Tejas Subramaniam

Economics @Stanford. Emergent Ventures grantee. I tweet about economics, international development, and animal welfare.

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

Who are some researchers or organizations trying to answer “big picture” questions in wild animal suffering (e.g., do small soil animals live negative or positive lives?), or questions likely to translate to especially high-impact interventions? Would love recommendations 4/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

The more obvious reason is it seems like a process that will take a lot of time before having any impact, and depending on your view of AI timelines, you might have higher discount rates. But I’m unclear what reasonable timeframes might be for other approaches here 2/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

My bigger worry is that field-building often rewards pursuing tractable, legible questions over pursuing the most important ones. I don’t think targeted veterinary interventions for wild mammals, for instance, are likely to prove more cost-effective than cage-free campaigns 3/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

I’m pretty uninformed about this, but as someone who thinks wild animal suffering is plausibly among the most important issues in the world (and wishes to make donations to such work over the next few years), I have some worries about the agenda to build it as a research field 1/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@NathanpmYoung Noah has been arguing for this comms change specifically (e.g., https://t.co/YkYB3s4enr, https://t.co/MIowo73MB2). I disagree with him about many of his AI takes (and find him a better commentator on non-AI issues), but I do think he specifically means the comms change.

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

Much more relevant for animal welfare, particularly wild animal suffering, is the EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement, which I will be writing about soon. 7/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

Typically, the net effects of breaking up large meat companies on animal welfare are unclear. Market concentration allows for P > MC and thus less production/consumption than an efficient market, while aggressive competition between more companies might lower welfare standards 1/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

None of this is very relevant to the current antitrust investigation (which doesn’t seek divestiture as a goal and might not even lead to a case). Overall though, I’d weakly guess the net effects of strong antitrust enforcement in the beef industry specifically are positive 6/

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@flappyairplanes Congratulations!!

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@ColinJSharpe @Benthamsbulldog https://t.co/17FMsm9qS4

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@morallawwithin What is your credence that shrimp can feel pain or suffer? My guess is that taking illusionism seriously probably raises the bar for the kinds of neurological properties you need to have “consciousness” the way we do

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@LinchZhang @MichaelJDickens Suppose A is “it is raining in Tokyo” and B is “[insert celebrity] ate lunch today.” ¬A ∨ B is very likely true, but it doesn’t seem like “A implies B” even remotely captures this situation. In contrast, in both #1 and #3, “A implies B” seems like it could capture the situation.

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@Benthamsbulldog (Not to ruin the joke but) tbf Nozick thought utilitarianism was incomplete even for animals, he just names this as a possible view

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@morallawwithin Have you written in defense of Kantianism anywhere that I can read :))

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@ZiChengCaoHuang Is your point that you expect r* to go up rapidly and hence Fed policy will be overly expansionary soon? Or that you want less access to capital for AI or data centers or something? Or something else

[Tejas Subramaniam @TejasReal]

@michaelxpettis What do you think of the argument that the U.S. having higher productivity + TFP growth than most other advanced economies would lead to sizable net capital inflows for America even without China artificially pushing up its savings rate?