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Letter from EAA's new Executive Director - Jon Bockman

Jon Bockman, Tuesday 16th April, 2013

Hello everyone! This is my first month as the Executive Director of EAA, and I couldn’t be more excited. Public interest around concern for animals is rapidly gaining momentum. Change is afoot, and I’m proud to lead this innovative organization in maximizing the efforts of animal advocacy.

I have always been drawn to working with and for animals. Like many other advocates, my career has progressed through a variety of fields - I have spent years working as a caretaker at an animal shelter, a humane investigator, and a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Once the magnitude of farm animal suffering dawned on me (the eventual result of receiving a Vegan Outreach booklet), I decided to refocus my efforts. I founded the non-profit Justice For Animals to organize local outreach events, and to give consumers easier access to vegan products, I formed a small local vegan food business.

As I gained experience, I began to question if I was helping animals in the most effective way. The more I studied the issue, the more it became clear that animal activists didn’t have access to significant market research and empirical studies on the efficacy of our actions. We needed an organization to provide reputable guidance to activists on where they should focus their efforts, as well as guidance to donors on where they should contribute their funds. In short, we needed Effective Animal Activism.

I am thrilled to join EAA in pursuit of these most crucial goals. We have a great deal of work ahead of us, but we will succeed. With your support, I look forward to embarking on this essential and exciting journey.

Warm Regards,

Jon

Veg Research – The Value and the Need

Anonymous, Sunday 3rd February, 2013

Nick Cooney is the Founder and Director of The Humane League - an EAA top charity - and the Compassionate Communitites Manager at Farm Sanctuary. He's also the author of Change of Heart, which is about how we can use an understanding of psychology to make social advocacy more effective (we recommend it!).

As a member of 80,000 Hours, we asked him to share his thoughts on how to use an 80,000 Hours approach to approach causes more effectively.

Note that Nick's views do not represent those of Farm Sanctuary

Cow_image

The Problem

For-profit companies (including the meat, egg, and dairy industries) spend countless dollars each year on market research to figure out the best ways to persuade the public to consume their products. Vegetarian advocacy organizations have until recently spent virtually nothing to determine the best ways to persuade the public, despite the fact that their entire success as a movement depends on getting individual members of the public to change their dietary behavior. Until things began to change this past year, there had been virtually no research on the impact of various programs (i.e., no formal comparing of veg advocacy programs against one another to determine which are most cost-effective), and also no component testing of specific aspects of a program (for example, does video A or video B persuade more people to go vegetarian?).

Additionally, while there is a body of useful academic research on vegetarians, it remains cloistered in unread journals where it is of no use to advocates or advocacy organizations. Furthermore, many studies provide information that is only marginally useful to animal advocates. The curiosities of academic researchers usually do not line up with the pragmatic needs of vegetarian advocacy organizations. (I should note here that I've authored a book that analyzes the body of research that has already conducted, and distills its useful lessons for veg advocates.)

Thankfully, the tide is now starting to change. In just the past year at least three organizations in the United States - The Humane League, Farm Sanctuary, and the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) - have begun evaluating some or all of their veg advocacy programs and approaches for comparative cost-effectiveness. And the Humane Research Council has been commissioned by several organizations to test the relative effectiveness of different veg advocacy videos, why many vegetarians go back to eating meat, and other things. But there is much more work to be done.

Why Research Is So Important

Research on vegetarian advocacy (and on vegetarians themselves) is important because animals' lives are important. Knowing that video A creates more dietary change than video B, or pamphlet A creates more dietary change than pamphlet B, can make an organization's veg advocacy work more effective. To use just one example, millions of dollars are currently spent on veg video and leaflet distribution. Identifying the most effective leaflet and video, and/or improving its effectiveness by even 10%, would spare hundreds of thousands of additional animals a lifetime of misery.

And such comparisons, as well as general program measurement, need not be expensive or time consuming. I recently oversaw a Humane League/Farm Sanctuary joint study that examined (for the first time) the dietary change impact of leafleting a college campus, and that also carried out an A/B split test on the effectiveness of two different leaflets. The entire study cost nothing other than a week of staff time and a few days of volunteer time to enter and crunch the data. And it yielded incredibly useful results that have altered decisions at both organizations and that will help spare the lives of many, many animals.

More broadly, research on the impact of vegetarian advocacy programs forces organizations to realize that certain programs are dramatically more effective than others. Hopefully that will guide future spending and prioritization, just as it most certainly would for any for-profit business. How many animals are helped per dollar of expenditure through an undercover investigation? What about through a media campaign? What about through in-person lectures? Research can answers these questions and help the vegetarian movement become much more efficient at sparing lives. Research on vegetarians themselves can help organizations target key demographics that are likely to switch more effectively, use messages that are more likely to inspire dietary change, and so forth.

