Thanks for your thoughtful and engaging comments. I appreciate going into the reasoning of the philosophical ideas as well as interests and institutions (the 3 Is).
The philosophy used is the starting point before speaking about strategies and campaigns because it limits what the focus is. The focus on utilitarianism and thus welfare results in looking at reforms in factory farms rather than taking a strong anti-factory farming position. This is not effective in a holistic, ecological systems perspective,we are trying to show in the Beyond Cage-Free Open Letter and Report because welfare campaigns like cage-free eggs and "welfare tech" tend to treat animal rights (animal as subjects or persons), climate change, freshwater and land use, biodiversity, health, pandemic risk, and food security as externalities and thus don't count all they should. They also tend to fixate on one animal welfare reform at a time and unfortunately there are multiple atrocities hens face, for example, and PETA's White Paper shows that several improvements in hen welfare may cause new suffering in other areas so total welfare isn't improved. The argument is we need a holistic math for animals and if we did so, plant-based food system change campaigns are necessary.
Why don't we choose this win-win solution then?
My background is in political science and we use the 3 Is to look at human constructed ideas, interests and institutions that shape our views, attitudes and behaviours. Ideas like philosophies can act as barriers. Utilitarianism is very useful and helpful but it also has limits. It's a bridge to far for individual rights. The classic critique of utilitarianism is that it can be oppressive for the individual as in the Gladiator analogy (in Rome, the joy of crowd could be taken to outweigh the suffering of the gladiators). Also, it make assumptions that one can accurately predict and properly weigh consequences in the future based on one's calculations and decisions. Deontology or philosophy of duty to respect a subject-of-a-life and to do the right thing in the present needs to be added so that animals are not treated like commodities and get legal rights of personhood (this goal was vital in other social movements from anti-slavery to the women's movement). It changes the focus on the animal protection movement beyond welfare tweaks in factory farms to an anti-factory farming and anti-animal exploitation stance and thus favours a shift to a plant-based food system.
In addition, we need to adopts a complex systems worldview (like in Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point - depicted in the film Mindwalk, or more recent one described in books like George Monbiot's Regenisis, Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics, and Tim Lenton's Positive Tipping Points) to address the existential polycrises we face.
This takes us to interests and institutions. The AI donors may in myopic terms prefer to work with Big Ag (and make profits creating robots and machines for factory farms and slaughterhouses and increase their efficiency and profitability) but it's not ultimately in their or anyone's interest because of climate change, water use, societal instability, food insecurity and so forth. So we need to organize people power, organizations and experts across sectors, and policy makers to change the system and incentive structure so everyone does the right thing. Those at the top of different systems might have the wrong incentives so we need to help them through organizing to do the right thing. It's not their fault, it's the system that pushes people in directions that aren't always ideal for living beings and their survival and flourishing. Hence we launched this Beyond Cage-Free campaign. It's not easy. There's a lot of anxiety that comes with challenging the 3Is - ideas, interests and institutions. It starts with the understanding that everyone who is mentally sane has good intentions but systems shape attitudes and behaviours in not great directions sometimes. The way to reduce that anxiety is to try to be as constructive and positive as possible in promoting a paradigm shift and to alter how interests are perceived and try and construct big tent institutions that are inviting and inclusive.
With regard to your second point, many esteemed EA folks are not leaders in Anthropic. For example, @Holden Karnofsky helped start Giving Well and then Open Philanthropy Project which became Coefficient Giving. The hope is to convince Anthropic leaders like Holden and Coefficient Giving leaders like AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy to adopt a holistic complex systems approach to evaluate the most necessary funding needs in our time. There is no doubt among Earth System and climate scientists like Johann Rockstorm that we need to shift away from animal agriculture to plant-based food systems to address the animal, climate and planetary boundary crises. Animal agriculture produces the majority of the greenhouse gas food emissions and is the leading cause of biodiversity loss, land use, freshwater use, acidification and nitrogen and phosphorus and nitrogen use. Kate Raworth, an Oxford economist and vegan, adds humanitarian crises to planetary boundary concerns in her doughnut economics. It would be great for all of us to get together and use Claude and Open AI to assist in a new systems calculator and choose projects to help us solve our cascading crises and truly produce a better world for animals (human and nonhuman).
