Hi guys I just joined the forum so I wanted to introduce myself!

I'm from Germany, studying maths and "Future Planet Studies" in Amsterdam and secretly I've been a utilitarian for quite a while I guess . One day my economics professor told us that there is a name for this philosophy as well and I could finally learn more about it. That was about the time I discovered effective altruism too. It was kind of the same story: I wanted to be an effective altruist for a long time and considered earning to give since I was 12 or so . I thought that "Future Planet Studies" would teach me how to make the world a better place, but with hindsight I have to say that EA did a way better job at that.

At first I really wanted to tackle poverty and global health. After reading Peter Singer's essay, watching "Farm to Fridge" and having a half-drunk emotional moment in a bus in Macedonia ( )I decided that my actions would be more useful if dedicated to non-human animal well-being. And that I had been very wrong about eating meat.

I am a total utilitarian, not particularly positive or negative leaning. I realize though that to this day it is likely that suffering has been overwhelmingly dominating on our planet, mainly because it was so successful in Darwinian evolution. Thanks to the effective altruism community utilitarianism is more than a philosophy to me now and I want to do my very best to change the world for the better. I am also open to the possibility that utilitarianism as we know it today is not the real thing yet. We know so little about the arising of hedonic states that I think new discoveries may change our understanding of them. Maybe algorithms have emotions? Maybe stones? Who knows?

Next to non-human animals I care a lot about far future issues including x-risk, AI, dystopian and positive scenarios, transhumanism and anything I haven't yet discovered. I am particularly interested in the question how big the impact of animal activism on the far future may be AND how that compares to various kinds of influcence on x-risk, friendly AI, value-spreading, policy and other things I'm not aware of yet.

I've been reading a bunch of threads on felicifia and I want to join the discussion. I often have ideas about effective altruism, philosophy, x-risk etc. that I want to discuss with other people. Felificia may be a good place to start, because many clever people are here and it's a more practical medium than FB and maybe even LessWrong.

I recently started doing a bit of volunteering for Effective Animal Activism and New Harvest. I hope to do more of that in the future. These may be good ways to do some of the things I expect to be most effective: Winning new people (EAs, animal activists, x-riskers), fundraising and marketing/influence.

Some more fun facts about myself: I like to party, dance and travel and right now I should actually be preparing for my trip to Belgium tomorrow!

Cheers!
Sören

PS: Add me on FB "Sören Simon Mind"

Hi Soren, welcome

I am also open to the possibility that utilitarianism as we know it today is not the real thing yet. We know so little about the arising of hedonic states that I think new discoveries may change our understanding of them. Maybe algorithms have emotions? Maybe stones? Who knows?

Would that necessitate a different form of utilitarianism? It seems like the current version is flexible enough that if we discover inert objects/abstract concepts that have experience, we'd be motivated to promote their welfare.

A

Arepo wrote:Hi Soren, welcome

I am also open to the possibility that utilitarianism as we know it today is not the real thing yet. We know so little about the arising of hedonic states that I think new discoveries may change our understanding of them. Maybe algorithms have emotions? Maybe stones? Who knows?

Would that necessitate a different form of utilitarianism? It seems like the current version is flexible enough that if we discover inert objects/abstract concepts that have experience, we'd be motivated to promote their welfare.

A

I agree. I should have specified what I mean by 'Utilitarianism as we know it'.

Welcome!

What is volunteering for New Harvest like?

Welcome Soren! You can friend me and others on facebook also.

peterhurford wrote:Welcome!

What is volunteering for New Harvest like?

Hi Peter,

My task was is to find private donors originally. No specific instructions, because they are just starting out. In June they created an amazing google spreadsheet that lists all the tasks and their progress and everyone can work on it. It lists things like recruiting volunteers, increasing their ranking on Google, run FB-ads, and finding donors, foundations and other contacts. So when I have time I can also help with any of these tasks.

What do you think the opportunity for New Harvest to get grants is like?

Do you know of any for-profit companies investing in animal welfare technologies (eg meat substitutes)?

peterhurford wrote:What do you think the opportunity for New Harvest to get grants is like?

I wouldn't say that I have inside knowledge on this, but generally I don't see why not. NH is very small, with only one full-time employee and maybe they have to grow a bit and have more concrete action plan to get better chances. This seems to be important for foundations. It is hard to judge for me however if foundations would judge the current plans as sufficient. NH have recently made a track record of achievements which might be useful for getting a grant. Grants are not the first priority at the moment, because NH needs money short-term to survive. Finding and approaching private donors and elaborating the fundraising strategy are higher on the priority list right now. This is what the Google Doc says about the fundraising strategy:

"We are developing a fundraising strategy (see PowerPoint slides). Any feedback/ ideas/ comments would be very much appreciated so that we can refine it further. Especially: which other potential donor groups exist which may support New Harvest or research?"

I read you are volunteering for Effective Fundraising so maybe you have a comment? I can also share the 2nd quarter Team update via email. It contains a lot of info about how NH works.

Arepo wrote:Do you know of any for-profit companies investing in animal welfare technologies (eg meat substitutes)?

Beyond Meat work on plant based meat alternatives (effectiveanimalactivism.org/beyond-meat). There's also Beyond Eggs. Modern Meadow tries to develop 3D-printed meat and I think they are for-profit too. They have been funded by Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs at least which only fund for-profits to my knowledge.

Sören Mind wrote:NH have recently made a track record of achievements which might be useful for getting a grant.

What is NH's track record? I've heard you're gearing up for a cool event...

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Sören Mind wrote:because NH needs money short-term to survive.

Is NH in danger of not having enough funding? What would NH do with more funding? (I'd be potentially interested in donating to NH, but right now I don't have much money to donate right now and I have very high standards for organizations I donate to, so I don't know if it would be worth the work to chase me down.)

