Cruelty Toward Animals and Going Vegan More Easily
Organizations focused on effective altruism are running campaigns against food companies around the world to reduce cruelty toward animals and to reduce the share of animals in the food system.
Hello,
We are sending the last newsletter of 2020. In our next newsletter, we will be in 2021; we hope that 2021 brings happiness, peace, and health to our planet. This month’s newsletter once again includes a range of different topics.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can is one of the most important organizations that has helped shape effective altruism. Giving What We Can has a single goal: to direct existing donations toward effective organizations while also increasing the total amount donated.
With more than 5,000 members and more than $200 million raised, Giving What We Can has made a major difference in the lives of people living in extreme poverty.
By choosing one of the three options below, you can also join Giving What We Can.
- You may want to donate just 1% of your income.
- You may want to donate just 10% of your income.
- You may want to donate a larger share of your income.
It is time to stop animals’ suffering
Organizations focused on effective altruism are running campaigns against food companies around the world to reduce cruelty toward animals and to reduce the share of animals in the food system.
You can look at two campaigns that are currently active as examples. The first asks Burger King to stop sourcing eggs from cage systems. The second asks McDonald’s not to use fast-growing chicken breeds.
Note: may contain upsetting visuals.
A guide to going vegan more easily
Do you want to go vegan but think you do not know enough yet? Do you want to go vegan but are not sure what to eat? Do you want to go vegan but are still uncertain?
The website Kolay vegan steps in at exactly this point.
Reducing existential risks through career choice
Many existential risks may be waiting for us in the distant future. If you want to help reduce existential risks, there are many career options. Let’s mention a few important points to keep in mind when choosing a career.
- At the outset, you can decide which existential risks you want to work on mitigating. At this point, make sure you know whether you want to focus on areas that create direct existential risks, such as pandemics, or on more indirect areas such as global political instability or a lack of cooperation among major powers.
- Generate ideas about which career paths are suitable for working on these issues. The most common options include research, governmental and policy-making institutions, and nonprofit aid or research organizations.
- Identify the steps you would need to complete in order to build a career in these institutions, compare them, and begin.
The biggest existential risks
Before choosing a career aimed at reducing existential risks, let’s look at the scale of these risks and which ones stand out more. According to the effective altruism organization 80,000 Hours, the biggest areas of existential risk include pandemics within the subcategory of global catastrophic biological risks and misaligned artificial intelligence.
Pandemics have caused global catastrophes throughout human history and still represent one of the biggest risks to humanity’s future. The rapid development of biotechnology is increasing this risk dramatically.
Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, stands out as one of the most promising and at the same time most worrying technologies of the 21st century. Although billions of dollars are being spent to make AI systems more powerful, very few people are working on making AI safe. In other words, we can say that AI safety is a highly neglected field. Many experts say that AI could become smarter than humans within this century; but whether these technologies can be developed in a controlled way that remains aligned with humanity’s aims is still a major open question.
You can also play a role in reducing catastrophic and existential risks through your career by working in other areas expected to cause large-scale disasters. These areas may include great-power conflict, climate change, and work aimed at reducing tensions and improving coordination between the world’s two major powers, the United States and China.