Thanks Aromastoff. The UK egg study is very enlightening on the environment and the greater number of hens (1.6 million) needed each year for cage-free compared to conventional battery. The PETA report provides an important comprehensive look at the multitude of welfare issues. Both reports and the Open Letter make a strong case for pivoting to plant-based food system change as the main priority.
Add deontology or philosophy of duty and a holistic, ecological systems approach, then diet change and plant-based food system change outperform animal welfare.
Thanks for this open dialogue Bruce and Lewis.
Lewis' (1) and (5): Diet change campaigns are good at developing movement capacity including volunteers, activists organizers and cadres who populate the movement, make up vegan influencers, start vegan businesses and hopefully enter politics with new groups focusing on this. Lewis you are right to not just focus on diet change. We also need to focus on plant-based food system change and many groups are doing that and deserve a massive influx of resources from city and national action plans for plant-based food, to plant based school meal replacement, to plant-based by default, to meat free days and changes in procurement at various institutions and food service providers, and public education campaigns like Project Slingshot. Coefficient Giving is already wisely pivoting here. My argument is we need a full on pivot, as explained below.
(2) Diet change approaches need more resources. Why do meat, dairy and egg companies outspend us so much in ads aimed at bad diet change? Do they know something we don't? Let's not give up the rich variety of diet change campaigns from bearing witness to farmed animals going to slaughter (many people have had an epiphany after bearing witness and joining an animal vigil, including myself), vegan outreach, public education campaigns including cooking demonstrations and digital ads, and community organizing including in black communities as argued in Carol Adams et al., edition,The Good It Promises, The Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (Oxford University Press, 2023). We need to spend way more in diet change.
Your (3) and (7) arguments identify the crux of the matter. We live in a polycrisis of interlinked crises centred around farmed animals, the climate, freshwater withdrawals, biodiversity loss, acidification, eutrophication, pandemic risk, food insecurity and other injustices and unsafe planetary boundaries. The present EA mathematics for animals is too simplistic and unreal. We need two things: (i) to broaden philosophy beyond Peter Singer's utilitarianism to deontological philosophies like Tom Regan's animal rights approach; and (ii) to adopt a holistic, ecological systems approach which does not treat climate, health, and animal persons as externalities. Animal welfare approaches like cage free are worse for the climate, acidification, eutrophication and land use than caged systems; same for health and perhaps pandemic risk; whereas plant-based outperforms animal welfare campaigns across the board in complex systems "EA mathematics for animals" (pattrice jones came up with that phrase a few weeks ago when I speaking to her). When you do that you'll find highly rated ACE groups working on animal welfare do not take into account externalities whereas plant-based food approach do and are win win for animals, the climate, health, reduced pandemic risk and a more resilient food system. These same wonderful NGOs could be working entirely on menu change. We need them. For systems approaches see everything from
systems theorist Fritjof Capra'sThe Turning Point which proposes a paradigm shift from mechanistic to holistic views of nature and technology (made into a thought-provoking film calledMindwalk starring Liv Ullmann and Sam Waterston),
George Monbiot's (the winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Journalism)Regenesis (chapter 2),
Kate Raworth's (a vegan Oxford Economist, formerly with UNDP and Oxfam)Doughnut Economics (Chapter 4: "Get Savvy with Systems: from mechanical equilibrium to dynamic complexity"),
and the recent fabulous bookPositive Tipping Points (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Prof. Tim Lenton (University of Exeter) who was featured on the BBC Climate Question.
