iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I'm giving two talks at the University of Santiago de Compostela this week on wild animal welfare, the first on a part of my PhD and the second on the work I'm now doing with Rethink Priorities. You can also join online! Just email Pablo.Sarmiento@rai.usc.es.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Really impressed by Jack Hancock-Fairs's new documentary, in which he tries to understand his own father - a slaughterhouse worker. The movie is touching, at times horrifying, but always full of empathy. You can watch it for free: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qb-...

youtube.com

Killing for a Living | Full Documentary

YouTube video by Humane Hancock

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

🚨 New paper by myself and @tristankatz.bsky.social 🚨 "Harm-Benefit Analysis for Animal Experiments Is Not Utilitarian" It's commonly claimed that HBA – used in the licensing of animal studies – is utilitarian. We say this vastly oversells the framework. #animalexperimentation #animalresearch #3Rs

Screenshot of title and abstract for "Harm-Benefit Analysis for Animal Experiments Is Not Utilitarian". The abstract reads:

The claim is commonplace that harm-benefit analysis (HBA), a weighing procedure widely used in ethics reviews of animal experiments, is utilitarian. We argue this is false and misleading for three reasons: (1) HBA does not compare, let alone maximize, utility across different options, but merely assesses whether the consequences of one option are net-positive, thereby ignoring opportunity costs; (2) HBA does not aggregate utility coherently, as it allows for varying degrees of speculation in the assessment of harms and benefits; (3) HBA is not concerned with moral evaluation or moral goodness. From our discussion, we derive positive suggestions for how to improve animal experimentation policy and public communications about it. Most straightforwardly, scholars and institutions should stop claiming that HBA is “utilitarian.”

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I'm stoked to have just published the final paper from my PhD in the Journal of Applied Philosophy! "Wild Animal Suffering Is Not Intractable: A Precautionary Approach to Compassionate Intervention" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

I want to quit Instagram, because I don't want to support an app that's designed to be addictive. But I like taking photos and want to 'put' them somewhere. What should I do?

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

It was great to share my PhD research with others and celebrate after my public defense last week. In Fribourg it's tradition for colleagues to build a graduation hat - I'm pretty happy with what they came up with!

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

I have a new #Flashes account - the bluesky app for photos. Follow me there for non-academic photos of me hiking and stuff 🙂 I'm slowly trying to re-post my old Instagram photos, it's a long process. @tristan-katz-photo.bsky.social

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Happy to announce that I passed my PhD defence 😁 The topic is: how should wildlife managers respond to the prevalence of suffering in nature? I'll be giving a public presentation for it on Thursday, 27th March at 10-11am CET. It's possible to attend in person (Fribourg) or online - details below!

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Who's heard the statement "wildlife populations have decreased by 73%"? It seems to be everywhere. This fantastic @ourworldindata.org article explains why it's so misleading. ourworldindata.org/2024-living-...

ourworldindata.org

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 18/02/2025

For many land animals, life is short and painful. Recent estimates indicate that globally, most animals are raised on factory farms. In the US, where better data and research are available, 99% of livestock is factory-farmed. (This Daily Data Insight was written by @simonvanteutem.bsky.social.)

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Pretty shocked by this: "In Obama's first three years in office, around 1.18 million people were deported, while around 800,000 deportations took place under Trump in his three years of presidency." And no, this didn't change in the fourth year. Seems like an inconvenient truth for both sides...

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Mal Graham @wildanigraham.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Last chance! Only 3 more days to apply to be a board member at WAI. Give it a shot :)

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Dominic Roser @dominicroser.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Looking for a list of the most prominent criticism of effective altruism? Is anyone aware what really bugs people about EA (not what I think bugs them)?

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

I knew that the ability to feel pain in infants was denied at the start of the 20th century. But I just found out that it was denied up until *1987*, following a campaign by a mother whose baby underwent open heart surgery without any anaesthesia. Crazy shit.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I see a lot of hate here for AI, especially among academics. But honestly, I'm finding new ways to use GPT in my work by the *day*.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

In many countries, the ability for all individuals to be able to own a house is a goal across the political spectrum. But why? Countries considered successful in many ways (GDP being just one of them) don't always have high rates of home ownership. Note Switzerland marked with the red X.

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

People love hating on the humanities. What they should hate on is a system where the public has almost no say in what is being researched on its dime. If people have a problem with "olfactory ethics", it's not that they can't understand the jargon – it's that they don't care.

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

New existential risk just dropped.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

In other news, I had a very pleasant stop in Hong Kong today. Only scratched the surface of the city, but I had a great first impression: not least because of the abundance of free, clean public restrooms! A highly undervalued aspect of most cities!

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: who are all these people who stand up to queue 20 minutes before boarding, and as soon as the plane has landed?? When you're spending 11 hours on a plane, I cannot understand this sense of urgency.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

If you your death was suddenly imminent, but the doctors told you that they had some way to keep you alive for another five years in a state of perpetual sleep (such that you would spend those five year only experiencing your dreams)... what would you choose?

