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225- How can vegans make better decisions?
35 Plays1 hour ago
In many ways 'Open Philanthropy' & 'Effective Altruism' aren't new concepts; moreover, these philosphical approaches to one's veganism (or just general decision-making) aren't the sexiest of phrases either. However, in many ways they are central concepts that hold an extra impetus when thinking about social justice and how we can use our limited resources to affect the biggest positive change.
In this episode, Carlos, Dominic & Ant examine the work of https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/ discussing the philopshires as a whole, as well as how the lenses can be applied to living life as a vegan.
As ever, we love hearing your views on the topics under discussion (or anything else!) so do drop us your thoughts via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com
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Enough of the Falafel is a community of people who love keeping on top of the latest news in the world of veganism & animal rights. With the Vegan Talk podcast, we aim to develop listeners' (& our own) thoughts around key issues affecting veganism & the animal rights movement; giving our opinions, whilst staying balanced; remaining true to our vegan ethics, whilst constantly seeking to grow & develop.
Each week we home in on one topic in particular and pick it apart in more detail. If you have a suggestion for a future show, do get in touch via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com.
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Thanks everyone for listening; give us a rating and drop us a message to say "hi"; it'll make our day!
Carlos, Dominic & Anthony
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Transcript
Introduction to Vegan Talk
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, hello, everybody. Let us be honest. Who knows what effective altruism is? Who knows what open philanthropy is? Well, I'll be honest, I don't know. And that's why I'm really happy to be on this episode of Vegan Talk, where I will be joined by Carlos and Anthony.
00:00:23
Speaker
So I think vegans go looking for trouble even when they're not looking for trouble. That's not what butter's used for. Brrrr! Take your lab-grown meat elsewhere. We're not doing that in the state of Florida. What about your protein and what about your iron levels? Should I call the media and say, hi, sorry? They're arguing like, oh, poor woe is me.
00:00:42
Speaker
Hang on a minute. You always pick
00:00:50
Speaker
social injustice has connection with another. That's just what people think vegans eat anyway. As long as you didn't get the wee brunions with the horns you'll be all right. Does veganism give him superpowers?
00:01:05
Speaker
No I cannot fly around the city. I don't have laser
Focus of Vegan Talk
00:01:09
Speaker
vision. and Hello everybody this is Carlos and welcome to this episode of Vegan Talk and thanks so much for being here.
00:01:16
Speaker
Hello everyone, this is Anthony here. So vegan talk, you you might have heard of these episodes before. This might be your first one. Basically, instead of going through the week's news, which we do in Vegan Week, we pick just one topic, might be a news article.
00:01:32
Speaker
or it might be a broader topic, something related to veganism or animal rights, and we will discuss that in a bit more depth. We can't be exhaustive though, that you know these things are never ending, so there's always more questions than answers, but we focus on one thing.
00:01:47
Speaker
And the great thing about these episodes is, unlike the news, they're kind of a bit timeless. you know you could You could listen to an episode that we recorded two years ago, And it might sound just the same as if we recorded it yesterday, which means there's over a hundred of these discussions that you can go back into your podcast feed and listen to now.
00:02:08
Speaker
If you've not listened to them before, or even if you have, they age well. A second listen is always quite an interesting experience. So Do dip into that back catalogue if you would like. Thank
Introducing Effective Altruism and Open Philanthropy
00:02:18
Speaker
you, Anthony. All right. Well, today, Carlos is the one who's brought awareness to me of two organisations. There is the Effective Altruism organisation. Listeners can have a look at their website, which is just effectivealtruism, all word,.org.
00:02:37
Speaker
And Open Philanthropy has a similarly easy website view, openphilanthropy.org. So we're going discuss what they are. I say we, I say we, Ant and Darlos are going to discuss and I'm going to learn with you listeners. If you're in the same boat as me and you're not quite sure what all this is about, you're in the right place.
00:03:02
Speaker
So I know I was speaking to the fellas before we started recording about how I'm a poet and in poetry we often use terms to just use one or two words to say very quickly what a whole load of detailed poetic information is and that's shorthand and makes things move at a quicker pace but it can seem inaccessible to people who aren't well versed in the poetry world and that's kind of how I feel coming in here. I think Anthony, I think we're talking about talking about problems around the world.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I think ah we're talking a little bit about how we decide which of those problems are the ones to which we give most resources. Is that is that fair to say that's a starting point, Anthony? Yeah, absolutely.
