My understanding is that electrical stunning is much faster than argon gassing- and the main reason that gassing is preferred by farms is that it is slightly cheaper. I agree that electrical stunning is likely as bad/worse if botched - which is why I opted for ‘automatic electrical stunning’ which seems likely to have a lower failure rate.
I agree that CO2 gassing is the worst of all, and that if this consultation can help bring about the end of this practice in the UK a year faster it would be a significant win
I've logged in and started logging all my donations. At the moment, I feel like the app provides value by essentially mutiplying the amount donated by a relevant multiplier (e.g. divide donations by $5,000 to get lives saved, or multiplying donations by 10x to see the number of animals helped).
I think this is good- but I can imagine an app which uses simulations/case-studies like https://anyhumanever.com/ or https://spawn-again.vercel.app/ to provide people with a way of visualising who they are helping and by how much (E.g. if you donated £5,000 to AMF you could draw a random life and see who it is you most likely helped save). Or if you donated £5,000 to THL you could get some more data on how many hours of hurtful/disabling pain you removed (drawing from their own evaluations which are numerous). Basically the app could become a place which centralises cost-benefit-evaluation data and then multiplies it by user's donation portfolio. This sounds like a heavy lift to me, but with coding agents all sorts of things are possible.
Hi - I filed a self assessment form which calculated the size of the rebate I was owed based on my giving. If you call their helpline (8am-6pm mon-fri) they should also be able to make the necessary adjustments. You’re probably better off asking Claude for details
Farmed animal welfare should be addressed first. I think this is an important step in our moral circle expansion (e.g. caring enough about animals to stop actively harming them.) I’m not an deep environmentalist, but there’s also more moral uncertainty about messing with nature (what if wild animals have good lives? What if nature has inherent value?)
Hello- first of all I think you verbalised a bunch of very interesting and useful ideas about EA, its role and strategy. However as someone who currently donates 10% of my salary to addressing farmed animal welfare, I have some criticisms of your conclusions. I know that you’re not ruling out donating to animal charities, but requiring people to donate >10% of their salaries to charity is just putting the bar insanely high for the vast vast majority of people. So in effect your proposal means ceasing support to farmed animal welfare in favour of global poverty focused charities
One of the issues with this argument to my mind is that the same basic form can be made compatible with nationalistic rhetoric. ‘Before we donate a single dollar/pound of aid, we need to make sure no child is hungry in our own country, etc.’ If we accept an argument for partiality towards some strangers over other strangers (beyond questions of effectiveness)- why draw the line to contain all humans rather than humans of a specific nationality, ethnicity, eye colour etc.
I completely get the ‘optics’ rationale for not prioritising nematode welfare, but I think saying that we need to solve all major causes of human sufffering before addressing factory farming is too conservative. Quite a lot of people are against factory farming in a way which is not true about wild animal suffering (or farmed invertebrates suffering for that matter). After all it is fear of public opinion which makes farmed animal welfare charity campaigns so unreasonably effective (particularly caged hen corporate campaigns). This is why factory farming and wild invertebrate suffering are in different leagues as far as optics are concerned. In essence - I agree that emphasising certain ‘far out’ aspects of EA can be off-putting, but I don’t think that factory farming is so beyond the Overton window.
Also- the Overton window is malleable, many ideas (abolitionism, women’s suffrage, AI safety) sounded completely nutty when they were first floated - not to mention ‘immoral’. One of the historic missions that EA is currently fulfilling is pushing this circle outward, not by solving all issues for people within the circle first, but by challenging where most people draw the boundary in the first place. It can’t be done all at once (we’re not going to convince most people about shrimp anytime soon) but we can move the line inch by inch over decades- which is pretty much how all moral progress has worked up till this point. I’m fairly confident it will continue working this way (barring future existential catastrophes)
I think one simple and effective idea is tying EA to marginal decreasing utility. Decreasing marginal utility is often a Econ-101 topic as it explains the downward sloping nature of demand curves. It is also a fundamental part of why donating money overseas rather than domestically is more impactful (a foundational EA insight).
People living in the West are most likely in the top 10% of global incomes, and because of that a single $/£/Euro will be purchase significantly less wellbeing than for someone in a low-income country. This is basically the 'drowning-child' argument in a nutshell, tied to a 101 Econ principle, and a good starting point before exploring more contentious/less intuitive EA ideas.
I think another topic that can springboard into EA type ideas is the idea of discount rates, as this brings up the subject of how much we should care about the future. The question of discounting is central to Longtermism, and a ongoing discussion within economics, with plenty of different perspectives to consider.
I went through a phase of researching masks for several weeks a few years ago and I fully agree with your choice of the 3M half face respirator as a one of the best options available.
I think that social movements are most effective when they have face-to-face interactions, which build solidarity, facilitate discussion, and prevent value drift (as well as reducing burnout and increasing subjective well-being). However, outside of EAGs I don’t see many opportunities to socialise with other EAs in London. This is despite London being the second largest EA city after SF (or so I’ve been told). Am I missing something?
