1. Is it right to kill someone who would otherwise continually cause animals to be harmed and killed, in isolation, i.e in a hypothetical thought-experiment-world where there's no better way to stop this, and doing so will not prevent you from preventing greater amounts of harm?
      • In this case, 'yes' feels like the obvious answer to me.
      • I also think it would feel like an obvious answer for most people if present biases towards members of other species were removed, for most would say 'yes' to the version of this question about a human creating and killing humans.
   2. Is it right to kill someone who would otherwise continually cause animals to be harmed and killed, in the current world, where this will lead to you being imprisoned?
      • In this case, 'no' feels like the obvious answer to me, because you could do more good just by causing two humans to go vegan for life, and even more good by following EA principles.
3. ^{^}

   (To preclude certain objections: These are different standards which would not be justified by members of a given species experiencing only less suffering from 0-2 years of psychological desperation and physical torture than humans would from that same situation).

^{^}

(Relatedly, after reading your comment, one thing I tried was to read it again with reference to {people eating animals} mentally replaced with reference to {people enacting moral catastrophes that are now widely opposed}, to isolate the 'currently still supported' variable, to see if anything in my perception or your comment would be unexpected if that variable were different, despite it not being a morally relevant variable. This, I think, is a good technique for avoiding/noticing bias.)

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So a portfolio of global health and animal welfare donations seems likely to do good across both worldviews.

Yes, sufficient donation to animal welfare can make it net positive. But it doesn't sound so good when one draws out the impact matrix:

• Donate only to animal charities: +100
• Donate only to human charities: -10
  • (not -100, because animal welfare is neglected, so proactive work on it does more good than creating more passive animal-eaters does bad)

• Donate half to both: +45

  (edited to add: If one thinks the animal eater problem's conclusions are more likely true, such that these numbers could represent an average of one's probability distribution. It looks like there's disagreement in values about whether it's valuable itself to for an action to be {at least positive} per se; I write about this extensively below)

That has the same structure as this:

• Donate only to EA charities: +100
• Donate only to bad-thing-x: -10
  • Not naming a particular bad-thing, because it's unnecessary, but you can imagine.
• Donate half to both: +45

If these feel different, a relevant factor may be how uplifting humans isn't the kind of thing that narratively should be bad. It's a central example of something many feel is supposed to be good - improving or saving lives. And in a different world, it would be good, because humans are not inherently evil.

I would point to purchase fuzzies and utilons separately in situations like this. If one believes the median human life has a net-negative impact, and also cares a lot about humans, and feels compelled to 'act on' their care for humans somehow, there are various less-harmful or net-positive ways they could. Here are some ways from brainstorming:

• Find effective positive-net-impact things to do that involve 'helping humans' instrumentally
  • Example: Try to figure out the sources of mental suffering among alignment researchers, and potential ways to better this situation. (Or donate to this kind of work)
    • Same but for other EA cause areas
• Help humans in small-scale but emotionally resonant ways
  • Helping a community or friends, separately from EA focus
• Find some human charities that are maybe less effective at saving humans, but also a lot less likely to be net-negative
  • This comment has some examples
• Help humanity become more morally reflective rather than trying to help lives directly
• Work on alignment to help humans and other animals in the long-term future (!)

It's a tough question and something I've tried to wrap my head around as well. All of the threads in the comments here are quite helpful!

This point you've made, Sam, is also something I have thought about:

Saving human lives doesn’t just contribute to the problem of animal consumption, I hope it it also accelerates the solutions to factory farming.

Awareness of animal welfare issues tends to increase as people get richer and have more space to think about something other than their immediate needs. Of course, factory farming is worse in richer societies, but I think those societies are also closest to overcoming factory farming / the worst farming practices (veganism is more popular, bans of cages, mandatory pre-slaughter stunning, R&D into alt proteins, etc.). This hinges on a few assumptions, which can be debated, but I tend to find it plausible.

That said, I still exclusively support animal charities at this stage, since I think they are anyway far more cost-effective at improving sentient lives (see the points made by Vasco Grilo and Ben Millwood made in this thread).

