Hi Robert, I don't think there's anyone in EA-world who has a vested interest in perpetuating the use of animals for food. I think they don't support diet advocacy and animal liberation b/c they don't think it will do much good, resources are limited, and animal welfare advocacy makes real and positive changes for animals. i.e., basic cost-benefit analysis. I would like to see that thinking updated on the basis of new information and a new reality, but I also think it's totally genuine. And I don't see any mixed incentives. 

Thanks so much, Lewis — I appreciate you responding in such depth; I know you're busy and don't take that for granted. 

Prefatory comment: 
My post captured some of what I've been wondering about in recent weeks, based on the Substacks from Nan, Itsi, and you. 

And then the thing that prompted me to move those thoughts from my brain to the Forum was Aidan’s dismissal of even trying to come up with something new, b/c it’s all been tried (quoted in my piece). It seems to me that we won’t come up with something new if we’re not trying to come up with something new… 

While I’m delighted to offer some thoughts, I’m sure there are many EAs who would have better ideas than I do, and I’d really love to see lots of smart EAs who care about animals challenging one another to come up with new ideas (or twists on old ideas) that are focused on animal liberation and diet change. 

If our messaging is laser focused on mitigating the myriad ways animals suffer, that’s what people will spend time on. I wonder if we might see some creative and high-impact proposals focused on diet change and animal liberation, if we actively challenged the community to come up with some. 

Okay, from there: 

My first four points were asking whether there might be reasons other than direct behavior change that we should be considering, and then my final point asks whether a changed reality for our movement (e.g., AI and more resources as the two obvious examples) might warrant a rethink about what's possible. 

With regard to AI: Just like everyone else on the planet is trying to figure out how to use AI to come up with new and better ways to do things and to solve previously unsolvable problems, that’s what I’m wondering about here. 

I don’t claim to have answers; this feels like the kind of challenge that warrants lots more people thinking about it (inspired by Itsi’s line, “the projects that step up to the plate will happen.”) 

That said, here are some thoughts.

Could AI: 

1) help us hone animal liberation and diet change strategies for greater impact? What have we been missing? Why have our strategies so far failed? What might we do to make them more successful?

2) help us analyze what worked with you, me, and everyone else who did change our diets and sign onto Animal Liberation philosophy and then why that workeed and what it might look like to scale up based on that information?

3) help us figure out how to do much, much more with less, via agents for example, opening up impact opportunities that were constrained by bandwidth previously? 

4) help us target the people most likely to be open to changing their diets or adopting animal liberation philosophy for the kind of repeat interactions that might work? 

5) come up with ideas that no one else has thought of yet?

Those are a few ideas/questions; I would love to see what others might come up with, if prompted to do so. 

*** 

On Resources: 

I agree with you (of course) that “what matters is … whether [animal liberation and diet change advocacy] will make those interventions relatively more impactful than the other interventions we could deploy AI and those resources toward.” 

It seems like we’ve written off the idea that interventions focused on animal liberation and diet change should even be considered. I’d like to see them in the mix, with creative people really thinking about what might work. 

FWIW, I could imagine a big difference in impact between two similar interventions based on the concept of going deep v going broad. Maybe not, but it feels like it might be worth exploring. 

Also FWIW, I don’t think the animal liberation movement and diet change advocacy have tried the ideas laid out in The End of Roe — are there lessons there for animal liberation and diet change advocacy, not just for farm animal welfare advocacy? I don’t know, but it seems to me like it would be worth thinking about. 

Re: the diet change section on the EA Forum: I was referring to where we’re putting money and what we’re encouraging people to think about right now w/a potential huge influx of resources; everything I’ve seen that speculates on uses of a potential significant influx of funds has focused on animal welfare and alt proteins, both of which I am (of course) incredibly enthusiastic about! 

I’d be interested in seeing more people also thinking about diet change and changing the ethics zeitgeist. 

***

Very good points w/r/t whether animal liberation activism made welfare improvements possible. Ugh. That said, I still wonder whether a complementary focus on animal liberation and diet advocacy might, directed effectively, prove helpful to welfare campaigns. Could there be a symbiosis there? I don’t know, but it feels to me like it might be worthy of exploration. 

I appreciate your comments w/r/t the liberation struggle question. I agree with Elliot’s points and yours. Just one thing: Things like AI safety and global health have humans at the center, so it feels like maybe the liberation concept (these beings matter) is a given?

*** 

Conclusion: 

My post is a call to bring the creativity and analytical minds of the EA community to questions around animal liberation and diet change. EA is constantly asking “How do we do this better? How do we make this work? What’s most effective?” 

As you rightly note, a bit more than 10 years ago, we looked at the evidence w/r/t diet change and liberation advocacy, saw that nothing was working, and largely moved on. That may have made sense then, and it’s certainly paid dividends in the form of decreased suffering for an unfathomable number of animals (and the prospects for even more, of course). 

My point is: In the light of where were are now (e.g., with advanced AI and the potential for a lot more resources, and perhaps there are other new variables), might an overt focus on animal liberation and diet change advocacy lead to some new and transformative interventions that could work? 

