A Scam within Veganism: the "Effective Activism" paradigm.

the open philanthropy project recently
gave a $500,000 grant to ace however they wrote a damning criticism of a stating that they had used a quote reliance on low quality research low quality data and that they had reservations about the level of vetting ace applies to charities claims about themselves in other words the public may very well have been deceived into donating potentially millions of dollars based on bad science and self-made claims leafletting is a big deal and I saw a lecture recently at the vegan conference that happens every year in the Czech Republic in Prague there's a YouTube channel for called vegan channel there was this I maybe 19 year old girl gave a lecture so she could have been 20 she could in 18 I forget a young young woman and she was very nervous and having troubles me she goes up and stands in front of this live proudness electric and she says well this is gonna be a lecture about leafleting about like affective leafleting and why i want all of you to be super excited about leafleting and i sat there like really hostile sir i'm not in the crowd I'm watching this on YouTube I'm like okay let's see where this goes as funny this girl gives a totally shizune pointless set of reflections on on leafletting and i realized oh so this young woman doesn't realize that right now within the vegan movement leafleting is like a political minefield it's become this really loaded thing because of groups like animal charity evaluators now okay I guess I guess this is as good a time as any I can cut to a minute or so clip from this video by shark [Music] animal charity evaluators or ace is a group that claims to review organizations for effectiveness then they promote those charities and ask people to financially support them ace Awards three organizations top charity status this positioning is incredibly lucrative as top charities get the most money donated to them from its inception to the time of this video only four groups have been awarded top charity status all of them are related to an animal rights activist named Nick Cooney this includes Mercy for Animals where he is executive vice president the humane League where he used the founder and board chair and the good food Institute where he was co-founder and board chair top charity status is a fiscal designation and is potentially worth millions of dollars in donations considering there are 20,000 humane organizations in existence it made no sense that only those groups either founded by or having a financial relationship with Nick Cooney were chosen for that highly profitable top charity status ace also put deceiving information on their guidestar page they claimed that in 2016 they quote conducted evaluations of over 300 animal charities however when we go back to their website we see that the total number of charities they have reviewed is 1/3 less than that out of that 205 an astounding 117 supposedly views consisted of a website link and nothing more the reality is they focus on those they pre-selected to promote a large part of the scam that this group animal charity evaluators has been foisted on the begin movement on the world and I feel confident calling it a scam begins with the assumption that for every one person who becomes vegan you save so many animal lives [Music] so they set up a calculus this so they start off by saying well let's suppose that if one person who's a meteor becomes vegan that saves the lives of 30 animals now we already had a video talking about the extent to which this is dubious or untrue or we can't we can't proceed with this assumption and then I say okay now let's estimate if you give this charity a thousand dollars and they hand out so many thousand leaflets they convert the money into a leaflet and campaign then how many meat-eaters become vegan because of having the leaflet hand them and then through this calculus they tell you for every $1 you donate to this charity you save the lives of eight animals or fifteen outs now to me already that's a skin if you regard that in isolation that is a scam if I say to you you donate $100 to me and I'm going to save the lives of 27.3 animals they give you a specific factual claim that already is a scam but it really gets more slippery and kind of psychological manipulative when you're comparing more than one type of vegan activism which is exactly the point of this research the point is to have a comparative evaluative overview of what different vegan groups are doing so to give an example I just looked up what Sharpe does you've seen the video by shark but it doesn't tell you who they are what they do so this is this interesting no I'm I'm not hating I'm but this is not my cup of tea I'm not into rodeos I just I don't care about rodeos and horse races and horse-drawn carriages for me and my vegan activism that's not the issue I'm gonna tackle right there are so many different different issues but it doesn't mean I think rodeo activism is [ __ ] it's not my perspective but I'm just saying I'm totally detached in this it's not telling with you so an example of one of the things they did was objecting to supermarkets in the Trader Joe's chain so trader Joe was a chain of supermarkets we don't have them in Canada I don't think but you guys have in the States so so two different shops from Trader Joe's were donating money to support rodeos an ace they did an intervention they expose this and they no this isn't acceptable and apparently the higher levels of the Trader Joe's corporation agreed with activists they said yeah that look they don't want the name of Trader Joe's linked to rodeos they also read and said no that's true you know both individual branch stores