This seems like a good initiative, I wasn't aware of that. My idea was to more explicitly redirect some very small percentage of budget to effective charities. Probably human charities would be most politically viable, and also great for optics, as they could say "our donation saved so and so lives".

Maybe 0.1% of government budget would be viable, what do you think?

There are many upsides for the government - they could brag about how many people they saved, they could be seen as more progressive than other countries, and they could make EA more widely recognized.

But perhaps they would need to be very careful about how they go about it. Probably choose human and farm animal charities, some split between the 2 but no less than 50% to human charities. Perhaps some allocation to X-risk as well. I'd probably go like this: 10% X-risk, 50% human charities, 40% farm animal charities.

Here's what I calculated: A budget of very small political entity in Bosnia (not the whole country) in which I live is around $3.2 billion.  0.1% of this is $3.2 million. 50% of this that would go to human charities is $1.6 million. Divided by $5000 (per life saved) that could save around 320 lives per year. And that's just 0.05% of the budget that would be allocated to human charities.

If you cure one AIDS patient, you might be condemning five malaria patients to death.

What if the AIDS patient will keep donating 10% of their income to AMF?

But more seriously, this particular ethical dilemma is so horrible that it makes me sick to even think about it.

My take is that within each country, we must make sure, through the healthcare system and insurance, that EVERYONE who is sick receives the therapy, no exceptions. Doesn't matter how expensive their treatment is and how many children in Africa could be saved if the money was directed their way. No one should feel guilty because they are receiving expensive therapies.

Healthcare should be viewed separately from charity. When we're giving to charity, we should give to most effective charities abroad, like AMF, or others from GiveWell's list.

But when we're talking about improving healthcare system, we should make sure that every single person receives treatment and that we don't let anyone down. This is the basic of human dignity, how one society treats its members.

Such an attitude towards sickness would give everyone a peace of mind, that if they themselves get sick, they too would be taken care of.

So I think paying taxes that would be spent on healthcare is a great thing to do. I support high taxes and Universal Free Healthcare.

Now of course, I think this should be standard everywhere, in every single country, so that eventually there will be no need to make donations to AMF and like. Everyone who is sick would receive free healthcare in from their own healthcare system in their countries. Governments themselves would provide abundant bednets to everyone, and this would be seen as something as basic as having clean water and electricity... which unfortunately many countries still don't have.

This is a very interesting take. Sometimes I'm wondering to which extent I have undergone such moral evolution myself, to which extent is my own thinking about all these thing virtuous.

By the standards of this forum, I sometimes feel like I'm not virtuous enough. Like I haven't yet gone through this mental shift that would allow me to bite certain bullets.

Prioritizing humans might seem backwards or spaciest, but that's how I still feel on a gut level. I tried to elaborate why.

Another thing I would like to add is, that even in my framework farm animals are in the second circle, that is, right next to humans. They are not the same category as insects or soil nematodes. And they indeed live in horrendous conditions. I think every effective altruist should allocate some money to them.

My intention was to try to keep those 10% to humans sacred, to prevent value drift, and trains to crazy town. I made a case for it. Am I right? I don't know.

I am quite confident about the priorities thing. But perhaps there shouldn't be such a harsh cutoff.

Perhaps we can do it like this donate 1 unit to the first circle, 1/2 to the second circle, and 1/4 to the third circle.

Translated into percentages it would be roughly 57% of donation money to the 1st circle (including X-risks), 29% to the second circle (farm animals) and 14% to the third circle (wild animals).

I outlined a lot of reasons for prioritizing humans, some, but not all of them are based on emotions and gut feelings. Many other are based on rational considerations. I'm not sure if these rational considerations are correct or if they might be misguided.

You're right that asking people to donate more than 10% is too much. But here's the thing. Animal charities are way more effective than human charities. So giving just another 1 or 2 percent to animal charities can be incredibly effective.

For this reason I love animal charities, they are extremely cheap ways of doing good.

But can we call ourselves philanthropists if we don't donate anything to people?

According to Wikipedia: The word philanthropy comes from Ancient Greek φιλανθρωπία (philanthrōpía) 'love of humanity', from philo- 'to love, be fond of' and anthrōpos 'humankind, mankind'.

Everyone can decide about percentages for themselves. My idea of preserving 10% for humans + existential risks, is just how I feel about it, perhaps to ensure we're not losing our focus and not forgetting why we're doing this in the first place.

So perhaps we can donate 10% to human charities and existential risk prevention, and another 2% to animal charities. (12% total)

Or if you really think that animal welfare is extremely important, perhaps you can donate 5% to human charities and 5% to animal charities.

I think by allocating less than 50% of donation money to humans and existential risks (which is 5% if you donate 10% in total) we risk losing focus.

