I'm really excited to see this. I'm optimistic that ecologists and conservation professionals will want to help with this. They WILL be excited to have an ally that cares about non-charismatic species. They are begging for more attention to the smaller foundational participants in the ecosystem. The field is also gradually becoming more pro-intervention. I am also optimistic that AI will contribute, and want to emphasize that a simple but important step is deploying far more field data loggers. The sooner you collect data, the sooner you have years of data to work with. 

I did not find this patronizing! I recognize that this is a charged topic and really appreciate you moving the discussion to higher quality format/content. Don't overthink too much, I am one person and being a little neurotic. You cleared the air. 

 I've probably missed quite a lot. I'm aware of this article about how animals die and the signs of distress very small animals exhibit. Gonna take your advice and try to get up to speed to see what I've missed.

The post you recommended seems like a very nice outline of the premises in (wild) animal welfare and problem with being able to tell how good an animal's life is, and how that measures up in the grand scheme of things. It is unfortunately dense and long and from 10 years ago, but it make me see this is well-trodden ground and left me wanting to know what the more recent developments are. 

Edit: I want to add that the tone of this comment felt dismissive to me when I first read it. I think I'm sensitive to being considered shallow for disagreeing so the word choices of "if you are new" and "this is a nice first engagement...to engage more deeply...is a great place to start" set me off. I've read a bit. I have heard some counter arguments. I'm not completely uninformed. I'm unconvinced. (So far.)

Among EAs that are focused on preventing suffering in the non-human world, United States based.

This is not what most conservation scientists and "animal lovers" tend to espouse. Those groups also have severe biases in what they pay attention to.

Net negative lives is a bit of a weird concept to grapple with, but I wouldn't dismiss it immediately (despite how it sounds at first encounter). They've definitely thought about it. The problem with net positive lives is that you then might want to fill the world with slight net positive lives and get to a Malthusian state. Its not simple to reason about what a net positive/neutral/negative life is, nor how good/bad it is that lives that never come to be, nor how the world should be shaped in response to these things. 

I think this is a brilliant contrast to the usual insect welfare discussion. I hope it sparks descriptions of some different possibilities.

The usual argument as I understand it, is that lives cut short is a Very Bad Thing. So when animals "die young" they have unfulfilled potential and traumatic lives. I don't think that's the correct way to look at it. Unfortunately, I don't know what the correct way to look at it is. A hypothetical way to frame it, is that most insects have average lifespans, but they have the potential to achieve an almost god-like existence (for an insect). Another hypothetical framing is that daily life eating and sleeping and growing is pretty fulfilling, and the short amount of time spent suffering from dying doesn't counteract that. Another hypothetical framing is that r-strategists find immense meaning in competition as it is such a huge part of their life history, and we wouldn't be able to understand it. I don't think these are obviously wrong nor do I think the going EA framing is obviously correct. 

I fully believe that things we think is terrible are likely to be experienced very differently for other organisms. I have a couple reasons for this. One is that we live very comfortable safe lives and this has skewed our perception of how bad bad things are. (and made good things look pretty bland too!) This is especially strong when it comes to pain. I think pain isn't as bad as we think and we have mistakenly amped this up beyond all reason. People today are afraid of tiny amounts of pain. I don't think animals have the same outlook. Mindset is a huge determinant of pain. 

Another is that we anticipate the future in ways that exacerbate painful experiences, often way way beyond the experience itself. It sounds weird to say, but bodily harm and poverty and "adverse weather" are not that bad when your mind isn't trying to prevent poor futures.

I appreciate the concept of "herbivores live in fear their entire life." This is exactly the kind of wildly different experience that we should imagine! Drawing from humans, both good things and bad things seem to get flattened over time. So an herbivore "living in fear every second" is probably not actually in overdrive their entire life. They probably are either alert or relaxed for a good proportion of their life. I am being hypocritical applying human-extrapolated framing here.