or something it's a I don't know how their corporate hierarchy works with probably there's some independence for local stores to do local promotions and they said yeah actually they don't approve of promotions linking Trader Joe's to to rodeos of this should this should stop so okay what is the effectiveness of this form of activism if you are actually gonna put a number on it and they choose this this organization AC e they're not just putting a number like a rating like a Plus through D - they're not putting a number from 1 to 1 to 10 they're actually attempting to put a number on it that's the number of animal lives saved I'm like if you if maybe this is my real-life girlfriend she's not just me not just my co-host on a TV show but you know if you if we're back in Canada and you want to get involved in you know protest against the rodeo some of that it's not like I'd say no absolutely okay well let's see what goes you know it's open mind open heart see if Liam possibly see if we can make a positive difference but how would you measure the positive difference and if you came to me one day and you said you know I just came back to the protest I just saved the lives of 27 animals I look at you like you know what are you crazy now I mean this kind of prayers for this specific example two different shops were prevented from donating money to a rodeo to supporting a rodeo and to promotion I think I mean the most positive outcome probably would be that it made a lot of people ask themselves difficult questions probably people inside Trader Joe's had to stop and ask themselves well what's our corporate mission what direction are we going in you know just ordinary average people who happen to see the story in a newspaper this controversy probably stop at ask themselves gee you know a sporting event that's based around electrocuting cows and horses and then you know chasing them around a field hmm you know like there is I mean in terms of effectiveness there or these effects but to quantify them at all is incredibly just to quantify them to give them like a grade like a minus serve or b-plus that's already a huge challenge and to have an objectively real consistent quantification where I could look at that protest against rodeos and compare it to our protest against fur farms and say oh this one's an 8 out of 10 this one's a 7 out of 10 like that's a huge challenge for the social sciences I'm not saying it's impossible because like I've been involved with projects like that like in Cambodia where you sit down you're like well on a scale of 1 to 10 how good is this hospital compared to this hospital it's complex what makes a good hospital a bad husband how good is the hospital at helping poor people how good is it at you know performing complex surgeries what are the wait times what are the signs of corrupt there's a lot there's a lot that goes into how clean is the hospital literally one of the measures we had was how often do the the searches wash their hands where we watched them we had the researchers sit in the room and watch whether or not the doctor wash their hands in front but maybe you have a great hospital but the doctors don't wash their hands enough but not that one you know so and you've got to actually come up with the math how important is washing your hands compared to helping poor people or doing really good surgeries or something you know great point we never write we never attempted that that's a great point could you could you extrapolate how many lives you're saving sure thing I could think if there was a protest going on at a rodeo afterwards if somebody wanted to hand out a survey and people would answer like did you see the protesters did you think about it while you were watching the rodeo like that that would be the only thing that I think could see too I'm even very skeptical of that because there are studies of that kind there are right what is it volunteer visor whatever like whoever chooses to actually fill out the survey you know right so that's already a problem is a sample selection yeah and is it so is it cell phones hear it or is it chosen another way yeah those that there's a huge problems in social sciences but even when you do research like that so I mean you know AC e did this one study and they interviewed about 489 people so the exact number is in the article link below from Harrison Nathan and one person this is like four hundred and people who are leaflet it and then they interviewed them they did a study like how effective was this leaving one person became vegetarian after this leasing but even then you can't say because this person went vegetarian we savers how many you know real some point is the person Hindu or their parents in do this is a huge is no but is the person Chinese are they Chinese from Taiwan already some of that which I'm not mentioning because I'm racist the fact that I'm racist has nothing to do with it you know like you know most people have some kind of background some kind of Barents before they make the decision to go vegan like even if someone handed you a pamphlet you saw it like you know what yeah I should go vegan like in my case it's not my back I don't have a background as a Hindu you know but I mean I had a background I could now talk for an hour what were the childhood experiences in background the values you know what sir my father he started doing a PhD on Hinduism and actually Hinduism was part of the reason my father never converted he's white in case you haven't guessed but you know what my father was involved with Hinduism and that shaped his worldview and and indeed shaped what he said about vegetarianism to me growing up and so on to and you know obviously I could I could list off 100 of the