“Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare” by Ariel Simnegar

Thanks to Michael St. Jules for his comments.Key TakeawaysThe evidence that animal welfare dominates in neartermism is strong.Open Philanthropy (OP) should scale up its animal welfare allocation over several years to approach a majority of OP's neartermist grantmaking.If OP disagrees, they should practice reasoning transparency by clarifying their views:How much weight does OP's theory of welfare place on pleasure and pain, as opposed to nonhedonic goods?Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human's welfare than one unit of another animal's welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?How would OP's views have to change for OP to prioritize animal welfare in neartermism?Summary.Rethink Priorities (RP)'s moral weight research endorses the claim that the best animal welfare interventions are orders of magnitude (1000x) more cost-effective than the best neartermist alternatives.Avoiding this conclusion seems very difficult:Rejecting hedonism (the view that only pleasure and pain have moral [...] ---Outline:(00:09) Key Takeaways(02:46) The Evidence Endorses Prioritizing Animal Welfare in Neartermism(06:32) Objections(06:35) Animal Welfare Does Not Dominate in Neartermism(07:07) RPs Project Assumptions are Incorrect(09:21) Endorsing Overwhelming Non-Hedonism(14:13) Endorsing Overwhelming Hierarchicalism(16:09) Its Strongly Intuitive that Helping Humans Helping Chickens(16:46) Skepticism of Formal Philosophy(17:58) Even if Animal Welfare Dominates, it Still Shouldnt Receive a Majority of Neartermist Funding(18:12) Worldview Diversification Opposes Majority Allocations to Controversial Cause Areas(19:43) OP is Already a Massive Animal Welfare Funder(20:16) Animal Welfare has Faster Diminishing Marginal Returns than Global Health(21:36) Increasing Animal Welfare Funding would Reduce OP's Influence on Philanthropists(23:42) Request for Reasoning Transparency from OP(26:13) Conclusion--- First published: November 19th, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/btTeBHKGkmRyD5sFK/open-phil-should-allocate-most-neartermist-funding-to-animal --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.