On not fewer than four occasions (perhaps more) I have been asked to compare Vegan Outreach with New Harvest, so it's time we had a full forum devoted to the subject.

The thrust of my view is summarized in one of my replies on an earlier thread:

A number of people have suggested New Harvest, and I agree that it's a solid organization. My primary concern is that, as I suggested in the main post, I fear vegetarianism could -- depending on the balance of suffering in nature and the animal-population impacts of climate change -- cause more animal suffering than it averts. The main reason I favor Vegan Outreach and The Humane League is actually not the direct reductions in meat consumption that they effect (whose net animal-suffering impact is, I fear, ambiguous to me), but the long-term ideological concern for animal suffering in general that they help to build among the public. The latter might, I hope, eventually translate into concern for wild animals. In contrast, the technological fix that New Harvest would facilitate produces comparatively less ideological meme propagation. (An exception is if you think that a significant amount of the resistance to giving animals ethical consideration is the fact that people don't want to give up eating them. A technological fix might allow people to realize the barbarity of their previous attitudes toward factory-farmed livestock, similarly to the way in which the industrial revolution made it easier for people to see the barbarity of slavery.)

"Why I Donate to Vegan Outreach" elaborates on my support for, and reservations about, Vegan Outreach's work.

I think donations to an organization explicitly working to promote concern for wild-animal suffering for futuristic reasons would likely be better than Vegan Outreach, assuming that the organization was effectual. However, for company-matching purposes, I can only donate to a US 501(c)(3) organization, and I'm not confident that donations to another organization would be twice as cost-effective as giving to VO. I would love to see a US-based charity focusing entirely on suffering in nature. I may start one myself in 5-10 years if no one beats me to it.

I also like the idea of researching and promoting humane insecticides, both for its direct impact but also as a vehicle to cultivate sentiments toward insects. Preaching about the "mother nature's child abuse" (to paraphrase Nick Bostrom) may sometimes lead to apathy when people feel that they can't do anything about the situation in the near term. Humane insecticides can be worked on now and so could channel that discontentment. I think this is one reason vegetarianism is so effective: People can feel like they're doing something about the problem, not just learning about it. And often, our beliefs follow our actions, rather than preceding them, so acting to reduce animal suffering is a good way to shore up concern for animals.

What do others think? In particular, let's separate a few questions:

• Which of VO vs. NH is more cost-effective at reducing factory-farmed suffering?
  
  • I'm not sure. NH may have higher expected value in the long term. However, one of the best ways to promote in-vitro meat is to create new vegetarians who can popularize it (as Vegan Outreach does). VO is one of NH's biggest supporters.
• Which of VO vs. NH is more effective at raising concern for wild animals?
  
  • I think VO almost certainly wins here, but I'd be glad to hear arguments otherwise.
• What other relevant considerations should bear on the decision?

Alan: A minor question. How do you reconcile your (pretty high) donation per year into vegan outreach with the desire to start (or wait for someone else to start) a charity working on suffering in nature? I understand you might be thinking of the extra amount of money per year that comes from using your employer to match donations. But do you really think Vegan Outreach is half as good as the money that you would spend on a truly wild-animal focused charity? And consider that if you are giving them $15,000 per year - then if you intend to fund a wild animal charity in 10 years and get around 8% interest each year off stocks, then you would have over $200,000 extra to play with at the end of that period (used this calculator).
Although my numbers don't take into account taxes and so on... Dunno about the taxes you face in the U.S, and that could undermine my whole objection.

Honestly, the insect suffering thing seems likely to be perceived as very far out by the average person, or even the average ethicist-veg*an-utilitarian-transhumanist person. Trying to invent a form of insecticide that was cheaper and less eco-damaging than normal might be able to sell the idea, but if the cost of it at the point of purchase is higher than normal kinds, no-one is likely to buy it - so honestly I don't think it's worth cost of research, though perhaps a very quick look by some chemists and etymologists would be useful, as it might turn out that humane insecticides are very cheap.
I'd rather concentrate on cultivating moral sentiments toward certain higher animals and then let that grow in a normal sort of progression instead of jumping straight in and being like: "Hey guys, let's kill insects nicely!"

As to your set of questions...

• I would argue NH is better at getting rid of factory farming, with a few caveats. My caveats are that if it's mainly vegetarians caring about IV meat, and VO substantially affects the number of vegetarians who care about IV meat, then we should give to VO instead. I need more data really. I also have concerns that VO isn't the best charity for that sort of thing: doesn't the major support for IV meat come from environmentalist groups?

• VO. This seems obvious to me, as it doubtless does to you. I assign ~20% probability to the statement: "attitudes towards animals will improve substantially with the introduction of IV meat".

• X-risks, but they tend to make everything go insane Then there's the possibility I alluded to in the first paragraph - that of saving money until a better charity comes along. Low-hanging fruit in the area of factory farming - e.g. Controlled Atmosphere Killing?

