Tucson, Pics, AI, Scam, FB

The best photo example is the last. 

Two sunset photos from earlier this week:

I also took a picture of a nearly-full moon one morning:

Some adjustments (contrast):

But then I asked the Pixel's AI to process it:

Ay, Carumba!

I gave Google's Nano Banana this scan of an old photo from 1992:

And asked Nano to clean it up, especially making the faces clearer. This is what I got. I swear I am not making this up:

Also: we had a scam charge on our debit card (which is never used for anything). A recurring $20 charge. I only mention this because I then heard of someone else who just had the same thing happen. 

Aaaannnndddd, with all that said: It is Day 7 and counting of Meta not allowing One Step for Animals to advertise Facebook or Instagram (or anything related). It has been Kafka-esque. The most likely explanation is that they are trying to drive me insane. (Little do they know how much I hate them and how, for a long time, I haven't liked giving them money.)

Ignore, Egomania: “The Book I Wish I Read Sooner”

One of the best pics I've ever taken.

Note: Today is the fourth anniversary of going off oh-pea-oyds. I was on them for almost 8 months after the fall. I am still on Pregabalin (nerve med) and probably always will be.

Below: New review at Amazon and email. Note that you can read / share the book for free.

”Losing My Religions is essential reading for anyone in the animal rights space. Matt's reflections on dogma in the early vegan movement really hit hard because surprisingly not much has changed. The book offers honest lessons on mistakes we keep repeating - ones new advocates could easily avoid by learning from the past. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that living compassionately isn’t as simple as continuing to yell 'go vegan,' but about actually working to build a better world - for everyone, including those who don’t share our mission.”

Email from Germany:

”I came across your book "Losing My Religions" - quite shocking, all the misfortunes you’ve had with accidents and near-death experiences! I hope you're doing reasonably well now. :/ 

”It’s also very unfortunate that you've experienced all these betrayals - sadly, not too uncommon both within and outside the vegan bubble.”

Plant-Based = Poison-Based

Addressing the antivaxxers of the food world seems to be my least-popular Substack post ever. In addition to the knee-jerk reaction of "OH NO GMO!" the idea that pesticides and herbicides are "poison" is stuck in people's heads. 

I then came across this video by Hank Green on how many different plants evolved to produce caffeine as a poison. That is a great example of the below, from New Scientist, that I quote in both the above-mentioned Substack and Losing My Religions:

All fruit and vegetables contain large numbers of naturally occurring pesticides. These are the result of an arms race with insect herbivores. If we tested for these, we would find that they are just as nasty as synthetic pesticides, but present in food in higher amounts. However, they don't affect us when we consume them because their concentration is only effective against insects, not anything large.

Weekend Reading / Share

Lewis Bollard on factory farming.

Please read and share.

As I've written elsewhere: The person I trust most regarding animal suffering is Lewis Bollard at Open Philanthropy Project. He and I don’t agree on everything, but he is not trying to sell a certain story, promote his group or philosophy, or solicit support. He takes suffering very seriously. In addition to being extremely scrupulous and rigorous in evaluations, he constantly monitors himself for self-delusion. 

Q on Compassion ("That’s not weakness—it’s wisdom.")

"Yes, I know I'm impossibly cool."

As mentioned yesterday, here is an almost unedited column from ChatGPT. [edits and comments in square brackets.] I didn't even take out the hated m-dashes. And the last line seems put in just to prove it is ChatGPT. 😆

Kinda a follow-up to Even Vegans Die, which I actually did write.

Draft blog post — When a famous [person] dies: be kind (yes, even online)

tl;dr — Kindness first. Critique later, if at all. [No, don't even do it later.] Nobody wins when we open a public wound at somebody’s funeral.

I keep seeing it after a public death: someone famous—often [even] someone who spent years speaking on behalf of animals or health—passes away and somewhere on social media a handful of people pop up with the gleeful moral accounting: “See? Shouldn’t have eaten meat,” or “Serves them right for not being vegan.” It’s a temptation. It’s also lousy.

