Category: Effective Altruism

Episode 2 of the Morality is Hard Podcast released!

Today I expanded on two blog posts I wrote recently, the first being about the recent United Airlines event where a customer was removed from one of their flights and about a controversial art installation coming to Tasmania, Australia. I try to show why both of these events are more complex than they first seem.

The second is about the recent announcement by the Australian Federal Government that they are considering a shark cull in response to a surfer dying to a shark attack in Western Australia. I try to show why this makes no economic sense, even if you are only concerned with Australian human lives.

Download the full episode here

Response to: ‘The Crucible of the Application Process’ by Dillon Bowen

I just read a great article by Dillon Bowen titled ‘The crucible of the application process’. Bowen discussed some of his frustrations about being a young academic applying for jobs and scholarships. In particular, his motivations for wanting to do good were often questioned. I’ve highlighted some key quotes, because I can’t beat Bowen’s words here.

“…the first question they would ask, almost unanimously, was but why do you care about extreme poverty?

Well, because there’s no single problem on earth responsible for more suffering or needless waste of human life, I would respond.

Yes, but why do you care about extreme poverty?

What on earth did they mean? A number of them followed up by asking if I had witnessed anyone living in extreme poverty. No, I hadn’t. Had I or anyone I know ever contracted malaria or a neglected tropical disease? No. Did I feel I had a responsibility to the developing world as a beneficiary of colonialism? Not particularly. How did my privilege and my identity as a White Westerner contribute to my decision to focus on extreme poverty? It didn’t.”

“But the thing I don’t understand is why do you care? This was the final question of my Rhodes nomination interview. I can’t properly express the frustration I feel whenever this question is put to me. Every time I try to explain the importance of extreme poverty, and every time my answer isn’t good enough.

It was all I could do at that moment to keep my composure. What do you want me to say? I felt like asking. There are 900 million people living on less than $2 a day. That’s why I care. That’s the reason. There is nothing else. It doesn’t matter that I’m White, it doesn’t matter who my ancestors were, it doesn’t matter what country I’m from. All that matters is that people are suffering and I can help them. What more reason do I need?“

This really resonated with me. Unfortunately, I don’t believe this phenomenon is restricted to academia, as Bowen hopes. I had a similar experience when I was going for a job in the energy industry 3 years ago and made it to the final round interviews (2 available jobs out of 6 remaining candidates).

To that point, I had been asked a range of technical and aptitude questions, but also questions about my motivation. This was before I discovered anything like effective altruism, but I was already broadly aligned with the views that you highlight here.

The answers I gave were pretty similar to Bowen’s. My motivation to combat poverty and climate change came not from a personal connection to the issues, but of believing they were the most pressing issues, and the best opportunities for me to do good.

In the final interview, they asked me a question that stumped me. “What makes you wake up and want to be a geologist each day?” I was confused, because I thought I had answered that. I told them again about my reason for choosing the oil and gas industry. I believed the industry had a big role to play in both poverty and climate change, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to change the industry from the inside to become even better.

They weren’t satisfied. I paraphrase the second question, but it was something to the effect of “But what specifically motivates you?”

Was it so incomprehensible that I would want to do a job because of extrinsic reasons? I told them I woke up every morning and watched the news to remind myself of the horrors in the real world, to motivate myself to work harder and try to stop them.

Finally, I told them that my father was in the oil and gas industry too, and from a young age my family and I had gone camping and collected fossils and rocks and developed a fascination. They seemed happier with that. I didn’t get the job.

Why spending money on shark culling is a terrible idea

A 17 year old surfer in Western Australia has been killed by a shark. This is, of course, a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the girls friends and family for the loss. However, in response the Australian Federal Government has said that they are open to a shark cull to ‘protect people’, which would be equally tragic, if not much greater. Let’s look at some numbers.

First, I need to acknowledge that I think this is bad because I intrinsically value animal suffering, and feel like this might impact animal suffering in a negative way. But even if we just look at humans (and not only that, specifically humans in Australia!), this idea would be an incredibly inefficient way of reducing suffering and/or death.