Its not only the welfare ranges, but also assuming we are hedonistic utilitarians which is pretty important and I would be interested to know how man EAs are in that boat. In general though your point stands!

Hi Vasco, I first learned about the meat eater problem from your post. Thank you for your insight.

There was some Givewell-commissioned research that did find that saving lives likely leads to future population increases. I imagine there's a fair amount of uncertainty, but it seemed to be the best information available at the time I was looking into this a few years ago. I could dig it up if it's of interest and difficult to find.

Im getting at that most people would would not go out of their way to save baby Hitler. I value Hitler's life, but I also wouldn't save his life.

I don't really understand this stance, could you explain what you mean here?

Like Sammy points out with the Hitler example, it seems kind of obviously counterproductive/negative to "save a human who was then going to go torture and kill a lot of other humans".

Would you disagree with that? Or is the pluralism you are suggesting here specifically between viewpoints that suggest animal suffering matters and viewpoints that don't think it matters?

As I understand worldview diversification stances, the idea is something like: if you are uncertain about whether animal welfare matters, then you can take a portfolio approach where with some fraction of resources, you try to increase human welfare at the cost of animals and with a different fraction of resources you try to increase animal welfare. The hope being that this nets out to positive in "world's where non-human animals matter" and "world's where only humans matter".

Are you suggesting something like that or is there a deeper rule against "not concluding that the effects of other people's lives are net negative" when considering the second order effects of whether to save them that you are pointing to?

This doesn't really solve the problem, but most animal suffering is likely not in factory farms but in nature, so getting rid of humans isn't necessarily net good for animals. (To be clear, I am strongly against murdering humans even if it is net good for animals.) 

Thanks for your response, im in the same boat as you it seems.

That said, this is distinct from whether the impact of the average human on factory farming would alter personal donation decisions.

The bonus question that this sentence raises for me is whether the impact of the average human on factory farming should factor into other decisions, like our votes in a democracy.

If we choose not to save infants from malaria because they may turn out to consume factory-farmed animals, should we then use the same logic to choose not to prevent deaths to adults in our own country by not voting for (e.g) stronger auto-safety legislation or stricter tobacco regulation? Yeah, the proliferation of this idea could definitely have negative expected value!

its an extremely important topic that has extreme ramifications such as concluding that a large portion of global health and development could possibly be negative utility! It also entails a degree of misanthropy which affects how we think about X-risk and the utility of society today. If EA were to ignore this problem with my previous statements being true, most of the movement would be misguided. It is therefore an extremely important problem IMO. 

I agree with this. I think these conversations are important, and we should be having them in "quiet" public places where mostly EAs go like the forum and 80'000 hours podcast. I didn't think it's the just helpful topic for a public debate.

Open and public conversations can be had about difficult topics. While we still avoid posting them onTwitter....

I initially rejected this idea, but I think I've come around to this viewpoint a lot more. EA needs to have broad appeal to become a mainstream movement and we don't always need to publicly state our distasteful utilitarian conclusions!

If 'how do you deal with it' means 'how do you convince yourself it is false, or that things some EA orgs are contributing to are still okay given it', I don't think this is a useful attitude to have towards troubling truths.

Well said and important :)

For a standard utilitarian, a benevolent superintelligence would create enough happiness (and not allow factory farming) to outweigh any current suffering due to the large length and size of the future.

For a suffering-focused altruist (such as myself), it's not that simple, although in any case it mostly revolves around (i) the possibility of locally-originating long-term s-risks (rather than factory farming, if it ends near-term), and (ii) the ability of aligned ASIs to reduce s-events in unreachable parts of the world through acausal trade; see my shortform expected value of alignment over extinction for negative utilitarians

I would probably believe the poorest most rural parts of Africa would not be able to contribute to lab-grown meat development before it is brought efficiently to market. Furthermore, these parts of the world would likely be the last to adopt lab-gorwn meat.

I don't think that expanding compassion to animals leads to reduced compassion for aunts and other humans. It could make one's choices benefit humaunts less, but that's arguably desirable.

I do agree that when we find ourselves dispassionate or hateful towards others that's a sign that we may have stepped wrong at some point in our journey to do the most good