Maybe not, of course, but I also think maybe so. It definitely feels to me like it would be worth putting the challenge out there. 

Thank you again for engaging—and, of course, for your world-transforming work. 

Thanks Aidan. 

You say: “My reason for objecting is that I think this conflates using moral arguments as a means with being motivated by morality in the end…”

Response: Aha, that’s a helpful clarification, though I’m not sure I agree. 

On the one hand, yes: I think most of the EA farm animal welfare community is motivated by a burning moral conviction to help animals—true. 

On the other hand, if 99%+ of our advocacy resources are focused on the welfare work that we think the vast majority of people agree with, then I think my statement holds up. 

Our internal motivation is important, but if we’re not doing much to bring others on board with those understandings, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve “walked away from the moral foundation of our work.” 

I’m also, as discussed, concerned that this decision may be counter even to our welfare goals, since:

How likely are we going to be to build a powerful movement? 

How likely are we to move the Overton Window? 

Are we doomed to have a cause that people care about, but only after the myriad things that impact them personally? Where will those single-issue voters come from? 

And are we going to have the talent problem you described in your most recent Sandcastles reflection? 

I understand your definition of bad faith ("saying something other than what you think is true for rhetorical reasons”) and understand that it can happen unintentionally. I know I do that sometimes and, like you, I appreciate having it pointed out. Here, though, I don’t think I did that. 

I appreciate you explaining your disagree vote, Michael - thank you. I thought it would be really funny if folks just flooded my comment with disagree votes, with no explanation, LOL.

That said, it seems to me that the value of an anonymous disagree vote is negligible (or perhaps even negative), unless there's an explanation. What do you see as the value of "cheap anonymous signals"? 

Here's why I think they're not valuable (and likely counter-productive): 

For a lengthy post (i.e., this one) where someone clicks "disagree," I guess it's just with the top-line message? I don't know if that assumption is correct. And even if it is, I don't know why they disagree. Does this add to understanding in some way? Or is there some other value I'm not seeing? 

If someone simply wrote "No" as their comment (the practical effect of a disagree vote, I think), is that a useful contribution? I think that would run afoul of the forum's posting guidance in multiple ways. How is an anonymous disagree vote different from that? 

There are forum principles around respectful disagreement and general EA principles around transparency. Anonymous disagree votes feel to me like they violate both of those. 

What principles do anonymous disagree votes uphold? 

This is for anyone, of course, not just Michael! 

You write: "I think this post was a good contribution to this topic and I'm excited to respond to different parts of it more in future posts."

Thanks! I've been thinking about these things since reading the Substacks from Nan, Lewis, and Itsi, but it was your recent Sandcastles piece that moved me from thinking to writing. So thanks for that, too. 

You write that you "strongly disagree with" my line about largely walked away from the moral foundation of our work on behalf of animals, noting: "I think you can guess my reasons and I'm wondering if it's what you meant."

Reply: Perhaps that's too strong -- I'm not sure. My point is that EA is not funding animal liberation work or much in the way of moral persuasion work around diet change, etc. To me, saying that EA has walked away from the moral foundations of our work feels right, but it's 100% possible that I'm quite wrong. I'll look forward to your (or others') response/s.

I'm also very curious to hear more about this: "On its face, I think it's a bad faith argument for basing our strategies on what feels aesthetically satisfying to us." 

I'm not sure what you're saying here; do you think the arguments are so bad that I can't possibly be serious? That's what I think I'm getting from the article you link to. I assure you that I'm serious... I could, of course, be incredibly wrong, and it's very possible that you'll explain and I'll agree. I don't know what I don't know. 

Or perhaps you're saying that the post aligns to my self-interest (the more common connotation of "bad faith"); since the post advocates that EA should fund things I don't work on professionally (and as I note in the post, haven't done much with over the past 10+ years), I'm not sure how my argument would align to that more common understanding of bad faith, either. 

Curious what you think of the author's view from that article about bad faith: 

"Arguments can be evaluated on their merits, without addressing what the speaker's angle is in saying it (even if you think there's probably an angle). This delivers most of the benefits of 'assume good faith' norms; the main difference I'm proposing is that speakers' intentions be regarded as off-topic rather than presumed to be honest." 

I've generally thought that suggesting bad faith falls into the "Look over there, a distraction!" category of argumentation described in the article. 😊

Should "agree" and "disagree" be anonymous? 

What's the reason that "agree" and "disagree" are anonymous? I find it frustrating when someone clicks the "disagree" button, and then there's no accompanying post to explain the disagreement. I assume that most (all? almost all?) people on the forum would be happy to own their disagreements here, and that would also be good for transparency, etc. Curious to hear others' thoughts (and worried that I'm being incredibly obtuse).

Thanks for your note, Elliot. 

What Prompted This Post — 

This post was precipitated by thinking about the potential influx of a significant amount of money for farm animals and wondering whether AI and a lot more money might change the nature of what’s possible w/r/t animal liberation and diet advocacy. 