Why Is Vegetarian Research Only Now Starting to Catch On?

If you were to ask any vegetarian advocacy organization "Would you like your program to become 10, 20, 30% more effective with just a small amount of extra work?" you'd expect them to jump for joy. But we humans are creatures of incredible habit, and it's so hard for us to do something we have not done before.

We assume we know what works and what doesn't, based on anecdotal evidence, instinct, and so forth. We always want to put what money we have towards programming itself (an understandable desire). We feel pressed for time and loathe to take on something new when we don't know (from experience) that the results will be useful. We don't know where we would begin with research, or exactly what questions it could answer for us. Probably the biggest factor of all is that it just isn't on our radar. We haven't done it before, we don't know of many other people doing it, so the thought has barely crossed our mind. Thankfully, that is all changing now, at least in the United States. Precedent has now been set, with a growing number of the top vegetarian advocacy organizations beginning to carry out research that is guiding budgetary decisions and helping improve their cost-effectiveness.

How Can You Help?

If you work for a vegetarian advocacy organization, especially one with paid staff and financial resources, carry out research to the extent possible. It's not hard to learn how to carry out meaningful, valid research, and you can always seek guidance from the Humane Research Council or from other organizations that have already done similar research. (Or from me, I'd love to help! Just drop me a line at ncooney@farmsanctuary.org .)

Most importantly, compare the programs you are running to see how cost-effective each one is so that you may shape future budgets accordingly. All of us would agree that the right thing to do for animals is spend money on the program(s) that will help the most animals. So hopefully we will all agree that it's imperative for us to take the time to find out which is which! Secondly, consider what researchable answers would enable you to make your most effective programs even more effective.

If you are a student or professor interested in carrying out research to help the vegetarian advocacy movement, speak to a top vegetarian advocacy organization and ask them what would be most useful to them. Sadly, there are many more-or- less useless dissertations and studies that well-meaning (and probably vegetarian) students and professors put an incredible amount of work into to answer a question that they theorize would enable veg advocates to do a much better job, but which ends up being of little practical value. The most pressing and most useful research is likely to be identified by organizations themselves, and it is often simple research on what approaches and programs create more dietary change per dollar.

And again, if you are interested in or considering carrying out any sort of research, I'd love to chat with you! You can reach me at ncooney@farmsanctuary.org.

Here's to the important and growing trend in the vegetarian advocacy movement of turning to research to improve our effectiveness and save more animals!

Career Advice for High-Impact Activism

Anonymous, Tuesday 29th January, 2013

Nick Cooney is the Founder and Director of The Humane League - an EAA top charity - and the Compassionate Communitites Manager at Farm Sanctuary. He's also the author of Change of Heart, which is about how we can use an understanding of psychology to make social advocacy more effective (we recommend it!). As a member of 80,000 Hours, we asked him to share his thoughts on how to create impact with your career.

Tree

So you want to do the most good you can in life. Great! Adopting a thoughtful view where you try to do the most good you can in everything (what job to have, where to donate, how to use the limited resources you have, how to live your life) is probably the most important step you can take. Since you're visiting this website, I imagine it's a step you've already taken.

But what comes next? What career path offers the opportunity to do the most good in the world? While I would definitely not claim to be an expert on the subject, here are the best thoughts that I can share with you.

The Issue

Naturally, one of the most important questions is what issue to focus on. Your view on this may change in time; mine certainly did.

During most of college, the majority of my work was focused on social justice and environmental activism. Eventually, however, I realized that it was in the area of our planet's use and abuse of animals that there was both the greatest amount of physical and mental suffering, and the opportunity to reduce the greatest amount of physical and mental suffering. (I do think that population control efforts, particularly when focused on the industrialized world, may offer a similar or possibly greater reduction in suffering for the same costs.) Certainly anti- poverty efforts offer the potential to do enormous good as well, though as best I can tell not to the same level as those other two issues. It's certainly possible to choose a career path prior to settling on the issue or issues you see as having the highest impact, since most advocacy skills are translatable across fields. The most important thing is continually honing the approach: how can I, and how can this cause, accomplish more good?

  1. College - I attended a mid-range (in terms of educational ranking) University on the outskirts of New York City. When applying for colleges, I didn't apply to Ivy League universities because I wanted to go to a school that I thought would have a more diverse student body, which it did. If I could go back in time though, and were I ever to attend graduate school, I would absolutely choose as prominent a school as possible - in the U.S., Yale or Harvard. Why? Because of the connections. One of the most important things that you can take from University, aside from the credentials that can allow you to make money to donate, is connections. Given the number of future influencers, future wealthy individuals, and future politicians and business leaders that occupy elite schools, what better place to both make your mark in the short term (by constant on- campus advocacy) and long term (through cultivating and maintaining friendships with as broad a range of people as possible, and not just those who agree with you on social or other issues).

