Thank you for sharing! Being new to this stuff, I was just about to look for an unsugarcoated documentary to help me grasp the severity of suffering in the wild and importance of this issue.

Both very good points: the ick factor seems to be an important advantage to our effort, and for us early birds to be here before it's a political contest, or a livelihood, is indeed another opportunity. 👍

As somewhat of an amateur, it's good to hear I'm on the right track taking expected value as a core concept of EA, factoring it in with stuff daily. I'm reassured when I read the experts lend the same level of credence to it: a way of doing things that likely does an astronomical amount of good. Thank you for another contribution of great, well-written wisdom, Bentham! 🦐

This is an excellent post. I went into this with a very cursory understanding of biocomputing, and by the end of it, am convinced as strongly as I'm intended to be of what you seek to make happen. I understand clearly and agree that we're at a very opportune time to enact a ban on most biocomputing, that a ban is very reasonable, and that it is quite possible.

In a world where animal agriculture was some novel and experimental concept in our modern society, it seems likely that the public, knowing what it would entail, would easily be on board with a ban before it became mainstream.

The consideration you give to concerns of framing risk and the uncertainty of moral value at this current stage shows that you've thought this stuff through very deeply and very professionally, and does well to quell the little uncertainty I had going in. The two arguments that convinced me most are those on setting an extensive precedent and the success of early action on other scientific issues.

Very nice work! I wish you great success in this endeavor you are already working hard for, and thank you on behalf of the conscious agents this effort may well save. 🧠

Just some idiomatic language for animal rights efforts in effective altruism. 😁

This solid post of yours gets me thinking, and clears up a lot of the confusion I've had about how AI can negatively impact animals, and humans, too. I thought it was a weird topic to bring up the first time I've heard about it, but have been giving it credence the more I've seen the experts do so, and now I have some comprehensive reasons as to why this intersection may be very important to keep an eye on.

It's some valuable food for thought for the ever-multiplied situation of animals in longtermism, which has seemed very important to get into as I join the corps to do what we can for them. Thank you much for your contribution to early-stage learners like me here, and for keeping most of the world in mind while working to protect the future.

I've wondered about this, so thank you for thinking this up and calculating! Considering how I did about as much work this past week to get a $3 monthly subscription cancelled, this is kind of genius.

This is a very enlightening and clever-to-make post: billions annually for a species I'd never even thought about giving special attention to, or thought about much at all, three years in amateur EA and nine in veganism.

For what it's worth, I could see them being more "personally relatable" than fish, about on the level of chickens, even. I've seen fellow zoomers walk around with frog-themed stuff like beanies, hoodies, and backpacks, which seems important when assessing tractability.

This bug stepping thing was where it all began for my scrupulosity problems, walking home from work days after my bestie had died, which have been the biggest and deadliest challenges of my life since that evening in 2018, and what led me to EA. I didn't know the science on bugs, still barely do, but knew they seemed alot like animals such as you and I and those cows and chickens we choose not to eat because they are conscious.

Being compassionate in this way—unflinching about when consciousness is consciousness and not abandoning the idea that compassion is respect for the conscious experience—it's orders of magnitude harder than most of the world somehow accepts it to be. It'd be absolutely mercliess for anyone not to be considered a "good person" anymore when they watch the goalposts for being a "good person" move away so drastically.

I like how you quite compassionately acknowledge this, speaking of crippling intensity and a reasonable line, while all the while being very much open to the idea for a gentler ethic to insects, because you're unflinching like that. We might as well be if we have a goal of reducing pain in any species, even when perfection is nowhere near possible. It's the good that comes out of facing such horrifying truth. 🪲

Thank you for taking on this debate, Tobias. Like our target audience in creating not a vegan community, but a vegan world, I share very personal frustration with the guilt and shame approach; not in spite of me wanting the same "total abolition" which the anti-welfarists and anti-incrementalists do, but because I want it. I can see why Bashir is convinced by the anecdotes he's able to tell, and it reveals to me why science and studies, if done well, is the collection of many helpful anecdotes from a wide and varying population to inform how to work toward everyone's goal: a world without factory farming that stays without factory farming.

Bruce Friedrich convinced me that vegan activism as it's been for the past fifty years isn't working and sent me down the road of meat alternatives as a solution. I've been having trouble doing anything to advance it now, so I've been looking into dietary incrementalism as another solution to learn about alongside it, which is why I watched the debate. It seems up to each of us to be honest with ourselves about what we've tried, how well it's working, and what other options we have to work toward our goal that hasn't changed.

On behalf of the voiceless animals, thank you for everything that you do. I'll remember your book in case I decide to explore reducitarian advocacy further.