Always!

Just wanted to drop by and say that I have been really enjoying this sequence, and I deeply resonate with this idea of divine discontent!

I would like to add to this and applaud Vasco for being such a good sport about this, sharing the draft with me in advance and engaging in an unusually civil and productive back and forth with me to clear up misunderstandings, including nitpicky nuances and issues that arose from my own miscommunication. To anyone who would like to share feedback or ways to improve our community guidelines, but prefers no to do so publicly, you can also reach me/us per dm here on the Forum/E-mail/Slack, and we have an anonymous form! Although we do generally think that a public discussion here could be valuable for other community spaces as well. I would also like to - despite this - thank you, Vasco, for being a valued community member and for your exceptional moral seriousness/commitment to taking ideas seriously and care.

Strong agree! I also often get asked „why push careers, if the movement is primarily funding constrained“ - it’s almost as though there is a bit of a misconception around the idea that only non profit work is a „career that helps animals“ and I think part of this is that there is no good guide on making an impact in adjacent areas (outside of E2G perhaps). I‘m very excited to see the research you are producing! 

Effektiv Spenden has donation vouchers that seem roughly in line with what you are thinking of!

Great post, thanks for looking into this! I previously noted four different types of interventions one might want to prioritize given AIxAnimals; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the implications on this intersection from a broader, zoomed out perspective!

I found this post deeply and wonderfully relatable, especially the section on why you didn't pursue Philosophy! :) 

I am sure someone has mentioned this before, but…

For the longest time, and to a certain extent still, I have found myself deeply blocked from publicly sharing anything that wasn’t significantly original. Whenever I have found an idea existing anywhere, even if it was a footnote on an underrated 5-karma-post, I would be hesitant to write about it, since I thought that I wouldn’t add value to the “marketplace of ideas.” In this abstract concept, the “idea is already out there” - so the job is done, the impact is set in place. I have talked to several people who feel similarly; people with brilliant thoughts and ideas, who proclaim to have “nothing original to write about” and therefore refrain from writing.

I have come to realize that some of the most worldview-shaping and actionable content I have read and seen was not the presentation of a uniquely original idea, but often a better-presented, better-connected, or even just better-timed presentation of existing ideas. I now think of idea-sharing as a much more concrete, but messy contributor to impact, one that requires the right people to read the right content in the right way at the right time; maybe even often enough, sometimes even from the right person on the right platform, etc.

All of that to say, the impact of your idea-sharing goes much beyond the originality of your idea. If you have talked to several cool people in your network about something and they found it interesting and valuable to hear, consider publishing it!

Relatedly, there are many more reasons to write other than sharing original ideas and saving the world :)

Great point, Michael! I agree on discounting potential counterfactual impacts of current interventions past X years and think that short-term large payoffs are a very good way of dealing with the overall situation. In addition to that, I'd argue that cheaper higher animal welfare and alternative proteins in X years suggest that interventions will be more cost-effective in X years, which might imply that we should "save and invest" (either literally, in capital, or conceptually, in movement capacity). Do you have any thoughts on that? 

To me, this suggests prioritizing (1) short-term, large payoff interventions, (2) interventions actively seeking to navigate and benefit animals through an AI transition (depending on how optimistic you are about the tractability of doing so), (3) interventions that robustly invest in movement capacity (depending on whether you think interventions are likely to be more cost-effective in the future), and perhaps (4) interventions that seem unlikely to change through an AI transition (depending on how optimistic you are in their current cost-effectiveness and how high your credence is in their robustness). 

Thank you for writing this up, Max! The more I dive into AI for Animals, the more it seems to be just about the most important (and drastically underdiscussed) topic within the farmed animal movement, both in terms of risks and opportunities.