Evidence-based vs Sentimental Approaches
00:03:49
Speaker
And it's, I mean, I think it's fair to say that a lot of people, probably most people, certainly me, the way that we decide what problems we're going to get involved with, that we're going to lend our words, our money, our time to, the decision process, the thought process is not the way that effective altruism and open philanthropy
00:04:18
Speaker
would advocate. We'll go into a bit more detail about their backgrounds and their different approaches, but theirs is a lot more based on evidence, analysis, and things like that.
00:04:29
Speaker
Whereas I would imagine most of our listeners, and like I say, certainly myself, when I decide, am I going to get behind this campaign? Am I going to donate some money to this charity? Am I going to give some of my time?
00:04:42
Speaker
I'm not necessarily doing a big matrix and grid and graphs and things like that, weighing up, well, how much of my time am I going to put in? What am I going to get back out of this? is is Are there better problems blooms that I could be spending my time on?
00:04:58
Speaker
To a subconscious degree, we might be doing that a bit. Maybe we might be weighing up a bit. But I would say very often we will, ah my mind is going to ah an email that we got a few weeks ago from a listener. I want to say his name was Neil. And he was talking about a lot of the campaigning that he's been doing on behalf of greyhounds.
00:05:18
Speaker
And not surprisingly, he has a greyhound at home, a rescue greyhound. So it's not too difficult to see where his thought process might might have gone there. Oh, I very much care about greyhounds.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I can put some of my time, energy and resources into campaigning about the problem and the problems that greyhounds face. And i I think, I mean, do jump in either of you to contradict me, but I reckon that's how most of us will go with these things. it it could be quite sentimental. It could be quite reactionary.
00:05:51
Speaker
I don't think we're doing the complex things and detailed work that effective altruism and open philanthropy are doing. Yeah, I think I would agree with that. I don't think most of us are doing weighted factor models every we time we have to make a decision or where are we're going to spend our time and money, especially in the... we We might do one, something like this when we're buying a house, for example, where we might look at if the house prices in that location are appreciating or depreciating or how good the schools are in the area if we have kids or...
00:06:24
Speaker
This and that, we might look in those things, but not for something that comes from a place of passion like activism. So some of this is about talking whether we are focusing on immediate stuff, like stuff that's directly affected us or stuff that's maybe... local to us or whether we're spending that time because we've spoken in previous shows about the privilege of time. Some people want to do good but very short on time. So I guess we're looking at um an argument, is that time better spent perhaps on ah larger scale problems?
00:07:04
Speaker
Is that the kind of area we're in, Carlos? Is that what we're talking about?
Large-scale Problem Solving in Effective Altruism
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, ah effective altruists would definitely talk some about impact as like their main like one of the first criteria they look at ah if they want to solve a problem, and we can get to the other two later. But what one thing which effective altruists are very much... I don't know if I should call myself an effective altruist. I guess in some ways I am.
00:07:27
Speaker
Certainly, i've I've started kind of adopting that sort of methodology when I look at problems or things, causes I want to get behind. They would look at impact and they would look, for example, at the cost effectiveness of trying to solve that problem or how much each dollar of investment or each pound of investment, how much how many results that can be obtained.
00:07:49
Speaker
So in in that sense, Looking at large scale problems to solve is generally what an effective altruist will look at because they will say, if if I'm looking at a problem that's really big, if I make this not 0.5% better, that will have a massive impact because it's like a large scale problem.
00:08:08
Speaker
Whereas if you're looking at a small problem or kind of a sort of a local problem, if you make like 10% difference to it, it's very important to that local problem, but in a sort of quantifiable way of, let's say, reducing animal suffering, improving animal welfare, saving animal lives, the difference will be very big to the 0.5% on the large scale problem.
00:08:30
Speaker
So i if if we look at ah some of the initiatives that effective altruism, or rather, and don't like to speak of effective altruism as an organization, or let's speak about the organizations that subscribe to this philosophy.
00:08:43
Speaker
Currently, a big trend for them for animal welfare is related to fish welfare. Because this is a problem that most people don't have an emotional connection with because it's an animal that's sort of far away from us on the kind of evolutionary scale.
00:08:58
Speaker
But where, for example, fish are allowed to live in extremely dirty water when they're being farmed, they're killed without ah stunning or electrocution electrocutcionlike mammals are stunned or, you know, sorry, of not to electrocution, but kind of stunned through some ways.