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

So you've gotten an orange cat by mistake, and regretting your choices? Regret no longer! Now you can transform your cat into a leaner, more monochrome feline. This is a patented Tristan device, offers and investments welcome 😌

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Surely I deserve some kind of reward for getting the wordcount of my abstract to match a CFP exactly?!

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

I was asked to present my thesis at the end-of-year event for the geosciences department. Despite them having a 'vegan' option, I've now been told that since only five people ticked it there will be only one vegetable platter, and we should bring our own food to avoid being hungry...

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Only got a week until my thesis submission deadline. I should be stressed. Fortunately, I've found some pretty effective stress-relief 😄

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

This is such a powerful graphic (from Our World in Data).

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

No apparent relationship between healthcare expenditure and life expectancy found. Clearly, healthcare is a scam and should be abolished!

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Quote from your work but add 😉 at the end. While the child is able to express their autonomy to some extent, their inability to understand their dire situation gives the doctor a good reason to act against the child’s will 😉 brill.com/view/journal...

brill.com

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Nico Müller @nicodmueller.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

By the way, traffic "accidents" involving animals are a topic worth more attention from journalists & philosophers. So-called accidents are almost always the results of a planned environment where not everyone's safety was considered. This is a great book on the topic, though not about animals.

Jessie Singer's book "There are no accidents" lying on a road.

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 14/10/2024

Being made miserable by prep for my seminar on ethics of animal agriculture tomorrow. Figures I used last time have been updated, e.g: no of chickens slaughtered for food rose from 70,767577,00 in 2020 to 75,208,676,000 in 2022. The trend is staggering: ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

Graph showing rising trend of land animals slaughtered for food from 1961-2022. The biggest rise is of chickens, from fewer than 10bn to greater than 75bn.

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 15/10/2024

I asked my students to guess how many animals are slaughtered for food every year. Answers ranged from 52,000,000 to 100,000,000,000, then someone remembered fish. Every year 83,000,000,000 land animals are slaughtered. The number of fish is measured in billions of tonnes rather than individuals.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 11/10/2024

How many Hamas command centres are there in Gaza? It seems like every week there's a new one discovered under a school or hospital... More importantly, why hasn't the bombing of these places eliminated Hamas yet?? @israeldefenseforce.bsky.social please answer.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2024

"A rabbit is viewed differently according to whether it is: a family pet, a laboratory animal, an animal kept for meat production, or a wild animal that eats your crops. This is not scientifically sound. A rabbit is a rabbit and each one feels pain or has cognitive function." - Donald M. Broom, 2011

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 19/09/2024

My second full-length paper, "Taking natural harms seriously in compassionate conservation", just got published in Biological Conservation 🥳 I think this paper might ruffle some feathers! (hopefully more metaphorically than physically) #academicsky #conservation www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Taking natural harms seriously in compassionate conservation

Compassionate conservation is an ethical framework proposed to instill greater compassion for individual animals in conservation science and practice.…

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

The govt's approach to children be like: Let's take the most vulnerable members of our society, place them under the responsibility of 1-2 (often completely) untrained people, and apply the absolute minimal regulation to this. I'm sure they'll be fine! ...This is *weird*.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 13/09/2024

Yesterday I spent the day thinking about how to improve the wellbeing of wild animals. I got a paper accepted, so I was feeling really good about myself. Then in the evening I went to a barbecue where a dozen chicken corpses were scorched and then eaten...And I said nothing.

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Friderike Spang @friderikespang.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

Job alert: PhD position in environmental ethics, University of Fribourg - very cool people there, including Angela Martin and @tristankatz.bsky.social! 🥳 #PhilSky #AcademicSky

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

Daniel Denett on (some) other philosophers: "they were clever as a devil, very fast, very good with counter examples. And they didn't know a darn thing, and they didn't think they had to... And I thought: those are...wasted lives. People getting very good at something that doesn't need doing."

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 11/09/2024

Are there clear cases where we can say that biodiversity loss has led to ecosystem *collapse*, rather than a mere shift to a new type of ecosystem / new dynamic range? Ecologists please help. #ecology #biodiversity

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 10/09/2024

Why is it socially acceptable to buy extreme pet breeds, like pugs, persian cats, dachshunds or chihuahas? I mean I know people criticize this in private, but why not to the owner's face? We don't stand for it if an owner kicks their dog - I see little difference here.

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Max Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · 04/09/2024

Many of us can save a child’s life, if we rely on the best data. I think this is one of the most important facts about our world and so I wrote about it in my latest article: ourworldindata.org/cost-effecti...

ourworldindata.org

Many of us can save a child’s life, if we rely on the best data

There are many ways to improve the world, but their cost-effectiveness varies immensely. You can achieve a lot more if you rely on the best data on where to donate.

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 18/12/2023

Something I don't understand is how most people waiting for a flight seem eager to stand for 20 minutes in a queue... when it makes no difference to what seat they get or what time the plane will leave. People who do this, why??

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Tristan Katz @tristankatz.bsky.social · 05/12/2023

Feeling disorientated at 53° North: “The sun has set. Will my flatmate be home soon? Should I make a coffee? Maybe it's too late in the day". *Looks at the clock* It's only 3:30 😵‍💫

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