things but I don't believe there's this really simple cause and effect like you hand someone a pamphlet on veganism they're like oh veganism oh oh I'll do that next week cool like I don't think in effectiveness this is about cause and effect and even something like a major intervention like the rodeo maybe you're spurring people to ask questions definite you know maybe in China if you if you handed out leaflets like there are people that seem to have never heard of a despite bow doesn't be yes but even the but with train so I have a lot of experience so I can put this with Chinese and with Buddhists of other ethnicities including Buddhists from Sri Lanka and Thailand in other parts the world but like normally even then so when you talk to Chinese people look when I said before well is this person Hindu or are they Chinese or do they have another background there maybe they're white or black but there's something else that's pushing them to the brink of being ready to think about mean ism so even if I talk to a Chinese person who's grown up with parents and grandparents who are devout Buddhist s-- or you talk to an Indian person who has vegetarians in their family which is very common they come from a mixed caste family some of their family that relatives are vegetarian and some need me you know a very common in India but you know so they come out of whatever background they've got very often you get a lot of questions back like oh is that even nutritionally possible now they may be hostile they may say well I think if I'm vegan I'll die I won't be able to survive that's a sincere concern you know and you know you may start to talk to them about that but it's obvious if this person doesn't sit down and do a couple hours of reading about the nutrition they're not gonna make the change now I'm not hating like you know I want people go ahead do the reading like don't don't make the decision at a blind ignorance if you really think you need to eat milk to live which millions of people believe people believe that in India people believe that in America people leave that in China they think they will die if they don't eat dairy products well you know what I can help you out but it's not like that one pamphlet you know I don't believe people make that leap in response to one family and again that that doesn't mean pamphlets have zero efficacy but this is a kind of bizarre game that I would describe as a scam of you know and the thing that's painful is it's a scam that's kind of at the crossroads between like mathematics and morality you know you can put a number on anything yeah we can we can we get a sign yeah there for there for 12 people became vegan there for 12 times 30 is we saved so many animal study that you mentioned you can't apply that to every put every pamphlet that you hand out in the future you can't say like oh the last time we did this one out of every 498 people became vegetarian this time like same same so like we hand out leaflets over and over again let's let's let's get let's get really racist what if you're handing of those pamphlets in front of a Hindu temple with everyone coming out they're already somewhere on the vegetarian spectrum as opposed to handing them out in Alaska like you don't think that's different I mean Anchorage Alaska we can choose a specific front of a Presbyterian Church in Anchorage like you don't think there are slightly different outcomes you know what I mean like anyway sorry but well you know I mentioned this again I'm mentioning this not in order to be racist but the point is to draw attention to the profound cultural moorings of these questions and how people how people come up with with answers in the extent to which the pamphlet doesn't have like a quality we can evaluate and assign a number to in a vacuum you know what I mean I think also I mean the context of like if I have a you know deep interaction with someone about veganism and then they say they want more information and I give them a pamphlet like that's that's really different from like standing it was really literally showering a crowd with pamphlets you can just be throwing them into a crowd you know a pamphlet being maybe the last thing somebody gets after some kind of interaction with activists at a demo that's very very different from that the pamphlet being the whole focus of your your form of activism again I I don't even want to say like these things are not effective I'm just saying it's really really hard to assign a number to them and the types of effect are very hard to put the same number on the type of effect of a publicity stunt like maybe shutting down the rodeo maybe protesting the rodeo shark also protests at pigeon shoots you know now I sympathize like you know I real as a vegan I sympathize they're horrified by actually watching these pigeons die slow terrible deaths and so on I I sympathize and they want to be there and have cameras and showed and I think they get on the news and get in the newspaper forced ratings in some ways that's effective but how do I compare that to PCRM you know so PC arm is Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine PCRM taking a lawsuit and challenging the government and actually change the government polls it's very hard to put a number on there's another huge category here by the way if you click on laris and Nathan's article ace assigns numbers which again I think are a scam to collaborations between vegan charities and meat producing corporations so it's like no again I'm not gonna make a simple statement somebody like Gary France aione would you say this is evil period like that's it this is evil any cooperation to vegans and that's that's the end of it but that's that's not what I'm here to say you