Hi Gedusa,

Great question about why I donate to VO instead of saving everything now. It may be irrational (I'm not sure), but it's cognitively more reassuring to do so. Some considerations:

• The 2X match is most relevant.
• Tax deductions (worth ~25% of the donated amount) matter too.
• Rates of return for promoting veganism are likely higher than 8% per annum. The returns come from multiplier effects of outreach, leading to more supporters and therefore more donations. The below graph gives some indication of that effect, although I don't know if it's possible to derive the exact annual return herefrom.
  
• It's not certain that I or someone else will create the said wild-animal organization. If not, I could potentially fall back to VO anyway. But in that case I would have forgone the greater rates of return from donating early.
• VO is very efficient, especially benefiting from economies of scale. I'm pretty certain I could never reach the same number of people per dollar. Of course, the point is that my message would presumably have higher expected impact per person than VO's, but I'm not sure how much. Many people need to get to vegetarianism before they can even consider wild animals.
• Donating now reinforces my self-image as someone who cares about these matters. I do find it unlikely that I'll become selfish; once I started caring about suffering in the world in 8th grade, I've never since contemplated not devoting my life to it. But these things can change, and I don't want to be overconfident that it won't happen to me.
• Placing all my eggs in the basket of my own wild-animal organization is cognitively burdensome insofar as it requires that I follow through with the idea and do a good job in order to justify the forgone donations. I'm not psychologically ready to implicitly commit to that task by adjusting my saving strategy.

Also: I also usually recommend that other people donate to VO instead of my future organization because the probability of them saving and actually following through on the latter seems pretty small in most cases. A bird in the hand is worth several in the bush.

Gedusa wrote:Honestly, the insect suffering thing seems likely to be perceived as very far out by the average person, or even the average ethicist-veg*an-utilitarian-transhumanist person.

Hmm, that's unfortunate. Even transhumanists, you say?

Gedusa wrote:"Hey guys, let's kill insects nicely!"

Yeah. Well, I do think it's a great idea.

Gedusa wrote:I'd rather concentrate on cultivating moral sentiments toward certain higher animals and then let that grow in a normal sort of progression

Does the same apply with respect to cultivating sentiments toward factory-farmed animals prior to wild animals?

Thanks for the answers to the questions!

@Not saving and donating to VO instead:
Is there an upper limit on tax deductions? I'm guessing no.
The number of booklets doesn't really give a tremendously good indication of how good the multiplier is - we'd need data on no. of activists created per thousand booklets, average amount of time spent being an activist by such people, whether the activists created were "good" ones (utilitarians) or "bad" ones (deep ecologists or something). It helps us guess, but there is still a lot of room for doubt about how decent the multiplier is.
And as to the organization failing/never starting: aren't utilitarians not meant to be risk-averse? Or am I missing something there?
Is reinforcing your self-image worth $15,000/yr (sounds flippant when I say it like that, but I guess it might be important if taken with all the other factors).
Your last point is totally understandable. Though it doesn't quite get you off the hook, it might be that you should save the money and fund someone else to run the organization - though I suppose then you have the responsibility of finding someone good at it.

It seems like your implicit thinking is something like: "VO is around half as valuable as a potential future wild animal charity - taking into account likelihood of possible non-existence of that charity, multiplier effects, tax deductions etc." (I'm not sure how to count your other points into this). I say this because that accounts for you giving what you do every year so that it's doubled and not for giving any more - even though more money would also be subject to multiplier effects, tax-deductions and so on. And it accounts for not giving any less - which rationally you would if the value of VO were less than half that expected value of the wild animal charity.
Ways to think more about this: Would you give more if I offered to pay VO $1000/yr iff you did too? If your employer discontinued your matching grant programme (and you couldn't move employers) - what would you do?
I can't help but think this all seems inconsistent somehow. Maybe it's just that you're human and running on corrupt hardware - having to adjust for various biases and so on. So maybe a matched $15,000 is psychologically useful, as you say.

Many people need to get to vegetarianism before they can even consider wild animals.

I didn't - I nodded along to the wild animal parts of the Hedonistic Imperative and never really considered how it applied to factory farmed animals until (several years) later. Though I'm likely atypical.

Okay - I'm willing to accept that a majority of transhumanists would be able to get your point of view, in the sense of being able to understand why you care about insect suffering. But they'd probably still disagree with you that insect suffering is at all an important problem, as opposed to curing ageing or preventing extinction or just living the lives they intended to lead (not every transhumanist is terribly altruistic obviously).
Killing insects nicely is a good idea. I'm just not sure it's the best idea

Does the same apply with respect to cultivating sentiments toward factory-farmed animals prior to wild animals?

Hmm. Yes. Probably Morality would be easier to force in that direction - it's more mainstream for one and so we might have to do that whole getting rid of factory farming thing before we do the other one.

Gedusa wrote:Is there an upper limit on tax deductions?

There is, but it's high (50% of AGI), and you can carry over extra donations to subsequent years.

Gedusa wrote:It helps us guess, but there is still a lot of room for doubt about how decent the multiplier is.

Agree.

Gedusa wrote:Is reinforcing your self-image worth $15,000/yr

No, don't think so. If that were the only factor, I wouldn't do it.