00:09:14
Speaker
before they're killed to reduce their suffering. So effective altruists look at this and say, well, there's millions and billions of fish farmed every year. If we improve their welfare by, say, trying to bring in legislation that forces fish farms to improve the quality of the water they're living in, we're impacting billions of lives by a tiny bit.
00:09:37
Speaker
Whereas most people will look at this and say, Well, yeah, but you're still killing the fish in the end. You're still eating the fish in the end. You're not giving them any rights. You're making their lives slightly, their bad lives. You're making them slightly less bad.
00:09:52
Speaker
Whereas effective altruists just say, well, we're making slightly less bad the lives of billions of animals, which is more than making then running an animal sanctuary, where you're making the lives of 20 animals much better.
00:10:05
Speaker
You see? that This is the sort of their mindset. I'm not putting myself in either camp. you I'm just explaining where they're coming from. Yeah, it's it's really interesting hearing you saying that, Carlos, because like to me, that sounds like quite a mind shift from from a ah lot of vegans that that I know and talk to in that the the idea of advocating for something that's not stopping an animal ultimately being killed can often be, ah well, I'm i'm not going to go there then. you know It could be dismissed as welfarist.
00:10:38
Speaker
which which is such a dirty word to so many people, yet I can really see the the logic and the the understanding behind it. It um requires quite a shift though, doesn't it? I'm not saying it's not worth it, but it is a shift, I
Impact over Ideology
00:10:53
Speaker
think, for a lot of people. I would tell you from being in these circles for a while that effective altruists whose cause is animal welfare, and there are other causes that effective altruism looks at besides animal welfare, although And welfare welfare welfare is a sort of a privileged one because it gets a lot of attention in these circles.
00:11:12
Speaker
they They wouldn't even care about the terms welfarist and abolitionist. For them, it's completely irrelevant. Because if if if the way to have the biggest impact is an abolitionist method, they would use it.
00:11:25
Speaker
it's It's just its sort of an irrelevant thing for them. Well, it's just it's just a human label, isn't it? it it's and And getting bogged. I can see why people do get bogged down on it or draw attention to it. But it's in it in and of itself, it's not changing an outcome for an animal, whether a human has got that label or not, has it?
00:11:43
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's it's really interesting. I'm wondering what different ways I might sort of weigh things up in this way. So we we had a vegan talk episode ah a few weeks ago where...
00:11:56
Speaker
we were talking about animal saves and the vigils. And but I think part ah of why I've only attended one is it was a very moving experience for me.
00:12:08
Speaker
But in terms of impact to animals, I didn't feel like it was going to have the same impact or anywhere near the same impact as, say, running...
00:12:22
Speaker
veganuary workshops or courses or being like a, you know, somebody that someone can ask for advice when they're doing veganuary or challenge 22 or something like that. Someone who's actually like on the cusp of being vegan and that being their lifestyle. maybe for the rest of their lives.
00:12:39
Speaker
Giving someone like that support felt like, oh gosh, I could i could give someone just that little bit of help. And because a lot of this approach is to talking about impact, isn't it?
00:12:50
Speaker
And long-term impact as well. I think we can often not focus on long-term impact. Yeah, I would say effective altruism would consider future lives impacted as valuable as existing lives impacted.
00:13:04
Speaker
They would weight those lives the same. Well, I think I've got the beginnings of an understanding of what effective altruism might be.
00:13:15
Speaker
But we're talking about Two different philosophies because we're that learned. We're that learned. One philosophy and enough for us on Falapple.
00:13:26
Speaker
So Ant, we've also ah put a link in our show notes to the Open Philanthropy site. is that Is that more of the same, Ant, or is that a completely different way of being Well, I have to say we've mentioned time poorness. I've not done that much digging into effective altruism in that, you know, ah we've divvied things up and I've been looking at open philanthropy. So that means ah I've got a limited way of comparing the two.
00:13:54
Speaker
However, there's there's big overlaps from what I can see. There seems to be, I'm on the openphilanthropy.org website at the moment. And they they talk about effectively pairing donors with with partners and and kind of it's it's still pointing towards decision-making effectively. We've got limited time, we've got limited resources. How do we maximize the impact for that?