  2. Choice of Major - What major is most useful to having a high impact? One way to approach things is to pursue the major that in the long term will allow you to have the highest income, so that you can donate a maximum amount of money to effective charities. Just imagine if, say, Warren Buffet, were a devoted vegan or devoted supporter of efficient anti-poverty efforts. While few will ever become billionaires, it's certainly conceivable that entering certain business, finance, medical or law fields can net you an income of hundreds of thousands to a million dollars a year within a decade or so after college. The amount of good you can do with an income like that is incredible. And, you'd likely be connected with many other extremely wealthy and powerful individuals, which also has great value. If this is your approach (and it is a very, very good approach), the best thing to do would be to consider your skills and potential, examine the average earnings of various fields, and pursue the career with the highest earning potential (and a high likelihood of reaching that high earning potential).

On the other hand, if your goal is to work directly in the advocacy field, choice of major is - in my opinion - generally irrelevant. My depth of experience is generally confined to the field of animal advocacy, but in surveying that field as a test case it's clear to me that the most effective advocates do not have any particular educational background. What makes them so effective is their hard work ethic; their utilitarian approach; their great social skills; and their tactician's ability to get things done and move other entities in the right direction. None of these things will be learned in the classroom, regardless of your major.

The skillset that will improve the total impact of any field of advocacy, whether it is animal advocacy, anti-poverty efforts, or anything else, is not a particular major. (Sorry lawyers, business students, and everyone else! Though from the right school those can be helpful credentials for getting you into positions of influence.) It's those qualities I mention above. And it is building up your intelligence of what works and what doesn't in that field, so that after years of experience you can help drive the field, or part of, in a smarter direction. Once that is the case - once you are sure that you can do a better job than others in position of influence - then you can do what is needed to insert yourself into as powerful a position as possible, so that you can do the most good for the world.

But keep in mind this is not book or theoretical knowledge, it's learned from experience. Advocacy movements only respond to, people who carry out a better approach, not describe one. Academics have virtually no impact whatsoever, regardless of how great (or groundless) their theories and suggested refinements are. Skills are learned through doing, succeeding, failing, and - most importantly - always trying to emulate those who are doing things best, and then improving upon them.

The one exception I'd point out in terms of career is pursuing a career where you can bring about technological fixes to social problems. For example, if there were even 5-10 smart young advocates who decided to pursue a career in food science with the sole goal of hastening the production of commercially viable in vitro meat, the results could be incredible. (Although, by the same token, if you can take a very high paying job you can just hire others to do this work for you. However there is something to be said for the passion that goes with doing something yourself, so having animal advocates working on this issue would likely yield much quicker results than hiring non-animal advocates who are only doing the work for the paycheck and the scientific curiosity.)

Certainly similar technological breakthroughs may be able to help alleviate other social and environmental issues. One other example of a technological advancement that could eliminate a massive amount of suffering is the development of simpler, cheaper sterilization procedures or contraceptive drugs, such as this work currently being done in India. I do believe that the most significant advances in bettering the world will come about in large part through technological solutions (pushed into being sometimes by ethical motives, sometimes by financial).

So there you have it! While I have no particular qualifications for providing career advice for maximum social impact, I hope you'll consider the above and I hope it is of use to you! Feel free to email me at ncooney@farmsanctuary.org if I may be of any assistance.

Should Veg Activists Use Health Arguments?

Ben West, Friday 4th January, 2013

Discussions about how we can best advocate for veganism often take place between ethical vegans, so (unsurprisingly) the conclusion is usually that ethical arguments are the best approach.

For example, the Animal Activist's Handbook calls health-based arguments "problematic" and urges readers to focus on ethics-based approaches. No less an authority than Mahatma Gandhi said in his book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism:

I notice also that it is those persons who become vegetarian because they are suffering from some disease or other - that is, from the purely health point of view - it is those persons who largely fall back. I discovered that for remaining staunch to vegetarianism a man requires a moral basis.

Like a lot of marketing advice, these theories are usually justified by an appeal to intuition, and like most such appeals I suspect that they aren't well supported by the facts.

A review of US meat consumption found that health information (as measured by the number of articles published in medical journals about the bad effects of cholesterol) had a stronger effect on demand than even price changes. A similar review of Canadian meat consumption found that government recommendations to eat less meat appear to have a significant impact. Concerns about cholesterol have sent the demand for butter and eggs plummeting. As Oprah fans know, information about the unhealthfulness of beef causes a huge drop in beef consumption - without increasing the consumption of pigs or chickens.

