What Owen said resonates. A few things I want to add:
When you say "I do know that I do not want to privilege the "EA"/"maximizing" perspective as a default", combined with reading this post, I'm curious whether (a) this post is an attempt to give space to the non-maximising part to express himself, even though out in everyday life he is not always in control, (b) this part is in fact now in control, so this post represents what 'you' currently endorse, or (c) other?
If the answer is (b), I appreciate this seems like a good approach for someone who is too deep down the rabbit hole of EA, EA status games, judgment, etc, and would benefit from stepping out of it a bit.
But, for many people, I feel totally comfortable encouraging them to think more about the suffering of others, and effectiveness, and that it's okay to try and improve the world even if part of the motivation is guilt and status because the world is on fire and we don't need everyone to be enlightened before they can help, we need people to help put out fires.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply and in general I think the post does a good job of anticipating some criticisms and argues thoughtfully and clearly.
One thing I want to pick up on is the question of WHY do you think this intervention is worth EAs abandoning other problems/interventions, given the current state of evidence is not promising? I have a social psych background and behaviour change is really hard, benefits are modest, and this has been backed up by decades of the movement creatively tackling diet change from many angles.
FWIW I think you might be overstating EAs' creativity and research abilities. An RCT or survey is not too hard to pay for with a lot of non-EA social scientists out there in the world. While the $100M is mostly spoken for, surely a few hundred thousand could be pulled to more research and testing from donors and orgs who are more bullish on this ToC than the average EA?
One final question, do you have an idea in your head of what kind of data would change your mind about pursuing this theory of change? Like if you had a $1M budget to do some testing, and 3 years and several studies later, the results were as modest as current diet change interventions, would you pivot to other work? Since I strongly believe we are always in triage, what would it take for you to say "in hindsight I was wrong to push so hard on diet change, it was a dead end/less cost-effective than other strategies"?
Thanks for the post. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, honesty, and self reflection.
One thing I think the post doesn't articulate enough is tradeoffs - what is gained and lost by rejecting status games and judgment. All else equal it would be better having less of these things. The way you describe them. They sound so obviously bad and destructive but I worry that sometimes it's harder to not throw out the baby with the bathwater than it seems.
For example I like the idea that wherever you go there will always be status games, so it's best to find people who reward you for playing status games that you want to play, like being truth-seeking or trying to do the most good. Then, for example, who has the most money or is the most fashionable?
Another thing that might be lost is the good done to help beneficiaries. I see in some circles a focus and valorisation of working on yourself as an important first step before helping others. But I wonder how true this is. Claude tells me LBJ was motivated by a fear of humiliation, Hamilton was vdery sensitive to slights related to his poor origins, Darwin was anxious about someone else beating him in publishing similar works.
If it is the case that focusing on ourselves more, or worrying about status less, or focusing more on the truth, comes at a cost to 'the good', this seems very grave indeed, and I'd argue we should move with great caution (not to say doing good is the only thing that should matter to any of us). If the two are always aligned, then this is very interesting as well, but I'd want to see it argued more clearly. Curious what you think.
“If you include PETA's $80M annual budget, and the ~$50M annually spent on diet change globally, animal liberation and diet change currently account for over a third of the animal movement's funding.”[2]
Lewis Bollard is right that the wider movement is not neglecting diet change. The question his point opens up is whether that spending is trying new directions and testing them rigorously, which is where EA has a comparative advantage, and where a prize would pull new efforts.
Moreover, if the budget of EA is going to increase x-fold, as many expect it to under the AI windfall, this would greatly increase the EA share of total movement money in animal advocacy, meaning a proportionally greater share of responsibility to ensure all vital parts of the movement are covered.
The arguments here seem confused to me. Are you arguing for EAs to work on diet change advocacy or for 'EA money' to go to this intervention? The middle paragraph quoted seems to be arguing you want EA's to work on the problem, which is not about funding but about talent. FWIW I think testing new efforts is not that hard to do, and with $100m+ a year on diet change advocacy there should be no issue getting some funding to run some studies (as you have already done).
If, however, the claim is that a portion of EA funding should go towards diet change advocacy, then I think the order of evidence <> money is the wrong way arouns. The broad consensus in EA, to the extent there is one, is that the current state of evidence is not nearly as cost-effective as other interventions, despite there being a lot of research to date (e.g. see a summary here). If new high quality research came in to suggest otherwise, I expect more EA funding would come in (assuming marginal dollars would be cost-effective). The order should be test then scale, not scale then test.