00:14:23
Speaker
And again, that there was, you know, what Carlos was talking about, that in terms of looking at the long-term impact of things, there was also a focus on, is anyone else doing this?
00:14:35
Speaker
which I thought was interesting. I i don't know, Carlos, whether that, like, is that a part of effective altruism too? that But that seemed quite loud for open philanthropy. It's like, if no one else is doing this, presumably that increases the impact that you could have.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's ah three criteria they use to decide on where to spend the money or where to put their minds to, which is scale or impact and then neglectedness, which is exactly what you were talking about, as in, is anybody actually taking care of this problem already?
00:15:08
Speaker
and Is there anything we can contribute? And then the other one is tractability, which I confess is a word I had to look up when I first heard of it. So tractability is is roughly means, is this something that can change, actually?
00:15:22
Speaker
Is this something that's acceptable to change? you know It's like, for example, saying billions of and billions of birds are killed every year by other birds and other types of predators.
00:15:32
Speaker
Is this a problem we can even solve or even imagine trying to solve? So that that would, I guess... In my head, that would solve very low on tractability because it's very hard to change or very impossible to change. So it wouldn't kind of go into their consideration. So there's three factors, you know, is the scale big enough?
00:15:48
Speaker
Is it something that's neglected as in there are like not a million other NGOs and charities and grassroots movements taking care of it? And the other is, it is it something that can actually change or are just stuck with it ah ah Something that came to mind when I was looking at this, I mean, ah as you've said, Carlos, these are philosophies as well as individual organizations.
00:16:10
Speaker
The open philanthropy page, as the name would suggest, is looking at, I'm going to say, they big philanthropists. It's looking at larger scale impacts. It's it's not deciding what's going where to put your Tesco token after you've bought your 70p chocolate bar or whatever.
00:16:31
Speaker
it it it seems like it's looking at bigger things than that. Or is is is that a misconception? Because I just feel like really the most relevance... It's interesting to talk about what will multi-millionaires do with their money, but actually it's going to be the most relevance for our listeners and for most vegans. Like, how do we apply this to most of us?
00:16:52
Speaker
I think since effective altruism appeared, which was around 13, 14 years ago, one of the most surprising things about it has been how much money they've been able to raise for their various, when I say their various, I mean, these organizations are not tied to effective
Funding and Global Focus in Effective Altruism
00:17:07
Speaker
altruism. They're kind of subscribed to the philosophy, but they're they're not subsidiaries of effective altruism in any way.
00:17:13
Speaker
They just exist by themselves. But they've been able able to write ah raise an enormous amount of money, the sort of money that most NGOs have never been able to get to.
00:17:23
Speaker
And a lot of it has come from you know billionaires and um you know kind of Silicon Valley tech companies and so on and so forth. And I think that comes because of the fact that they can very clearly explain the impact they're making. They're very transparent in their accounts.
00:17:39
Speaker
So if they say... we improved the the the quality of water where farmed shrimp live, and we've affected 2 trillion shrimp in the last year.
00:17:52
Speaker
They actually can provide the the the accountancy, the spreadsheets that prove that they've done this, as opposed to we ran a campaign to end horse racing.
00:18:03
Speaker
Nothing happened, but we ran a campaign. and And this has made these... very wealthy philanthropists, I guess, much more comfortable in applying the money because they know exactly what happens with the money in terms of having a ah change happen in the real world.
00:18:20
Speaker
And it's not just animal welfare. You know, there are other causes that are in effective alternatives, like, for example, global health and development. It's a massive one. Things like existential risks, which in this case mean stopping the extinction of humanity.
00:18:34
Speaker
So, for example, trying to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons, trying to stop the next pandemic from happening, for example. And they might say, well, we need to do this to stop the next pandemic. So we're going to start a little charity or NGO, and we're going to provide, for example, improving the trading conditions of live animals in live markets, for example.
00:18:56
Speaker
right And then they can say, we've done this. And they provide... One of the great things I think about Effective Out is that they're so open with their accounts. They show exactly what they're doing, where all the money is going. I think ah fund you know kind of funders and Fund is not the right term, but, you know, philanthropists putting their money into this and giving to these causes, they feel they feel safe that they're doing some measurable change in the world as opposed to just being, we did something and your money contributed to this something, but we cannot tell you the actual impact it's had in the world.