In a survey by the Vegetarian Journal, 82% of readers stated that they became vegetarian for health reasons, and among adolescents a vegetarian diet seems to be linked with a desire for weight control. This is confirmed by the Vegetarian Times' survey, which found that the majority of self-described vegetarians do it for health reasons. In a psychological survey of the origins of vegetarianism, the authors found that slightly less than half of vegetarians originally quit eating meat for health reasons. Vegetarians of all stripes are significantly more likely to be concerned about health aspects of their food.

And we shouldn't think that someone who becomes veg*n for health reasons will be less committed. An attempt to understand the process of becoming vegetarian found that slightly more than half the subjects were vegetarian for ethical reasons, but "health vegetarians became increasingly aware of animal welfare issues and this reaffirmed the transition." Indeed, the initial ethical/health distinction seems to fade over time as ethical vegetarians become more interested in health, and vice versa.

Unspeakably more depends on what things are called, than on what they are. - Friedrich Nietzsche

It's critically important to consider here too the benefit gained from advocacy that is not "vegan advocacy." You probably have heard of pink slime, a filler used in ground beef. The public outcry sent beef prices plummeting, causing at least one producer to declare bankruptcy. Several lawsuits regarding E. Coli-infected beef caused Topp's Meat Company to file for Chapter 11 a few years ago. The Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company went bankrupt after an investigation by the Humane Society of the US caused the largest beef recall in history - not because of animal cruelty violations (which were horrendous), but because of health concerns.

Bruce Schneier has said that no one should be concerned by what's on the news - if it's newsworthy, it's by definition unusual, hence it almost certainly won't affect you. This is a fact which a lot of advocates seem to forget. Pink slime is probably no worse than any other type of meat, yet some combination of branding, luck and timing caused tremendous economic damage to the beef industry. Similarly, your chance of dying from E. Coli even during an "outbreak" compares favorably with that of being struck by lightning, yet we find massively expensive recalls happening on an almost weekly basis.

So we have to be extremely careful when evaluating things like the evidence that vegan diets help with long-term weight loss. They stack up pretty well when compared to the competition, but the fact that they aren't overwhelmingly better than anything else doesn't necessarily mean that the health argument fails veganism.

Maybe health benefits aren't the best way to present veganism. Certainly there is a subgroup of people that is more responsive to ethical arguments than health ones, and we have to be careful about change which moves people from one type of animal consumption to another (although the evidence seems to indicate that this is less of a problem than one might think). But I hope I've convinced you that this is not something which can be decided by navel-gazing - it needs to be decided empirically, by doing surveys, handing out pamphlets and measuring what works.

If you are interested in learning more about health-based arguments for veganism, PCRM is a good place to start.

What's the Rush? Giving Now Instead of Later

Pat, Saturday 15th December, 2012

Most charities spend money as quickly as they receive it, while most US-based foundations pay out just five percent of their assets each year, the legal minimum. Which strategy does more good? The answer matters to you as well as to non-profit organizations: you can give away your money as you earn it, or you can invest it in a donor-advised fund (DAF) and allow it to grow indefinitely before donating it. DAFs offer tax savings and require that the funds be given to charity; that means that you won’t be tempted in the future to blow your charity dollars on a sports car or yacht.

One factor in whether to give now or later is the expected rate of return on investments. From 1950 to 2009, the S&P 500 index (a broad measure of the US stock market) returned 7 percent a year after inflation. At this rate, an investment of $10,000 would grow to about $212,000 over 50 years after fees and inflation.* But the stock market may be less profitable in the future: Jeremy Siegel, the author of "Stocks for the Long Run" and a prominent advocate for investing in stocks, forecasts inflation-adjusted returns of around 5 percent a year. This lower rate of return would cut the expected value of a $10,000 investment in 50 years to $82,000 after expenses and inflation.

Delaying your giving would increase the amount you could donate, but each dollar would probably do less good. When charities spread concern for animals, the animal-welfare movement gains activists and donors. This growth helps even more people to be reached, so an additional supporter today may be worth several in the future. Another reason to give now rather than later is that factory farms may disappear owing to competition from plant-based or lab-grown meat alternatives. If this were to occur, the remaining giving opportunities might be less cost-effective.

Although you would probably do more good by donating to the best animal-welfare charity today than you would by investing the money and donating it later, you might be unsure about which charity that is. Charities that make a big difference are the exception, not the rule, which is why EAA has prioritized research on effectiveness. If you think further research would cause you to give to a different organization, waiting might make sense. Most people, however, would find giving money to a DAF less fulfilling than donating to a charity. Because of this, and because the returns on donating may outstrip those on financial investments, donating now is probably the better choice for most people.