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Sören Mind wrote:Finding and approaching private donors and elaborating the fundraising strategy are higher on the priority list right now.

How do you plan to do that?

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Sören Mind wrote:"We are developing a fundraising strategy (see PowerPoint slides). Any feedback/ ideas/ comments would be very much appreciated so that we can refine it further.

What slides?

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Sören Mind wrote:I read you are volunteering for Effective Fundraising so maybe you have a comment?

Yes! Right now, we're still a very experimental organization, so we don't have solid advice to offer yet. Right now, our preliminary research indicates that grant fundraising is the most promising, so have begun to attempt grant fundraising for Against Malaria Foundation and The Humane League. But our preliminary research is not all that strong.

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Sören Mind wrote:I can also share the 2nd quarter Team update via email. It contains a lot of info about how NH works.

That would be wonderful. My email is peter@peterhurford.com.

peterhurford wrote:What is NH's track record?

It's going to be published soon, along with a short article on EAA's blog. I will mail it to you as well. I think that will be an important step for informing people on New Harvest!

peterhurford wrote:Is NH in danger of not having enough funding? What would NH do with more funding? (I'd be potentially interested in donating to NH, but right now I don't have much money to donate right now and I have very high standards for organizations I donate to, so I don't know if it would be worth the work to chase me down.)

Yes, sadly, this was shared in a recent newsletter and also in the EA facebook group I think. The main expense right now is for staffing, more precisely for Isha, who is the only paid employee. If the funding is too low she has to reduce from full-time to part-time or volunteer. That would be bad though because NH has been getting a lot of important work done since Isha works full-time.
At the moment I'm donating monthly to EAA and I have been thinking about donating to NH but I'm undecided. I think it's important that there is more info about NH, e.g. on the EAA blog. I could imagine that some people would like to donate in the current situation if they had more information.

peterhurford wrote:How do you plan to do that?

Good question. I should say here that my involvement with NH is still very shallow and I'm not sure if my time should be spent on EAA or learning something else instead. The mission right now is to identify more potential private donors and make a list with contact details etc. More experienced volunteers will approach them. They have approached Phillip Wollen for example who was not interested though. On the celebrity front we've already made a list of famous/rich vegans and activists that can be approached. It's hard to say how promising that is. I think some donors could be found on sites like veganforum.com or facebook forums including the EAA and EA group. As I said my involvement is still too shallow to give you a really good overview.
There's a bit more info on the fundraising strategy in the file I sent you.

I'll mail you the slides and the track record. If anyone is interested you can ask me, but you can't share the files further without asking Isha first

peterhurford wrote:Yes! Right now, we're still a very experimental organization, so we don't have solid advice to offer yet. Right now, our preliminary research indicates that grant fundraising is the most promising, so have begun to attempt grant fundraising for Against Malaria Foundation and The Humane League. But our preliminary research is not all that strong

Great, I hope that some time EA organizations can learn from Effective Fundraising! And maybe even the other way around or who knows, maybe some cooperation could happen?

The tasting of the first cultured meat burger happened today by the way! I heard that NH brought the research team and the anonymous philanthropist together who donated 250k to make the project happen. I couldn't say though whether this wouldn't have happened without NH's help

Sören Mind wrote:I will mail it to you as well.

Thanks for emailing me the materials. I don't have time to review them yet, but I will soon!

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Sören Mind wrote:The main expense right now is for staffing, more precisely for Isha, who is the only paid employee. If the funding is too low she has to reduce from full-time to part-time or volunteer. That would be bad though because NH has been getting a lot of important work done since Isha works full-time.

That makes sense. Why has it been so difficult to get further funding?

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Sören Mind wrote:I think it's important that there is more info about NH, e.g. on the EAA blog. I could imagine that some people would like to donate in the current situation if they had more information.

I agree.

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Sören Mind wrote:I should say here that my involvement with NH is still very shallow and I'm not sure if my time should be spent on EAA or learning something else instead.

I think that's an important consideration. EAA is very promising and could also use quite a bit more staff time to get it off the ground. I'd be happy to talk to you about this in more detail if you think it would be useful (I'm also thinking a lot myself about what I want to do in the future), but I'm not close enough to NH or know enough about you to know if you being in NH is worthwhile.

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Sören Mind wrote:Great, I hope that some time EA organizations can learn from Effective Fundraising! And maybe even the other way around or who knows, maybe some cooperation could happen?

I agree!

I do think that NH work might be a very effective use of my time, especially since volunteer time is really needed right now. I am not certain about the expected impact of NH as a cause and it could easily be lower than THL/VO, but just as easily higher. I have read some discussions on the subject but I think we should discuss this issue more thoroughly some time. Especially as soon as there is new info about NH available to everyone.
In expectation my involvement with NH would seem very worthwhile, but I have to compare it to my other options. If I can do more for EAA soon I would choose that.

EAA is very promising and could also use quite a bit more staff time to get it off the ground. I'd be happy to talk to you about this in more detail if you think it would be useful

I do! I actually don't know much about the internal affairs at EAA yet and it would be great to hear what you think about their impact. I think they have huge potential.

It seems like if there's a risk of it going under, that drastically increases the marginal expectation of supporting it (at least assuming a good chance of stabilising it).

Hey! !!

We're already friends on facebook, but you may like to add the people in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=422&hilit=facebook

Sören Mind wrote:I do!

We could set up a time to Skype if you'd like. If you're interested, Facebook message me or email me peter@peterhurford.com

peterhurford wrote:

Sören Mind wrote:I do!

We could set up a time to Skype if you'd like. If you're interested, Facebook message me or email me peter@peterhurford.com

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