Here I’m going to make some simplified assumptions to make the case for culling seem more attractive than it is, then show that it still doesn’t make sense. From 1958 to 2014, 72 people died to shark attacks in Australia (536 attacks total). Let us suppose that for a one-time investment (unrealistic) of $10 million (unrealistically low) we can prevent all shark attacks in Australian waters for the next 56 years (unrealistic). If we suppose 72 more people would have died in this time frame, this would be an estimated cost of $138,888 per life saved*.

Even with these extremely optimistic assumptions, that is an exceedingly poor return on investment. The Against Malaria Foundation can save a human life for approximately $6,000 AUD by preventing cases of malaria. But even if we care much more about people in our own country than in Africa (which, to be fair, governments have to), there are still more effective ways of reducing death.

For example, the median cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained for Australians by interventions for specific diseases such as diabetes is $3,700 AUD.

Do we care about all suffering, or just suffering specifically experienced by humans and caused by sharks? That would be silly, but then, government policy doesn’t always seem to make much sense. The steelman of this might be that they are trying to win publicity points (and aren’t ignorant of cost-benefit analyses). Sharks are a topical issue today, and the government wants people to like them. But let’s not pretend the policy would make any rational sense to someone interested in improving the world, even if you only care about animals of your own species that happen to within an arbitrarily defined political boundary.

I urge the Australian Federal Government to please reconsider any thoughts of a shark cull, and to focus on helping sentient beings in a significantly more efficient manner.

* One might even be able to make an argument that a shark cull would increase human deaths. I have no numbers for this argument and therefore place low confidence on it, but if a shark cull is incomplete (i.e. doesn’t kill all sharks), yet more people end up swimming because they think it’s safer, more people might die.

80,000 Meals

You have 80,000 meals in your life*. How do you best use them to make a difference? Find out with our free coaching service at 80,000 Meals to pick a diet that suits your personal fit and chosen cause! Will prioritising fruit over bread help reduce or increase insect suffering? Find out here!

Most other guides on meals focus on one cause, like animal suffering, climate change or health. This guide combines all causes to determine a diet that will most reduce suffering in the universe.

This is, of course, a play on 80,000 Hours, a careers advice organisation named after the fact that the average human will work for 80,000 hours in their career. It was amusing to me that the average number of meals of a human born today is roughly the same.

While the above is entirely tongue in cheek, I think there is an important point to note here. We rarely think a lot about what we eat beyond taste, or if we do, we only consider a few factors. Even people interested in improving the world as much as possible might only consider cost, healthfulness, and farmed animal suffering, which might lead someone to adopt a vegan diet, for example.

However, even within a vegan diet, there is much room for optimisation. Not all vegan foods are equally cheap, healthy, and environmentally friendly. If we are concerned about the suffering of wild animals and insects, some vegan foods can still be far better than others. For example, wheat (and therefore bread) and rice are estimated to be worse than lentils.

Even for selfless reasons, taste can be a factor. A diet without much variety might be cheap and healthy, but it may lead one to burn out, both in terms of their diet and their other altruistic endeavours.

Health is probably more important than people think. Diet isn’t the only thing that affects health, but it does play a substantial role. If your health suffers, your motivation and possibly even your life span might be reduced, thus decreasing your earning potential (and therefore how much good you can do through donations) and your direct impact through your career or projects.

Over my life, I might reasonably expect to spare 5293-24,382 animals from a life of suffering** by adopting a vegan lifestyle (at least through my direct impact), but if that reduces my earnings potential by just 1%, thus meaning I can only donate $6,400 less***, resulting in 22,400 fewer animals spared***.

If I wanted to maximise the amount of good I could do in my life, combining the various factors would mostly be guesswork. I can be vegan and try to eat healthily, cheaply, indulge in tasty food sometimes to not burn out, and avoid foods I think are particularly damaging to wild animals and insects, but I have no idea how to combine these to truly maximise my impact on suffering in the universe. Some diets might be more effective than others at an individual level, but weirder and harder to get other people to adopt.

I believe there is a real gap for some research like this. Maybe not enough to found 80,000 Meals, but enough for a rudimentary analysis. Maybe someone could read this and instantly say that there is no way this would be worth the time, but I think someone should at least estimate the value of a resource like this existing.

Brian Tomasik has done a commendable first pass at looking at the impacts of crop cultivation on wild animals here, but he has only covered some foods, and has not covered a lot of the parameters I’ve listed here such as cost and impacts on motivation.