I notice I now value shorter posts and comments much more than I used to.
It used to be sometimes a long post was a sign the person was rambling, and sometimes just meant the had a lot to say, or didn't have the time to make it more concise, but it was still a valuable contribution. Now with LLM's being so verbose, I find my eyes glazing over longer writing. Even when it doesn't 'sound' like an LLM, it isn't that hard to get AI to not sound like AI if it has a writing sample.
Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand the example of women dying in childbirth is a good point. On the other hand, minimum wage was raised by economic growth, and people in power would have been against raising the minimum wage if it was done without increases in productivity to go with it.
I've heard here and there that the anti-slavery movement took root in parts of the world and US that were less economically dependent on slavery.
Out of personal curiosity, this appears to be a big shift from your previous position on diet change advocacy. I've listened to you talk in the past and recall you were quite negative on the value of diet change. What has led to the shift? Or let me know if I'm misunderstanding.
Then I went to work at PETA in 1996 and I thought everybody loves animals. All we really have to do - we don't have to win an argument with a meat eater - all we have to do is show people what's happening and obviously people will want to align their values and their actions. Everybody's going to go vegan. We just need to tell them, and again, it didn't happen.
What I've come to understand is that the vast majority of people are not going to radically change their diet on the basis of really anything other than price, taste and convenience. Maybe health. There appears to be something in human nature. I don't know if it's emotion or physiology or biology or psychology. I don't know what it is, but the vast majority of people just aren't that interested in changing their diet, and they're not interested in hearing from me about why they should change their diet.
Thanks for the clear post Bruce. To add to your points, it also seems that campaigning and advocacy also created the conditions by which lots of passionate young advocates built up experience and became many of the leaders of the movement today, and that this is happening less today.
One point of disagreement I do have with this framing is that if you focus specifically on the justice movements that succeeded and then ask "Did any of them succeed by only focusing on welfare improvements?" You've made an artifically constrained reference class to compare it with, being reforms we remember as justice movements that famously won as justice movements.
I think the better reference class is all attempts to radically improve the wellbeing of others. Using this reference class there are many successes including that focused on technological solutions to problems that could be framed as liberation or justice issues: child mortality reduction via global health innovations, famine reduction via green revolution, extreme poverty alleviation via economic development, women's empowerment and family planning via oral contraceptives, etc.
There's also many liberation/justice movements that failed or stalled despite decades of intense effort and focus.
FWIW I think you do outline some of the reasons why this particular effort is promising. I think that's the most important part to flesh out. Not all liberation efforts are equal. Each needs to be argued on their merits.
In addition to the other comments which I agree with, I think substack is also playing a role. Seems in the past few years everyone went and got a substack, and now many posts just live there, and for the ones that are posted in both places, half the comments happens there.
What Owen said resonates. A few things I want to add:
When you say "I do know that I do not want to privilege the "EA"/"maximizing" perspective as a default", combined with reading this post, I'm curious whether (a) this post is an attempt to give space to the non-maximising part to express himself, even though out in everyday life he is not always in control, (b) this part is in fact now in control, so this post represents what 'you' currently endorse, or (c) other?
If the answer is (b), I appreciate this seems like a good approach for someone who is too deep down the rabbit hole of EA, EA status games, judgment, etc, and would benefit from stepping out of it a bit.
But, for many people, I feel totally comfortable encouraging them to think more about the suffering of others, and effectiveness, and that it's okay to try and improve the world even if part of the motivation is guilt and status because the world is on fire and we don't need everyone to be enlightened before they can help, we need people to help put out fires.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply and in general I think the post does a good job of anticipating some criticisms and argues thoughtfully and clearly.
One thing I want to pick up on is the question of WHY do you think this intervention is worth EAs abandoning other problems/interventions, given the current state of evidence is not promising? I have a social psych background and behaviour change is really hard, benefits are modest, and this has been backed up by decades of the movement creatively tackling diet change from many angles.
FWIW I think you might be overstating EAs' creativity and research abilities. An RCT or survey is not too hard to pay for with a lot of non-EA social scientists out there in the world. While the $100M is mostly spoken for, surely a few hundred thousand could be pulled to more research and testing from donors and orgs who are more bullish on this ToC than the average EA?
