Thanks for the reply. I completely agree that we should look for interventions that improve welfare most per $, and that those, at least for now, are the ones focusing on animals and not humans. 100% of my donations at the moment actually goes to animal causes.
That's a very interesting table about welfare range per calorie consumption. It caused me to update away from my belief that in the ideal far future we should dedicate most resources to creating more happier humans (or the next generation of the most sentient beings), and towards the belief that the existence of some lower sentience but super efficient beings, such as bees, would be a great thing. It doesn't change any near term things for me or have any actionable consequences though, as I think we're still gonna be in the "reduce suffering" part of history for a very long time before we get to the "increase bliss" part
Thanks for writing this interesting article! I had a few objections, but it looks like most of them have been covered.
One thing I would still like to mention is using wild animals as the bar to cross. This only makes sense if the replacement is 1:1, meaning that if we didn't farm x amount of animals, there would have existed an additional x amount of wild animals (not sure if x should be individuals, or some sort of "sentience units" that weigh vertebrates more for example). If this were the case then setting 0 equal to the expected welfare of a wild animal makes sense, because that would be what the farm animal is replacing, and therefore that would define whether it's good for the farm animal to exist or not.
Although I don't think the replacement is 1:1, but I don't know in which direction it should lean. In terms of individuals I think farm animals replace many wild animals, especially invertebrates. More farm animals result in more plant crops to feed them, meaning more pesticides, meaning fewer wild bugs. On the other hand, the density of highly sentient animals are higher on farms than on wild land.
The danger of using wild animals as the bar when the replacement is not 1:1 could be the following example (with made up numbers): If we instead place the 0 at non-existence, imagine wild animals are actually at -5, and farm animals are at -1, but 10 farm animals replace 1 wild animal. Then every farm animal that exists actually decreases total utility by 0.5 (it subtracts 1 but adds -5/10). But using wild animals as the bar you'd think every farm animal increases total utility by 4
Very interesting article! Although I would disagree that it would be bad to decrease the number of factory farmed animals if they have positive lives. What we're doing when decreasing the number of factory farmed animals is just shifting the biomass to be in different forms. I think humans are capable of much more positive lives than farmed animals, so in the long term future it would be best to have as much biomass in the form of humans (and possibly pets) as possible. A world where humans eat predominantly plants and cultivated meat would be able to support more humans, and these extra humans would have much better lives than farmed animals.
When it comes to shifting the biomass towards wild animals, I don't know whether it would be good or bad though. I think in the long term future after people start intervening, wild animals would probably also have better lives than farmed animals, because people would value them intrinsically instead of instrumentally. Farms will always be optimised to produce as much output as possible, whereas future "nature reserves" could be optimised for welfare
I'm donating to the Good Food Institute for 2 reasons:
1: Moving the world more towards alt protein has a positive impact in many different areas including animal welfare, food security, pandemic prevention and climate change
2: I live in Switzerland and effective-spenden makes it bureaucratically easy and tax deductible to donate to them
Thanks for the great post, it was a very enjoyable read.
I'm curious if there are any justification to using qualities such as intelligence, creativity and sociability to determine moral status? They seem pretty arbitrary to me. We might as well consider fluffyness, body weight and visual resolution.
I would think if there is at all something like hierarchical moral status, it would be determined by instrumental qualities such as resource consumption (negative) and altruism (positive)
Thanks for the reply. I completely agree that we should look for interventions that improve welfare most per $, and that those, at least for now, are the ones focusing on animals and not humans. 100% of my donations at the moment actually goes to animal causes.
That's a very interesting table about welfare range per calorie consumption. It caused me to update away from my belief that in the ideal far future we should dedicate most resources to creating more happier humans (or the next generation of the most sentient beings), and towards the belief that the existence of some lower sentience but super efficient beings, such as bees, would be a great thing. It doesn't change any near term things for me or have any actionable consequences though, as I think we're still gonna be in the "reduce suffering" part of history for a very long time before we get to the "increase bliss" part
Thanks for writing this interesting article! I had a few objections, but it looks like most of them have been covered.
One thing I would still like to mention is using wild animals as the bar to cross. This only makes sense if the replacement is 1:1, meaning that if we didn't farm x amount of animals, there would have existed an additional x amount of wild animals (not sure if x should be individuals, or some sort of "sentience units" that weigh vertebrates more for example). If this were the case then setting 0 equal to the expected welfare of a wild animal makes sense, because that would be what the farm animal is replacing, and therefore that would define whether it's good for the farm animal to exist or not.
Although I don't think the replacement is 1:1, but I don't know in which direction it should lean. In terms of individuals I think farm animals replace many wild animals, especially invertebrates. More farm animals result in more plant crops to feed them, meaning more pesticides, meaning fewer wild bugs. On the other hand, the density of highly sentient animals are higher on farms than on wild land.
The danger of using wild animals as the bar when the replacement is not 1:1 could be the following example (with made up numbers): If we instead place the 0 at non-existence, imagine wild animals are actually at -5, and farm animals are at -1, but 10 farm animals replace 1 wild animal. Then every farm animal that exists actually decreases total utility by 0.5 (it subtracts 1 but adds -5/10). But using wild animals as the bar you'd think every farm animal increases total utility by 4
Very interesting article! Although I would disagree that it would be bad to decrease the number of factory farmed animals if they have positive lives. What we're doing when decreasing the number of factory farmed animals is just shifting the biomass to be in different forms. I think humans are capable of much more positive lives than farmed animals, so in the long term future it would be best to have as much biomass in the form of humans (and possibly pets) as possible. A world where humans eat predominantly plants and cultivated meat would be able to support more humans, and these extra humans would have much better lives than farmed animals.
When it comes to shifting the biomass towards wild animals, I don't know whether it would be good or bad though. I think in the long term future after people start intervening, wild animals would probably also have better lives than farmed animals, because people would value them intrinsically instead of instrumentally. Farms will always be optimised to produce as much output as possible, whereas future "nature reserves" could be optimised for welfare
I'm donating to the Good Food Institute for 2 reasons:
1: Moving the world more towards alt protein has a positive impact in many different areas including animal welfare, food security, pandemic prevention and climate change
2: I live in Switzerland and effective-spenden makes it bureaucratically easy and tax deductible to donate to them
Are there any rules against using crude language or having a lot of violence in the story?
Thanks for the great post, it was a very enjoyable read.
I'm curious if there are any justification to using qualities such as intelligence, creativity and sociability to determine moral status? They seem pretty arbitrary to me. We might as well consider fluffyness, body weight and visual resolution.
I would think if there is at all something like hierarchical moral status, it would be determined by instrumental qualities such as resource consumption (negative) and altruism (positive)