Interview
Marcus Davis on founding and leading Rethink Priorities
- Rethink Priorities plans to transition to multi-layer management with a specific shift from one to two layers expected to require robust operational processes and reporting chains.
- The organization anticipates publishing a backlog of approximately a dozen global health and development reports later this year, alongside current work on global land burden, Sub-Saharan African scientific capacity, and weather forecasting.
- A "more weight" project assessing over 90 capacities for a range of species is scheduled for release in the fall, with expectations that it will lead to a large one-year grant for in-depth assessment.
- Hiring for worldview investigations, cross-species comparisons, and decision-making under uncertainty is planned for early next year, contingent on securing unrestricted funding to cover cross-cutting research questions.
- Additional survey staff may be hired to address external requests if funding allows, requiring approximately $3 million over the next year to support current capacity and potential expansion.
- Specific budget expectations include about $1 million annually over the next two years for worldview investigations projects and $2 million to $3 million over the same period for animal welfare research covering policy, wild animal welfare, and farmer welfare.
- Recruitment may include generalists with quantitative and critical thinking skills, alongside contractors for specific projects, while communications and fundraising roles remain potential but unfirmed additions.
- The organization expects to maintain its position in the top four research organizations within the effective altruism community, with a remote-first structure cited as a key advantage for global scaling.
- Wild animal well-being is predicted to become a serious field of study within the next decade, with research on species sensitivity and population sizes expected to be frequently referenced as the field gains credibility.
- Research indicates wild animals may outnumber humans by a factor of thousands, with specific estimates suggesting up to 99,000 wild animals per human, and the number of wild-caught shrimp estimated between 10 and 60 trillion.
- Future implementation of monitoring systems for wild animal vocalizations is anticipated to rely on years of basic science and machine learning components to distinguish distress from pleasure calls.
- Rodenticide research suggests anticoagulants cause internal bleeding and death over hours or days, while carbon monoxide and birth control agents like ContraPest are viewed as potential, though currently cost-disadvantaged, humane alternatives.
- Public sympathy for banning rodenticides is expected to grow if viable alternatives like birth control agents are presented, despite cost differences that must be justified by long-term welfare benefits.
- Aquatic noise research forecasts that sounds above 100 decibels can be debilitating to marine life, with findings potentially repurposed from conservation to inform welfare interventions.
- Rabies vaccination research aims to prevent painful deaths over several months for both dogs and humans in India, while invertebrate sentience research seeks to identify features influencing the probability of consciousness.
- Long-termism research is projected to include forecasting nuclear war probabilities and assessing risk-based actions, building on prior work that influenced Open Philanthropy's creation of global health and R&D roles.
- The organization expects its research on interspecies moral weight and cultivated meat forecasting to shift donor focus, influence how people think about consciousness, and move the cultivated meat space in the right direction.
- Farm animal welfare research in the EU has generated millions in potential giving opportunities, and Charity Entrepreneurship graduates are expected to continue utilizing the organization's research to identify neglected spaces.
- A full in-person team retreat larger than previous ones is scheduled to occur in approximately one month to support organizational cohesion during the growth phase.
- Uncertainty remains regarding the timing of policy changes on rodenticides and the immediate adoption of birth control agents, with implementation contingent on establishing basic science and improving cost competitiveness.