Working in food technology is a more effectively altruistic career choice than working in grassroots activism
12
closes 2300
77%
chance

Full question:

Working in food technology is a more effective career choice than working in grassroots activism if one’s goal is to end factory farming as quickly as possible and one has average skills in each area.

One of the questions from https://jacyanthis.com/big-questions.

Resolves according to my judgement of whether the criteria have been met, taking into account clarifications from @JacyAnthis, who made those predictions. (The goal is that they'd feel comfortable betting to their credance in this market, so I want the resolution criteria to match their intention.)

Resolves once factory farming is ended and we have a decent idea of what caused that to happen.

Get Ṁ500 play money

Related questions

Effective Altruist organization commits serious human rights abuses "for the greater good" before 2035
HarrisonLucas avatarHarrison Lucas
17% chance
A state of the art review on the causes of autism
mariopasquato avatarmario pasquato
80bounty
The Evolution of Weather Forecasting: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Technology
KayChen avatarKay Chen
50% chance
Annual rate of controversies related to lack of edit history
Automatic discovery of natural experiments
mariopasquato avatarmario pasquato
37% chance
Longtermist Policymakers create mass-surveillance civilisational risk monitoring programme by 1st Jan 2028
AgenticLondoner avatarJamie
39% chance
Sort by:
ErwinRossen avatar
Erwin Rossen

I think this is quite unmeasurable. Even if factory farming has ended, I am pretty sure that opinions differ what actually caused that, which most likely is a combination of both, but in which proportion? I don't want to place a bet on an a mere opinion of Jacy Anthis or whoever.

connorwilliams97 avatar
Connor Williams

85-90% yes. The vast majority of people are omnivores. Most non-vegans are actively turned off by most of what passes as animal rights activism nowadays. Accepting the EA moral framework for the purposes of this market, activism probably has small net negative utility and research has large net positive utility, if your utility function is reduction of farm animal suffering.