know okay so you got a vegan organization doing kind of hand-in-hand cooperation with like a dairy dairy company or a poultry producer or what have you and allegedly this dairy producer is changing something they do to be more ethical you know to be less painful of the animals because this vegan group recommended it or co-signed it or something and you know would they have done it anyway or what you know what's the nature of the kind of propaganda and product here or something you know it's you're gonna assign a number to that for for animal live is saved like already if it was just a scorecard if there's just an ordinal number if it's just a plus a minus if you're just giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down I think you can have a kind of investigative meaningful dialogue about how good or bad this is but like how many lives were saved so look most of we talk about in this channel when we talk about effective activism is it's it's subjective in a very overt transparent sense if Melissa tells me she wants to go down and do rodeo activism you know the question I'm asking is is this effective for you is this effective compared to the other things you could be doing with your time and I think again like you know I have a million videos on this channel on criticizing direct action everywhere akdx see direct attention ever as a particular repeating group I think they're wrong about so many things but they were founded in a moment of honest reflection where Wayne's young their founder he handed out pamphlets I think over a hundred times he'd done these demonstrations with a hand out pamphlets and the hand up free vegan cookies and they invite people to come to see a documentary for free and he said over doing this thousands of time the number of people were converted to veganism are shown any interest you know was like was a handful it was an incredibly small number of an incredibly small number had ever sent him an email like there was an email on the pamphlet for more information and he's like five people had ever sent him an email and only a couple people had ever shown up at the film night who weren't already vegan the people had actually been given the pamphlet so over years of doing this he hit his limit and said this doesn't work something has to change that's a really honest moment and a really honest reflection on effective activism and I see more value in that I mean like I feel like he's asking the right questions then in this scam animal charity evaluators have foisted on the vegan movement and that from my perspective the whole so-called effective effect effective activism movement sub movement I think is drawn the name of effectiveness through the mud they've discredited the concept of effectiveness itself you know anything can be measured you know you can assign numbers to things to me at them at the moment to be honestly emotionally I'm a little bit more [ __ ] up about this because I've just slightly been dealing with again the question of how do you measure the effectiveness of Buddhist meditation to me that's profoundly similar it's like okay I can take someone and teach them how to meditate and then measure how much less angry they are after meditation and how do you how do you measure anger how do you assign a number from one to ten to how angry someone was before and after they meditated it's not a shallow question and then there are all these questions that are easy to deal with in a Socratic way but seems so difficult for people to deal with as soon as you you assign a numbers link as soon as we're into this weird intersection math and morality it seems to me the way a sea animal charity evaluates the way they respond to this kind of criticism is by saying how dare you if you ask these questions you're against the animals more for the animals you know it's the same with the Buddhist meditation stuff it's like well if you dare to question this scientific study saying that meditation is affected then you're against Buddhism or you're against meditation etc you know but those are exactly the tough tough questions we have to ask and in the 21st century all the evidence I see just indicates that if anything people have become more and more naive more and more shizune about what math means the basic assumptions of the social sciences donations about the different charities than getting the most donations yeah well that's another weird part of this game is just the amount of money involved you and I have never knew I mean we've never talked about that you and I have never once asked the question how much money do you think we can raise for blank and veganism never we don't look at it that way but I mean that's the other thing many people watch this may have forgotten about there is big money in this game and in one case in the video of mentions an agency that serves at the open philanthropy project and even though they published criticism saying that this is a bad organization AC they still need them half a million dollars half a million US dollars is a lot of money apparently that way right their project yeah they were critical they directly say they directly say this relies on pseudoscience this relies on numbers that don't make sense and so on right but I'm guessing that project it's the same thing in a lot of other areas of philanthropy nonprofit charity work etc then and they probably just have a list of applicants and they got a pick three or four that are the least bad to give money to do their budget for that year you know a lot of the time you know it's like well you don't have to be good you just have to be better than the alternative for the to get that to get that budget you know so yeah it's funny though it is another wake