* Fidelity, Vanguard, and Charles Schwab—the three biggest providers of DAFs—all charge the same administrative fee to small investors for this service: 0.6% a year on the first $500,000. I deducted this amount, plus 0.1% a year for mutual-fund expenses, from the annual-return figures.

New Veg Ad Video by Farm Sanctuary

Eitan, Friday 7th December, 2012

According to our best evidence, the current top intervention to reduce animal suffering is online veg ads. As discussed in a recent blog post, it is crucial to to make these ads as effective as possible. EAA's top charities both use the Farm to Fridge video, after trial-and-error refinement supported its effectiveness compared to other existing videos, further confirmed by HRC's recent study.

Joining in on online veg ads is the new 'What Came Before' video: http://www.whatcamebefore.com/ - a page recently put up by Farm Sanctuary.

What Came Before - meet someone you'll never forget

While this video shares many of the upsides of Farm to Fridge, especially in its powerful undercover footage of factory farms, it also uniquely employs a number of techniques highlighted in the (highly recommended) book Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change by Nick Cooney, founder of one of EAA's top charities: The Humane League.

For this reason, in the near future EAA will look to collect data on how effective this new video is in comparison to other existing videos, and we'll publish the results here.

So in the meantime, as animal activists:

1. Take a guess and tell us what you believe the results will be: more effective or less effective than Farm to Fridge?

2. Share the new page - http://www.whatcamebefore.com/ - on social media, to help increase traffic, which will help increase the potential data set for surveying its effectiveness.

Job Openings - EAA is Hiring!

Eitan, Monday 19th November, 2012

join us

If you’re here, you probably have some idea of what EAA is about. We’re trying to build the world’s first online resource and international community for people who want to reduce animal suffering effectively. That’s a big project, and we’re growing fast.

If you’d like to help us out, now’s your chance: EAA is hiring! The first stage of the recruitment process is specially designed to be really quick- you’ll fill in a little bit of basic information and then answer one question in 200 words or less. Everyone we’ve tested the question on thought it was pretty fun - although it does take a bit of serious thinking.

We’re currently looking for an Executive Director. To find out more, click here.

If you're not quite ready to work for us, there are plenty of other ways to Get Involved! Or if you have any questions, Contact us.

Other Recent Openings in Effective Altruism:

EAA is a project of 80,000 Hours. In addition to an EAA Executive Director, 80,000 Hours is looking for a Head of Fundraising and External Relations and Head of Career Advice and Research. For information about these positions, please click here.

If you are interested in Effective Altruism in general - not limited to the Animal cause - you might also want to check out positions at our sister organizations working on global poverty: Giving What We Can and The Life You Can Save. For more information on these other roles click here.

If you have any questions, email: recruitment@centreforeffectivealtruism.org

Other Recent Openings in Animal Activism:

The following are some additional recent openings in Animal Activism. While these are not positions at our top charities, they may nonetheless prove to be promising ways to make a big difference for animals with one's career. For more advice on career choice, please visit our careers page.

New Harvest is seeking a Director.

Humane Research Council is seeking a Research/Communications Coordinator.

FARM is seeking 10 Billion Lives Tour Staff.


Interview with Brian Tomasik

robertwiblin, Saturday 10th November, 2012

Brian Tomasik is a member of Effective Animal Activism and 80,000 Hours who has spent many years thinking and writing essays about how to most effectively reduce suffering in the world. Robert Wiblin sat down with Brian (metaphorically) to learn about his intellectual journey and at times unusual conclusions.

Brian Tomasik

What were the initial influences that led you to care about doing as much good for the world as possible?

I grew up in a family that cared about social issues. However, I wasn’t terribly interested in them myself until late 2000, when I saw a speech by Ralph Nader at a local college. Nader’s speech wasn’t just about politics narrowly defined, but also about the extraordinary amounts of suffering (or, in his words, “injustice”) in our world and the amazing ability that young people have to make a difference – especially educated young people living in the most powerful country on the planet. Inspired by Nader’s example, I became a really good student, and I led many social-activism clubs and projects at my high school.

Later, in spring 2005, I heard the word ‘utilitarian’ and didn’t quite know what it meant, so I looked it up. I was delighted to discover that there was a name for the philosophy of cost-benefit analysis applied to happiness and suffering that I had been following for the last few years. I soon found utilitarian.net and read Peter Singer’s work on animals. Previously I had believed that non-human animals couldn’t consciously suffer, but Singer persuaded me otherwise, and it soon became obvious that animal suffering was the most important current issue due to its sheer scale. This is true even when we consider just animals raised for food – there are ~24 billion livestock at any given moment and at least a trillion fish slaughtered per year – but is even more the case if we count wild animals, which outnumber domestic animals by many orders of magnitude.