There are a lot of meta-factors at play here. Would many people even listen to or use such a guide? Is the world so complex and changing that any recommendations would be too uncertain to be meaningful? These are all questions I hope a rudimentary analysis could examine.

As an end note, I’m not saying that you should avoid being vegan because of burnout or anything here. Maybe a vegan diet actually increases your motivation on average. I think being vegan while paying some attention to health and food cost is a pretty easy baseline for doing good with your meals. But it’s more complicated than that, and I don’t know how to truly optimise this part of my life or if it’s worth trying.

* This estimate assumes 365 days in a year, 3 meals in a day, and an average lifespan of 73 years.

** Using the figures in Section 3 of this review – switching from an average American omnivore diet to a vegan one might lead you to expect to require 32 fewer land animals and 468-502 fewer marine animals each year. Due to supply and demand elasticities (explained in more detail here), ACE estimates that consuming 30 fewer land animals will result in 1.8-21 fewer animals being farmed, and consuming 232 fewer marine animals results in 35-144 fewer being killed. Therefore, switching diet is estimated to result in 1.9-22.4 fewer land animals and 70.6-311.6 fewer marine animals, for a total of 72.5-334 fewer animals each year. Over a 73 year life, this results in 5,293-24,382 fewer animals being killed or farmed.

*** 80,000 hours times $40 per hour is 3.2 million. 99% of this is 3.168 million, a difference of $32,000. ACE estimates that a donation of $1,000 to Mercy for Animals can spare -10,000 to 80,000 animals from a life of suffering. I take this to mean an average of 3,500 animals for sake of argument (3.5 animals per dollar). Say I donate 20% of my income over my life, I would be donating $6,400 less, resulting in 22,400 fewer animals spared. I intend on donating more than 20% of my income over my life, and I believe $40 per hour (inflation adjusted) is also a lower bound, making this a very conservative estimate.

Edited April 25, 2017 due to incorrect maths.

Addicted to outrage: For the love of the bandwagon

In our society, we are addicted to outrage and jumping on the latest bandwagon. This is a bad way to go about things, and maybe even dangerous. I want to share a particularly great example that occurred through a conversation I had recently on Facebook with some random people on a post made by Adam Bandt, Australian Federal Government Greens member for Melbourne. He was talking about a proposed coal mine in Queensland, Australia, which the Australian resources minister Matt Canavan had said would be a net positive for the environment. Queue outrage.

Bandter with Adam Bandt’s supporters

I decided to simply screenshot the conversation without removing names as it was and is entirely public on Facebook anyway.

What happened here exactly? If you made it through all of the comments, I’m impressed. I read the linked article and another about the issue, and resources minister was making some plausible arguments for how this mine could be a net positive for the environment. Sure, it might have been better to have renewable energy or gas instead, but if what we’re comparing is a world without this mine and a world with this mine, Mr Canavan’s argument might hold. Here is how:

“…using high-quality coal to displace lower-quality coal”

I know nothing about this mine, but if it were true that the coal was higher quality (releasing less emissions per unit energy produced) than the average existing coal, and the production of this coal meant lower quality coal was not produced, the claim might be true. There are several other minor arguments, such as:

““They will do things that will improve the environment here in central Queensland and they’ll protect an additional 31,000 hectares for the black-throated finch,” Canavan said.”

And:

““They will limit the drawdown on the springs in the area and also return water to the Great Artesian basin – around 730 megalitres a year.”

So basically Adam Bandt and his followers seem to be arguing that these claims are baseless. Fair enough, maybe they are. So I asked Adam Bandt if he did indeed have evidence that these claims were baseless.

“This seems plausible, does it not? Adam Bandt are you saying that you have evidence that this statement is false?”

No response from Adam, but his supporters were pretty upset. E.g.

“Have you got shares in the coal industry or are just stupid as Canavan” [sic]

“Michael you really are naive if you think what they said will actually happen. Look at history of Adani and their broken promises…get the facts from many sources before you slavishly believe one source.”

This one was particularly amusing because I’m actually questioning the source (Adam Bandt) unlike them. There was also one nice chap who asked me whether my (PhD) supervisor knew what I was saying here, but he has since deleted his comment.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that we are addicted to being outraged at certain things without much evidence about the specifics. This seems like a pretty bad heuristic. If you have read any of my work relating to effective altruism, you would know that even strange ideas can lead to great outcomes, and great ideas can lead to negative effects. I wouldn’t fall off my chair if something that sounded environmentally damaging on the outset turned out to increase wellbeing.