00:19:27
Speaker
So it's a really big change. Can I ask Dominic, we did a show a few weeks ago with Julie and Shane, and we were talking about the Welfare Footprint Institute and their attempts to sort of quantify and measure the amounts of suffering that that animals in agriculture lived through and what have you. and and And one of the criticisms that we sort of put of that is that actually you'' you're trying to measure these things, but it's not always possible to measure these things. We we we took issue with with some of their conclusions as to what should be done.
00:20:02
Speaker
as well, I'll make the cage a tiny bit bigger then, which obviously we're not going to get on board with. But that's kind of a recurring issue here, isn't it? In that if we're trying to make like rational and informed decisions, the data that you're using becomes really important.
00:20:17
Speaker
And it is possible to get that wrong or get the wrong end of the stick, isn't it, I suppose? I think there's a difference between how folks who are really very rich are spending their money and and how we apply that if we're not a person who is very rich.
00:20:38
Speaker
Some people are struggling so greatly with the world as it is and are not sure where their next penny's coming from, but still care. I think what we'd never want to happen is for e anyone to feel discouraged from even doing anything good at all ever because of feeling some kind of judgment. Oh, you're not doing the most effective thing.
00:21:09
Speaker
I think that if somebody is living what I would see as ah as a luxurious life, sitting in a boardroom, having their expensive coffee going. So how are we going to offset our polluting the lakes?
00:21:24
Speaker
You know, what are we going to do to greenwash this? What's a, you know, that's a very different scenario to somebody who's like, you know, got children and debt and multiple jobs just to break even.
00:21:38
Speaker
really thinking, oh, you know, I do want to be as ethical as possible. I really care about that animal sanctuary up the road. I'm going to do a nice thing for them. We we unfortunately ah live in a time of great wealth disparity.
00:21:53
Speaker
And I think the effective altruisms altruists who so far, everyone I've met, they've been fully committed to what they're doing. i mean, I've never had any reason to doubt they're not doing what they think is best, but we're kind of discussing if if what they're doing is best or not, or if there are other approaches.
00:22:11
Speaker
I think they've identified that there's great wealth disparity, and they've kind of identified that because there's great wealth disparity, these people who are hoarding all the money, have no problem in giving. Oh, you're doing a charity for this thing that I roughly care about, and you can provide me breakdown of what my money is doing. All right, here's $10 million. dollars And this sort of $10 million donation is sort of donations that, you know, the sanctuary down the road is never going get.
00:22:35
Speaker
and and And it's tricky, isn't it? Because, i mean, i i don't I don't think many people who will subscribe to these philosophies and these lenses through which to look at the world and one's own decisions would say that this is a perfect way of going about things.
00:22:56
Speaker
And I think part of that is because, yes, we can want to be more informed. And like, I'm all in favor of trying to live my life and make decisions in the most informed way. Like one of the things we say about this podcast, if you go to our sort of about bit on Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever, like the word informed is there. Like we we don't with all due respect to certain vegan news organizations, sometimes what they put out there is clickbait. There's not really any information there. It's like, oh, you'll never guess what's in this. new but
00:23:28
Speaker
You know, we we we want to be informed. I think there's a lot of value in as a vegan being informed, knowing what you're talking about. and knowing what's ah affecting you. But there are still limits, aren't they? And and and actually, if your last penny of disposable income goes towards the donkey sanctuary, and also you have a conversation with somebody at the donkey sanctuary, you don't know the ripples of that.
00:23:54
Speaker
And further down the line, that that could lead to something that's hugely impactful on a huge number of animals for many, many years to come. And it's very, very difficult to measure that.
Intent and Resource Allocation in Altruism
00:24:05
Speaker
And and I know,
00:24:06
Speaker
effective altruists aren't claiming to be able to measure every atom in the universe and and predict which direction it goes in. But it's worth acknowledging that they there are limitations and there are things that we can't measure.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, they they would definitely say that there's a lot of uncertainty in the future. so if you're going to spend money on something, it's better to spend on something that you can see the results within a certain time span.
00:24:30
Speaker
Otherwise, just being too speculative and just kind of throwing the money away. But but you you can see the difference, right, in terms of attitudes. Like I can tell, for example, in the effective altruist world, the salaries for jobs in these NGOs are market rate, whereas for the other type of philanthropic philanthropic associations, you always expect to make less money for the same type of job because you're doing good. So you get the the good reward.
