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What AI could mean for alternative proteins; Many thanks to everyone who provided... |
A Brief & Recent History of Fish: What I learned in a weekend; Epistemic status: I researched this in a day and a half, wrote it in a couple hours, and shared it with no one. Believe nothing and fact check everything. |
Healthier Hens Y2 update including impact estimates and possible next steps |
AI, Factory Farming and Intuitive Moral Responses; Does the idea of autonomous factory farming (i.e. factory farming by intelligent autonomous systems, with no human interposed) create an intuitive protective response for non-human animals by meat-eating humans? |
Which countries should be prioritised in preventing the intensification of factory farming in Sub Saharan Africa?; This post presents a new tool for deciding which countries to prioritise in preventing or limiting the growth of industrial animal agriculture in countries in Sub Saharan Africa. |
How meat-free meal selection varies with menu options: an exploration (edited) |
Sources of Information for Animal Advocacy Research; When conducting animal advocacy research projects, the sheer amount of online material can be overwhelming. Fortunately, there are several research libraries and data repositories that can help you access high-quality, relevant, detailed information. Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)... |
(Linkpost) The real AI nightmare: What if it serves humans too well?; The age of artificial intelligence has begun, and it brings plenty of new anxieties. A lot of effort and money are being devoted to ensuring that AI will do only what humans want. But what we should be more afraid of is AI that will do what humans want. The real danger is us. |
An intersection between animal welfare and AI; From some uncited utilitarian calculations, a meat eaters positive emotional utility is dwarfed by how much suffering they cause (maybe around 10x). This means that the world is negative utility at the present. If AGI comes along,... |
Why The Insects Scream; Crossposted on my blog. This article was written about the general apathy towards insect suffering, and farming especially, so many of the statements about general indifference are not as applicable to those reading on the EA forum.... |
Corporate campaigns affect 9 to 120 years of chicken life per dollar spent; In this article, I estimate how many chickens will be affected by corporate cage-free(1) and broiler welfare(2) commitments won by all charities, in all countries, during all the years between 2005 and the end of 2018. According |
Progress in Qualia; It... |
Writing about my (old) job: Fisheries scientist in government; This post could be useful to anybody interested in fish advocacy, wild animal welfare, working in the civil service/public policy, or building skills in biology/ecology or mathematics/statistics. This post is in response to Aaron Gertlers and Lizka's... |
My Thoughts On Suffering; I actually just linked to part 3 because I'm too lazy to collect them all into one post. Also, part 1 might not really be all that necessary for some EAs to read, especially if you've already... |
Party Politics for Animal Advocacy: Part 2: Establishing groups across or within major political parties; In this report, we ask whether the animal advocacy movement should invest more resources into formingparty groups focused on animal welfare. For context, we usually encourage animal advocacy organisations to pursue legislative lobbying in general, and... |
Which animals realize which types of subjective welfare? |
Confessions of a Cheeseburger Ethicist; Eric Schwitzgebel invokes the cheeseburger ethicista moral philosopher who agrees that eating meat is wrong, but eats meat anywayas the paradigm of failing to walk the walk of ones moral philosophy. |
The number of seabirds and sea mammals killed by marine plastic pollution is quite small relative to the catch of fish; Disclaimer: plastic pollution may well kill way more animals besides seabirds and sea mammals. There are 6.20*10^14 wild fish and 1.00*10^20 wild marine arthropods, but only 6.75*10^11 wild mammals. |
Stanford Humane & Sustainable Food Seminar is now open to public; TheStanford Humane & Sustainable Food Lab holds a regularonline seminar series in which leading researchers present on topics related to reducing consumption of meat and animal products, followed by an audience Q&A session. Seminars are held every... |
Veganuarys impact has been huge here are the stats to prove it; For people short on time (like me), Ill point out this article brief, highly skimmable, and full of self-explanatory graphs. It also briefly explains reasons the researchers think Veganuary succeeds where similar efforts have failed (i.e., the... |
When can I eat meat again? |
Animal Advocacy Africas 2023 Review and Plans for 2024; This post is a detailed review of Animal Advocacy Africas work in 2023 and our plans for the year ahead. We go into detail about our work to foster knowledge sharing and ensure transparency, allowing our stakeholders... |
What is veganism anyway?; Originally posted on my blog |
AI ethics: the case for including animals (my first published paper, Peter Singer's first on AI); Hi! I am Tse Yip Fai. This is a linkpost to my first published paper (second author). Since the paper is open access, I won't be doing any copy-and-paste here. |
Developing Farmed Animal Welfare in China - Engaging Stakeholders in Research for Improved Effectiveness |
Call for Presentation Proposals for 3rd Annual Fauna Connections; Faunalytics will host a remote symposium for animal advocates on September 19th, 2024 (tentatively 12:00pm-5:30pm EDT). We invite academics and scientists from the social and behavioral sciences, or related disciplines, to submit a presentation abstract of original... |