Best of all, I never said I supported the project, I was just not jumping on the bandwagon. This was taken to be a full, unwavering support of the project. As I said in the post:

“These things are always more complicated than people want them to be. For the record, I think the project shouldn’t go ahead. It is amusing to me that people here have assumed that I am in favour of the project, as I never said anything of the sort.

What kind of sad world we live in where merely thinking through the consequences of actions instead of jumping on the bandwagon is seen as a bad thing.”

Along a slightly different theme, but no less ‘bandwagony’, is this example. This was posted in a closed group called Friendly Vegans in Melbourne, so you might not be able to see it. As a result, I have hidden the identities of the original poster and commenters.

Some friendly vegans

 

I really don’t have much to add here. But once again, refusing to jump on the bandwagon makes people think less of you. Go figure.

I will just say that this should in no way cause you to be against veganism, simply because some friendly vegans celebrate human suffering in specific circumstances.

How to influence stuff

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it’s actually pretty easy to influence stuff. It seems like people don’t try because they assume it will be too hard to change anything, and this is self-reinforcing. I’m talking about things like emailing your local politicians, getting articles and opinion pieces published, and getting a company or website to change their public position. From the age of about 20, I kind of just made a decision to be gutsy, and so far it has paid off.

I want to share some of my successes and tips, and encourage you to try being more engaged and active in issues that matter. I’ll also cover my failures and try to analyse what could have gone better, but I must say the failure rate is far, far lower than people assume it is.

This ended up being a very long article, so I’m going to publish my failures and learnings separately. Make sure to subscribe to get notified when that comes out.

What has worked

Scholarships

My first realisation of how little people try to do stuff they think is hard came in 2013 when I was about to start the final year of my undergraduate degree. I was unsure about applying for scholarships because my results had been lackluster until my penultimate year when I started caring. However, two of my professors encouraged me to try anyway, and one of them mentioned that not many people actually apply. I ended up receiving 4 scholarships with a total value of just under $10,000 AUD, including the prestigious Playford Memorial Trust scholarship, which comes with political networking opportunities (more on this below), and a $2,000 scholarship to which I was the only applicant despite advertising attempts by the organisation.

The takeaway here – if a scholarship looks hard to get, that deters people, and may actually increase your chances. And – you may well be more capable than you think you are.

Political lobbying

This next one was a smaller financial reward, but really broke down a lot of mental barriers to trying other stuff in the future. In 2014, I signed up for and was accepted to Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project training in Melbourne, a three day course where we learned about climate science, policy and communication skills.

As I mentioned, the Playford Memorial Trust offers networking opportunities with politicians, and I spoke with the opposition leader of South Australia for a few minutes. Amusingly, he approached me because he was impressed by my bio. As an aside, he was in the audience falling asleep when they read it out, and I got the pleasure of seeing him get startled to wakefulness.

I later emailed his office to ask whether they would be interested in sponsoring and funding my trip to the training in Melbourne, citing the reasoning that I would be able to better communicate the risks of climate change to his constituents. His office declined, and I asked whether he would make an introduction to my local state representative to try again. He did, and my local MP’s office got in touch to say they would pay for $100 of the trip as long as I said that they sponsored me.

Let’s take a close look at what happened here. This was clearly a valuable spend of money for them. They spend a paltry $100 and get to demonstrate that they care about climate change. It was very much a mutually beneficial situation. This is the second takeaway I’d like to leave you with. So you want to change something or get something. Half the battle is pitching it in a way that makes it desirable to them as well. Of course, I was very happy to get to say that I was sponsored by my state government to attend climate advocacy training with Al Gore.

You might say that I had some help here thanks to an introduction, and you might be right, but I don’t think it’s that unlikely that I wouldn’t have been able to land this anyway.

Contacting famous people

I often hear people complain about the stance of some famous (or otherwise) individual, but never do anything about it except type angry Facebook posts. I hear the opposite too – where someone is in awe of some individual, but never contacts them. I’ve had a lot of success with cold emails (your unintroduced email to them is the first contact between you), and want to share a few.