Among humans the things we find meaning in, the things we find intolerable, and our very basic perceptions are very different among us. Not only are wild animals in a very different situation, living a very different lifestyle than us, but they have very different perceptions, bodies, and desires. Which to me indicates they would be even more wildly different in their experiences of happiness and meaning than we are between each other.  Most of that I think comes out positive for the animals.

I am not nearly as eloquent as the OP, but I would be happy to give more explanation of my opinions if anyone is interested to explore this further. 

Sidenote: I think the shape of the dialogue is an artifact how wild animal welfare proponents with extreme uncertainty sometimes say "I can't be certain," which doesn't really register. And those who do feel confident have something (urgent) to express, which is that they think insects have net negative lives. There seems to be vague agreement that predators probably have net positive lives, but herbivores, insects, and r-selected species have net negative lives. This seems incorrect to me, or at least counterintuitive.

I'm very interested in this. I would very much like to know which pesticides kill less insects (but achieve their purpose of protecting crops) and which pesticides kill more humanely and what are the best blanket replacements for the biggest pesticides in use today. 

I think this is very understudied for biodiversity off-target deaths as well. Unintended deaths and unnecessary suffering. I think it's possible to do a truly huge amount of good here.

Does anyone have some initial leads on what these might be? 

Just want to flag that this post doesn't specify what kind of development. I was confused if this magazine was about nimbys, green infrastructure, poverty, civil engineering, or something else.

Oh I missed this post when it was first published. I think this might be the first piece on the EA forum regarding incorporating earth-systems into AI frameworks!

Some critique: I'm not sure if there are values beyond human/sentient preferences. I am not sure what the earth wants or needs. It makes it very difficult to incorporate those hypothetical values without someone defining them and giving a way to measure success at fulfilling them. Does the earth want to stay the same? Or change? In what way? (I am not aware of what the accepted thinking is on this, or if there is any commonly accepted thinking.)

I am somewhat hopeful that we can make more sense of the "right way to respect the earth" by feeding a ton of data into AIs. My hope would be that they could work on massive scales and disentangle some patterns, then condense it down to a message that makes sense to us. Or it might not help at all because the philosophy simply has to be worked out first.

In your piece I found it valuable that you summarized the other attempts at representing non-humans in governance. I learned about a few I had not heard of and learned what happened after they were implemented. 

I also liked your suggestions for what to emphasize in training - The planetary boundaries framework, Earth System Models, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Life Cycle Assessment databases, and Real-time environmental sensors. I think this is a really good starting set. I do have a minor quibble with the planetary boundaries. I recently became aware that they are not quite so good as they first appear.

If the values and methods of maintaining ecosystem integrity and earth stability are not worked out yet, then it could be very high impact to work on developing them. I suggest that this is something that you would be well equipped to do, as it appears the other attempts have been weak on this front. "Legible ecological signals. Non-human interests must be translated into monitored, updated, and decision-relevant indicators that powerful actors cannot simply ignore." This roughly translates to an actionable concrete objective. Extinction risk and biodiversity are too hard to measure directly according to what went wrong with some of the non-human governance examples. Perhaps some simpler indicator of those could be standardized? Perhaps eDNA could make this easier and more objective? 

Personally I am excited about using EDGE (evolutionarily distinct, globally endangered) as a better method of evaluation and prioritization. 



 

Hi!

Like you I care about the environment and like you I want to know the most effective way to make the global environment better. 

My focus is on biodiversity, and 80% of the time that means habitat loss. Alternative proteins can halve deforestation permanently, and that's a bigger impact that anything else I know. A full explanation is written up on EcoResilience Initiative's website here.  We think some of the best alternative protein companies for combating future habitat loss are Terra Bioindustries, Hyfe, and Pow.bio Because they are working on changing feedstock for precision fermentation tech away from sugarcane (a tropical crop grown in biodiverse areas) to recycling agricultural waste products like corn husks and spent barley or waste water. Here is EcoResilience Initiative's full write-up on the individual places working directly on the problem. To be clear, the statistic about halving deforestation is still using sugarcane. It could just get even better than that if we recycle agwaste on top of using alternative proteins. Pow.bio is doubling efficiency by changing the fermentation process. Synthesis Capital recommends Hyfe and Pow.bio and some other specific companies too. Incidentally I got up to speed and found a lot of detailed information from GFI, which made me feel like they are pretty good at pushing alternative protein innovation/funding/development forward. Here are all the alternative protein companies. GFI keeps a database. 