up call to me look like well there are donors out there there's demand for action on these issues there are there are people some of them are foundations some of them are foundations like open Flensburg but I'm guessing it's mostly elderly retired people who want to see change you want to see action on these issues and obviously everyone knows peda has a multi-million dollar budget but a lot of these agencies do and I guess I mean what we call outcome evaluation you know it's the quantitative side I guess what they're confronted with is how do they actually quantify what it is they did with your money after you give that money to them and I'm that that's a tough question you know if you did if you paid for everyone's bus ticket just to come to a protest at a rodeo is that a good or a bad use of donor money I think that's really debatable I'm like I'm open it you know what I mean like I think we can talk about that like well as opposed to the alternatives we can just buy bus tickets you know I mean like long long haul bus tickets for a bunch of people to go into a rodeo and then stand in front of the rodeo holding placards I can think of better things to do with the same amount of money you know but I can't assign that a simple number like these guys though ace they even assign money for Internet advertisements that for every one dollar you spend on on putting a pro vegan advertisement on the Internet you're gonna save 18 animals lives to me this is crazier than like a Buddhist belief in karma this is we're getting real crazy now you know what I mean like to me this is at the same level as like Catholic prayer or something like okay so if you do this right yeah if you do this symbolic act if you donate this money you'll save so many souls who have some kind of good outcome but a lot of stuff in Buddhist and pseudo Buddhist cults are like that with you know trying to assign a value to karmic karmic acts on it look I mean like everyone else there was a time when when I saw Oh effective activism oh so there's this movement within veganism to try to really evaluate what is and isn't effective I had a positive bias I thought great what could be wrong with that and then these [ __ ] exactly what's wrong with it like any idea it's amazing you know any idea can be misused you know it's that's like the moral of the story it's like you know in this case I mean all I deal is dangerous all ideals are inherently corruptible and misleading and bad and wrong but Wow even an ideal is as simple as we should care about and try to measure what is effective can in this way discredit yeah like you said people are easily swayed by that seeing like this will save this many lives or as many animal lives but like there has to be a way to garner donations that doesn't like you don't have to lie about it right like I I accept donations myself I raise six thousand five hundred dollars in less than 48 hours you know I myself have an open patreon I make under $200 a month out of it we know it's you know it's it's real I want to say too I've said this in many videos lately the most underrated activists in veganism or the restaurant owners you know owned a hotdog stand on a restaurant on whatever you want those people are sooner how how many lives do you say if i running a vegan hot dogs and i think that's impossible to assign that number to I think it's ridiculous and surreal and how do you compare it like so let's just say you own a restaurant in downtown Detroit in downtown Detroit and the sign for the restaurant says the word vegan or like let's say the south person says vegan food is healthy that's the name of the restaurant right what is the effect what is the effectiveness of that restaurant just standing there because he does have an effect the same way that gay rights organizations back in the day back when homosexuality was way more taboo it was a huge statement to just have a permanent office in downtown Toronto for gay rights because it normally it said hey we exist we're not going away we're not hiding this isn't something secret like gay rights is this cause and we got this office and you know what I mean nobody had to even walk inside it you know what I mean that made a statement just by existing that as a mention of their videos they got quoted in the newspaper you know whatever journalist had to ask someone about get a gay rights issue or a controversy they'd call them you know and other people will say like someone who's a total meat-eater will say oh yeah you know we have we have quite a few gay vegan restaurants here in here in Detroit oh yeah you know via oh yeah that there's a there's a neighborhood there's a district there are a few places around oh yeah that's something normal and permanent that's an option that exists it's not gonna kill you you're not gonna die for lack of dairy products those are powerful and important messages that get across just buy the restaurant existing even if nobody eats there you know like if I'm not assigning karmic value to the actual feed hotdog you know what I mean but I I can't I can never do this kind of calculus you know yeah well I'm just thinking of the actual charities or the organizations that were mentioned so Mercy for Animals what I mostly think of when I think of Mercy for Animals is like farm sanctuaries yes like I think that really makes you like it appeals to people's desire to just like you know it makes people sad to know that so many animals are being killed in a slaughterhouse and like these animals are being saved and like I think I think this this number this quantifying is to get people to feel like they're actually making a difference like this is I am personally saving this money you know this number of animals but without