Gedusa wrote:it might be that you should save the money and fund someone else to run the organization - though I suppose then you have the responsibility of finding someone good at it.

There's the rub. I don't know of someone else who would run the organization, else I might well just keep making money and let that person do the work. (Do you know of anyone? Would you like to do it? )

Gedusa wrote:II say this because that accounts for you giving what you do every year so that it's doubled and not for giving any more - even though more money would also be subject to multiplier effects, tax-deductions and so on. And it accounts for not giving any less - which rationally you would if the value of VO were less than half that expected value of the wild animal charity.

Right. And there may be anchoring effects too, but oh well.

Gedusa wrote:Ways to think more about this: Would you give more if I offered to pay VO $1000/yr iff you did too? If your employer discontinued your matching grant programme (and you couldn't move employers) - what would you do?

First question: Yes. Second question: I would likely stop donating (except maybe token amounts to maintain relationships, etc.).

Gedusa wrote:Maybe it's just that you're human and running on corrupt hardware

Yes. Or more like corrupt software, actually.

Gedusa wrote:I didn't - I nodded along to the wild animal parts of the Hedonistic Imperative and never really considered how it applied to factory farmed animals until (several years) later.

Nice point! Though presumably you cared about animals, at least in theory, before HI? By "getting to vegetarianism," I mean partially just "caring about the suffering of the easiest animals to care about (big mammals and birds)."

I see your point - finding a decent person to run things is conceivably hard. And I don't really know of anyone who could do it. And I don't want to do it But thanks for the possibly not entirely serious offer!

Nice point! Though presumably you cared about animals, at least in theory, before HI? By "getting to vegetarianism," I mean partially just "caring about the suffering of the easiest animals to care about (big mammals and birds).

I think I did care about animals - certainly cute petlike animals, and I think I had a generalized objection to cruelty to most animals. Except insects. Hated insects. I certainly didn't think of getting rid of wild animal suffering was particularly important though - I was more human focused then.

Okay, that seems consistent. Thanks!

*Shuts up to invite more people to comment on the main (pretty interesting) question*

Hello,

Alan, it seems to me that a wild-suffering non-profit would appeal almost exclusively to already-vegans (if not vegans in practice, then in beliefs). This would mean that it'll likely draw its resources (activists+cash) at the expense of other next-best non-profits that address animal suffering such as VO/MFA.

In order to attract people to the idea, I think there need to be concrete examples of things the potential org. would do (or would it begin by focusing solely on researching this question?)

Could you say more about what is it that you expect such an organization to do off the bat?

Gedusa wrote:possibly not entirely serious

Nice string of adverbs.

Gedusa wrote:Okay, that seems consistent. Thanks!

What in particular? I didn't catch that part.

Hi eithi,

Welcome to Felicifia! Thanks for joining the discussion.

eithi wrote:Could you say more about what is it that you expect such an organization to do off the bat?

Great question! Yeah, at the start, I think the org would primarily focus on outreach and perhaps research, in part because it would be too small to take on bigger projects. Just by writing about these topics in my free time, I've come across at least ~15-20 people who are very supportive of wild-animal-suffering meme promotion, and I bet there are many more out there. Some people don't need a lot of persuasion -- just explaining the idea in the right way.

Some possibilities for outreach:

• Forum discussions (expanding to other forums for philosophy, animal rights, atheism, neuroscience, etc.).
• More web activity -- a better website (?), Facebook links, YouTube videos (?), and other social media outlets that I haven't yet thought about.
• Possibly academic conference papers, although the expected benefits would have to be assessed.
• Contacting professors and especially grad students -- in environmental ethics, animal welfare, economics (?), cognitive science, entomology -- to (a) ask their opinions on these topics and (b) see if they'd be willing to research / write papers on the subject. This research could be about wild-animal suffering in general, or assessing the welfare of particular wild animals, or studying how much insects suffer in various circumstances, etc.
• Email newsletter / blog for people interested in the topic.

Feel free to add to (or subtract from) my list!

As far as the real-world projects, one idea that I mentioned I like is promotion of humane insecticides, because it is concrete, but it simultaneously pushes the envelope on people's circle of compassion. If people care about insects (at least in proportion to their probability of being sentient), then the dominance of suffering in nature becomes more apparent. This project is (sort of) an intervention in the wild, at least in the sense that these animals aren't confined by humans, but it's simultaneously far more cost-effective than, say, rescue operations to help sick or starving caribou (which are probably less efficient than improving animal welfare in factory farms).

In the longer term, it's possible that people with academic or popular clout could be drawn toward these ideas (e.g., an animal philosopher or activist leader). Coauthoring a paper with an entomologist or animal-welfare scientist could help improve the seriousness with which people take the idea (although some people don't take academics all that seriously anyway ).

eithi wrote:This would mean that it'll likely draw its resources (activists+cash) at the expense of other next-best non-profits that address animal suffering such as VO/MFA.

