Steven Rouk
Bio
Participation2
I've been in the animal advocacy space since ~2012 and EA since ~2016.
I have a background in mathematics, philosophy, data, and programming. Thinking about how to do the most good with my life led me to animal advocacy, and more specifically working on ending animal farming.
I worked at Mercy For Animals for two years doing data analysis and research, and in 2022 I founded the organization Connect For Animals after conducting an analysis of the gaps in the animal advocacy space where I could have the most impact.
My favorite social media app is Goodreads.
How others can help me
Others can help me by using Connect For Animals, sharing it with others, and giving me feedback on how we can do better and create more of an impact. I also appreciate introductions to people who can help us accelerate our work. And we're always in need of talented, dedicated people who can help us do the work and push our mission forward. (And like every organization, funding helps as well.)
How I can help others
I can share my experience of working in animal advocacy and founding an organization. I also have a good amount of experience doing peer coaching and helping others work through issues in their work and efforts to do good.
I can provide resources and recommendations (often books, my favorite things) for (1) learning more about how the world works, (2) learning more about ethics, and (3) learning how to live a good life.
I've thought a lot about animal ethics, moral value aggregation, and ethics generally speaking.
Posts 3
Comments3
Thanks for doing this AMA, Emma!
I'm curious as to how you think about prioritizing different types of interventions that might reduce the suffering of farmed animals in very different ways, for example:
- Working on reducing suffering through welfare reforms.
- Working on reducing numbers of animals through diet change policies (e.g. plant-based default food policies) or behavior change messaging (e.g. pro-veg messages).
- Working on reducing numbers of animals through increased alternative protein availability and consumption (e.g. plant-based meats, etc.).
Since each of these is a plausible way to help farmed animals, yet they're very different strategic approaches, how do you all think about allocating your time and energy?
I'm late to the discussion, but I might add that I have a hypothesis that we have heavily underinvested in finding, connecting, and supporting existing supporters of farmed animal welfare. One symptom of this would be a seeming lack of diversity in the funding opportunities. Another symptom might be difficulty finding these opportunities, even if they do exist, due to lack of social network connectivity (i.e. there are no easy ways to find opportunities outside of our well-connected local social networks). Thus, perhaps one of the first things we should invest more heavily in is building up this connective infrastructure for the movement.
Lastly, I think the definition of "good opportunity" varies wildly, and a more holistic understanding of risk and uncertainty would nudge us in the direction of valuing strategic and tactical diversity as an inherent good, above and beyond any kind of impact evaluation or estimation. Thus, at an extreme, if you had 100% of funding invested in CWRs, then nearly any non-CWR opportunity would be seen as a good opportunity due to increasing the diversity of approaches.
Of course, we don't have that extreme case of 100% investment in CWRs, but I think Kato's point is that a more pluralistic movement (i.e. a more diversified one than we currently have) does probably lead to higher impact, which would expand our definition of good opportunities to include things we might otherwise pass on.
I believe Harish Sethu gave an excellent talk at the AR Conference a few years back using an apples and oranges market analogy to demonstrate this same kind of idea.
Do you think about fish or insects at all, or are you choosing to remain focused on chickens for now?