What share of British adults are vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian?; My colleague Hannah Ritchie and I just published a new short post on the dietary choices of British adults on Our World in Data. |
CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses: Modest benefits for animal welfare; Due to the desire to reduce... |
Frontiers of Pain part 2: Making decisions within the Pareto frontier; When we want to figure out whether one intervention is more cost-effective than another, without knowing the true value of the weighting between high intensity pain and low intensity pain, we can sweep the weighting... |
Invertebrate Welfare in Science; Disclaimer: We apologize that we wont be monitoring this post to answer questions. |
The harm cascade: why helping others is so hard; Altruism, helping others, is so difficult. Suppose you save a childs live, and many years later that child becomes a new Hitler, killing thousands of people. Of course this is very unlikely, because there are not many... |
(Link Post) Do Microbes Matter More Than Humans?; GROWING UP, MOST of the stories I heard about animals featured charismatic megafaunaflagship species, as they were called. Elephants and tigers were the main attraction in zoos; dolphin shows were the primary draw at aquariums; and nonprofit... |
The hidden complexity of moral circles; Some effective altruists aim to expand humanitys moral circle to encompass more or all of sentient life. However, the term moral circle is very ambiguous. Different definitions yield... |
Animal Charity Evaluators Is Seeking Intervention Effectiveness Research and Cost-Effectiveness Estimates; Hello EA Forum, |
Are you passionate about AI and Animal Welfare? Do you have an idea that could revolutionize the food industry? We want to hear from you!; Are you exploring the intersection of AI, animal advocacy and animal welfare, and do you have an innovative concept that could redefine the food industry? We want to hear from you! |
A New Resource for Effective Volunteerism & Activism in Minutes; I collected the most effective volunteerism/activism opportunities (actions) I could find and built a website calledDoing Good Now, a one-stop shop for doing good, aiming to help people maximize their positive impact in minimized time. |
Strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation; The European Commission is planning to revise and expand the scope of European Union (EU) animal protection policies with new legislative proposals in late 2023, likely followed by another ~12-24 months of negotiations before being passed into... |
Space settlers will favour meat alternatives?; Thesis: Thepsychological profile of the first space settlers will be unusually pro-technology, which will correlate with liking meat alternatives, which will reduce the number of farmed animals in the far future. Great news if true! |
William Shatner joins Pacific Wild in message against fish farms.; Captain Kirk offers a strongly worded video message to Canadians as part of Pacific Wild's F*** Off Open-net Pen Salmon Farms initiative. (*This website and video contains strong language that may be upsetting to some viewers.) |
Humane slaughter in Mediterranean sea bass and bream aquaculture; Context: This article was published in Frontiers in Aquaculture as an outcome of my recent project with Koen van Pelt and Max Carpendale . The personal side of that project is detailed here. Since our article is... |
Ranking animal foods based on suffering and GHG emissions; I created a simple web-based tool which ranks animal species according to the harm caused by consuming them. The user can specify the relative priority of two subscales of harm: animal suffering and greenhouse gas emissions. |
Potential Theories of Change for the Animal Advocacy movement |
Paths to reducing rodenticide use in the U.S.; This is the third report in a sequence of reports on reducing the use of rodenticide poisons. It is not necessary to have read the previous reports to read this one, although this report will take for... |
Own stock in a meat or egg company?; Hi, EAs! |
Animal Welfare Guidelines for International Development Organizations in the Global South; I found this new paper exciting and hope the conversation it expects to start leads to meaningful improvements for animals in IDO projects. |
Animal advocacy: Lobbying through public consultation; TL;DR: In this report, Animal Ask assess establishing a small organisation to a) build a database of jurisdictions around the world that regularly use public consultations, b) monitor upcoming consultations that could affect the lives of animals,... |
Research summary: brain cell counts in Black Soldier Flies (Hermetia illucens; Diptera: Stratiomyidae) |
Where to source ethical meat?; I'm looking for a source of ethical meat that ships to San Francisco. |
Please share with lawyers you know: Legal Impact for Chickens seeks litigator.; Hi EAs! |
Veg*ns, what supplements do you take?; I'm yet to find a simple, comprehensive, reliable guide to supplements for vegetarians and vegans. So instead of spending more time on Google I figured I'd just ask you all what you do. |
The value of actual sales data for understanding meat consumption; Cover photo by Bruno Kelzer |
Vegetarianism is mostly genetic, claim Wesseldijk et al.; I found this topic first from a short snippet in The Week, then from the news article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/maintaining-a-vegetarian-diet-might-be-in-your-genes-180983021 |