True. I think the wild-animal cause would probably be more worthwhile per dollar, and some of the donations might come from people who give to suboptimal animal-welfare charities, but this is a valid cost to keep in mind.

eithi wrote:Alan, it seems to me that a wild-suffering non-profit would appeal almost exclusively to already-vegans (if not vegans in practice, then in beliefs).

Interesting. What do you make of Gedusa's point that transhumanists (and I think also Dawkins-type athiests) can be drawn toward the cause without passing through the vegetarianism detour?

Alan Dawrst wrote:True. I think the wild-animal cause would probably be more worthwhile per dollar, and some of the donations might come from people who give to suboptimal animal-welfare charities, but this is a valid cost to keep in mind.
...
Interesting. What do you make of Gedusa's point that transhumanists (and I think also Dawkins-type athiests) can be drawn toward the cause without passing through the vegetarianism detour?

I think for both of these points we need to look at the kinds of claims the non-profit would make. I think you've laid out nicely the probabilities involved. However, the second, and perhaps just as important variable, is the equivalence claim (e.g. "death by pesticides is as bad as spending, say, 2 days in a factory farm"). And this I think would be hard for many to accept.

More clearly, for most people to come to take potential-insect-suffering seriously, they must have already taken mammal/bird/fish suffering seriously - something which will reflect in forming vegan beliefs. If people retain such a huge 'discount' of pain as intelligence decreases so as to remain non-vegan, it's hard to see how they would be sympathetic to claims about importance of insects.

Finally, it's difficult for me to come to estimate the accuracy of such claims. I think it's plenty controversial to make much weaker claims (e.g. farmed fish experience 50% of the suffering of a pork pig per day). My gut reaction (perhaps a remnant of speciesist non-scientifically-informed feelings) is that if insects did feel pain, the equivalence ratio would be much greater than the above (maybe 1000 pesticide-deaths beginning to approach a day on a factory-farm).

These considerations would bring suffering/dollar amounts closer to VO's, and also present hurdles for non-vegans to be sufficiently supportive.

Just for fun: Here is an article that plagiarizes several paragraphs from "Humane Insecticides: A Cost-Effectiveness Calculation." I don't mind; I find it amusing.

The passages are rather out of context. Most of the piece deplores human environmental destruction, but in between are these sentences: "One's immediate reaction to this fact might be to try to limit use of pesticides on farms and lawns so that humans kill fewer insects. However, if insect lives aren't worth living, this may be precisely the wrong thing to do, since the insects killed by pesticides would have died in other (probably painful) ways, and pesticides prevent--at least temporarily--the existence of new insects that would otherwise have lived miserable lives."

I do like this quote at the beginning of the essay: "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." Abraham Lincoln

Hey Alan,

Just a quick reply: you seem to be predicating your preference for VO on a mostly instinctual belief that one best changes people’s moral views about X1 by trying to persuade them of X2 – a closely related, more socially acceptable but seemingly analogous ethical perspective. My view in preferring other causes is that 1) where we think they’re reasonable, it’s better to persuade them of X – an underlying view from which X1 and X2 naturally follow (obviously utilitarianism in our case) and 2) where we think they’re not particularly reasonable, it’s much more effective to give them an economic incentive for accepting X2 (or rather, an economic disincentive for rejecting it).

Re 1), I wonder how much our (your and my) metaethics bear on our positions. I think of util, properly understood, as simply a more consistent way of looking at the universe than any alternative we could possibly consider, whereas you seem to think of it as a more personal position – you like happiness, and think more is good/less bad, ceteris paribus, but don’t seem to think that there’s anything fundamentally undergirding your view other than your own motivation (am I representing you about right?). In which case it would make sense that I’m more optimistic of persuading people to come to util than you. But even if you’re right, there could still be value in just trying to persuade people to adopt your motivations without giving them a watertight proof that util is ‘correct’ (and in any case, I don’t think the ideas of ‘correct’ and ‘wrong’ actually fit into a util worldview – only models whose adoption seems to improve/diminish happiness. Ie for me util is simply a collective set of axioms which we can lose sight of)

Re 2), this is an empirical question. We should think of a way to quantify it, and then seek relevant data.

Arepo wrote:a mostly instinctual belief that one best changes people’s moral views about X1 by trying to persuade them of X2 – a closely related, more socially acceptable but seemingly analogous ethical perspective.

Well, almost. In fact, I would prefer to promote X1 directly, as Gedusa and I discussed. However, there's currently no US charity that promotes X1, and I think promoting X2 is probably at least half as good at promoting X1.

Arepo wrote:where we think they’re not particularly reasonable, it’s much more effective to give them an economic incentive for accepting X2 (or rather, an economic disincentive for rejecting it).

Hmm, I'm not sure what kind of economic incentives could be established in this case. The shift in people's attitudes regarding wild suffering has to extend for centuries into the future, until post-humans reach the stage where they start making these crucial decisions (about panspermia, lab universes, sentient simulations, etc.).

Arepo wrote:but don’t seem to think that there’s anything fundamentally undergirding your view other than your own motivation (am I representing you about right?). In which case it would make sense that I’m more optimistic of persuading people to come to util than you.