My understanding is that electrical stunning is much faster than argon gassing- and the main reason that gassing is preferred by farms is that it is slightly cheaper. I agree that electrical stunning is likely as bad/worse if botched - which is why I opted for ‘automatic electrical stunning’ which seems likely to have a lower failure rate.
I agree that CO2 gassing is the worst of all, and that if this consultation can help bring about the end of this practice in the UK a year faster it would be a significant win
Hi - I love the idea behind this app.
I've logged in and started logging all my donations. At the moment, I feel like the app provides value by essentially mutiplying the amount donated by a relevant multiplier (e.g. divide donations by $5,000 to get lives saved, or multiplying donations by 10x to see the number of animals helped).
I think this is good- but I can imagine an app which uses simulations/case-studies like https://anyhumanever.com/ or https://spawn-again.vercel.app/ to provide people with a way of visualising who they are helping and by how much (E.g. if you donated £5,000 to AMF you could draw a random life and see who it is you most likely helped save). Or if you donated £5,000 to THL you could get some more data on how many hours of hurtful/disabling pain you removed (drawing from their own evaluations which are numerous). Basically the app could become a place which centralises cost-benefit-evaluation data and then multiplies it by user's donation portfolio. This sounds like a heavy lift to me, but with coding agents all sorts of things are possible.
Best of luck with the project!
Hi - I filed a self assessment form which calculated the size of the rebate I was owed based on my giving. If you call their helpline (8am-6pm mon-fri) they should also be able to make the necessary adjustments. You’re probably better off asking Claude for details
The arguments have existed for 50 years without a very significant change
There seems to be significant disagreement about the coefficient and even the sign of the impact of various interventions on animal welfare.
Farmed animal welfare should be addressed first. I think this is an important step in our moral circle expansion (e.g. caring enough about animals to stop actively harming them.) I’m not an deep environmentalist, but there’s also more moral uncertainty about messing with nature (what if wild animals have good lives? What if nature has inherent value?)
Hello- first of all I think you verbalised a bunch of very interesting and useful ideas about EA, its role and strategy. However as someone who currently donates 10% of my salary to addressing farmed animal welfare, I have some criticisms of your conclusions. I know that you’re not ruling out donating to animal charities, but requiring people to donate >10% of their salaries to charity is just putting the bar insanely high for the vast vast majority of people. So in effect your proposal means ceasing support to farmed animal welfare in favour of global poverty focused charities
One of the issues with this argument to my mind is that the same basic form can be made compatible with nationalistic rhetoric. ‘Before we donate a single dollar/pound of aid, we need to make sure no child is hungry in our own country, etc.’ If we accept an argument for partiality towards some strangers over other strangers (beyond questions of effectiveness)- why draw the line to contain all humans rather than humans of a specific nationality, ethnicity, eye colour etc.
I completely get the ‘optics’ rationale for not prioritising nematode welfare, but I think saying that we need to solve all major causes of human sufffering before addressing factory farming is too conservative. Quite a lot of people are against factory farming in a way which is not true about wild animal suffering (or farmed invertebrates suffering for that matter). After all it is fear of public opinion which makes farmed animal welfare charity campaigns so unreasonably effective (particularly caged hen corporate campaigns). This is why factory farming and wild invertebrate suffering are in different leagues as far as optics are concerned. In essence - I agree that emphasising certain ‘far out’ aspects of EA can be off-putting, but I don’t think that factory farming is so beyond the Overton window.
Also- the Overton window is malleable, many ideas (abolitionism, women’s suffrage, AI safety) sounded completely nutty when they were first floated - not to mention ‘immoral’. One of the historic missions that EA is currently fulfilling is pushing this circle outward, not by solving all issues for people within the circle first, but by challenging where most people draw the boundary in the first place. It can’t be done all at once (we’re not going to convince most people about shrimp anytime soon) but we can move the line inch by inch over decades- which is pretty much how all moral progress has worked up till this point. I’m fairly confident it will continue working this way (barring future existential catastrophes)
I think one simple and effective idea is tying EA to marginal decreasing utility. Decreasing marginal utility is often a Econ-101 topic as it explains the downward sloping nature of demand curves. It is also a fundamental part of why donating money overseas rather than domestically is more impactful (a foundational EA insight).
People living in the West are most likely in the top 10% of global incomes, and because of that a single $/£/Euro will be purchase significantly less wellbeing than for someone in a low-income country. This is basically the 'drowning-child' argument in a nutshell, tied to a 101 Econ principle, and a good starting point before exploring more contentious/less intuitive EA ideas.
I think another topic that can springboard into EA type ideas is the idea of discount rates, as this brings up the subject of how much we should care about the future. The question of discounting is central to Longtermism, and a ongoing discussion within economics, with plenty of different perspectives to consider.
I went through a phase of researching masks for several weeks a few years ago and I fully agree with your choice of the 3M half face respirator as a one of the best options available.
I think that social movements are most effective when they have face-to-face interactions, which build solidarity, facilitate discussion, and prevent value drift (as well as reducing burnout and increasing subjective well-being). However, outside of EAGs I don’t see many opportunities to socialise with other EAs in London. This is despite London being the second largest EA city after SF (or so I’ve been told). Am I missing something?