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The Power of Research in Informing Animal Advocacy Strategy: % of Veg People Who Abandon Diet Summary: The biggest finding was that 84% of vegans and vegetarians abandon their diet within two years, but follow-up studies found a lower overall number of around 46%. However, the overall number hides a more complicated reality depending on the demographic position of the person. Among certain demographics, the number is much higher, while among others, it's much lower. The study challenged the animal advocacy movement to reconsider strategy and sparked discussion and reflection on their approach. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yeah, so the sort of biggest finding, the one that gets quoted the most and the one that got us like all of the media attention was that 84% of vegans and vegetarians abandon their diet Within, I believe it was within two years. I didn't remember seeing that. Speaker 2 I didn't know it was Fonnalitix. Yeah. Speaker 1 And we've done follow-up studies that sort of, we actually released a series of follow-up studies over the course of late last year and early this year that did a much more sort of like Robust analysis of a follow-up survey and a much more robust analysis of the data that found considerably lower like overall numbers. So the more like current estimate that we have is around like, I believe it's 46% which is still high. Speaker 2 It's still not great. It's still 46% of people who are vegetarian or no longer vegetarian after two years. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Cool. And that is still really high. That's almost one and two. But part of the reason that I mean, we learned a lot from that first study, right? We learned the power of what a particularly punchy data point, how quickly that can travel around the world and around the movement. Because the reality is it's much more complicated, right? Like in this current set of follow-up studies, we found a lower overall number in the 40 to 50% range. But the reality is that it totally depends. Like that overall number actually hides a much more complicated reality depending on the demographic position of the person, right? So among certain demographics, the number is like much higher. Among other demographics, it's like a lot lower. It's when we put out like an overall number or when you see an overall number on any study, it's usually hiding something that's like a lot more complicated once you start to break it down. Yeah, of course. But I just, you know, that project remains a favor for me because it really did challenge the animal advocacy movement to sort of take a look at what it was doing and reconsider strategy Or try and think of strategy in a different way. People were mad, but that's okay. They should, you know, in a lot of ways it means you're doing something right.

Karol Orzechowski on Animal Research and the Importance of Effectively Communicating Data to Support Your Goals.