We can do better. I’ve said something like this before: Even vegans die. But not today. That was the point of my old post—illness, accidents, and freak bad luck don’t politely wait for perfect morality. Matt Ball [These are reference; I'm leaving them in. Despite being told, and having a paid account in my name, ChatGPT often doesn't get that I'm Matt Ball.]

A few real examples, because the internet loves examples: Jay Dinshah, a pioneer in North American vegan organizing, died at 66. IVU Dr. John McDougall, who did more than anyone I know to popularize a starch-based plant diet [WTF?], died at 77. The Press Democrat Dr. Baxter Montgomery, a physician many people followed, died at 59. [gulp] McGovern Medical School And [a worshiped person who, 25 years ago, charged $20,000 for a speaking event, and once threatened to sue me] recently died at 77. [reference cut]

Those are sobering facts. They’re also a reminder that lifespan and cause of death are messy. People die for reasons that often have nothing to do with the one obvious thing we want to blame. [Cut], accidents, infections, genetic vulnerabilities, environmental exposures, and simple bad luck all exist. The role of diet is complex and rarely the sole determinant of how long anyone lives. [💓]

So here’s the thing: when someone dies, [cut], the reflex to score moral points does more harm than good.

Why it’s worth resisting the reflex

• It’s cruel to those left behind. Grief is raw and real. Pointing fingers at the deceased adds injury to pain.

• It’s strategically dumb. [Oh, this does sound like me.] People watch tone and manners as closely as they watch facts. Public cruelty makes our movement look smug and mean—and turns people away. [💖💖💖]

• It’s often wrong. A single data point (one death) tells you almost nothing about diets, longevity, or virtue. Cherry-picking deaths to “prove” a point is bad reasoning dressed as triumphalism.

What to do instead (online and off)

1. Be kind, first. A simple, humane comment—“I’m sorry for their family”—does not betray your cause. It keeps the moral high ground.

2. Remember nuance. If you want to discuss diet or health [don't do that], do it later and in a context that doesn’t exploit grief. Evidence > taunt.

3. Honor contribution. If the person advanced animal welfare (or health), recognize that. Celebrate what they did and be candid about what we might still learn.

4. Use it as an invitation, not a cudgel. Link curious people to good resources. Offer help and information, not humiliation.

5. When tempted to “gotcha,” pause. If you’re heated, don’t reply. Sleep on it. Public conversations that begin in anger rarely end well. [Public conversations rarely end well - full stop.]

Short, shareable things to say (if you want to post)

• “I’m sorry for their family. They did a lot to help animals—thank you.” [I'm not sure where Q got this focus on "they helped animals" - it was not in my prompt.]

• “This is sad. I’m grateful for their work and I hope we can carry it forward with kindness.”

• “Tragic news. Eating choices are complicated—let’s keep the conversation compassionate.” [WTF is that? Yuck. Horrible.]

A note to those of us who care deeply

We want the world to change. We want to be right. But the point of persuasion is to bring people along, not to humiliate them. [💓] Righteousness without empathy is brittle: it breaks relationships and shrinks our influence. If the goal is fewer animals suffering, being kind in the small moments matters. People notice tone. They remember whether you were the person who shamed them or the person who invited them.

Final thought: kindness should be our baseline. [What a great line.  ;-) ] If you want to make an argument later about diet, do it with data and respect. [No, don't do that. No no no.] If you want to honor someone’s life, do that first. [The strikethrough is my edit.] We can be firm about our values without being cruel to grieving humans. That’s not weakness—it’s wisdom.  [LOL  😜]

Me on AI, AI on Kindness preview, and Cat Pictures

On my wall, c/o Nat. (Click for larger if you can't read.)

I use ChatGPT a lot, mostly for research and pro/con lists. It makes kinda insane errors, but is generally better than a [classic] Google search. 

But I will repeat: If there is real intelligence, things would work much better.

Not to whine (I won the lottery, I know) but things very often do not work well.

We're not happy about this, but One Step for Animals has advertised on Facebook / Instagram for over a decade. Bazillions* of dollars. Until yesterday, when they suspended our account. Why? Who knows. I'm stuck in an endless loop with, I'm sure, an "AI."

