EA - Longtermism and animals: Resources + join our Discord community! by Ren Springlea

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Longtermism and animals: Resources + join our Discord community!, published by Ren Springlea on January 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Key pointsWe host a Discord server for discussing animals and longtermism. You are more than welcome to join here.There are compelling reasons to help those who will live in the long-term future, and there are compelling reasons to help nonhuman animals. As such, the intersection between longtermism and animal advocacy is starting to receive a bit more attention among the EA community.This post has three main purposes:To invite you to our Discord server on animals and longtermism (link above).To share a list of resources on animals and longtermism that we've collected over time, in case this helps anybody.To share some details about an organisation we almost launched, which would have aimed to find the best interventions for helping animals in the long-term future. We got funding, but the grant was awarded by an FTX Future Fund regrantor, so the funding fell through. In this post, we have linked our grant application/plans in case anybody wants to pick up where we left off.Background to animals and longtermismThere are many reasons why animal advocacy and longtermism can help each other do even more good. These reasons are explored in detail in the resources that we list below. To quickly name a few:The expected number of animals in the far future could be simply enormous. This means that considering the lives of animals in the far future could be a great way to have a large impact. As Browning and Viet conclude, "Work on longtermism has thus far primarily focused on the existence and wellbeing of future humans, without corresponding consideration of animal welfare. [...] Given the sheer expected number of future animals, as well as the likelihood of their suffering, we argue that the well-being of future animals should be given serious consideration when thinking about the long-term future, allowing for the possibility that in some cases their interests may even dominate."Animal welfare may represent most of the moral value in the far future. This means that longtermists may need to consider the perspective of animal advocacy in order to do the most good.Most animals might exist in the long-term future. This means that animal advocates may need to consider the perspective of longtermists in order to do the most good.Society’s attitude towards animals is important for the long-term trajectory of society's moral values.Animals may also interact with new phenomena, like artificial intelligence, space colonisation, artificial sentience, and brain emulations in ways that are likely to have serious moral implications.So far, research on animals in the long-term future has fallen into these broad buckets:Animals and space colonisation (making sure space exploration and colonisation is animal-friendly)Wild animal welfare (e.g. resilience of wild animal populations over time, introducing wild animals to other planets, how artificial intelligence affects wild animals)Animals and artificial intelligence (making sure artificial intelligence and machine learning is designed with animals in mind)Digital animal mindsHealth of the animal advocacy movement (to enable animal advocacy to sustain its efforts over time)Further (meta) thinking on longtermism and animalsResources on animals and longtermismGeneral animals and longtermismHeather Browning and Walter Veit - Longtermism and AnimalsMichael Dello-Iacovo - Longtermism and Animal Farming TrajectoriesZach Freitas-Groff - Longtermism in Animal AdvocacyOscar Horta - Why Animal Advocacy Matters Much More Than You ThinkAnimal advocacy & longtermism - Effective Animal Advocacy Leadership Coordination Forum 2022 (slides)William Bench - Apples and Oranges: On the Conv...