“What to do about near-term cluelessness in animal welfare” by Anthony DiGiovanni
(Context: I’m not an expert in animal welfare. My aim is to sketch a potentially neglected perspective on prioritization, not to give highly reliable object-level advice.)SummaryWe seem to be clueless about our long-term impact. We might therefore consider it more robust to focus on neartermist causes, in particular animal welfare.[1] But if we also take seriously our deep uncertainty about our impact on animals, what implications does this have for animal welfare prioritization? This post will explain: why I think we could be clueless about even the near-term impact of many animal welfare interventions (more); what criteria I think an intervention must satisfy to be robust to near-term cluelessness (more); and how these criteria compare to existing approaches to robustness (more). Practical takeaways for cost-effectiveness analyses: Include estimates of key backfire effects (more), such as: large increases in populations of wild animals with net-negative [...] ---Outline:(00:22) Summary(02:28) Introduction(06:59) Principles for a cluelessness-robust intervention(07:11) 1. Accounts for robust backfire effects(07:30) Example(09:07) More detail(12:53) 2. Doesn't depend on arbitrary estimates(12:58) Example(14:50) More detail(18:00) 3. Accounts for unknown unknowns(18:05) Example(19:13) More detail(24:08) Comparison to other approaches to robustness in cause prioritization(27:21) Conclusion and future directions(30:16) Acknowledgments--- First published: October 8th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8Y9byyfpBpjGiW5mG/what-to-do-about-near-term-cluelessness-in-animal-welfare --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.