In early 2015 I emailed Peter Singer (I got his email from his website), one of the co-founders of the effective altruism movement, after seeing his hugely successful TED Talk on the movement. The talk really resonated with me, and I desperately wanted to know how to get involved. Amazingly, he responded within 30 minutes, and suggested that I start a chapter in Adelaide, then put me on to some people to help. As an aside, his email actually went to my spam. I never checked my spam email, but did this time, and was stunned to see his email there. Now I always check my spam. The lesson, always check your spam.

I once saw a talk by famous British geologist Iain Stewart at a geology conference in Australia. He was well-known for science communication and had been in a number of documentaries. I later emailed him for advice on getting better at science communication, and was pleasantly surprised to hear back from him.

Gary Yourofsky is an well-known animal activist who has given hundreds if not thousands of talks around the world about animal exploitation. I emailed him with some questions about how to have an impact in the space, and he replied with a long, detailed email. To be fair, he said he spends around 6 hours a day replying to cold emails, but I think this just highlights the point that famous people do respond to stuff.

There are many more examples, but I’m sure you get the point by now. I once toyed with the idea of emailing Bill Gates but didn’t, but in all honesty I think the chances of getting a personal response are higher than we all think. In terms of what to say in an email, it depends on what you want to achieve. If you just want to ask advice, just be honest and polite, and giving some context doesn’t seem to hurt (e.g. I saw your speech and it resonated with me. Would you mind if I asked you some questions? The questions are…). If you want to influence them on something, you might want to start with a more innocuous question to build rapport, and increase the likelihood of them responding. I’ve covered this a little more below.

Radio

At the end of 2015, I had a very interesting radio experience. I had already been on radio a few times by this point to talk about solar thermal energy through a committee role I had, but the interviewers were all on board and receptive, since they ran a climate related radio spot. As I found out, there is a very big difference between receptive and hostile on the radio.

It started when I saw Neil Mitchell (an Australian radio host) and two other individuals talking on Channel 9 News about the World Health Organisation announcement that processed meat is carcinogenic, and red meat is likely carcinogenic. They laughed and downplayed the announcement using a number of shoddy arguments, claiming that all things are safe in moderation. My main issue with this was that they were on a segment labelled as ‘news’, and were presenting opinion as fact without being kept in check by the news host.

I decided to take a rather aggressive approach, which turned out to work… sort of. I started a petition on change.org to hold Channel 9 News and Neil Mitchell accountable for their irresponsible health remarks. In fact, I called for them to be sacked. You can see the full petition here including my rationale, but here are some key points from the program that I took issue with, and my responses.

““I really don’t think that bacon is the prime suspect.” It is irresponsible to state an opinion as if it is fact. Processed meats such as bacon are indeed one of the leading causes of cancer and heart disease.

“We’re always being told… don’t eat this…” – “Don’t listen.” This medical advice being provided from a news anchor is simply dangerous. Being told to not listen to health advice is in no way acceptable.”

I shared the petition on Facebook, including various Australian vegan Facebook pages. I then followed up with an email to share the petition to key staff at both Channel 9 and 3AW radio where Neil works. Despite only ending up with 147 signatures, the producer of Neil’s program called me the next day to ask if I wanted to speak to Neil that day live on air. I said yes, but if I knew then what I do now about how hostile radio works, I probably wouldn’t have. As I said before, it’s very different to an interview where they are already on board. The first take away lesson here is to judge for yourself whether the interviewer will be at least neutral to your message. If not, it’s probably not worth your time unless you are a pro and have carefully considered the risks.

You can hear the full interview here. I wasn’t as assertive as I should have been, and should have stuck my to my key talking points. Several times he strayed from the topic and it distracted me. He played the audio of part of the news session in question, and I later realised that they had edited it to make Neil sound more reasonable. I should have noticed this at the time and called him out on it, but I was stressed and in the moment. I got some flak from a bunch of random people on social media. But at the end of the day, it was a valuable lesson, and I now know a solid way to get people’s attention.

Since then, I have been on a number of radio interviews about both my PhD research, and my work with Effective Altruism Australia while I was CEO. These opportunities actually mostly fell on my lap (more on the PhD interviews below), so I don’t have too much to say except to put yourself out there, because you never know. With the media, you will often get either no attention, or a lot of attention.