Put another way, it seems to me that what’s possible in one reality (until now) might be be quite different from what’s possible in another reality (AI + a lot more philanthropic support). 

I don’t know, of course, but I think it’s probably worth thinking about that explicitly. 

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about recent posts from Nan Ransohoff (The third wave of American philanthropy), Lewis Bollard (The AI Windfall), and Itsi Weinstock (The San Francisco Strategy for Animal Welfare). .

• Nan: “AI is about to generate hundreds of billions in new philanthropic funding. We have a huge amount of work to do to make the most of it.”
• Lewis: “New AI money could bring a step-change for factory-farmed animals — if we spend it well.”
• Itsi: “the projects that step up to the plate will happen.”

And then also thinking about the fact that Coefficient Giving, the Navigation Fund, the EA Animal Welfare Fund, ACE, and most others in the EA animal welfare community are not doing much to promote diet change or the philosophy of animal liberation. 

That makes sense in a world of restricted resources: The farm animal welfare work is paying dividends beyond anything I would have expected, and if we have limited funds, we should focus there. Fair enough. 

But in a new world of AI and significantly more resources, would it make sense for us to think a bit more expansively? It seems to me that it probably would. 

I really loved Dave Coman-Hidy’s reflection on the book The Fall of Roe and lessons we might take from it. The anti-abortion movement:

• built a complex, interlocking ecosystem
• was obsessively single-issue
• used incrementalism as the path to total victory
• prioritized community, which was essential to the movement's success

A few things I have been thinking about since reading his review and then reading the book:

• If we followed that playbook, could we actually win some victories for animal liberation and diet change? I don’t know, but I do think that AI and a massive influx of money… that might warrant changing how we think about what’s possible. 
• Although the anti-abortion movement worked incrementally, no one was unclear on the righteousness of the cause or the end goal, and they didn’t hide it, I don’t believe. They were on message, sure. And they were incremental. But you knew where they stood, fundamentally. I think this would fit into my second point/question. 

So: Might there be ideas for animal liberation and diet change that are new and innovative and powerful, building on the lessons we've learned over the past decade of wild success for farm animal welfare, as well as the lessons from The Fall of Roe, etc.? 

Not if we don’t try… 

***

Have I updated my thinking w/r/t diet change advocacy? 

I suppose the most obvious thing to say is that I have changed so many of my views since June 2018; that was a long time ago; GFI was just turning two years old. :-)

For one thing, I stopped talking about “convenience” many years ago (I thought even before June 2018, though apparently not). 

That said, my point in that talk was that I no longer believed that diet change advocacy could change meat’s steady global upward trajectory. It was not that I thought/think diet change advocacy was worthless.

Diet change and animal liberation advocacy do some very good things: 

First, many people will change their diets, and fewer people eating animals is a very good thing! 

Second, I’m here because of diet change and animal liberation advocacy. So are most of the leaders in alt proteins and farm animal welfare advocacy, as well many (perhaps most) of the people who started the plant-based and cultivated meat companies. 

What diet change advocacy is unlikely to do: Change the massive upward trajectory of meat production and consumption. 

But neither will farm animal welfare advocacy, of course.

But maybe AI and a transformational amount of funding could flip the script. I don’t know. 

But it won’t if we’re not trying…

*** 

One final point: A lot of my post represents new and not fully formed thinking — so much so that I say explicitly at the top that I’m tossing these ideas out for consideration and look forward to hearing from others. 

I tried to present these five observations/questions with appropriate circumspection; apologies if I failed at that! 

I’m excited to hear more from you and others. 

Thanks for engaging!

That's a really good point w/r/t my second point/question, Elliot. 

Similar to your reference point expansion (all very good examples), the farm animal welfare endeavor is not striving for animal liberation or diet change, so it doesn't make sense for me to hold it to animal liberation or diet change as its end goal (i.e., what success looks like).

Better welfare for farm animals stands on its own as an unequivocal good, a point I've made many times in response to the IMO wrongheaded argument that welfare reform delays liberation. 

I am struggling with this concept though, since I would like to see us keeping animal liberation as our north star... But that need not be the case for the welfare reforms, and fair enough.

Thank you so much, Seth - 

Really cool to see all this - I'm excited to dig in. 

I subscribed to your "Regression to the Meat" substack: fun name! 

I love that you published in Science about the small body problem - brilliant. 

Bruce

p.s. I'm sure you're familiar with the Stanford green bean study (health labels decrease consumption) and the LSE menu study (vegetarian sections = fewer orders for those dishes)? And all the studies showing that vegetarian and vegan labels decrease consumption. Fascinating stuff! BTW, if I am wrong in my understanding of these studies, please do correct me!

I remember talking with Lewis Bollard and Richard Parr once upon a time about the idea of giving every incoming student at the US's top universities a copy of Animal Liberation. 

I still really love that idea, as step 1 of turning all of those universities into immersive environments for animal liberation and diet change advocacy.