(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.)

Summary

We 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 [...]

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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

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First published:

October 8th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8Y9byyfpBpjGiW5mG/what-to-do-about-near-term-cluelessness-in-animal-welfare

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.