One final question, do you have an idea in your head of what kind of data would change your mind about pursuing this theory of change? Like if you had a $1M budget to do some testing, and 3 years and several studies later, the results were as modest as current diet change interventions, would you pivot to other work? Since I strongly believe we are always in triage, what would it take for you to say "in hindsight I was wrong to push so hard on diet change, it was a dead end/less cost-effective than other strategies"?
Thanks for the post. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, honesty, and self reflection.
One thing I think the post doesn't articulate enough is tradeoffs - what is gained and lost by rejecting status games and judgment. All else equal it would be better having less of these things. The way you describe them. They sound so obviously bad and destructive but I worry that sometimes it's harder to not throw out the baby with the bathwater than it seems.
For example I like the idea that wherever you go there will always be status games, so it's best to find people who reward you for playing status games that you want to play, like being truth-seeking or trying to do the most good. Then, for example, who has the most money or is the most fashionable?
Another thing that might be lost is the good done to help beneficiaries. I see in some circles a focus and valorisation of working on yourself as an important first step before helping others. But I wonder how true this is. Claude tells me LBJ was motivated by a fear of humiliation, Hamilton was vdery sensitive to slights related to his poor origins, Darwin was anxious about someone else beating him in publishing similar works.
If it is the case that focusing on ourselves more, or worrying about status less, or focusing more on the truth, comes at a cost to 'the good', this seems very grave indeed, and I'd argue we should move with great caution (not to say doing good is the only thing that should matter to any of us). If the two are always aligned, then this is very interesting as well, but I'd want to see it argued more clearly. Curious what you think.
The arguments here seem confused to me. Are you arguing for EAs to work on diet change advocacy or for 'EA money' to go to this intervention? The middle paragraph quoted seems to be arguing you want EA's to work on the problem, which is not about funding but about talent. FWIW I think testing new efforts is not that hard to do, and with $100m+ a year on diet change advocacy there should be no issue getting some funding to run some studies (as you have already done).
If, however, the claim is that a portion of EA funding should go towards diet change advocacy, then I think the order of evidence <> money is the wrong way arouns. The broad consensus in EA, to the extent there is one, is that the current state of evidence is not nearly as cost-effective as other interventions, despite there being a lot of research to date (e.g. see a summary here). If new high quality research came in to suggest otherwise, I expect more EA funding would come in (assuming marginal dollars would be cost-effective). The order should be test then scale, not scale then test.
I notice I now value shorter posts and comments much more than I used to.
It used to be sometimes a long post was a sign the person was rambling, and sometimes just meant the had a lot to say, or didn't have the time to make it more concise, but it was still a valuable contribution. Now with LLM's being so verbose, I find my eyes glazing over longer writing. Even when it doesn't 'sound' like an LLM, it isn't that hard to get AI to not sound like AI if it has a writing sample.
What do others think?
Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand the example of women dying in childbirth is a good point. On the other hand, minimum wage was raised by economic growth, and people in power would have been against raising the minimum wage if it was done without increases in productivity to go with it.
I've heard here and there that the anti-slavery movement took root in parts of the world and US that were less economically dependent on slavery.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I appreciate the full engagement and answer
Out of personal curiosity, this appears to be a big shift from your previous position on diet change advocacy. I've listened to you talk in the past and recall you were quite negative on the value of diet change. What has led to the shift? Or let me know if I'm misunderstanding.
For example this talk you gave at EAG in 2018:
Thanks for the clear post Bruce. To add to your points, it also seems that campaigning and advocacy also created the conditions by which lots of passionate young advocates built up experience and became many of the leaders of the movement today, and that this is happening less today.
One point of disagreement I do have with this framing is that if you focus specifically on the justice movements that succeeded and then ask "Did any of them succeed by only focusing on welfare improvements?" You've made an artifically constrained reference class to compare it with, being reforms we remember as justice movements that famously won as justice movements.
I think the better reference class is all attempts to radically improve the wellbeing of others. Using this reference class there are many successes including that focused on technological solutions to problems that could be framed as liberation or justice issues: child mortality reduction via global health innovations, famine reduction via green revolution, extreme poverty alleviation via economic development, women's empowerment and family planning via oral contraceptives, etc.
There's also many liberation/justice movements that failed or stalled despite decades of intense effort and focus.
FWIW I think you do outline some of the reasons why this particular effort is promising. I think that's the most important part to flesh out. Not all liberation efforts are equal. Each needs to be argued on their merits.
In addition to the other comments which I agree with, I think substack is also playing a role. Seems in the past few years everyone went and got a substack, and now many posts just live there, and for the ones that are posted in both places, half the comments happens there.