Exactly. That's also why I fear what social values posthumans might adopt unless we do our work now.

Who knows, maybe they'll start regarding baby eating as the pinnacle of morality:

"They developed psychological adaptations for enforcing that, their first great group norm. And those psychological adaptations, those emotions, were reused over the course of their evolution, as the Babyeaters began to adapt to their more complex societies. Honor, friendship, the good of our tribe - the Babyeaters acquired many of the same moral adaptations as humans, but their brains reused the emotional circuitry of infanticide to do it.

"The Babyeater word for good means, literally, to eat children."

[Note: This is not a scenario I'm actually worried about. It's just to illustrate a point about other value shifts that are more troublingly plausible.]

Arepo wrote:But even if you’re right, there could still be value in just trying to persuade people to adopt your motivations without giving them a watertight proof that util is ‘correct’

True. However, I worry that utilitarianism might be too abstract for most people, and the philosophy is actually not required in order for society to begin having second thoughts about multiplying suffering in nature by spreading wildlife throughout the universe. But I do agree that advocating a utilitarian approach to moral questions is quite valuable. In fact, its promotion of elements of utilitarianism is probably what I like most about SIAI. (Reduction of extinction risk is what I like least.)

Alan Dawrst wrote:Hmm, I'm not sure what kind of economic incentives could be established in this case. The shift in people's attitudes regarding wild suffering has to extend for centuries into the future, until post-humans reach the stage where they start making these crucial decisions (about panspermia, lab universes, sentient simulations, etc.).

I was thinking of X2 as being food animal suffering, hence New Harvest improving the economic incentive for people to admit concern for greater numbers of animals. While there are plenty of animals society neithers eat nor emphasises with, the psychological benefits to an omnivorous diet does push us to draw a line between animals we care about an animals we don't. Remove our incentive for actively making food animals suffer, and it seems like you remove at least some of our incentive for drawing any such line.

True. However, I worry that utilitarianism might be too abstract for most people, and the philosophy is actually not required in order for society to begin having second thoughts about multiplying suffering in nature by spreading wildlife throughout the universe. But I do agree that advocating a utilitarian approach to moral questions is quite valuable. In fact, its promotion of elements of utilitarianism is probably what I like most about SIAI. (Reduction of extinction risk is what I like least.)

Even aside from my philosophers' itch to settle this issue, it's an interesting one. I would guess I feel less empathic motivation than the average person, and judging from the Antisocial Response thread, I'm not wildly unusual among utils in that respect. If so, it seems to imply that we psycho utils (PsUs?) intuitively understand something that you empathic utils (EmUs ) don't, even if we haven't yet found a way to express it as a proof, or that there's some common mistake that regularly fools non-empathic people into behaving like empaths. Either way, it seems like there's some value in finding that proof/mistake and propagating it - although if it's the latter, we all seem to have a vested interest in making helping the EmUs stop the PsUs from learning too much about it. Unfortunately, it inevitably seems to be the PsUs who're interested in finding it...

This is slightly off-topic, but on some college campuses what is needed is better access to low-cost vegan food. At a uni near me, I have found only two vegan meals at restaurants on campus (most campuses here have private, fast-food restaurants and no longer have the school-run cafeterias that existed 20-30 years ago). There are places off campus that offer vegan food (but it is more expensive).

I would like to see a vegan restaurant that is designed to appeal to the masses. In the U.S., I think the perception that many guys have is that vegan food is for sissies, and they think "foreign" food is "weird." Perhaps a fast-food restaurant that sells something like roasted-nut sandwiches and does not sell any tofu or Asian food. Maybe it would have to sell French fries and other fatty foods to appeal to the masses--not ideal but it might be a first step.

Arepo wrote:the psychological benefits to an omnivorous diet does push us to draw a line between animals we care about an animals we don't. Remove our incentive for actively making food animals suffer, and it seems like you remove at least some of our incentive for drawing any such line.

Yep. At that point, the line would be drawn between animals with which humans interact (treated okay for the most part) and wild animals (treated badly for the most part).

I do think the expected value of New Harvest for the wild-animal meme is positive. I just don't think it's as positive per dollar as Vegan Outreach.

By the way, here's a comment from a friend: Why is in-vitro meat much better than meat substitutes already available? Maybe people think it's more nutritionally complete? Or they claim to like the taste better? The point being that even once in-vitro meat comes along, it might take some time for people to switch. There will likely be die-hards who refuse "fake" food for several decades out.

Arepo wrote:I would guess I feel less empathic motivation than the average person

Very interesting! Without meaning to sound pretentious, I would guess I'm within the highest 15% of humans in terms of empathy.

rehoot wrote:I would like to see a vegan restaurant that is designed to appeal to the masses. In the U.S., I think the perception that many guys have is that vegan food is for sissies

One thing I find unfortunate is when people describe vegetarianism as "eating more vegetables" and represent it with pictures like, say, this one, advertising Vegucated. While it has the best of intentions, it unintentionally reinforces the stereotype that vegan food has too little protein, etc. And as you say, for those who want fast food, there had better be vegan fast food available.