This is a vital discussion at this critical juncture as we see growing numbers of farmed animals bred and killed, a looming climate catastrophe, a high risk of more pandemics including bird flu, and a food system that is less and less resilient according to George Monbiot. We can do better. And it isn't hard: plant-based diet change and food system change are win-win-win-win. It'd be great to have town hall meetings, citizen assemblies, and roundtables of experts. Thank you for engaging.
Hi @abrahamrowe
Thanks for your thoughtful and engaging comments. I appreciate going into the reasoning of the philosophical ideas as well as interests and institutions (the 3 Is).
The philosophy used is the starting point before speaking about strategies and campaigns because it limits what the focus is. The focus on utilitarianism and thus welfare results in looking at reforms in factory farms rather than taking a strong anti-factory farming position. This is not effective in a holistic, ecological systems perspective,we are trying to show in the Beyond Cage-Free Open Letter and Report because welfare campaigns like cage-free eggs and "welfare tech" tend to treat animal rights (animal as subjects or persons), climate change, freshwater and land use, biodiversity, health, pandemic risk, and food security as externalities and thus don't count all they should. They also tend to fixate on one animal welfare reform at a time and unfortunately there are multiple atrocities hens face, for example, and PETA's White Paper shows that several improvements in hen welfare may cause new suffering in other areas so total welfare isn't improved. The argument is we need a holistic math for animals and if we did so, plant-based food system change campaigns are necessary.
Why don't we choose this win-win solution then?
My background is in political science and we use the 3 Is to look at human constructed ideas, interests and institutions that shape our views, attitudes and behaviours. Ideas like philosophies can act as barriers. Utilitarianism is very useful and helpful but it also has limits. It's a bridge to far for individual rights. The classic critique of utilitarianism is that it can be oppressive for the individual as in the Gladiator analogy (in Rome, the joy of crowd could be taken to outweigh the suffering of the gladiators). Also, it make assumptions that one can accurately predict and properly weigh consequences in the future based on one's calculations and decisions. Deontology or philosophy of duty to respect a subject-of-a-life and to do the right thing in the present needs to be added so that animals are not treated like commodities and get legal rights of personhood (this goal was vital in other social movements from anti-slavery to the women's movement). It changes the focus on the animal protection movement beyond welfare tweaks in factory farms to an anti-factory farming and anti-animal exploitation stance and thus favours a shift to a plant-based food system.
In addition, we need to adopts a complex systems worldview (like in Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point - depicted in the film Mindwalk, or more recent one described in books like George Monbiot's Regenisis, Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics, and Tim Lenton's Positive Tipping Points) to address the existential polycrises we face.
This takes us to interests and institutions. The AI donors may in myopic terms prefer to work with Big Ag (and make profits creating robots and machines for factory farms and slaughterhouses and increase their efficiency and profitability) but it's not ultimately in their or anyone's interest because of climate change, water use, societal instability, food insecurity and so forth. So we need to organize people power, organizations and experts across sectors, and policy makers to change the system and incentive structure so everyone does the right thing. Those at the top of different systems might have the wrong incentives so we need to help them through organizing to do the right thing. It's not their fault, it's the system that pushes people in directions that aren't always ideal for living beings and their survival and flourishing. Hence we launched this Beyond Cage-Free campaign. It's not easy. There's a lot of anxiety that comes with challenging the 3Is - ideas, interests and institutions. It starts with the understanding that everyone who is mentally sane has good intentions but systems shape attitudes and behaviours in not great directions sometimes. The way to reduce that anxiety is to try to be as constructive and positive as possible in promoting a paradigm shift and to alter how interests are perceived and try and construct big tent institutions that are inviting and inclusive.
