Interested in:
Sentience- & suffering-focused ethics; sentientism; painism; s-risks
Animal ethics & abolitionism
AI safety & governance
Activism, direct action & social change
Trying to make transformative AI go less badly for sentient beings, regardless of species and substrate
Bio:
From London
BA in linguistics at the University of Cambridge
Almost five years in the British Army as an officer
MSc in global governance and ethics at University College London
One year working full time in environmental campaigning and animal rights activism at Plant-Based Universities / Animal Rising
Now pivoting to the (future) impact of AI on biologically and artifically sentient beings
Currently lead organiser of the AI, Animals, & Digital Minds conference in London in June 2025
I think that veganism is deontological, or at least has a deontological component to it; it relies on the act-omission distinction.
Imagine a world in which child sex abuse was as common and accepted as animal exploitation is in ours. In this world of rampant child sex abuse, some people would adopt protectchildrenism, the ethical stance that commits you to avoid causing the sexual exploitation (and suffering?) of human children as far as practicable – i.e. analogous to my definition of veganism.
It seems inaccurate/misleading for a child sex abuser to call themselves a protectchildrenist because they save more children from sexual abuse (by donating to effective child protection charities) than they themselves sexually abuse.
Also it seems morally worse for the child sex abuser to a) save more children through donations than they themselves abuse than b) not abuse the children but not donate; even though the world in which a) happens is a better world than the world in which b) happens (all else being equal).