What were the first steps that you took in the direction of effective altruism?

There’s not a black-and-white distinction between effective and less-effective altruism, so I wouldn’t say that it began at a single point. During high school, I was really struck by statistics about how the number of preventable deaths due to mundane causes were orders of magnitude higher than deaths due to things like terrorism that people worry so much about.

Around 2005, the altruistic value of money became very clear to me. I remember reading one optimistic estimate that $500 spent on certain HIV-prevention programs could save a life, and similar suggestions were echoed in Singer’s writings. I also began thinking about “replaceability’” in career choice – i.e., that if I get a salary while working at a do-gooder nonprofit, it means someone else won’t be filling that role. (The details of replaceability considerations are more elaborate, which is why Benjamin Todd has now written a whole thesis on the subject!) So, while I had originally assumed I would pursue a life as an activist or policy analyst in the future, I began to see the merits of making money to donate. I talked about these ideas with many friends and wrote an editorial on the subject for my school newspaper, and as it turns out that is what I’ve ended up doing so far.

… And what are you doing now?

After a lot of career exploration and research, I decided I wanted to focus on statistics and machine learning. I’m in the Core Ranking division of Bing, the Microsoft search engine, which tries to improve the relevance of the ‘ten blue links” (i.e., the main algorithmic search results). Not only is the work interesting (it’s a lot like being a scientist, without the messy lab work), but the atmosphere, daily schedule, and culture of the team allow a lot of freedom for me (I even have a treadmill in my office that I use for a few hours a day while working). And the pay is quite good, which is important from the perspective of being a professional philanthropist.

Microsoft has a “matching contributions” program that doubles any donation I make to a tax-deductible charity up to $12K per year. This is one of the more generous matching programs I know of. Each year, I max out this limit by donating to Vegan Outreach and The Humane League, and sometimes I give a little extra. The remainder of my income that doesn’t go toward taxes, rent, food, and other costs of living is divided between donations to a donor-advised fund (so that I can get more tax deductions without committing to a charity just yet) and buying stocks as personal savings (in case I need to spend money on projects that aren’t part of a 501(c)(3) at some point in the future).

Do you find it difficult to maintain your commitment?

The answer is “no, I don’t find it difficult,” but this isn’t due to any great powers of will on my part. Caring about the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it just come naturally, for which I’m very lucky. I’m not enticed by material possessions or expensive adventures, and my family was a little bit poor while growing up, so I am naturally frugal.

Reducing suffering has been my main priority in life for ~12 years, and I don’t expect the feeling to die away any time soon. That said, you can’t always control where your emotions take you, so it’s important to embed yourself in social and environmental situations that will reinforce your motivation. Becoming friends with like-minded people, such as the members of 80,000 Hours or the contributors to Felicifia, can be extremely helpful, both because we learn from each other and we keep each other interested in topics that matter. It can also be useful to build altruism into your personal identity, so that you’ll feel more intrinsic motivation toward it and will be less likely to let it go. Donating earlier rather than later can be a good step in this regard – also because it gets you into the habit of giving and ensures that you don’t have loads of spare cash that you might be tempted to spend – although I recommend considering a donor-advised fund or even private trust if you expect your wisdom to improve over the coming years faster than the social rate of return on the donation.

How do those altruistic efforts intersect with your relationships with friends, family and colleagues, or your other plans in life?

Activism has definitely enhanced my friendships. Caring about suffering inspired me to talk to lots more people than I would have otherwise, both because (a) it showed me how important it is to learn from other people in order to improve the accuracy of your world-views and (b) talking with others is an opportunity to get them excited about crucial issues. Probably ~200 of my friends on Facebook I’ve met through nothing other than our shared interest in altruism. I find that with altruism, there’s an abundance of fascinating people that I want to meet and talk to about all kinds of topics.

Religious and spiritual lecturers often talk about “living for a higher purpose,” and I don’t doubt that working to reduce suffering taps into the same neural circuits. It’s quite possible that I’m happier and more fulfilled than if I had never thought about suffering and was still playing video games. (But probably not too much happier, in light of the hedonic treadmill.)

I have noticed that online you are extremely courteous and friendly when discussing altruism and ethics with others. Is this a conscious effort or just your personality? Do you have any advice on what attitudes make our ideas persuasive and community attractive to others?

Why thank you! This comes mainly from personality but involves some conscious effort, and these two components feed on each other over time.