Linkpost: Italy introduces bill to ban lab-grown meat; This is a linkpost for a Reuters article about a new bill proposed in Italy's parliament to ban lab-grown meat. I don't have much to say about it, except that I hope it fails, and I hope this isn't the start of a culture war around lab-grown meat. |
Tiny humans: the most promising new cause candidate?; Epistemic status: 97.75% certain. |
Mike, Mouse, Moth, Machine; I am sitting in a large boardroom in Westminster. I am watching my friend and colleague Mike present his recent work to about a dozen colleagues. Its a key piece of economic analysis of government spending and... |
Philosophers speaking against the mistreatment of animals: The Montreal Declaration On Animal Exploitation; This week, 473 (so far) philosophers signed to speak against the human exploitation of nonhuman animals, in the Montreal Declaration On Animal Exploitation, it seems to me that it is pretty rare for philosophers to sign and... |
Sentience Institute 2023 End of Year Summary; Last years2022 End of Year Summary was published just five days before the launch of ChatGPT. This event surprised many in the field, and the global spotlight has illustrated how important it is to understand human-AI interaction.... |
The Type Of Animal Husbandry Is Relevant For Animal Welfare; A growing number of people do not eat animals, and a smaller but also growing number of people do not eat animal products. This probably has enormous benefits for many animals that would otherwise have been eaten.... |
Genetic Enhancement to Turn Animal Suffering to Animal Bliss; The case for animal welfare as a priority goes something like this: tens of billions of land animals are killed for human consumption in factory farms. The conditions in the factory farms would be considered torture if... |
Nirva Patel on the Ahimsa philosophy, producing films promoting veganism, and animal law at Harvard; Nirva Patel currently serves as the Executive Director of the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Program. Shes an animal rights campaigner and animal policy researcher whos worked in both the US and India. She was an executive... |
The case for conscious AI: Clearing the record (AI Consciousness & Public Perception); One way to approach the decision whether to build conscious AI is as a simple cost-benefits analysis: do the benefits outweigh the risks? |
Remove An Omnivore's Statue? Debate Ensues Over The Legacy Of Factory Farming; There have been cries from locals in Healy, New York, about taking down the statue of Jerry Whittaker. Whittaker was renowned in his time for his breakthroughs in the field of oncology,... |
Resilience & Biodiversity; This is currently a fringe issue in EA. We think it is important that more individuals within EA become fluent in the ways humanity depends on the natural world for basic needs such as clean air, water,... |
The Determinants of Adopting International Voluntary Certification Schemes for Farmed Fish and Shrimp in China and Thailand; This shallow literature review addresses the determinants considered by exporting farmers in China and Thailand when adopting international voluntary certification schemes for farmed fish and shrimp. |
Suggestion: Effective Animal Advocacy forum; EDIT: This now exists! https://forum.fastcommunity.org/ I really hope it will gain traction. |
New research findings on narrative in U.S. animal advocacy; Pax Fauna recently released messaging recommendations based on almost two years of qualitative research into the use of narrative in animal advocacy in the U.S. Specifically, our focus was on building public support for government actions to... |
Vlog Brothers (Hank and John Green) are promoting reduced beef consumption; OG YouTubers Hank and John Green (the vlog brothers) are reducing their beef consumption to only 4 designated days each year (plus 2 flex days). They have millions of followers and hundreds of thousands as a part of their so there's a good chance this could make a real impact. And more importantly, raise more awareness for the issue. |
Stakeholder-engaged research in emerging markets: How do we unlock growth in Asian animal advocacy? |
Intervention Profile: Ballot Initiatives; Ballot initiatives are a form of direct democracy in which citizens can gather signatures to qualify a proposed piece of legislation for the ballot, which is then subject to a binding up-or-down vote by the general |
Animal Charity Evaluators 2023 Movement Grants; Animal Charity Evaluators announced last week the recipients of the 2023 round of Movement Grants. |
Finding bugs in GiveWell's top charities |
Longtermism and animal advocacy; There is a common tendency among effective altruists to think of animal advocacy as having little value for improving the long-term future. Similarly, animal advocates often assume that longtermism has little relevance to their work. Yet this... |
Possible misconceptions about (strong) longtermism; In this post I provide a brief sketch of The case for strong longtermism as put forward by Greaves and MacAskill, and proceed to raise and address possible misconceptions that people may have about strong longtermism. Some... |
Impact Entrepreneurs Wanted to Help Farmed Animals and Climate; ProVeg International is looking for outstanding, mission-driven talent to join the second edition ofKickstarting for Good, the worlds first incubator and accelerator programme aimed specifically at high-impact nonprofit organisations and initiatives working on transforming the food system... |
The Best Near-term Tool for Improving Wild Animal Welfare: Contraception; This article makes a case for selective contraception of wild animals as a near-term tool that could lead to a substantial improvement in wild animal welfare (hereafter, WAW). |
Helping animals or saving human lives in high income countries is arguably better than saving human lives in low income countries? |