How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Having Grace For the Present Time and Letting Go of a Bleak Future That Has Not Yet Happened Transcript: Speaker 1 I've noticed this in a lot of our colleagues and friends that the people I know that are sort of quote unquote fighting the good fight, right? They're out there in the front and in the public. They're out there drawing attention to critical issues, those kinds of things. They're often getting kind of spun up and burned out themselves, right? It's a lot to hold and to hold the urgency and the responsibility is more than most of our psyches and nervous systems can handle, right? And I thought, good Lord, if I had a terminal diagnosis, right? Like if I knew I had a year to live the classic kind of thought experiment, how would I act? And then the simple answer is that for most of us, we would be more free, we would be more courageous, we would be more truthful, we'd be more heartfelt, we'd be more adventurous, we'd Do all the things, right? Yeah, it's hard more. Yeah, it's hard to have lots and bucket lists and you name it, right? And I thought, okay, well, let's say that 30 years from now, we really are in that totally bleak wheels off situation. But I look out my window today and it's actually pretty beautiful. The sun is still coming up, the moon is setting, there's waves to be surf, there's powder skiing to be had, there's music to listen to or share, there's people, there's loved ones in our Lives. If we pissed away these days, ringing our hands about what might yet be but isn't, I mean, it's the old Mark Twain thing, it's like an old man and I've experienced a great many sorrows, Only some of which actually ever happened, you know, we're kind of in that neck of the woods and I sort of felt like, okay, so the simplest is for me, it's almost the hospice tour of the world And life, like about six months ago, I just kind of sat down the super intense urgency that I had been feeling for several years, including the writing of that last book where I was, you Know, like always looking for the solution, always looking for the way through, right? Where was the gap? Where was the seam and the clean, you know, climbing that crazy mountain that would go and that we can make it through? Because every single one of them that I tracked pinched out and it was almost always maulic, right? It was like, you basically, his fingerprints are everywhere where you're like, oh, fuck, that's hypothetically possible, but we're just not going to do it, are we? We're not going to do it because of a perverse incentives, we're not going to do it because if greed or, you know, all of the things, you're just like, fucking goddamn, why? We could, right? We absolutely could, but the statistically my gut sense on are we going to incredibly low given current conditions. So step one was like feed the holy, like celebrate life, shame on us while there is still goodness, truth and beauty in abundance, right? Not to be sucking the matter out of life and not to be putting those memories in the bank. And at the same time, we can never give up hoping because if we give up hope, then that adjacent possibility can never happen, like for certainness, nails in the coffin, if we just go into Despair and cynicism or even just hedonism, like fuck it while the room burns, you know, while room burns, I'm just going to party. Like those are unconscionable decisions. So can we use our feeding of the holy, the idea of like, I'm going to bear witness to the glory of creation, right? And the absolute heart-rending poinency of this human experience. Can I use that, right? In some tiny, small, you know, insignificant, but profound way, rich, really keep the world on its on its axis, right? As most indigenous cultures did, we pray, we make these offerings, we do these things so that the sun keeps rising, right? So that the rain keeps falling so that the crops grow, like can we participate in the wonder of that creative cycle while we are fortunate enough to still have that opportunity and choice. And then oh, by the way, leave space for grace, right? Because it has always happened that way. And funnily enough, this is this was also you've all just mentioned he type something maybe just about AI like a month ago. And he said, we have forever, all of human history, all of human civilization and culture is living in someone else's dream. You know, free markets was a concept, you know, like the democracy, civil rights, everything that we take as the mimetic norms of our reality someone dreamed them first. So the leaving space for grace is and how can we dream a way through that we cannot see from here? We cannot, because I at least I can't, I've looked, right? And most of the people I look up to have been looking. And if you really behind closed doors sit down with most of those folks, it's far grimmer than even the headlines encapsulate, right? But the reality is, is we are still amazingly adaptive, cunning little monkeys with opposable thumbs and brilliant prefrontal cortexes. So, so we can't see from here, what adaptations, what permutations, what mutations will happen around the bend. And this goes back to, you know, Jim Stockdale is Admiral Stockdale. He was the highest ranking POW in Vietnam. And he actually went on to be a vice presidential candidate at one point. But his the Stockdale paradox was he noticed that in those North Vietnamese POW camps that the pessimists didn't live, because they were like, ah, I'm fucked. You know, sure enough, they snuffed it. But the really interesting insight was the optimist didn't live either. Because what happened is they'd be like, we're going to get the boys home for Christmas or Easter or July the 4th. And those dates would come and go. And then they would just collapse, that they would lose all ability to maintain hope after their hope redemption came and went. And he said the paradox was the people who survived were ruthlessly realistic about short-term realities, while remaining relentlessly optimistic about the long-term possibility. I don't know when we're going to get out, but we're going to go home. Right. And that is to me, it's sort of all of us right now. We don't like would like we are in a massive, intersecting, chaotic and complex, tight spot. Right. And it's it's it's the confluence of every intentional and unintentional quality of our civilization to date. And we're just huddling off the cliff. No skid marks. Now, whether or not we can figure out how to turn into chitty, chitty bang bang, you know, and sprout wings or turn into a boat or do something else we can't see from here. And I wouldn't give it super long odds. We may just get subject into the trash compactor of history. Right. But it is on us. It's incumbent on us to maintain a thread of hope and resilience.

#11 - Jamie Wheal — Tackling the Meaning Crisis

Win-Win with Liv Boeree

Balls & Bowls: The Relationsip between a Systems Resilience and its Behavioral Variability Summary: A resilient state is akin to a ball in a deep cup, where if the ball is knocked, it quickly rolls back to the bottom. In contrast, a less resilient state is like a ball on a flat plate, where if the ball is knocked, it rolls back slowly. As a result, a system with lower resilience will exhibit more variability compared to a highly resilient system. Leading up to critical transitions, a system that used to be highly resilient gradually becomes less so, resulting in increased variability. Transcript: Speaker 1 As we talked about in the last episode, we're talking about states and tipping points. One image to have in mind for a state is a ball and a cup. And a really resilient state is one where that cup is really, really deep, so that if you knock the ball, which represents the state of the system, it really, really quickly rolls back To the bottom. But if you go from a deep cup to a flat plate, if you knock that ball, it might roll back if you don't sort of knock it completely off the plate, but it's going to roll back slowly. So one consequence of that is that when a system is lower in resilience, the ball is just going to wiggle around more than in that really, really steep ball. So imagine, you know, a ball in the bottom, maybe you have a little fan, you're blowing on it. It's not really moving far because the ball's keeping it right in the bottom versus a plate. You ever put a marble on a plate and you just knock it a bit, all of a sudden it's wandering all over. So that's variability in the system. And so in a resilient system, you actually have lower variability than in a less resilient system. So our idea is that in the lead up to these critical transitions, what you have is a system that used to be really resilient. These jazz musicians were really locked into a particular sound and gradually that basin, that ball had just become less deep.

When Jazz Music Tips

Simplifying Complexity

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