00:24:55
Speaker
But effective outstresses go, well, we want the best people because these are important issues, right? So we want to be able to offer them the same money they'd get at Goldman Sachs to come and do data analysis for us because we want to get the best minds working on these very important problems.
00:25:11
Speaker
So it's it's it's a completely different way of of... And there might be listeners listening to this and say, oh, that makes total sense to me. I come from that world. i come from the world where big investors...
00:25:22
Speaker
who went and invested in a company and became shareholders of that company, they they want to see a return on their money. And similarly, when they invest in a cause where they're not going to get a return on their money, they want to see a return on investment in terms of getting the most good done with the money they've invested.
00:25:37
Speaker
And they want to be able to tell what that was. So for them, sponsoring a sanctuary with 50 pigs, which actually costs quite a lot of money to run, might not be as appealing as improving improving the cage sizes for 5 billion chickens every year or something like that.
00:25:53
Speaker
Even though, for like as as an emotive argument, we'll go, I'd rather have the 50 pigs living in luxury. Carlos, um a lot of... Time is spent by some vegans, and I would include myself among these vegans. You know, I write poetry about veganism. I stand up to largely non-vegan audiences and recite words with the intent of creating veganism.
00:26:18
Speaker
new vegans from the effective altruist perspective and I guess Ant from the open philanthropy perspective.
00:26:29
Speaker
ah it is Is creating new vegans something that is the best use of vegans to mind? Well, um I don't speak for the fact of tourism so don't know if I can answer that I would say they would look at it and say would these people remain vegan how many lives are impacted by them continuing vegan how much money do we have to spend to turn somebody vegan money as in you know which includes like people's time and resources marketing campaigns etc they would they would they were just break it down it would be no surprise to tell you that ah there's over indexing of neurodivergent people in this movement and that's about as polite as i can put it yeah a lot of people who are who have whose brain chemistry makes them extremely analytical dispassionate but passionate enough to care for these causes but and and who have a hard time handling uncertainty and like to have things broken down the resource this is the outcome there's a direct correlation between the two no abstraction um so there's a certain type of people that
00:27:37
Speaker
this is perfect for it's caught on. That's all i can say. There's a lot of ah massive amounts of money invested in this. It's really made me realize how I have made presumptions about our listeners to our podcast. And I think that my presumption might not be an uncommon presumption that we tend to think of folks we like as being like us and that can be a really problematic stance to have. For all I know, there is a whole heap of enough of the falafel listeners who are millionaires working in companies with large amounts of money, whereas my presumption has always been that a lot of people who I have day-to-day interactions with are people who are really, really struggling for money. you know, so that's an interesting thing. A philosophy for theory. Go on, Ant, I've got something to say following on, but you are eager to say something. You've got the data, you've the data, it's all millionaires. 95% of the people who listen to podcast became millionaires because of listening to us. Goodness me, if that was the case, I would outsource the £20 a month based on our Zencaster platform. No, I was just going to follow up on what you were saying in terms of like assuming or wanting to assume that people are similar to ourself. And I think that is part of why some of us will want there to be more vegans. Of course, we know that the more vegans, the less animal suffering.
00:29:08
Speaker
you know so So the logic would go. But I think part of it is, it's like, actually, we we want some more people that are like us and that can be part of it. And I think that's okay. I think that's okay, so long as that's not our only reason for wanting there to be more vegans.
00:29:22
Speaker
Like accompaniment in life is important. You know, the the saying of no man is an island or what have you, like it's it's been shown neurochemically, like if we feel like we are accompanied, if someone is alongside us, it feels a lot better. We can achieve a lot more. We feel a lot safer.
00:29:39
Speaker
um To your first question, Dominic, in terms of would focusing on creating more vegans be something from an open philanthropy point of view, using those three criteria that Carlos mentioned before, importance, neglectedness, and
Open Philanthropy Criteria Explained
00:29:55
Speaker
tractability.
00:29:56
Speaker
Well, neglectedness, there's a lot of organizations and people trying to create more vegans. So I think it fails on that regard. But in terms of importance and the impact of it, you know, somebody going vegan, that's that's many...
00:30:09
Speaker
hundreds of animals not suffering. and I know it's not ah a direct thing and sort of, you know, a farm doesn't immediately say, oh, well, we'll breed fewer pigs because matey boy went vegan down the road yesterday. I know it doesn't work like that, but, you know, with enough people, it can make a difference.