But that's neither here nor there. Tomorrow, I'm going to run a column that ChatGPT wrote, based on some prompts and feedback I gave it. I'm going to run it mostly unedited; you'll see the [] where needed. 

Why? Because I'm very busy trying to fix things that should have just worked.

Until then, some cat pictures:

*OK, maybe an exaggeration. But we've not found a better way to reach people with a pro-chicken message. We are open to suggestions - I'm serious.

Doom: A Force that Gives Life Meaning (rerun)

  Sting - Russians

Trinity test.

(This blog title refers to the saying that war is a force that gives life meaning. Chris Hedges has a book on that particular topic.)

As I write in Losing My Religions, the threat of nuclear annihilation overshadowed much of my life growing up, especially after Reagan's election and his "jokes" about bombing the Soviet Union.

This wasn't irrational; much of the northern hemisphere came close to devastation a frightening number of times. (BBC article; longer Wikipedia list of nuclear near-misses - pay particular attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 event. You and I are alive because of Vasily Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov.)

Those two paragraphs are a tangentially-relevant introduction to my main topic:

There has always been a subset of people who believe the world is going to end. 

As far as I can tell, some form of Apocalypticism has pretty much always existed in human history. In the past, though, it has mostly been within a religious context. However, during my lifetime, there has been a number of "rationalist" / "scientific" forms of doomism.

Perhaps the first one that came to my attention was championed by Wrong About Everything Yet Still Celebrated Paul Ehrlich. ("The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.")

Currently, there is the Dogma of Climate Catastrophism and Effective Altruism's Church of Existential Risk. 

I think it was in The Demon-Haunted World where Carl Sagan noted that the advent of rocket launches and space flight brought with it UFO sightings and fears of aliens. Today, there is a section of the population for whom computers are the wrathful god we must fear. 

All of the above is just a preface to suggest listening to Tyler Cowen on Russ Roberts' EconTalk. I think it would be useful to set aside any preconceptions and consider the ideas discussed - especially the historical context of apocalypticism (and general pessimism). (And, of course, if you know anyone in the Church of EcoDoom, share Hannah Ritchie with them.)

Not to repeat myself (OK, yes - I'm repeating myself) but doomism is making the world a much worse place. Climate catastrophism has destroyed the mental health of an untold number of people, and, as discussed in this blog and Losing, is actually causing more climate change and worse impacts. Obsession with big numbers and "extinction" has led many smart people to spend their lives not working on all the incredible unnecessary suffering that exists right now. 

So instead of listening to another depressing podcast, consider trying this episode of EconTalk for a different perspective. 

If you find this blog interesting, please share it. Thanks!

The End of Optimization

Freddie Mercury

(Side note: Interesting overview on Passkeys.)

A follow-up to my earlier post, "Idiot or Fanatic," this post, "Optimizing Ourselves to Death" from Of Dollars and Data is worth a quick read. 

If you've read Losing, you're familiar with some of my regrets along these lines, particularly that the work I did for decades, on balance, made the world worse. But I also obsessed over every penny. Literally -- I worried that I wasn't getting enough use out of individual Q-tips. Oy.

Doing Good Better Per Marginal Dollar

Correctly realizing that "Go Vegan!" has failed (to put it kindly), a number of people are focusing more on welfare reforms. This has taken the form of encouraging people to "offset" their support of factory farming by donating to efforts for welfare reforms. Here is a good overview by Kenny Torrella. 

As noted by Kenny, Lewis Bollard helped raise millions of dollars for these "offset" efforts with one podcast. I am thrilled this money didn't go to "Vegans" (or AI "risks,"* or just sit in bank accounts), but will also note that one podcast probably raised more money than One Step for Animals has brought in over the course of its entire existence. 

It seems to me unlikely that One Step's reasoning and advocacy are currently doing less good per marginal dollar than more funding for welfare reforms. I could be wrong.