Holly Elmore on reducing rodent suffering and wild animal welfare; We discuss the issue of rodent suffering and the likelihood of rodent birth control kicking off, touch on what some of the challenges are along the way in promoting its usage by governments, and delve deep into... |
(Link Post) Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. Its a disastrous idea; Expanding our deeply flawed society would only mean replicating our mistakes, our failures, and our acts of cruelty on a much larger scale. |
Does Sentience Legislation help animals?; The sentience of animals has long been recognised and has continued to be demonstrated on ever firmer scientific grounds. From the Brambell report (1965), which emphasised the importance of sentience in the understanding of animal welfare... |
Results of tests to promote impactful Vegan Speeches on Social Media in low income countries. I would appreciate advice how to further test the impact of this approach.; Promote the best performing and most widely known speeches by Vegan Activists through Social Media in countries with low promotion costs, to reach the largest amount of people possible. |
Insect farming might cause more suffering than other animal farming; The edible insect market has been growing and is projected tocontinue increasing rapidly in the future. There has been significant research pointing to the fact that insectsshowsigns ofconsciousness, and I think its important to seriously compare insect... |
Dr. Heather Browning on animal sentience and ethics; Dr. Heather Browning is a Lecturer at the University of Southampton. Her primary research interests are animal welfare, ethics, and consciousness. She has done her PhD at ANU on the measurement of animal welfare. Heather has also... |
Sentience Institute 2022 End of Year Summary; Sentience Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit think tank aiming to maximize positive impact through longtermist research on social and technological change, particularly moral circle expansion. Our main focus in 2022 has been conducting high-quality empirical research, primarily... |
On Direct Animal Advocacy; This is a recounting of my experience doing a Cube of Truth similar to that done by Anonymous for the Voiceless (AV) with the UW chapter of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP). More broadly, it represents... |
Philosophy Can Change the World. Peter Singer Proved It. Three Times.; As he nears retirement, what lessons does his life have on how to dothe most good... |
Shrimp Neuroanatomy; This is intended to be an informational post to discuss the neuroanatomy of shrimp, and the implications thereof for the range of computational functions supported by this anatomy. |
EAA is relatively overinvesting in corporate welfare reforms; In this post I... |
Reducing aquatic noise as a wild animal welfare intervention; *We invite the international EA community to attend our conference in Mexico City, believing that your presence will nourish and enrich the event.* |
Should Longtermists Mostly Think About Animals? |
Divestment From Animal Agriculture: What Does It Achieve?; In this post, I explore some evidence that appears to indicate that total utilitarians sympathetic to longtermism should primarily focus on the effects of their actions on wild animals. I note that I am not particularly sympathetic... |
What will insect farming look like and actually mean for animal welfare? (Repost from my blog Karthik Logic); Main Author: Max Carpendale |
Using artificial intelligence (machine vision) to increase the effectiveness of human-wildlife conflict mitigations could benefit WAW; Hello everyone! I've started a blog a few months ago at https://karthiklogic.substack.com and I'm posting my article on insect farming here. |
Vegan Nutrition Testing Project: Interim Report |
Animal Advocacy Digest #4: Dec 24th- Jan 20th; Reducing consumption of animal products is a choice with both moral and practical consequences. Last summer I found myself in contact with many vegans who cared a lot about the moral consequences, but had put little effort... |
Comparisons of Capacity for Welfare and Moral Status Across Species; Welcome to this edition of the Animal Advocacy Digest, where we aim to help people in the animal... |
Invertebrate Welfare Cause Profile; Effective altruism aims to allocate resources so as to promote the most good in the world. To achieve the most efficient allocation of resources, we need to be able to compare interventions that target different species, |
Book Post: The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism; More than 99.9% of animals are invertebrates. There is modest evidence that some large groups of invertebrates, especially cephalopods and arthropods, are sentient. The effective animal activism community currently allocates less than 1% of total spending |
Relative values for animal suffering and ACE Top Charities; A few notes to start |
(Linkpost) Francis at a Factory Farm Francis of Assisi and animal welfare; tl;dr: I present relative estimates for animal suffering and 2022 top Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) charities. I am doing this to showcase a new tool from the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute (QURI) and to present an alternative... |
Would you rather kill 2 mice or 10 fish? Interspecies Trade-Offs and the Moral Weight of Animal Species in Biomedical Research; This post was originally published in the EA for Christians community blog. The EACH community blog is a multi-author and multi-perspective blog. The views presented in the posts are those of the authors and do not represent... |
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