00:30:26
Speaker
And tractability, like the how how you can measure it. You can definitely measure how many more people are vegan and how many you know animals are being bred, are being killed and being exploited. So in that regard, apart from the neglectedness bit, I think it does fit that criteria. Although an effective altruism would look at this question and say, why do you want to create more vegans?
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah. and And that intention is is really important because like I say, I do think because we're human beings, We want other human beings with whom we identify. And I think that is part of it for some of us.
00:31:00
Speaker
As I was to say, I just find this way of thinking fascinating, even even if it's to kind of challenge the way the ways we do things we already do. You know, for example, we you know we've always always go back to the Ransaps, which is an extremely inefficient and cost inefficient way to save animals, considering you have to kind of get a bunch of humans to spend an entire day, which they could be working elsewhere and donating the money they were from working elsewhere to something else, to go in the countryside to maybe save a fox. and you know it It might have been that the hunt never found a fox that day.
00:31:32
Speaker
So in fact, you're saving nothing that day, right? and So I always like like to think about these problems and kind of use this as as a sort of a i a framework to think. And it's incredibly useful from that sense, just to kind of keep us honest about what we're doing.
00:31:46
Speaker
And if we're doing something just to kind of please ourselves, because we feel good about it or if there's an actual point to the thing we're doing it's a way to kind of keep us honest and kind of play devil's advocate with ourselves in a way.
00:31:59
Speaker
I'll challenge you there Carlos and say that pleasing ourselves isn't inherently a worthless thing not that you were saying it was a worthless thing but you know to link to Ant's earlier comments about the animal vigils and is that a good use of time I would say that as well as having different amounts of money from each other and different amounts of time from each other we also all have a different emotional capacity and emotional reaction now for me personally I am not going to go to an animal vigil because it will really upset me and for me it wouldn't motivate me it wouldn't lead me
00:32:41
Speaker
to having a new insight, I would just be crushed. If anything demotivated, I'd probably want to go and hide away for a little bit just feel a bit sorry about the state of the world. Whereas for other people, that emotion is ah It might sound funny to say it's pleasing themselves going to an upsetting animal vigil, but we all need a fuel.
00:33:03
Speaker
We all need a fuel. We need food and we need ah intellectual stimulus to fuel us. And for some people, the animal vigil... or going on the hunt sab might be the catalyst for continuing to move forward rather than wheels grinding to a stop and being caught up in a society that doesn't really want us to do anything.
00:33:28
Speaker
good. Society wants us to consume, society wants us to stare at screens, society wants us to be well-behaved citizens who don't really challenge the status quo or those with a lot of money.
00:33:42
Speaker
So the the pleasing ourselves can be... I please myself by writing poetry and I think that it's okay to be fuelled by a little bit of what we do with our time. I think as well, there's there's pleasing ourselves and there is also kind of, I don't know, exercising something that we just feel compelled to do. When we spoke to Philip from the North London Huntsabs a few weeks ago, I felt like even if he were to have it objectively proven to him,
00:34:14
Speaker
that that what he's doing, sabbing hunts, is not the most effective use of his time. I don't feel like, I'm taking his words here, I don't feel he'd be able to sleep at night knowing that there was something that he could do to to to help those animals and he's not doing it. Like I go for a run.
00:34:33
Speaker
every day, at least half an hour, more often than not an hour, in a sense, that's a really poor use of my time. But like, I know the impact it has on the rest of my day, or rather, put the other way, if I don't go and do that, might my days are awful, you know, to just chemically and in my head and everything like that. And I think,
00:34:54
Speaker
That might be people's interactions with certain elements of animal advocacy or veganism or what have you. Like, yeah, I know it's inefficient. I know it's not really saving that many animals or anything like that, but I just have to go and do it. And when when I've done that, then I'll do something that's far more efficient. But I have to do this thing because there's something calling me to do it.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, and we we humans are incredibly inefficient and full of biases and fallacies. That's just the nature of it. You could say, well, if somebody is a hotshot a solicitor and they make 500 pounds a day with their client, if they want to be a handsab, they might as well just work on Saturdays and then use that money to hire people to be to be saps, hire like three or four people to go and be saps.
00:35:40
Speaker
which will be four times more efficient than a single person, right? But on the other hand, if that person wants to be a Saab, they'll be a Saab. There's no way you can tell them, no, just work extra and pay people to be Saab on your behalf.