To see why, here are some excerpts from a recent Robert Yaman column. His context is climate change, which readers know I care less than zero about. But Robert's statistics are worth considering when deciding how to best make a difference in the world; please click if you agree:

Mortality among broiler chickens currently stands at roughly 6%. Over 500 million chickens die before slaughter in the US each year (which, for perspective, is more than all the other land animals that we actually eat) 

Broiler mortality has increased from 3.7% to 6% over the last 12 years.

Chickens raised for meat are bred to grow extremely quickly, which puts intense pressure on their legs, often leading to bacterial infection in their developing bones and joints. One major consequence is lameness—poor leg health that makes it agonizing for birds to walk. The pain is often so intense that a chicken will die of thirst rather than walk. Up to 225 million chickens in the US die each year from this condition.

*

 

Q Asks: Got Back?

This post was drafted on Monday by “Q” (ChatGPT) because I’ve been stuck in bed for most of three days (and counting) with my back out. So I used voice recognition on my phone to brainstorm with Q (who, by the way, voice recognition insists on calling “chatchee BT.”) The irony is that a few days before this, I was, by some (but not all) measures, more fit than I had ever been.

Like other times in my life, my lower back has again decided No More Mr. Nice Guy. The pain has been so intense that I have almost thrown up on several occasions. At times, even the smallest movement has felt like a series of knives in the back, like I'm being filleted. 

And the thing is — this isn’t some once-in-a-lifetime medical catastrophe. It’s mundane. People throw out their backs every day. Yet at times, the suffering is absolutely overwhelming.

Lying here, I have found myself wondering: Have the folks who argue expected values — shrimp or insects or “the worst product is the one that involves bees” — ever really suffered?  

(And yes, I recently saw someone argue that the cruelest animal product is … honey. Not veal. Not foie gras. Honey. Because "numbers." SMH. [BTW, they are off by orders of magnitude!])

Seriously: I just have to doubt that anyone who’s been in enough pain to vomit, or to pass out, or to want to die — all of which I’ve experienced — could truly believe the ethical focus of their life must be bugs. 

To be clear, I’m not saying insects don’t matter. If it turns out they can suffer, then yes, their suffering matters. But contending that guesses and equations should outweigh the certain, profound, unnecessary suffering that is right in front of us — that’s just flabbergasting.

Yes, philosophy and reason matter. They keep us from only caring about ourselves or thinking the universe revolves around our cat. (Though Dusty would strongly disagree.)

"You take that back!"

But when ethics becomes math and drifts off into pure abstraction — divorced from the messy, visceral reality of actual, profound, tractable suffering — we have really lost the thread.

Thinking beyond our bubble is right and necessary. (Sorry, Dusters.) But when we forget what extreme pain feels like, we end up ignoring suffering that could actually be alleviated right now. And that’s the opposite of progress:  less compassion, more suffering, and no meaning.

(Blog's titles "Got Back" = reference to The Beatles = bugs.)

Weekend Reading

😵Holy Chicken! More Good News from Vox!  Don't fall for nostalgia. Even for the '90s.*

Similar to: Nostalgia is harmful

Ted Nordhaus: Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

* I get much joy from memories from the 90s (example below), but I'm not bitter about the present.

Animals are so much better than humans

Watch / listen to a few minutes about baboons. (Video will start at that segment.)

(This blog's title is sarcasm, btw. Also, humans are animals, obv.)

Socialism and Capitalism and History and Progress

 tl;dr - check out this podcast.

I've read and heard many arguments for socialism. But fundamentally, socialism is based on the idea that we can work together for the betterment of everyone.

Socialism is like ethical veganism*: everyone will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

I don't know how anyone can believe that.

The richest country that has ever existed knowingly put into power the most overtly corrupt, selfish, self-centered, avaricious individual to ever seek office. Not to mention the most anti-democratic (link, and also the pictures below the footnotes). 

This is not a post bemoaning how terrible human beings are. 

