It's a tricky one. The more seriously you are taken as a public intellectual, the higher the stakes are. The more people are listening, the less likely it is that you'll take a risk and say something that might later be used to undermine your status as a public intellectual. It seems likely that people with less knowledge and less authority on particular issues actually share their intuitions much more readily because they have less to lose by later looking silly.

An expert or public intellectual also might have good reason, beyond the superficial, to want to preserve the perceived authority of their voice. Nobody wants to be the boy who cried wolf. Although I do agree with you that it'd be refreshing if more people were willing to risk being publicly wrong.

This paper shows how strategic menu manipulation in a university canteen achieved a 30.7% reduction in carbon footprint without anyone noticing the nudge. It's such a simple idea that could be implemented in universities, schools, hospital and prison cafeterias etc. It seems harmless and the gains seem disproportionately large when we look at the relative simplicity of carrying this out. The impact could be substantial for animal welfare (cutting down on the consumption of animal-based foods) and climate change.

I don't know what would be needed to get measures like this to be implemented more widely, but it seems promising.

Absolutely right. There's really nothing better to bring clarity to your ideas than walking/running (outside if possible). 

I think you're right about the reality of how people weigh up giving up meat vs donating. Many people would rather sacrifice a small amount of money than give up meat (as shown in your example). I suppose the best that we can do, in terms of advocacy, is encouraging people to do both or, failing that, one or the other. On paper, it's possible that donating could look more impactful, but it can be hard to accurately summarise the impact of a social movement in numbers, especially when it's still quite early days.

As @NickLaing has pointed out, I think how people perceive the campaign or interpret its message is a lot more important than what the intentions are behind it. We can try and spin it however we like, but this is a straightforwardly anti-vegan campaign, maybe not in intent but in actuality. It is absolutely horrible in its attitude towards vegans, even though vegans are probably more likely to donate money to animals than any other group. Here are just a few choice snippets from the site:

1. Someone trying to go vegan had to plan every meal, give up her favourite foods, annoy friends and family, and get bloated. For all that, she helped far fewer animals than someone with an overflowing platter of meat.
2. "Can you survive Veganuary?" implying that its some terrible trial that someone needs to endure.
3. "Every day can be hard when you're vegan". Hardly selling veganism.
4. Listing celebrities who couldn't "make veganism stick," including references to them feeling weak and struggling with ill health.

Honestly, you'd have a hard time finding a carnivore influencer who more passionately bashes veganism. People should donate money. They should also go vegan. If they can't do both, they should at least do one. But if they can do both, they should do both. That isn't implied anywhere; to the contrary, veganism is portrayed as a waste of time and vegans as weak, misguided, joyless fools.

Thanks for writing. I'm with you on the idea of a self-imposed tax - seems like a reasonable idea for those who can do it and certainly the impact of donating can be more impactful than many other actions we can take. However, I don't know if we can discount the gains that veganism (I'll use veganism as it's a lot more straightforward) makes so quickly. I know you've said that veganism isn't bad or stupid, but that it's not as impactful as other things we could do, so I'm keeping that in mind. I'm only thinking out loud here based on my intuition, so let's see if this makes sense.

Veganism - as you know - is a philosophy against the exploitation of animals, based on ideas around animal sentience and the moral status of animals. Here are some thought that come to me based on that definition and your argument here:

1. One vegan meal, instead of a meat-based one, may make little difference compared to donating money, but by choosing a vegan meal someone is participating in a broader social movement and making a statement against animal exploitation. It's a drop in the bucket, but every bit helps push the movement forward. The more individuals choose vegan options, the stronger and more influential the group gets as a whole which gives us more political leverage.
2. Veganism doesn't ask people to do anything extra (like pay more for luxury goods). Instead, it asks people to refrain from doing something they otherwise would have done. This makes it feel different in kind than asking people to donate money, although I'll admit that this doesn't seem to make the former any easier unfortunately.
3. The vegan movement doesn't only help animals exploited for food, but those in labs, zoos, circuses etc. In this way, contributing towards a more influential vegan movement could have a wider impact than it initially seems when we choose a vegan meal.

Those are just some initial thoughts that make me feel like the first step in your money pump argument ('I give up one animal product-based meal in exchange for a less filling, vegetarian meal, which results in a slightly higher expected quality of life for some animals') might be more like 'I give up one animal product-based meal in exchange for a vegan meal (it surely doesn't need to be less filling) which contributes to a stronger, more influential movement against animal exploitation'. Perhaps the extent to which this is true depends on the context in which you're eating.

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts!

Could you possibly elaborate on what you mean here: "perhaps it adopts an explicit position of metaethical uncertainty... but avoids applying this to its own values"? I'm very much still learning about alignment, but my instinct is that AI value alignment would result in an AI that acknowledges unavoidable moral uncertainty. Do you think that alignment efforts push for certainty when there really isn't any? I'm just trying to get a sense of your perspective.

I've been doing a lot of reading and research lately on the relationship between AI development and animal welfare. I'm really looking forward to seeing this! Thanks for sharing.