Almost always I mean what I say. I honestly love the fact that people are interested in debating important ideas, even if I don’t agree with those ideas. At the very least, people deserve props for saying whatever they think, so that the rest of us can learn more about their psychology. So when I reply “Interesting point, Rob” or “Bill, thanks so much for the comments,” I’m being genuine, and this response comes naturally.

What’s more, I find that being friendly actually helps me to be less biased. When someone posts an argument with which I disagree, there can be an immediate reaction against it and a desire to find fault. But when take a step back and think about what the argument gets right, I often see at least a sliver of merit to it, and so when I reply to say where and how much I agree with my interlocutor, this not only makes the conversation more positive, but it makes it much easier for me to change my own mind about the issue.

Finally, yes, I do find that being polite is often the best way to “win friends and influence people.” I highly recommend Dale Carnegie’s classic book from which that phrase is taken. It’s interesting that some of the principles of friendship that Carnegie elaborates are similar to principles of rationality as expressed in places like LessWrong. For example, Carnegie’s advice to “Let the other person save face” is not unlike Eliezer’s ”Leave a Line of Retreat.” Both recognize that people need to feel emotional safety before they can consider changing their minds. There are some other nice books on the psychology of social change besides Carnegie’s, including Change of Heart by Nick Cooney.

I think probably it’s good when our community doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and occasionally admits to being fallible humans rather than perfect saints, although there’s no need to dwell on this excessively. I also recommend being thoroughly honest, continuing to seek better answers, focusing on important issues rather than minor details, and having a whole bunch of fun in the process. When we have fun doing good work, it shines through and can be infectious.

You started a popular website utilitarian-essays.com. What is the story behind that, and what impact do you think it has had?

My 11th-grade English teacher introduced me to formal philosophy and assigned his class to write a short philosophical essay each week. I got into the habit so much that I kept writing philosophical essays after the course ended. Eventually I had a collection of them that I shared with friends, and in 2006, when I first contacted David Pearce, he encouraged me to put the essays online. He gave me my website for free and he and his IT guru James Evans continue to host it without charge to this day.

Creating this website was the best thing I’ve ever done from the perspective of benefit-per-unit-cost. Since 2007, the site has had 120,000 unique visits, including ~23,000 during 2012 alone (or about 120 per day). This is just something I did in my spare time, so I imagine that more focused web development and social marketing could have many times the impact in spreading awareness of issues like wild-animal suffering.

You currently make your own charity recommendation, to an organisation that promotes veganism and animal liberation. How did you conclude that that was the best option?

I recommend donating to Vegan Outreach and/or The Humane League, especially for people in the US, for whom the donations are tax-deductible. In immediate terms, these organizations prevent a huge amount of suffering for farm animals. For example, The Humane League can use marginal donations to fund advertisements promoting vegetarianism – so called ‘veg ads’ - which I conservatively estimate to prevent ~120 days of suffering on factory farms and 20 additional fish deaths per dollar. The number could plausibly be several times higher. However, I think the much bigger reason to fund veg outreach has to do with wild animals. Suffering in the wild is orders of magnitude greater than all other suffering on Earth.

What’s more, post-humans might multiply the amount of wild-animal and other non-human suffering through activities like terraforming, directed panspermia, sentient simulations, running suffering subroutines, and (speculatively) creating new universes in labs. I think it’s crucial to build a movement to give animals greater weight in moral calculations, by spreading concern for animal suffering, and Vegan Outreach and the Humane League are existing charities which do that efficiently thanks to the scale of its operations. Take a look at some of the comments left by viewers of the landing page for veg ads, and you’ll get a sense of how many people can have their hearts and minds opened at low cost (~10-20 cents per click in the US, and as low as ~2 cents per click in some countries).

That said, in addition to promoting ethical sympathy for animals, we also need to make it clear that preserving and spreading natural habitats is not necessarily a good thing for animals, and in fact is probably net harmful, especially when we consider that nearly all animals die painfully within a few days of being born on account of r-selective reproduction. For this reason it will be important to create an organization that popularizes the suffering of animals in the wild specifically, and I plan to switch my donations to this group when it arrives. In the meantime I do think ‘veg outreach’ is extremely efficient, and it reaches a huge audience of people who may not be ready for “stranger” ideas about our ethical obligations to, say, minnows dying from parasitism.

What are you planning for the future?

I’m very excited by the rise of possibly the first animal-welfare metacharity, Effective Animal Activism, which assesses the cost-effectiveness of different interventions focused on reducing animal suffering. I helped advise the founders of the organization this past summer, and I’m continuing to support its growth. We’ve had some promising early successes encouraging more donations to The Humane League and Vegan Outreach and spreading knowledge about the best ways to campaign for vegetarianism. We’re currently looking to find a full-time Executive Director for the organization.