that maybe otherwise it's just a petting zoo if you don't believe that it's just a fancy petting zoo well and you know Harrison Nathan says about this he doesn't really drive at home with a hammer he just kind of mentions this in passing but this would be me driving over there what animal charity evaluators are measuring as effectiveness is not linked to any effect they're measuring the extent to which other animal charities ideologically agree with them with themselves and it's very subtle surgery you know I could do that again I'm too detached I have a real education in social sciences I've done real social science research I've also done research on Buddhism and other things but like Eve way even in Buddhism I wouldn't do that like I wouldn't say oh this Buddhist temple agrees more with my personal beliefs and values therefore it's better than some other you've got to have the detachment to say different strokes different folks but like I mentioned earlier I'm in a sense biased against the rodeo thing you know talking about horses and pony shows I don't I don't really give a [ __ ] it's just not my interest whereas there other issues of the veganism I'm much more passionate but I'm much more engaged about so that's something of fellowship valuated by this groove but you know even if it's right it's not really what they care about the you know anti rodeo should be evaluated on the same level is like Mercy for Animals or right so I mean like that's but that's a requirement supposed to be there for like evaluating charities right and that's and that's that's a requirement that's even lower than and simpler than science I mean for something to be a true science you've got a whole lot of checkmark boxes but this is just about being fair and equitable which is do we have the same unit can we compare unit by unit the value of the rodeo protests versus the value of a fer protest or pamphlet based activism or other you know a video or a film festival okay if we have a vegan film best we can do fundraising for that today you and me today with no help from anyone we could start a patreon and say we're gonna do a vegan Film Festival donate money here's the location here's how much money we need let's that we can do that tonight we can put up a patreon and do that is it effective is it effective to have a bean Film Festival first and foremost mostly only other vegans of all time yeah right but me know but maybe that's still meaningful maybe that's still effective right that's what you get into but you think there's a unit I can put on a unit such as number of animal live saved and I can compare that to a vegan restaurants or rodeo protest it's bizarre it's it's really really bizarre this this is a less lower than sign we're not even talking about is this truly scientific but is this true you know yeah that's not really what I want I don't I mean of course of course I would like fewer animals to be killed but what I really want is for people to change well it's um kind of like actual political action something that will make veganism more prevalent like you talked about like restaurants like when it's just a sign that says viewing one piece erm they directly pursue real political change right so that's one example of purely political there's the pursuit of cultural change right I'm publishing a children's story book I could do a patreon for that Osorio fundraiser for that like a Kickstarter tonight if I wanted to okay it's a children's storybook delivering the message of veganism to children blah blah blah you know is that effective I know for a fact that storybook is already deeply meaningful to a number of people who read it like some people read it in front of me I was in the room and I saw the effect it had on them so it is effective in some sense it's deeply emotionally moved my own mother said she broke down crying reading this story she only read it in English not in Chinese my mother's Chinese is a bit rusty but you know you know so there's a sense in which I know this isn't like moving and effective and I'm gonna pay an artist and publish a book but you know putting a number on those and putting them in the same category but yeah there's outright political change there's the pursuit of cultural change that can be sitt can be very slippery and yeah I mean there and then there's also just straight-up dietary change this straight up advocacy for imperf like providing vegan meals vegan alternatives and places that don't have them the end very very hard to quantify yeah but apparently this is the this is the challenge I mean look I'm gonna be straight with you I am NOT saying oh well animal charity evaluators did the best they could I guess they can't do any better I could do better I could do better if I applied the same standards of social science research I used in Cambodia I could do better so there's no doubt it is completely possible to do a better job than animal charity evaluators but still I want to point out there's a sense in which they are trying to do something impossible I think that's kind of philosophically very meaningful to to stay in touch with all right click on the link below this video we talk about this stuff all the time because we think about in our own future is it a waste of our time is it effective activism for us or not for us to own and operate a restaurant or a small bakery or a hotel that we really think about that stuff is it a waste of our time to be involved in and trying to collaborate with other types of activism these are real meaningful issues in our life this is not some kind of academic abstract display discussion I do have a patreon if you want to join $1.00 you can join the conversation hit me up a bonus yen [Music] [Music] ba Lu Cl