Got it. Thank you so much for explaining so patiently! 

Got it. I think I understand what you're saying. I'm not as good with math so I'm not sure if I followed the calculations. But to try to put what you're saying in less mathy terms, I think you're basically saying:

1) There are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals. 

2) Nematodes are significantly less likely to be sentient than farmed animals. 

3) But the fact that there are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals still means that, from an expected value perspective, one would still expect the effect of farming on nematodes to be much bigger than the effect of farming on farmed animals.

Is that right?

Like, if you could enter a deal where a person is guaranteed to pay you $1 up front, but in exchange you accept a 6% chance that the person will later take $4,810,000 from you, it'd be a bad deal to make, even though the most likely outcome is you simply gain a dollar and don't pay anything. Is that a good analogy?

Thank you for this interesting, weird, surprising, and important post. It is a mind f*ck. 

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Question: You say, "In particular, it is crucial to know whether [soil nematodes, mites, and springtails] have positive or negative lives."

Is another crucial question to find out whether soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are sentient at all? 

To me, reading this, the main emotional / System 1 reaction I had was, "But those animals are SO small and SO different from me. I can't even see them! It's hard for me to believe they're sentient." I looked briefly on the EA Forum and found this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jYdmcrgAj5odTunCT/demodex-mites-large-and-neglected-group-of-wild-animals ("Strictly speaking, it's unclear whether Demodex mites are sentient. But this is mostly because nobody has researched this question - for many groups of invertebrates where people have looked (e.g. insect groups), the science does support these groups being sentient. To me, it seems plausible enough that Demodex mites are sentient that we should be giving serious consideration to their interests.").

What is your opinion on how likely these small animals are to be sentient? E.g. do you think it's more like 10% likelihood or more like 90% likelihood? 

To me "whether they have positive or negative lives" seems to imply that you think they likely do have lives with a valence one way or the other, as opposed to just unvalenced lives like we imagine plants and bacteria have. But maybe that's not what you meant. 

I realize that there are SO many animals that even a small chance of them being conscious is a big important moral thing for us to consider. So to be clear I'm not trying to push back on caring about them even if the likelihood of them being conscious is only like 10%. I'm just curious what you think. 

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Update: After posting this, I just googled to see what soil mites look like up close. And the pictures I found of them are SO CUTE. They just look like little bugs, with cute little legs and stuff. So that makes me change my System 1 reaction to a new System 1 reaction of "Oh, of course these little cuties are sentient."  :-)

This is SUCH a great post. Very needed. Thank you Aaron! 

Woah! This is really interesting and surprising to me. Thank you so much for letting people know!

This is a REALLY good point. Thank you for posting this. I come from the animal rights movement. We have a similar problem in that movement. People in the AR movement tend to feel isolated, because they care so much about animals and perhaps they feel that the rest of the world, their family, and their society doesn't get it. So they are so eager to meet and befriend another AR person. It's really fun to make friends so easily! I love how quick other AR people are to trust me when they find out I'm an animal advocate. But there's also a downside to the trust in AR, similar to what you're describing. People can be too trusting when they're part of an ethical movement like AR or EA. And it can let others take advantage of them. I even imagine that people who want to take advantage of others might intentionally be motivated to join ethical communities like EA, AR, charity work, religious work, political activism, etc., so they can be accepted more easily with fewer questions. (Not sure—Just a hypothethis.) Thank you for writing this!

This is such a cool and interesting post. And it totally helps understand why things for humans seem like they're materially getting better in many ways, but our culture involves a lot of people saying a lot of negative things about how humanity is doing. I love that you're challenging the assumption that people accurately remember, or accurately report their memory of, their own happiness! This is super smart and matches my own experience of what it's like to be a human. Often, I'm not super sure how happy I've been over the past week, or the past day. When someone asks me, it feels like a hard question. All I can remember is how I feel right now. And even that can sometimes be hard to articulate.

And thank you for mentioning that GDP growth could still be bad due to its effects on animals! 

Most people have a strong drive to perpetuate humanity. What makes EAs special is that EAs also care about others' suffering. So EAs should focus on trying to make sure the future isn't full of suffering.

Update on Harvey's Market: A quick victory! 

The butcher shop says it stopped selling foie gras thanks to LIC' lawsuit.

“Harvey’s Market . . . discontinued the sale of foie gras once notice of this lawsuit was received,” according to the butcher shop’s answer to our complaint.

https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/foie-gras