00:35:52
Speaker
But that would be the most logical way. And that's not how humans work. So that's it. I think that's the effective altruism discussion. One the questions you asked before, Carlos, is ah when we were talking about having an intent of making other people vegan, you replied with the question, well, why would you want to do that?
00:36:12
Speaker
And I think that ah from what I've learned today about effective altruism, asking why someone is doing something think is a really good way of whatever our money or time or emotional resources may be,
00:36:30
Speaker
a really good way of thinking, are we actually achieving what we want? I know certainly for for for me, as someone who didn't used to be vegan, I was, as is so common, very, very concerned about the welfare of cats. and dogs, still am, but I was definitely one those people who saw that as animals. I'm an animal lover, and I would say, I'm an animal lover, and I want animals to be well. So was similar kind of question I was asked ah by vegans. I was like, well, okay, you're saying that, Dominic. You're saying you want to be a are you doing the most effective thing to love animals, ah to to help animals and support animals. i was like, well, yeah, look at, you know, i've i've I've donated money to this shelter for cats and people are like, you well, what about what about factory farming? What about the numbers of animals there?
00:37:26
Speaker
And I think that's a really effective, example of of me making a change in my own life and thinking, yeah, actually, if I'm saying I want to be of help to animals, and I do mean that, my behaviour could be more effective.
Engaging Listeners in the Discussion
00:37:44
Speaker
Well, everyone, that is what the three of us think. We always say when we're recording these shows that we don't profess to be experts, although I do tip my hat to how knowledgeable Carlos has been on this show.
00:37:56
Speaker
example really appreciative that carlos has brought this to the table but what about you listeners what do you listeners have to think about this uh we absolutely love it if you get in touch and here is how to get in touch with us just send us an email at enough of the falafel at gmail.com We see ourselves as a collective. our listenership stretches all around the world and everyone's opinions, questions, feedback and ideas are what helps shape the show.
00:38:31
Speaker
Go on, send us a message today. Enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com. Thank you so much, Anthony. Thank you so much, Carlos. What a great thing.
00:38:43
Speaker
Is me doing this podcast a day? ah example of effective altruism how record it is i reckon it is listeners i tell you what i tell you what if you want to be effectively altruistic why not leave us a review why not do that hey or a comment or a share those are really good things to help us Keep this podcast as good as it can be. Absolutely.
00:39:10
Speaker
And speaking of this podcast, we've got another one coming out on Monday after your weekend. Monday the 1st of December. Goodness, we're we're recording this at the end of October. I'm hoping I've got myself a good vegan advent calendar for ah for the 1st of December. I'm currently looking at the Catherine's Originals ones. But if you're listening to this in a timely fashion, it's too late. They've already sold out.
00:39:33
Speaker
Anyway, what is the next episode? It's coming out on Monday, the 1st of December. Because it's a Monday, it will be a vegan week episode. So we're looking at the news from the last seven days or so.
00:39:44
Speaker
And it will be myself, Carlos and Kate in the house. Anyway, that's enough of the falafel for this episode. Thank you, Dominic. Thank you, Anthony, for everything you've contributed to this episode. Thanks again, everyone, for listening.
00:39:57
Speaker
Be sure to check out the topic of this vegan talk for yourselves and decide how do you feel about it? It might be open new avenues for you your own activism if you're so inclined. I've been Carlos and you've been listening to Vegan Talk from the Enough of the Falafel Collective.
00:40:16
Speaker
This has been an Enough of the Falafel production. We're just a normal bunch of everyday vegans putting our voices out there. The show is hosted by Zencaster. We use music and special effects by zapsplap.com.
00:40:31
Speaker
And sometimes if you're lucky at the end of an episode, you'll hear a poem by Mr. Dominic Berry. Thanks all for listening and see you next time.
00:40:57
Speaker
This episode may have come to an end, but did you know we've got a whole archive containing all our shows dating back to September 2023? twenty twenty three That is right, Dominic. There's over 100 episodes on there featuring our brilliant range of different guests, people's stories of going vegan, philosophical debates, moral quandaries, and of course...
00:41:18
Speaker
around a dozen news items from around the world each week. So check back on your podcast player to hear previous episodes. And remember to get an alert for each new episode, simply click like or follow and also subscribe to the show.
00:41:32
Speaker
Thanks for your ongoing support wherever you listen to us from.