If you place more emphasis on longterm technological approaches and solving extinction altogether, biobanking could allow genetic rescue of species suffering extinction debt, and eventually de-extinction. It's also ridiculously cheap. For $3,000,000 for 100 years you could save a species. (For comparison, one study estimates it costs about $1,300,000 per year to keep critically endangered species surviving in the wild with insurance populations in zoos. The authors consider this a low cost.) The Frozen Zoo, Frozen Ark, Svalbard Gloval Seed Vault, and Ocean Genome Legacy are doing this, and Revive and Restore is working on de-extinction tech. 

For a more immediate, less techno-utopia approach, keystone species introductions seem really effective at improving landscapes. I haven't done research into what organizations are doing the best work on this, but the Big Scrub Conservancy is doing some amazing things. They are reintroducing some of the most evolutionarily distinct species and rebuilding an almost lost habitat. Its really exciting. I would particularly search for any freshwater mollusc introduction programs, because those are some highly effective keystone species in some of the most important and most depleted habitats. (And often they are neglected and evolutionarily distinct species themselves too!) Sorry I don't have specific orgs to recommend for this category. My lame excuse is that keystone species introductions don't globalize in quite the same way as the above two biodiversity interventions. 

I might also recommend EDGE for their direct action on neglected species around the globe. They prioritize by evolutionary distinctiveness (unique and irreplaceable species that represent entire branches of the tree of life) which I think is the right approach for a biodiversity crisis.

Giving Green just released their Biodiversity Conservation recommendations and they settled on GFI and Wetlands International. For marine biodiversity they specify "Supporting Implementation and Innovation of Improved Fishing Gear" as one of the most effective ways to reduce overfishing. If you dig in the footnotes you can find examples of people working on this, for example these conservation engineers and this team. I don't think Giving Green wants to claim these are the MOST impactful direct action. That is what their biodiversity philanthropy page is for. There is a lot of uncertainty about management and viability when you drill down this far. But its probably within the top 90% since its within the most effective intervention bracket.

For climate, I think Giving Green (and other EA climate orgs) have that covered. I dug around Giving Green's climate recommendations, trying to find non-policy nonprofits, and I see what you mean. You will probably have to go to the policy orgs Giving Green recommends, and then see if you can dig around and find a specific project/company they endorse. It won't be easy, because I'm guessing these climate policy nonprofits don't want to single out favorites since they will be working with lots of orgs over their lifetime. 

That being said, you might be able to find some specific direct action they are excited about if you search their reports and check their news page. For example, here is a list of 18 geothermal companies put out by Future CleanTech Architects (page 9). First I would pick a sector you expect to be most impactful, and then search within their coverage of that sector. They'll probably highlight a few places acting directly.

I'm not sure I understood what you are saying here? Do you add more in the direction they are already tilting, or are just more likely to vote if its a high-vote-volume post? 

I am aware I vote based upon the current karma count.  If someone has a bunch of karma, then I don't mind downvoting. If the post or user has super little karma, I upvote it much more readily. Something has to be truly egregious for me to push it further into negative karma.

In the midrange I am less likely to vote at all, and vote more accurately: if it was personally valuable to me, if I feel its underrepresented, or if I feel like it would be better that more eyes see it then I upvote. My favorite thing is to disagree vote and then give karma for a valuable contribution. Then I feel like I'm (a True Rationalist =P) counteracting the natural "like+agree+karma" impulse. I try to vote like this as often as possible.