The popular discussion panel Q&A recently launched a radio segment that follows their main TV slot where people can call in to ask questions and talk about what was discussed during the program. After a discussion on climate change that lacked any mention of animal agriculture, I called in to raise this, and was chuffed to get 60 seconds of air time. Unfortunately, the host was pretty dismissive, but it was a good opportunity to share the message to a large number of people.

Pitching articles

I’ve also discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to get an article published somewhere, so long as you’re strategic about it. My PhD research is mostly on developing new techniques to understand the physical properties of asteroids, but I also dabble in asteroid impact risk mitigation, asteroid mining and space ethics. Being concerned about existential risk (the risk of some event that might wipe out either humanity or all life), I pitched an article to The Conversation.

The Conversation publish short articles written by researchers in the relevant field on key issues of the day. Their motto is ‘academic rigour, journalistic flair’. They partner researchers with an editor to make an accurate but enjoyable article. I had previously pitched an article on public health, but was rejected because it wasn’t in my area of expertise. I later pitched an article on my PhD research and got an interested editor. He was more interested in the possibility of an asteroid impact and what we can do about it than anything directly related to my work, but I took the opportunity.

Overall, this was a wildly successful use of my time. The article has now been published in two languages and viewed by almost 100,000 people. I was contacted on the day it was published by ABC to do a 3 minute TV interview on the same day, and was contacted for several radio interviews on the same topic. Sometimes opportunities have great flow on value.

I later pitched an updated version of my public health article to the Australian Vegans Journal, where it was accepted (in a forthcoming issue). This is a pretty simple example of why target selection is important. You need to think about what audience would be receptive to the story, but also what outlet would be receptive to publishing. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always align with the audience you’re trying to reach, especially if you want to talk about something like factory farming, but you can take easy opportunities to build up your profile and have a better chance later.

I also pitched an article about effective altruism to Plant Based News on how it can and should be merged with animal advocacy. This was a pretty easy sell; because of course animal advocates want to be effective. Unfortunately I have had push back elsewhere with this pitch, because not everyone in the animal advocacy community agrees with the message, but it never hurts to try.

Getting a website or organisation to change something

I have two standout examples of where I contacted someone to change something, and they did. The first and best involved an online article by the Daily Mail titled ‘If you want grandchildren, make sure you eat protein, study finds’. They’re pretty notorious for low quality reporting, and I usually ignore their articles, but this one caught my eye.

This article originally claimed that a study showed low protein diet in humans lead to low fertility. I read the study they cited, and it actually had no data on humans, it was about bovines and fruit flies. So essentially the article had drawn their own conclusions that weren’t backed up by data. I put in a complaint, and impressively, they amended the article. The complaint and response from the Daily Mail are below.

“As a scientist, I’ve first hand experienced poor media reporting of science. The article says that the study reports low levels of protein can negatively affect offspring’s fertility. The news article then says that low meat intake can result in the same, presumably because they assume meat has a lot of protein, even though a plant based diet has already been shown to be more efficient for protein intake. So the author of this article likely made their own assumptions. However, it is impossible to tell because the article didn’t link to the original study, so I can’t fact check it. Overall, this seems like a very poor example of science reporting. I think it is more than appropriate that the article is revisited. If the article is indeed misleading, it should be corrected. I will be following this up with a formal complaint, including to other news outlets, in several weeks if it is not addressed.”

“Dear Mr Dello-Iacovo,

Thank you for your email, which has been passed on to me for a response. We are sorry for the delay in responding to you and please be assured that we meant no discourtesy.

We are extremely grateful for you to take the time and trouble to address these points and as you may be aware we have amended the copy to reflect these.

If there is anything further we can do to assist you then please do let us know.”

I can’t find the study now, but a very high percentage of media reporting (I think over 50%) has at least one minor scientific inaccuracy, and some large percent has at least one major scientific inaccuracy. If you see something that looks erroneous, look into it and try to get it changed! This is also a reminder to not take the news, especially articles, for granted. I have already experienced poor media reporting of my own scientific work first hand, albeit minor (The Conversation allows articles to be republished with credit, so one outlet republished my article on asteroids, but gave it a title that had nothing to do with what I was saying, and made it sound like I claimed something that I didn’t). Make sure to read the original study, especially if you plan on acting based on an article.