I guess there are some campaigns to get more humane fast food. For instance, here is one where you can add a comment encouraging Subway to offer veggie-meat sandwiches. And I already linked to a letter campaign encouraging McDonald's to use CAK. (Not perfect, but one step forward.)

Alan Dawrst wrote:By the way, here's a comment from a friend: Why is in-vitro meat much better than meat substitutes already available? Maybe people think it's more nutritionally complete? Or they claim to like the taste better? The point being that even once in-vitro meat comes along, it might take some time for people to switch. There will likely be die-hards who refuse "fake" food for several decades out.

I think it very much is the taste - and smell. I'm a vegetarian who loves meat, and I hardly touch Quorn and the like. Its texture is ok, but it just tastes like so much stodge. There's also no comparison between the smells of eg frying Quorn and frying bacon.

If IV meat tastes, smells and feels much like the real thing, and is cheaper, I confidently predict people will buy it en masse. Sure there'll be a few die-hards who'll refuse on obscure ethical grounds, but those types of people surely tend towards veganism anyway, judging by the way organic cafes/shops tend to be very veggie friendly and vice versa.

Very interesting! Without meaning to sound pretentious, I would guess I'm within the highest 15% of humans in terms of empathy.

If it's empathy alone that motivates you to utilitarian actions I'd imagine you're much more unusual than that.

Arepo wrote:Sure there'll be a few die-hards who'll refuse on obscure ethical grounds, but those types of people surely tend towards veganism anyway,

Not ethical grounds, but "eww, yuck!" grounds. And macho "give me real animals" grounds, connoisseur grounds (think foie gras and veal), religious grounds (would it be kosher? halal?), safety grounds, etc. As far as natural-foodies, they do eat their share of chicken and eggs as well.

Arepo wrote:If it's empathy alone that motivates you to utilitarian actions I'd imagine you're much more unusual than that.

Yes, it is by empathy alone. However, my notion of empathy includes triage and "shut up and multiply," which apparently isn't always the case. I just don't see how you can feel for the suffering of others without wanting to prevent as much of it as possible.

Browsing Project Gutenberg, I came across an ad for fake meat contained within a 1905 book, The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition, by A. W. Duncan. Not bad for 106 years ago.

Sure there'll be a few die-hards who'll refuse on obscure ethical grounds

My parents seem to be against it on the grounds that it's unnatural and therefore unhealthy.

I did some opinion polling in my social circles and on informal internet communication forums unrelated to the topic. The unnatural and unhealthy arguments are brought forth, but the general consensus on vat meat seems to be: If texture, taste, nutrition and health risks are all equal to real meat and it is cheaper, then it will be accepted by the majority.

Furthermore: Compassion for non-human animal suffering seems to be almost a non-factor in the majority's food choices, unless you show them videos of direct torture that stimulates the mirror neurons. That leads to emotional reactions, which are often transient however, and don't lead to long-term behavoir changes for the majority. Wild-animal suffering is almost always ignored completely, intervention is seen as immoral aggression against wild animals, or evaluated in completely human-centric cost-benefit terms. My prediction is that the ethical intervention meme almost certainly won't carry, no matter how many leaflets you distribute.

Hedonic enhancement for animals by invasive technologies like genetic engineering is almost universally rejected on a gut level. Sometimes it is opposed because it is unnatural, disrespectful to the animals, or because of concerns about side-effects. A minority rejects it because it could serve as an excuse for continuing the abuse of animals. A rational comparison to the status quo (which is clearly worse imo) doesn't seem to carry much intuitive weight for most people.

Personally, I find that some soy products are near perfect substitutes for some meat products regarding texture and taste, but not nutrition. Some meat products simply don't have substitutes yet (I've never seen satisfying vegan salami pizza in any store for remotely acceptable costs)

Thanks, HT.

Hedonic Treader wrote:Wild-animal suffering is almost always ignored completely, intervention is seen as immoral aggression against wild animals, or evaluated in completely human-centric cost-benefit terms.

Do you mean by your friends? Or by vegetarians?

Hedonic Treader wrote:My prediction is that the ethical intervention meme almost certainly won't carry, no matter how many leaflets you distribute.

Fortunately, we don't need to convince most of the population. Each additional supporter adds a little bit of weight to the faction of people who care about the issue. So if, for example, post-Singularity resources were divided in proportion to population (or to wealth/power), then having a few more wild-animal interventionists would allow for a little bit more in the way of computing cycles for research, ecology-altering robots, share of wild land that's allowed to be depopulated of animal life and replaced with utilitronium, or whatever else would be useful.

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Hedonic Treader wrote:Wild-animal suffering is almost always ignored completely, intervention is seen as immoral aggression against wild animals, or evaluated in completely human-centric cost-benefit terms.

Do you mean by your friends? Or by vegetarians?