When it comes to donation for existential risk prevention it can be counted in the same category as donations to human charities, because those donations help everyone, humans and animals, and the whole planet.

So 50% of donation money to humans + X-risk is in my entirely subjective opinion, a minimum.

I think it would be a mistake to confuse the life-affirming attitude with endorsement of the repugnant conclusion. Or that it makes eliminating factory farms less of a priority. I think this is too simple and too binary a way of thinking about it. Animals in cages can't fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.

I agree that factory farming should be eventually eliminated entirely.

But I'm not so sure about non-factory less intensive types of farming. 

You put it really great here: Animals in cages can't fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.

I agree wholeheartedly.

(It's not like the debate here is about whether animals in factory farms should be killed or not — they are going to be killed anyway, that's the whole point of factory farms.)

Another very strong point. Here's how I look at it. The question is whether the world with some number of farm animals (cows, pigs, chicken, etc) is better than the one without them, even if it means that those animals will be continually grown for the purpose of being killed? That is what is better - to kill them once and for all (or stop reproducing them) - some sort of near extermination, perhaps to keep just a few specimens and keep them in zoos. Or to keep growing them and killing them perpetually. It's very unpleasant to even think about it like this, but this is the only honest way of thinking about it. So thanks for bringing this up. I lean towards it being better to keep them in numbers significantly larger than just a few zoo individuals to preserve the species, but in number significantly lower than their current population. Perhaps the optimal number of those animals is equivalent to maximum number of them that we can support in humane conditions and without industrial farming... Perhaps like they were kept in the before industrial revolution. Maybe we could keep just 10% - 20% of animals in conditions like that. If they could live truly good lives, while providing us with food and agricultural products, and being slaughtered in humane ways. Then I think it's better then near extermination, and also much better then current inhuman conditions in which they are kept. It would be great if we could perhaps keep the number as large as 50% of the current number, while improving their life conditions maximally, but I'm afraid it's very hard to achieve. 

I think the best real life comparison is the one I already raised. People in countries undergoing economic development (either now, for developing countries, or in the past, for developed countries) doing family planning and choosing to have, say, two children instead of five, because they can provide for two children much better than they can for five. It's hard to argue this isn't out of love or an affirmation of life. It's hard to say this is any way life-denying, negative utilitarian, anti-natalist, nihilist, or pessimistic. It's simply parents trying to care best for their children, and affirming the value of having kids and parenthood, while attempting to balance quantity of lives with quality of lives as best they can figure out.

Yes I agree, there's no moral obligation, IMO, to have as many children as possible. 

Regarding the rest of what you wrote I agree to a large extent.

My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:

• I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say "Most suffering is not in that category.", and I entirely agree.
  • However, I'm inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if it's a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether there's a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether it's such a strong positive value that it "outweighs" the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).

I think it matters a lot how long does extreme suffering last. People regularly experience some pretty horrible suffering, but still they don't consider their life not worthy of living.

Take for example childbirth, or kidney colic. Most people go on after such events, without being traumatized for life.

Also, extreme pain might render people unconscious. I don't know how often it happens, if it happens in animals as well, and how good of a protection against extreme pain and suffering it is. But it might be a thing worthy of research.

Experiences such as being eaten, probably last quite short, and being last experiences in life of animals will likely not traumatize them, as they will be dead.

Close encounters with predators, injuries that animals survive, are more problematic and could lead to lasting trauma.

In general extreme suffering should be minimized as much as possible. But when thinking of extreme suffering I often have certain non-trivial duration in mind as well. If the lion kills its pray relatively quickly, the pain they experience, even if extreme, might not be that important in big scheme of things if it last just a couple of seconds.

I do not deny the existence of extreme suffering in nature, but I think it's not so common and when it happens it's often of short duration.

I very well do think that reducing of such extreme suffering should be among the top priorities.

• More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but I'd be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they can't spread their wings. I assume, eg, "tasting food" feels very different when you've only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.

Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! That's not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.

You're right here. Animals on factory farms probably have capacity to feel pleasure, but it's severely reduced and undermined by the conditions in which they live. That's why I think we should eat less meat (at least if we consider direct effects) and donate to charities that help those animals.

If we consider 2nd, 3rd, etc... order effects, I really don't know. If we're talking about these animals their lives should be improved. The way to do it is to eat less meat and to donate to those charities.

This will probably help them.

Whether this will also indirectly hurt someone else, and whether this is more important, I'm really not sure.

Thanks for your reply and feedback.

I will first focus on this paragraph that you wrote:

In the takeaways, however, you don't focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, it's probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more "maximizing" takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesn't seem to have affected the world much for now).