Rather, this is a question of both: 

1. How has humanity (as a whole), in the past few hundred years (only 0.1% of human history), gotten unbelievably rich and long-lived? 
2. How can humanity - especially the poorest individuals - get even wealthier and healthier?**

The answer to both questions cannot depend on anyone doing the right thing for the right reason. The answer has to take into account human nature - we are all at least somewhat self-interested, envious, and tribal.

The way we've become better off has been: trade, markets, and capitalism.

In this age of lies*** and memes, let's be clear what I'm not saying. 

I'm not saying:

• Libertarianism
• Crony capitalism / oligarchy
• No government / limited government / no government
• No taxes / low taxes / not-progressive taxes
• No regulation / limited regulation
• No social safety net
• The U.S. is perfect / Europe (or Scandinavia) is terrible
• Money is the meaning of life$$

Just because some assholes say "Markets!" "Capitalism!" doesn't mean <waves hands> socialism. 

And just because angry people have clever memes on social media doesn't mean the past was better or that we would all be better off if we were hunter-gatherers.****

This is just a long way of saying that this podcast (by two well-off white males!) is worthwhile for anyone who wants to understand human nature, history, how things got better (for humans), and how things can get better (for humans ... and hopefully animals?).

$$ The podcast ends with a discussion of the need for meaning in life, making clear that markets and capitalism don't inherently make us happy. But we've gone from:

A) Having most of our children die while we worried about getting enough food to stay alive, to
B) Having too much tasty food while worrying about the "point of existence." 

One of those situations is clearly better than the other.

Or, as Mike concludes:

Now, sometimes I will have a Duke student tell me, 'Well, now money isn't everything.' I'll ask them, 'Well, how big is your trust fund?' Because almost everyone who tells me that money isn't everything was never poor. If you're poor, money is quite a bit. So, not having to worry about where am I going to live? Am I going to be able to take care of the basic needs of my family? Those things are pretty important.

On the other hand, it is true that Adam Smith wrote two books and all of his point about being embedded in a society--now it's a commercial society, but it is a society. So, we can't substitute commerce for society. These things have to go together. And, if we can find a way to bring back the society part of commercial society, I think capitalism is likely to be more sustainable. As it stands you are right. We have some thinking to do.

Pictures of why we can't have nice things are below the footnotes. Only scroll down if you really think we can all just get along.

*And like "Go Vegan!", "socialism" can never be disproved. Everyone thinks that they have cracked the code of getting people to go vegan /not be greedy/tribal. Everyone is wrong. 

**Whether humanity should get richer does not have a clear-cut answer, as I discuss in Losing (shorter version).

***On Joe Rogan, Bernie Sanders claimed that Vanguard, Black Rock, and State Street "own" the vast majority of the stock market. This is so utterly and totally untrue, I hardly even know where to start. Please stop lying - it destroys your credibility with people who might otherwise be sympathetic. 

****For those who really hate our modern society, nothing is stopping you from moving elsewhere and living as a hunter-gatherer. 

Why I am not willing to count on the goodwill of my fellow humans:

A Meaningful Life (2-minute version)

From here.

Twenty-five years after the two-hour talk that became A Meaningful Life, my two-minute version:

1. Outrage, guilt, doom, depression, and anxiety aren’t “meaning.” They make things worse.
   Joy, gratitude, and pragmatism make things better.

2. Be kind and uplifting to nearly everyone. (See p. 355 for why I say “nearly.”)

3. Value and promote compassion, understanding, perspective, and gratitude.

4. Take seriously the plight of those suffering deeply.

5. Don’t let talk of bugs, “humanity,” “the planet,” expected value, or the far future distract you from the clear and present suffering all around us.
   Right here, right now, many individuals are suffering from intentional and preventable cruelty – and you can help.

6. Each sentient individual is “the universe.”
   You literally change “the universe” every time you make someone’s life better.

Inspired by a recent conversation with one of our favorite people.

Good News ... from Vox?

Vox's "Good News" newsletter, by Bryan Walsh, is, of course, sometimes infected by Vox's Doom Dogma. But this last one was great! Please share it around.

Ranting that everything is terrible and getting worse helps make things worse. The only way to make things better is to internalize:

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.