Sorry for this delayed reply. I meant by the set of people who care enough about wild animals to discuss the issue in some depth. It's often just ignored or brushed away with a cached naturalistic rationalization (it's okay or even optimal because it's the natural status quo). When it is discussed, intervention is often seen as hostile. People overestimate the degree to which animal behavior can be interpreted as an expression of rational preference. For instance, I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that fleeing from humans is evidence that wild animals like their lives exactly as they are (where in reality, it's almost certainly just an anti-predation instinct). And many people only rarely update on the counter-arguments, which is a huge problem.

Hedonic Treader wrote:My prediction is that the ethical intervention meme almost certainly won't carry, no matter how many leaflets you distribute.

Fortunately, we don't need to convince most of the population. Each additional supporter adds a little bit of weight to the faction of people who care about the issue. So if, for example, post-Singularity resources were divided in proportion to population (or to wealth/power), then having a few more wild-animal interventionists would allow for a little bit more in the way of computing cycles for research, ecology-altering robots, share of wild land that's allowed to be depopulated of animal life and replaced with utilitronium, or whatever else would be useful.

Sorry, of course you're right. I'm just not sure it's the most efficient use of resources, at least beyond a certain point. People change their minds less often then they think, and it's also possible to reach a point where they feel more annoyed than informed.

Finally, I have some information from New Harvest. I've contacted them seven months ago to ask some questions about their funding, here are some of the answers, in case they're of interest to you:

>Is there a way to see the total funding, and how it is distributed for research projects (and some more information about the nature and aims of those projects)?

Total funding over the last year was less than $50,000. 100% went to research at Oxford University to pay for this study:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es200130u.

>Is there any independent controlling or accountability review of how the funding are used?

No, because of our small funding we do not pay for audits.

>Will the funded research most likely lead to privately held patents?

No

Thanks, HT!

Hedonic Treader wrote:It's often just ignored or brushed away with a cached naturalistic rationalization (it's okay or even optimal because it's the natural status quo). When it is discussed, intervention is often seen as hostile. People overestimate the degree to which animal behavior can be interpreted as an expression of rational preference. For instance, I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that fleeing from humans is evidence that wild animals like their lives exactly as they are (where in reality, it's almost certainly just an anti-predation instinct).

You seem to understand these things. How can we create more people like yourself?

Hedonic Treader wrote:

Total funding over the last year was less than $50,000. 100% went to research at Oxford University to pay for this study:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es200130u.

Good to know. I'm certainly ambivalent about the idea of funding a study extolling environmental benefits. Still, I do think climate change is probably net bad. But the land use that meat implies is probably net good.

From Pablo's shared items I came across a fascinating study: "Don't Mind Meat? The Denial of Mind to Animals Used for Human Consumption."

I'll leave it to readers to see the abstract for what the study was about. I'll just remark that Figure 3 on p. 6 is fairly impressive. (Note that the y-axis doesn't start at 0, so the difference isn't as big as it looks, but the difference in the meat group is still big compared with the difference in the fruit group.)

Also from p. 6:

Finally, there was a nonsignificant trend for participants in the meat sampling condition to experience more negative affect (M = 2.03, SD = 1.12) than participants in the fruit sampling condition (M = 1.84, SD = 0.96), t(119) = 1.01, p = .321. To determine whether it was related to mind attribution we constructed a measure of change in mind attribution by subtracting mind attribution at T2 from mind attribution at T1 such that positive scores indicated reduced attribution at T2. Change in mind attribution was negatively correlated with negative affect (r = –.19, p = .035) such that the more people denied mind at T2, the less negative emotion they experienced.

Regarding meat substitutes, the Vegan Outreach blog pointed to an interesting article in Meat & Poultry journal: "Are meat analogs in industry’s future?." There, Bryan Salvage extols the benefits of fake meats and says

Who better to make meat analogs than meat processors themselves?”

[I]nnovative meat analog products keep entering the marketplace and are something to take note of [...].

These are just a few meat analog products on the market and they are impressive [...].

The effect size of putting meat (as opposed to fruit) in front of people (for later eating) is to reduce average ratings of the mental capacity of the slaughtered animal by a third of a point on a seven point scale (page 6). Not a huge effect, but the differences between "appropriate to eat" and "inappropriate to eat" animals (page 3) is only a couple of points.

CarlShulman wrote:a third of a point on a seven point scale (page 6)

Yep, it's not huge. But the in vitro meat supporters would say that even a few percentage points multiplied across a large segment of the population (once in vitro meat takes off) is non-trivial.

I wonder if the effect size would be even smaller if the study had used in vitro meat as the control instead of fruit, because people might still feel residual guilt from eating something associated with animals, even if the meat itself never belonged to an animal with a conscious mind.

My prior (based on historical analogies, survey data, observation of rationalizations, etc) was that in vitro meat would probably be enough to get eventual bans on non-in-vitro meat. This study seems to me to be grounds for a slight positive update in favor of that hypothesis.

New Harvest is now seeking a director.

They write:

Salary: $50,000 base, plus 10% of raised funds. Compensation limit of $120,000 per year.

In 2011, they wrote to me:

Total funding over the last year [i.e. 2010] was less than $50,000.

