Marcus (@MarcusDaniell) is a professional tennis player from New Zealand. He is a philanthropist and an advocate for effective altruism through his work as the founder of High Impact Athletes and as a member of Giving What We Can.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” Watch on YouTube above or find the audio on our Podcast – subscribe on Apple here​​​​ & on the other platforms here.

We discuss:
0:00 Welcome

1:45 Marcus intro – pro tennis and High Impact Athletes charity

3:02 What’s real?

• Growing up on a farm in New Zealand
• A “spiritual” father and a “hippie” mother
• Pragmatism, a love for nature and animals, but a comfort with death. Hunting as a child
• Attending Christian schools
• Enjoying Religious Education but never buying in. Being agnostic/atheist from a young age
• Moving alone to Slovakia for tennis
• Discovering “spirituality” and eastern philosophies
• Studying philosophy at university
• Discovering animal ethics but thinking “I’m an athlete, I need meat”
• A turning point when a friend ordered whale in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo
• Going veg*an a week later
• Finding awe and wonder in a naturalistic/scientific worldview
• “Put me next to the ocean or in a forest or a jungle and it’s like experiencing magic for me”
• Naturalistic karma? Putting positive energy into the world and getting positive things back

14:06 What matters? Humans and non-humans

• Meeting a vegan tennis pro
• “I now feel like I’m living in my space in the world – in the right way”
• A sense of solidity… “That’s really helped me”
• Our lack of understanding of non-human sentients
• Intelligence vs. sentience as a moral qualifier
• “I would consider myself a sentientist now”
• I try to give respect to all sentient beings. If they can suffer, try not to cause them suffering
• Artificial sentients? Does suffering matter regardless of species or substrate?
• Sentience as an evolved class of information processing that could also be programmed in
• Luna the puppy makes an audio appearance
• Existential, catastrophic and suffering risks (S-risks)
• Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. Trying not to cause suffering
• It’s so easy not to think. “I wonder how we can create more of these culturally shocking moments to make more people understand”
• The morals were somewhere there, just hidden under layers of culture and tradition

28:05 The Future

• Talking to others about animal products and hearing “We agree on all the reasons but I’m not going to make the change”
• “I would love for the world to be plant-based”
• Is regenerative animal farming an option?
• Can slaughter ever be humane?
• The broad common ground re: rejecting factory farming
• #JustTransition
• The inefficiency and waste of animal farming
• High Impact Athletes & Effective Altruism
• Extreme poverty, climate change and animal welfare as charitable causes
• The radical differences in charity effectiveness
• Athletes donating effectively and influencing their fans to do good
• Creating a norm in the athlete world of donating a percentage of income to highly effective charities
• The amazing opportunity to do good through effective charities

39:31 Following Marcus and HIA

• A dollar is the same whether it comes from LeBron James or Joe Bloggs

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info​​​​​​​​​​​​​. Join Marcus on our “I’m a Sentientist wall” using this simple form​.

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​Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest is here on Facebook​. Thanks Graham for the post-prod @cgbessellieu.