Next year I also plan to support another new nonprofit called Animal Ethics. It aims to research and raise awareness about the ways in which animals suffer at the hands of humans but also in nature. The focus on suffering in the wild is what will make Animal Ethics unique compared against all existing animal charities, and we hope to begin shedding more light on this long-neglected topic.

In general, the growth of the effective-altruism movement in the last 1-2 years has taken my breath away. Earlier it had seemed like I was just one of a few close friends on utilitarian forums and email threads making plans for more concrete altruistic organization in the long-term future; now it appears those plans have already begun happening, much faster than I ever expected. The growth of membership in the movement has been explosive, and I can’t any longer keep track of all the amazing projects that are going on. Seeing this makes the haste consideration more viscerally salient. I’m super-excited for what the future of the movement to reduce suffering effectively will look like.

It has been great talking to you!

Original Post in 80,000 Hours: http://80000hours.org/blog/116-interview-with-brian-tomasik

You might also be interested in:

Top Animal Charities and Climate Change

Ben West, Sunday 14th October, 2012

Abstract: I argue that EAA's Top Charities are not only efficient at preventing the suffering of animals on farms, but also good candidates among the best charities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change presents a difficult challenge, as well as a tremendous moral responsibility, to those concerned about the future of our planet. Not only is it expected to cause the extinction of a third of all species within the next forty years[1], but it has been estimated to give our own species a one in ten chance of extinction in the next century[2].

The magnitude of this threat means that we need to take climate change seriously. With a trillion sentient beings on our planet[3], even a slight reduction in extinction risk could potentially save a large quantity (and presumably quality) of lives. Furthermore, if life cannot recover from  the imminent disasters caused by climate change, then a truly mind-boggling cost will have been incurred, for a tremendous number of beings will never exist[4].

It's recognized that one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions is animal agriculture[5] - but how effective are EAA's Top Charities at reducing the risk of climate change?

Online ads undertaken by The Humane League and Vegan Outreach have been estimated to create one vegetarian-year (i.e. one person going vegetarian for one year) for about $11. A vegetarian prevents about 1.5 metric tons of C02-equivalent emissions per year[6]. meaning that these ads decrease emissions at an approximate cost of $7.40 per ton[7].

How does that stack up against conventional environmental charities? Several organizations allow you to purchase "carbon offsets", which are investments in alternative energy and carbon "sinks" like trees, which will decrease CO2 emissions by a given amount. Carbonfund sells offsets at the cost of $10/ton[8] and Terrapass sells them for around $13/ton[9].

So, even ignoring the animal welfare benefit of these charities and focusing solely on enivironmental impact, The Humane League and Vegan Outreach come out ahead of some mainstream "environmental" organizations!

There are a wide variety of charities/issues we can support, and much more research needs to be done to find the best one. But at least in the case of animals and environmentalism it appears that we might not have to choose: EAA's Top Charities may be great across both categories.

     References
     1. Thomas, Chris D., Alison Cameron, Rhys E. Green, Michel Bakkenes,
Linda J. Beaumont, Yvonne C. Collingham, Barend F. N. Erasmus, et al.
“Extinction Risk from Climate Change.” Nature 427, no. 6970 (January 8,
2004): 145–148.

     2. Bostrom, Nick. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.”
Global Policy (forthcoming).

     3. Tomasik, Brian. “How Many Wild Animals Are There?”, n.d.
http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/number-of-wild-animals.html.

     4. Bostrom, Nick. “Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed
Technological Development.” Utilitas 15, no. 03 (2009): 308–.

     5. Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. D. Wassenaar, V. Castel, and C. de Haan.
Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. FAO, 2006.

     6. Eshel, G., and P. A. Martin. “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming.”
Earth Interactions 10, no. 9 (2006): 1–17.

     7. Calculation.

    8. http://www.carbonfund.org/individuals

     9.
http://store.terrapass.com/store/p/56-TerraPass-carbon-offsets-Custom-Amount-Units-of-1-000-lbs.html

New Video Efficacy Comparison Study

Eitan, Wednesday 3rd October, 2012

VegFund, one of EAA's standout charities, released today a summary of the findings of a new study they conducted together with the Humane Research Council, examining the effectiveness of four different videos used in Online Veg Ads, a top intervention.

EAA's top charities both use the Farm to Fridge video, after trial-and-error refinement supported its effectiveness. So how did it fare in comparison with other videos used?

 Arguably even more important were the self-reported motivations of people considering reducing consumption:

 The report concludes:

Finally, the report notes further questions to investigate:

Full study report here.

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