If correct, they now seek a director with a salary base exceeding their total funding of 2010. The only reasonable explanation I can see is that their funding expectations have grown very rapidly?

Seems that way. I wonder how much they expect to bring in this year? This relates to Ruairi's discussion on returns to fundraising.

Ruairi and I are having an excellent discussion on a thread in the Facebook group on Reducing wild-animal suffering. I thought I would crosspost it here so that it can be preserved within the context of the VO vs. NH discussion.

Ruairi wrote:Re vegans spreading darwinian life to other planets;

"It may be because of a different reason. People heavily engaged in abolishing factory farming have emotional/personal and perhaps strategical reasons to ignore wild animals. The utilitarians I know who thinks/thought that meat eating may be justified accepted the importance of the wild animals question directly when I told them about it, or raised it independently. In contrast, some of the vegan utilitarians I've talked with did not accept it as easily." - Jesper Östman

I think this definintely happens!

Alan Dawrst wrote:Thanks, Ruairí. This is a really important discussion to have.

Why do you think the vegans in Jesper's example opposed intervention in the wild? Do you suppose it's caused by their conversion to veganism, or is it just correlated? I suspect it could be due to either or both.

Vegans who are not also interventionists may have motives to assume that wild animals are net happy and that human interference couldn't make things better, because if they don't assume that both of those are true, then the "defensive omnivore" argument that "you should also be worrying about wild animals" will go through. This is a sufficiently non-mainstream and perhaps uncomfortable position that some will resolve the dissonance by rejecting intervention.

But the sword cuts both ways. If the argument is true, then some vegans _will_ accept it, and that's the whole point. Indeed, Adriano and Lukas appear to be two such vegans who realized that their position had implications for wild animals. (Correct me if I'm mistaken.) Indeed, a large fraction of the people here are in this position.

Veganism very naturally leads to concern for wild animals, because vegans are claiming ("arrogantly," as some anti-interventionists might say) that certain animals have lives so bad that they would be better of not having been born. But this is precisely the position of some of us with regard to small wild animals as well. So veganism is a sufficiently strong position that once you adopt it, you either have to maintain a rosy view of nature, or you have to also accept intervention. Some vegans go one way, and some go another way.

A second possibility is that, in my experience, vegans are more emotional and less rational than many other people with similar demographics. Yes, this is a stereotype, and I hope no one is offended, but I think it's plausibly true. However, a personality trait like this isn't the type of thing that would have primarily come from being vegan; it's more the sort of personality trait that leads one to become vegan in the first place. Therefore, at the margin, if we create new vegans, we should expect most of them to be more "normal" than the population of current vegans is.

Talking abstraction is good, but it's also useful to look at what people on-the-ground are saying when they're affected by veg messages. Who's against animal cruelty? is the landing page for the veg ads currently run by The Humane League, and you can see over 1000 comments by viewers. (The cumulative total is in the tens or hundreds of thousands of comments, but the comments have to be cut off periodically for some reason.) You'll see that most people don't seem stridently and ideologically committed to veganism. Many of them are normal people who are shocked by animal cruelty and feel bad about it. That's the kind of thing that I think will plant the seeds of sympathy for animal suffering more than ecological idealism. Any thoughts?

I'm curious about the precise math involved in justifying donating to VO instead of saving to start your own reducing wild animal suffering (RWAS) organization. I'm skeptical that it would work out favorably for donating to VO. I'm posting this message because I think it would be great to have an RWAS organization and you have the knowledge and passion to do a great job at developing one. Let's very conservatively say that there is several trillion times more suffering in nature than in factory farming. Let's also say that right now, less than 1% of the people whom VO convinces to become vegans actually ever give any thought to the topic of RWAS. I understand that you have uncertainty that you'd be able to start an RWAS organization. I think you can do it but, for purposes of discussion, let's very conservatively say there's only a 1% chance of it working. I think if you factor into the equation how much more suffering there is in nature and how small a percentage of the people that VO impacts actually currently or ever will think about RWAS, the math will start work out more favorably for starting your own RWAS.

Thanks so much, LJM1979! This is a common question, and the more it's asked, the more I think you guys have a point.

You probably saw that Gedusa said something very similar earlier in this thread, and I replied here.

There's no question that suffering in nature swamps the calculations, so let's ignore suffering on factory farms entirely. The question is then whether my company-doubled donations to Vegan Outreach and The Humane League can compare with non-doubled donations by others to my hypothetical RWAS group.

It's not the whole story just to look at the fraction of converted vegans who go on to work on wild animals in the short term. Building antispeciesism is a multi-step process, so even if 99% of vegans don't work on wild animals right now, the growth of veg*ism is important for helping WAS prevention take off later. Some of the success of an RWAS group would be standing on the shoulders of the other antispeciesist giants before them.

That said, I do think an RWAS group would be a better use of money dollar for dollar, and I do think it's essential that such a group is formed. Exactly how that happens isn't clear yet, but I think it's unlikely such an organization won't exist within 10-15 years.