Would be curious why people are downvoting. 

Thanks!  

I don't think the analogy with subsistence humans is a good one because the basic argument for net negative animal welfare doesn't apply to them.  The basic argument is: most animals have very short lives that culminate in a painful death, and a few days of life isn't enough to recoup the harms of a painful death.  This doesn't apply to long-lived hunter-gatherers.  Fwiw, I don't think it applies to animals either--it seems plausible that elephants mostly live good lives, for example.  But the most numerous animals are worms, then insects, then fish, then amphibians, then reptiles--nearly all the most numerous animals have bad lives.  

I don't think hedonic utilitarianism is a complete frame either--I'm an objective list theorist fwiw, but I don't think that it has huge implications because animals don't have many significant non-hedonic goods.  I don't think nature has intrinsic value, but even if I did, this would be outweighed by the staggeringly large amount of suffering that exists even in small plots of lands (hundreds of bugs per square feet).  As I said in that piece, I think even pretty small chunks of land could contain extreme suffering, so this probably swamps whatever intrinsic value nature might have.  

I agree that biodiversity isn't automatically the same as increasing ecosystem productivity.  In fact, I'd generally tend to support preserving herbivores, as they lower plant populations--so we could find common ground there.  I'm skeptical about carnivores generally, though depends on the detail.  I'd also be skeptical of insect zoos because those might be used to argue for preserving nature.  I saw your recent post where you describe precision agriculture which would prevent conversion of nature into farmland.  I find this very alarming!  I think farmland has fewer arthropods! 

Want to come on the podcast to discuss more? 

I'm pretty worried about this because I think most wild animals have bad lives, and so increasing their numbers is very bad https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-biodiversity?utm_source=publication-search

I don't think the case for Vasco's argument depends really on sentience in non-arthropods. There are like a billion soil arthropods for every person, so funding research on soil animals looks similarly important.  And a lot of these are ants who are more likely to be sentient than black soldier flies. 

I do find the comment "I also want robustness in the case for sentience," a bit puzzling in context.  As I understood it, Vasco's argument was that it's not very unlikely that animals even simpler than arthropods are sentient (mites, springtails, etc).  That there's not a robust case that they are analogous isn't a strong argument for them not being analogous (and will, in fact, be a reason for uncertainty and research).  

Broadly agree with a lot of the document though, especially the funding stuff!  I think funding Arthropoda is great!

Yes it would imply that a bit of extra energy can vastly increase consciousness.  But so what?  Why be 99.9999% confident that it can't? 

I think it's a bad result of a view if it implies that no actions we perform are good or bad.  Intuitively it doesn't seem like all chaotic actions are neutral. 

Thanks!

Thank you!

It’s a somewhat long post.  Want to come on the podcast to discuss?

I don't agree with that.  Cluelessness seems to only arise if you have reason to think that on average your actions won't make things better.  And yet even a very flawed procedure will, on average across worlds, do better than chance.  This seems to deal with epistemic cluelessness fine.