The color argument, especially, seems excellent, if only for how much it could benefit flies and humans both, and perhaps is something humans would want. It seems like a victory for both humans and animals far outside most humans' moral circle. I'm not an expert, but I figure this victory would hinge on whether warmly-colored light is healthier for humans, and whether humans prefer warm light over white light.

I can't imagine when our ancestors would've ever encountered white light at times where artificial light is needed, only the warm light of campfires. Aside from that, I prefer to be around warm light over white light always, and have only heard complaints about white light and praise of warm light. I could see opinion research on this being instrumental.

I could see us partnering with public health and other efforts far mightier than EA; even those who care nothing about flies could be doing something great for billions of flies, and we could support the effort. Thank you for proposing this, for both the flies and a more pleasant nighttime for me. 💡🪰🔥

I quite appreciate your compassion for all the morally scrupulous, and this new lens that the money and work I've been able to put in may well amount to something, something more meaningful than I ever care to recognize. It's a bit of a throwback to being called an "essential worker" during COVID, working extra hours and hating it, yet always having such nice things said to me by friends, family, and strangers to keep in mind through it all.

Who would've thought that after discovering how to do way more for good causes than we thought possible, many of us would be more worried about not doing enough? I'm indeed not doing enough, because nobody is. If there was someone doing enough, factory farms wouldn't exist, neither would diseases, nor any other suffering in the world, preventable or otherwise; just one instance of it is plenty horrible on it's own.

The problems are bigger than we can comprehend, but so is the progress just a little care makes on solving them, let alone what sustained charitable action by treating ourselves nicely brings about. 🌠

For any message worthy enough to incorporate into our lives, we should treat it not as law, but as a nudge. An inspiration. A north star.

Thank you for sharing. I love me some survey oppurtunities, a super easy way for a EA noob like me to be useful. This is a very interesting and important-seeming topic, too; any advance in our knowledge and clarity about it is a welcome sight.

Among other things, the natural-atrocity take on zombies is what got me in love with the TV series; depressed by them but interested in this new aesthetic of dangerous nature globally killing human civilization, think overgrown moss on broken subways. I can indeed see things like it motivating EA people to prevent such things, very much involved with visions of such a world. 🪸

I like this. It makes me think of how these people working in typical EA jobs wouldn't be doing much at all without the people working in food, water, health, transportation, and other stuff that makes life livable, work workable; and if the number of those support workers suddenly fell to the number of direct workers, EA recruiters would focus on nothing but restoring the number of farmers, bus drivers, and healthy-world doctors. 💌

Yes, humanity in EA is always good. The monthly (perhaps even weekly) question idea sounds brilliant, and a great way to get people easily engaged; especially the nonprofessionals like me, swinging by the forum on my short downtime, not feeling up to reading entire long posts, but happy to pass the time with prompted comments.

At school we hold two-hour unstructured group discussions that always spark from one-sentence questions, and they go well, usually with plenty of engagement. I could see great things coming out of a version of that for EA, however its done.

Nice post! I get the impression that the ideal is to find something you always consider to be work but is without the unbearably negative aspects, like losing money, and maybe a little bit of what you like in it.

I was really depressed working as a janitor for a grocery store: it was work, often there was lots to do quickly without enough staff, and cleaning full-time was all I did, most of which I dreaded.

Loading packages for FedEx, on the other hand, seemed like the sweet spot for blue-collar jobs: it was work, at times lots to do quickly without enough staff, but my managers treated me with respect, I got to socialize a little on the job, and even do some medium-intensity workout.

I never went to work for free. I'd rather do a short workout and chill out than load for as long as I did, but I'd also rather load than clean, any day.

I appreciate you making this post; it’s plentiful with research and comprehensive sharing. Most importantly, it posits an idea most vegans don’t want to hear while coming from someone who, as much as them, cares about the animals and realizes the horror. In a world where vegan advocacy hasn’t stopped meat consumption from doubling on all continents since 1990, animal welfare people questioning animal welfare ideas, whatever they be, is crucial to the movement going anywhere.

I wish, for your sake, I could say I was fully convinced I should eat meat, but you have won me over in a few ways. This post did get me to double down on my nutrition, now taking a multivitamin that satisfies way more than just my B12 need. The studies you present also got me more open to the idea that a diet with some animal consumption, because the world sucks, is optimal for human health. In a world where moral progress may not grow infinitely upward, where humans may not only continue to trounce on others for their own smaller benefit but expand such endeavors, considering tough-to-face facts like vegan health deficiencies is crucial to making a world without factory farms still possible: directing greater research into the study of nutrition, alternative proteins, and whatever else, rather than telling people the problems they have with going vegan don’t exist.

Six months later, this is definitely the most influential and enlightening among the topic-focused/research-centered posts I've read here. I'm far too amateur to take anything with total certainty, so don't worry about that. The post did make me switch from being super confident in cultivated meat as the solution to very skeptical, and got me taking the development of plant-based meat more seriously. I still see cultivated meat being promoted as a solution, so I'm still figuring out what to think about it; I don't need much of an opinion at the moment, being an undergrad student with nothing to do but learn and give feedback on what I read. 🍔

Most of all, this post got me to face the fact that working in EA involves loads of 4D chess: nothing in this world is certain, the effectiveness of large-scale actions are determined by a world of factors more numerous than can be kept track of, and backfiring is something, sadly, to keep an eye out for. It's turned EA, to me, from the imperative to seize golden oppurtunities of doing good, to the choice of trying to doing good, not because I'm sure it will work, but because I believe something has to be done. Thank you for your brilliant insight, and for getting me think with more clear realism, expanding my world. 💡

It makes enough sense for you to disagree with it.