welcome to the nonlinear library, where we use text-to-speech software to convert the best writing from the rationalist and ea communities into audio.
this is: Big List of Cause Candidates, published by NunoSempere on the effective altruism forum.
Many thanks to Ozzie Gooen for suggesting this project, to Marta Krzeminska for editing help and to Michael Aird and others for various comments.
In the last few years, there have been many dozens of posts about potential new EA cause areas, causes and interventions. Searching for new causes seems like a worthy endeavour, but on their own, the submissions can be quite scattered and chaotic. Collecting and categorizing these cause candidates seemed like a clear next step.
We —Ozzie Gooen of the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute and I— might later be interested in expanding this work and eventually using it for forecasting —e.g., predicting whether each candidate would still seem promising after much more rigorous research. At the same time, we feel like this list itself can be useful already.
Further, as I kept adding more and more cause candidates, I realized that aiming for completeness was a fool's errand, or at least too big a task for an individual working alone.
Below is my current list with a simple categorization, as well as an occasional short summary which paraphrases or quotes key points from the posts linked. See the last appendix for some notes on nomenclature. If there are any entries I missed (and there will be), please say so in the comments and I'll add them. I also created the "Cause Candidates" tag on the EA Forum and tagged all of the listed posts there. They are also available in a Google Sheet.
Animal Welfare and Suffering
Pointer: This cause has its various EA Forum tags (farmed animal welfare, wild animal welfare, meat alternatives), where more cause candidates can be found. Brian Tomasik et al.'s Essays on Reducing Suffering are also a gift that keeps on giving for this and other cause areas.
1.Wild Animal Suffering Caused by Fires
Related categories: Politics: System change, targeted change, policy reform.
Wild animal suffering caused by fires and ways to prevent it: a noncontroversial intervention (@Animal_Ethics)
An Animal Ethics grantee designed a protocol aimed at helping animals during and after fires. The protocol contains specific suggestions, but the path to turning these into policy is unclear.
2. Invertebrate Welfare
Invertebrate Welfare Cause Profile (@Jason Schukraft)
The scale of direct human impact on invertebrates (@abrahamrowe)
"In this post, we apply the standard importance-neglectedness-tractability framework to invertebrate welfare to determine, as best we can, whether this is a cause area that is worth prioritizing. We conclude that it is."
Note: See also Brian Tomasik's Do Bugs Feel Pain.
3. Humane Pesticides
Humane Pesticides as the Most Marginally Effective Cause (@JeffMJordan)
Improving Pest Management for Wild Insect Welfare (@Wild_Animal_Initiative)
The post argues that insects experience consciousness, and that there are a lot of them, so we should give them significant moral weight (comments contain a discussion on this point). The post goes on to recommend subsidization of less-painful pesticides, an idea initially suggested by Brian Tomasik, who "estimates this intervention to cost one dollar per 250,000 less-painful deaths." The second post goes into much more depth.
4. Diet Change
Is promoting veganism neglected and if so what is the most effective way of promoting it? (@samuel072)
Animal Equality showed that advocating for diet change works. But is it cost-effective? (@Peter_Hurford, @Marcus_A_Davis)
Cost-effectiveness analysis of a program promoting a vegan diet (@nadavb, @sella, @GidonKadosh, @MorHanany)
Measuring Change in Diet for Animal Advocacy (@Jacob_Peacock)
The first post is a stub. The second post looks at a reasonably high-powered study on individual outreach. It concludes that, based on reasonable assum...
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