And I can only respond in somewhat illogical manner. Because, if we follow logic, then you're probably right.

So the first thing: my life-affirming stance isn't necessarily a life-maximizing stance. Especially if this involves deliberately shifting our consumption patterns in such a way that we farm as many animals as possible or deliberately increase the extent of wildlife habitats.

If I were to support veganism, it would not be because it increases the farming of small animals on margin (indirect effect), but because I believe that reducing meat consumption lowers demand for farming animals, lowering their numbers, thus allowing us to keep those who remain in better, more humane conditions (direct effect). So when I'm thinking about deciding whether to eat chicken, I think primarily about chicken welfare. If I decided to donate to a charity that deals with welfare of certain animals, I primarily think about those very animals that the charity deals with.

Second, and very important thing: I really don't know how far is too far when it comes to taking into consideration indirect effects. I'm afraid that taking indirect effects too much into consideration could lead to some situations that are very difficult to resolve. It can lead to strong cluelessness, the situation in which we're never sure if we're doing good at all, or if it is in fact counterproductive. Imagine this process:

First we do action A to help species B, and we're convinced doing A is very good.

Then we realize that helping B indirectly hurts species C to a much greater extent, so doing A is very bad, and we stop.

Then we realize that hurting C, is in fact great, because it indirectly helps species D to even greater extent, so doing A, once again becomes very good.

Then we go back to doing A, but not to help B, but to help D.

We might on some level love B, empathize with them, identify with them somewhat, and when we were doing A to help B, this felt like a genuine care - our actions and our emotions were in harmony.

But D?  - we don't really care much about D. Our theory tells us that Ds are very numerous and that helping them might outweigh all our other moral concerns due to their sheer number, even if they aren't conscious at all. But there is still some probability they might be, and due to their sheer number we can't afford to dismiss it.

So now we're doing A, not to help B (direct beneficiaries) whom we love , but to help D (indirect beneficiaries) about whom we don't really care, and this feels emotionally very alienating and weird.

We're just waiting until we learn that helping Ds is in fact terrible, because it harms Es, which are even more numerous, etc...

Since this process can be quite long, at each step of this process we can be quite unsure of whether what we're doing is good at all, and this lack of conviction can make our motivation to help and donate grow much weaker. We can start thinking "If I'm unsure if it helps or hurts (in sense of increasing or decreasing aggregate welfare), maybe I shouldn't do anything at all, and instead mind my own business".

So I'm wondering can we really afford to completely divorce our actions (donations, etc...) from our love, care and emotions? Or alternatively, can we afford to maintain even a modicum of love and genuine care while we're doing good?

I mean if we remove love and use just reasoning, maybe then indeed, the only logical project that we should pursue is eventually turning the Universe into hedonium.

But if we involve love and emotions, then perhaps it makes sense to help chicken because we care about chicken, to help people because we care about people, to help shrimps, because we care about shrimps, etc... In short to do focus our considerations on direct beneficiaries and thus retain this harmony between emotions and actions.

I think this is the way most people became altruists and effective altruists in the first place.

They donated money for malaria nets, in order to help those who receive nets. They donated to chicken charities in order to help chicken, etc... Imagining children dying of malaria or chicken living in terrible conditions was a strong motivating factor to step in and do something about it.

But nowadays, all I see is discussions about 2nd, 3rd, 4th order indirect effects of our actions.

But, logic is on your side, not on mine. Maybe I'm too lazy. Maybe I don't want to make effort to consider those distant indirect effects. Maybe I don't want to follow the logic to its conclusion. Maybe. I don't know.

I probably lack certain virtues needed for such detached thinking.

But maybe such detached thinking too lacks something important that is fails to identify.

I really don't know.

You're probably right about factory farming. I do think that we should eat less meat, and some drop in number of farm animals would probably be good.

But I wanted to say in which direction would life affirming stance take us if fully accepted.

Unfortunately it would also point us towards greater acceptance of repugnant conclusion which is another thing that I dislike and that feels wrong.

But the thing about repugnant conclusion is what it really means "barely worth living". How high this bar is, is very subjective.

If such lives are truly worth living, it might not matter that much if it's barely.

But if the bar is too low, then they might indeed be not worth living, according to most who wouldn't agree with the bar. The bar is subjective, this is the problem.

And it's very hard to talk about lives being or not being worth living when it comes to existing beings.

It's easier when planning for the future. If certain cows and chickens are never to be born / hatched in the first place, we can't really say they were harmed by not being born / hatched.

So reducing number of farm animals is probably not that bad.

It's more that life affirming stance makes reduction of farming less of a priority, but still certainly permissible and probably something to be endorsed, as with current numbers it's very hard to ensure adequate welfare for those animals.