Astral Codex Ten

animal welfare

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animal welfare

Article

animal welfare is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between March 24, 2022 and November 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “something more like “animal suffering” or “animal welfare””; “the only thing even close is animal welfare”; “as much to be proud of as the global health and animal welfare people”. It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, AI, AI risk.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: March 24, 2022
  • Last seen: November 28, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Justice Creep
March 24, 2022 · Original source
When Effective Altruists look at the world, they see lots of cases of unacceptable neglect and apathy and deep power differentials between possible beneficiaries and possible benefiters. Oh, and they also see sentient beings even more numerous that humans alive on Earth being actively/purposely subjected to non-stop torture for minor benefits to humans (that probably aren’t even net beneficial to humans), heavily normalized by culture, and which nearly everyone of moderate affluence on Earth is complicit in. The former types of issues can be given a justicey spin, but once you buy the right moral premises, the latter category screams “justice issue”. Ignoring this dimension makes it hard to see why animal welfare is such a popular cause area, indeed many passionate Effective Altruists I have run into, whether they are directly working on it or not, have a special, very personal investment in it when you talk to them.
Despite this feeling like the clearest case of justice to me, I hear the phrase “animal justice” less often than any of the others (though some people apparently do use it). The closest equivalent is “animal rights”. But a lot of the animal activists I know have been deliberately moving away from that to something more like “animal suffering” or “animal welfare”, I think because “animals are endowed with natural rights” is a harder sell than “animals being tortured is bad”.
Inline links: some people
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
Eli Lifland replies that sometimes long-termism and near-termism make different predictions; you need long-termism to robustly prioritize x-risk related charities. I am not sure I agree; his near-termist analysis still finds that AI risk is most cost-effective; the only thing even close is animal welfare, which many people reject based on not caring about animals. I think marginal thinking and moral parliament concerns can get you most of the way to an ideal balance of charitable giving without long-termism (see here for more), and that common-sense principles like “it would be extra bad if humanity went extinct” can get you the rest of the way.
Inline links: Eli Lifland replies
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
November 28, 2023 · Original source
Supported teams giving development economics advice in Ethiopia, India, Rwanda, and around the world.6 Animal Welfare: Convinced farms to switch 400 million chickens from caged to cage-free.7 Things are now slightly better than this in some places! Source: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23724740/tyson-chicken-free-range-humanewashing-investigation-animal-cruelty
Inline links: 6, 7
I don’t want the takeaway from this post to be “Sure, you may hate EA because it does a lot of work on AI - but come on, it also does a lot of work on global health and poverty!” I’m proud of all of it. I believe - just like Geoff Hinton, Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Daniel Dennett, etc - that there’s a pretty serious risk of human extinction from AI over the next few decades. I can’t imagine believing this and not thinking it’s important to prepare for. EA has done a great job working on this (see list of accomplishments above), and I think the AI and x-risk people have just as much to be proud of as the global health and animal welfare people.
Inline links: just like