With regard to your second point, many esteemed EA folks are not leaders in Anthropic. For example, @Holden Karnofsky helped start Giving Well and then Open Philanthropy Project which became Coefficient Giving. The hope is to convince Anthropic leaders like Holden and Coefficient Giving leaders like AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy to adopt a holistic complex systems approach to evaluate the most necessary funding needs in our time. There is no doubt among Earth System and climate scientists like Johann Rockstorm that we need to shift away from animal agriculture to plant-based food systems to address the animal, climate and planetary boundary crises. Animal agriculture produces the majority of the greenhouse gas food emissions and is the leading cause of biodiversity loss, land use, freshwater use, acidification and nitrogen and phosphorus and nitrogen use. Kate Raworth, an Oxford economist and vegan, adds humanitarian crises to planetary boundary concerns in her doughnut economics. It would be great for all of us to get together and use Claude and Open AI to assist in a new systems calculator and choose projects to help us solve our cascading crises and truly produce a better world for animals (human and nonhuman).
Thanks Aromastoff. The UK egg study is very enlightening on the environment and the greater number of hens (1.6 million) needed each year for cage-free compared to conventional battery. The PETA report provides an important comprehensive look at the multitude of welfare issues. Both reports and the Open Letter make a strong case for pivoting to plant-based food system change as the main priority.
Add deontology or philosophy of duty and a holistic, ecological systems approach, then diet change and plant-based food system change outperform animal welfare.
Thanks for this open dialogue Bruce and Lewis.
Lewis' (1) and (5): Diet change campaigns are good at developing movement capacity including volunteers, activists organizers and cadres who populate the movement, make up vegan influencers, start vegan businesses and hopefully enter politics with new groups focusing on this. Lewis you are right to not just focus on diet change. We also need to focus on plant-based food system change and many groups are doing that and deserve a massive influx of resources from city and national action plans for plant-based food, to plant based school meal replacement, to plant-based by default, to meat free days and changes in procurement at various institutions and food service providers, and public education campaigns like Project Slingshot. Coefficient Giving is already wisely pivoting here. My argument is we need a full on pivot, as explained below.
(2) Diet change approaches need more resources. Why do meat, dairy and egg companies outspend us so much in ads aimed at bad diet change? Do they know something we don't? Let's not give up the rich variety of diet change campaigns from bearing witness to farmed animals going to slaughter (many people have had an epiphany after bearing witness and joining an animal vigil, including myself), vegan outreach, public education campaigns including cooking demonstrations and digital ads, and community organizing including in black communities as argued in Carol Adams et al., edition, The Good It Promises, The Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (Oxford University Press, 2023). We need to spend way more in diet change.
Your (3) and (7) arguments identify the crux of the matter. We live in a polycrisis of interlinked crises centred around farmed animals, the climate, freshwater withdrawals, biodiversity loss, acidification, eutrophication, pandemic risk, food insecurity and other injustices and unsafe planetary boundaries. The present EA mathematics for animals is too simplistic and unreal. We need two things: (i) to broaden philosophy beyond Peter Singer's utilitarianism to deontological philosophies like Tom Regan's animal rights approach; and (ii) to adopt a holistic, ecological systems approach which does not treat climate, health, and animal persons as externalities. Animal welfare approaches like cage free are worse for the climate, acidification, eutrophication and land use than caged systems; same for health and perhaps pandemic risk; whereas plant-based outperforms animal welfare campaigns across the board in complex systems "EA mathematics for animals" (pattrice jones came up with that phrase a few weeks ago when I speaking to her). When you do that you'll find highly rated ACE groups working on animal welfare do not take into account externalities whereas plant-based food approach do and are win win for animals, the climate, health, reduced pandemic risk and a more resilient food system. These same wonderful NGOs could be working entirely on menu change. We need them. For systems approaches see everything from
This is a vital discussion at this critical juncture as we see growing numbers of farmed animals bred and killed, a looming climate catastrophe, a high risk of more pandemics including bird flu, and a food system that is less and less resilient according to George Monbiot. We can do better. And it isn't hard: plant-based diet change and food system change are win-win-win-win. It'd be great to have town hall meetings, citizen assemblies, and roundtables of experts. Thank you for engaging.