Meet at the Davenport Branch of the Toronto Public Library (1246 Shaw St) at 1:50 pm. We'll leave for my place at 2:00 pm sharp, so try not to be late.

If you've been around a few times and know the address, feel free to go directly to my house for 2pm.

Vegan snacks provided.

If you think you are >75% likely to come, please RSVP. If you haven't RSVPed but you would still like to come day-of, please come anyways!

Discussion Topic

Waterline is a new series of rationalist and EA events in Toronto. Events are biweekly, and are designed to focus on a broader and more principles-first set of EA topics to complement Trajectory Labs' AI safety events.

This week, we'll be discussing the neglected and currently intractable(?) cause area of wild animal suffering.

Please note that the readings have fairly explicit text and image depictions of animal suffering. If you find discussion of animal suffering to be very distressing, this meetup may not be for you and you might want to just catch us at the next one.

Readings

Please complete these before the meetup and come prepared to discuss them.

The Meat Eaters - Jeff McMahan (2010) (Archive link just in case)
The Importance of Wild Animal Suffering - Brian Tomasik (2015)
- Note graphic photos in the "How Wild Animals Suffer" section, and at the end of the article. Photos can be avoided by accessing the PDF version of the article.
Don't Green the Universe - Peter Barnett (2026)

Optional:

Please read as many of these as you like.

If wild animal welfare is intractable, everything is intractable - Mal Graham (2025)
- Argues that there is an isolated demand for rigor when it comes to wild animal welfare
Predators: A Response - Jeff McMahan (2010) (Archive link)
- A short piece where McMahan responds to the commentariat from his first post, and complains that most of them didn't read his piece. Short!
Positive Wild Animal Welfare - Heather Browning and Walter Veit (2023)
- In this paper, we challenge the primary lines of evidence employed in support of wild animal suffering, to provide an alternative picture in which wild animals may often have lives that are far more positive than is commonly assumed. Nevertheless, while it is useful to have an alternative model to challenge unexamined assumptions, our real emphasis in this paper is the need for the development of effective methods for applying animal welfare science in the wild, including new means of d

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