The shrimp welfare project

Waiting for the funny reveal that this is a prank

Why do you think this is a prank?

Because it's funny enough and seems like an absolute S-tier performance artist critique of the effective altruism movement. Like who gives a shit about whether shrimp freeze to death or are electrocuted and then freeze to death.

But this blog post uses a little BS math (.3 seconds IS shorter than 20 minutes! By an order of magnitude! Take my money!)

and some hand wavey citations (Did you know shrimp MIGHT be conscious based on a very loose definition of consciousness? Now you too are very smart! You can talk about this with your sort-of friends (coworkers) from the job where you spend 80 hours a week now!)

to convince some people that this is indeed an important and worthy thing. Because people who can be talked into this don't really interact with the real world, for the most part. So they don't know that lots of actual people need actual help that doesn't involve them dying anyway and being eaten en-masse afterwards.

It's also just such a perfect half-measure. You're not asking people to not eat these little guys. They're not even confirmed to be fully conscious. This is a speculative fix for a theoretical problem. Plus like, there's some company making shrimp zappers. So by donating you're also kind of paying two people to kill the shrimp?

> They're not even confirmed to be fully conscious

Please read the cited Rethink Priorities research: https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/welfare-range-es...

Notably the FAQ and responses.