The second example was more minor, but involved the Skepticon Australia 2017 conference, run by Australian Skeptics Inc. In case you’re not familiar with the skeptics movement, it essentially involves using a healthy dose of scepticism and rational thinking in your everyday life, being wary of pseudoscientific claims like astrology and homeopathy. Their website included ‘carcinogenic meats’ as a pseudoscientific claim. As I’ve already discussed above, this goes against the WHO announcement. I promptly emailed them to say that their claim was incorrect, and included links to the relevant WHO material. They corrected the website.

Competitions

My last example of success was my winning of the 2016 Sentience Politics Essay Prize (essay is available here). I had just discovered the field of wild-animal suffering research, and was pretty concerned, so I wanted to write about it and provide my own ideas. I was pretty unsure whether I could win, given that I’m not a philosopher and I sometimes question the quality of my ideas. But whether it’s because not many people entered, or because I am actually a visionary (I think the former is the stronger effect here), I won the $2,000 prize. Competitions probably suffer in a similar way to scholarships, in that people assume they aren’t worthy, so don’t try. You may be more capable or creative than you think.

Conclusion

I don’t see my success in this space ending any time soon, and I only expect to get better as I learn more, so I’ll be looking to update this post with new information from time to time, or to write a new post. I hope I’ve inspired you to try to influence stuff, because it’s honestly easier than you probably think (just please influence stuff in a positive direction!). Please share any future or past successes and tips in the comments to help me and other readers.

A future without factory farming? Possible – because of cellular agriculture

A lot of people have misgivings about clean meat or cellular agriculture (lab meat) because they think it will involve ongoing exploitation of animals for their cells. This is a myth. This podcast with Christie Lagally of the Good Food Institute is a fantastic intro to the topic and I highly recommend it.

I strongly believe clean meat will hit market control long before veganism gets close to 100%. This will be better for the animals, the environment, and human health.

GFI provides strategic and technical support to food tech companies (plant-based and cellular agriculture). I believe they are currently the best charitable giving opportunity for reducing the suffering of sentient minds into the future. Here is my reasoning. Check them out and support them if you agree!

My fear: spreading insect suffering to Mars

One thing I’m personally worried about is the spreading of wild-animal suffering to other planets. In the short term, I’m most worried about spreading insects to Mars. I think (and have argued here) that this might happen sooner than we think. The use of insects on Mars for either food or to help terraform seems supported (or at least warranting further thought) by a good deal of the Mars community.

Currently, a potato is in development that looks like it might be able to grow in Mars atmospheric (open) conditions. Biology is a weak point of mine so maybe I’m more worried than I should be. But I fear that if potatoes are solved, insects potentially aren’t that much harder to get to survive on Mars, especially given there are already extremophile insects.

So basically I’d like to loosely propose that shifting public opinion about the use of insects for Mars and anything else is potentially neglected, given the scale here (accidentally or purposefully putting insects on Mars which spread uncontrollably). I don’t know how confident I am about this argument, but wanted to drop it here for discussion.

March to Close All Slaughterhouses

I just got home from the March to Close All Slaughterhouses and a Cube of Truth in Sydney, check out the footage below!

This was the first time I’ve ever taken part in either of these styles of events for animal advocacy. I’ve done some tabling and leafleting before, but this was a lot of fun to be a part of. Walking in the middle of several hundred people march and demanding the same thing you want is a great feeling.

This event was run in most major Australian cities, and was run for a simple reason – to let people know that we want an end to the use of animals and their excretions as food. This cruel practice has gone on too long. The march went through the CBD and parklands, and ended up in front of the New South Wales parliament building.

A Cube of Truth was also run after the march in the middle of a busy mall. To explain exactly what this entails is hard, so I recommend watching the video above. But put simply, we display footage of Australian factory farms and slaughterhouses and talk to people to educate them on what animals experience, and the impact of something so harmless-seeming as eating animals.

It was interesting to see people’s different reactions to the footage. I saw everything from tears to laughter. One lady put her sunglasses on to hide her tears from her daughter. Another mother tried to pull her young (7?) daughter away, but she insisted on staying and watching. A father stopped and pointed out the footage to his son. One gentleman walked past yelling “Bring me sausages!”

I had a few good chats with people who stopped to watch. One man asked me “Where was this footage taken, China?” He seemed to almost fall over when I told him it was in Australia. He said that he had already mostly stopped eating meat and I gave him some information and tips for going vegan.

Of course, as an effective altruist, I had to have a think about how effective both of these events were, as well as the impact of my marginal involvement. Not an easy endeavour by any means, but it’s worth at least thinking about it. I’m well aware that ideas which sound great can actually make things worse.

First the events as a whole – I think the march has the potential to show people that the treatment of animals is an important issue to a growing number of Australians. Hopefully the government payed attention, though I think it would have been much more effective with more people. Considering there are over 8,000 people in the Sydney Vegan Club Facebook page, I was staggered that only about 200 people turned up. I get that people have work, families and other stuff on. But one thing that frustrates me is how willing people are to share and like pictures of food on vegan Facebook pages, but (it seems to me) rarely get involved in outreach and advocacy.

The Cube of Truth got footage into the forefront of people’s minds for at least a few seconds. From reactions and conversations, it seems obvious that most people just have no idea what the life of a food animal really is like. I don’t blame them, I didn’t either until shortly becoming vegetarian 5 years ago. I struggle to see how this awareness-raising could be a bad thing. The one minor worry I do have is that this might cause people to reinforce their beliefs about animals being capable of experiencing pain (which is definitely possible), but this seems unlikely. If I had to put a number on it, I would estimate that 30+ people said they’d consider veganism as a result of the Cube.

My marginal impact was probably low. By this I mean, if I hadn’t gone to either of these events, I don’t think more animals would suffer. For me, the value was in meeting people, refreshing my dedication to the cause of reducing suffering, and practising my outreach skills. I’m a strong believer in spending time with the people you want to be like. If you want to help animals and make a difference, you should hang out with people who feel the same. And when it’s so easy to make a huge difference in their lives (don’t forget that $1 donated to the right place can spare dozens of animals from suffering!) why wouldn’t you?

Blog – USA, Trump and CEO no more

Hey readers! Since I’m heading to USA for 1 year for my research (more on that later!) I’m trialing a different theme. I want to mix my essay/research-like posts with general updates, observations and thoughts about my travels and life that I find interesting. Bear with me and please do let me know of any aspects you like or dislike.

I’m pretty lucky in that I have a fair bit of flexibility in my PhD research, and I spend time thinking about things like asteroid impact risk and the implications of space colonisation. My main focus, however, is on understanding the geomechanical properties of asteroids and other planetary bodies, and developing geophysical techniques to do so. So far this has involved a lot of literature review, and a bit of lab work.

My opportunity to work in USA for one year initially came up in late 2015, a few months before I started my PhD. I was at the 2nd Off-Earth Mining Forum at the University of New South Wales chatting with my future supervisor, when he introduced me to an American.

“Michael, this is Rene. Rene is the deputy director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Oh, I have to go, bye!”

Suddenly I was standing there sweating in front of a senior figure of JPL, which is the CalTech-run arm of NASA.

“So Michael, tell me about your research.” He seemed oblivious to my nerves.

“Well I’m starting my PhD next year and will be looking at asteroid structure for mining and asteroid mitigation purposes.”

“That’s great! We have some people at JPL working on that sort of thing. You should come and visit at some point.”

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea, I’ll be there.” Inside me was freaking out. Visit NASA? Outside me was somehow cool as a cucumber.

Many months later I got a co-supervisor who worked at JPL, and eventually that lead to their offer to spend up to 12 months there and use their equipment, including a parabolic jet. Don’t tell NASA I hate flying…

I was set to arrive in USA on the 19th of March, when my co-supervisor at JPL broke the bad news. “Because of the new administration, your visa might be delayed for up to 3 weeks from now. There have been some changes.”

Call it hyperbole, but in a roundabout sort of way, Trump may have delayed my trip (*shakes fist*). But in under a month, I’ll be living in sunny Pasadena, California, in the north of Los Angeles.

I’m also stepping down as CEO of Effective Altruism Australia, a position I’ve held since August 2016. I want to talk a little bit more about my experience and what I’ve learned, but I’ll cover that in a later post, stay tuned.