Nor does the inability to establish an exact zero provide positive evidence for it.

I agree the inability to establish an exact 0 does not imply exact 0s are impossible, but it implies exact 0s are unfalsifiable. So I do not think there is any way to empirically distinguish no experience at all from sufficiently weak experiences. The most natural assumption for me is that exact 0s (including no experience at all) are impossible. If empirical evidence points towards a given quantity being between exactly 0 and some small value, and we assume the probability density of the values in this range varies continuously, the probability of any particular value in the range, including exactly 0, is exactly 0.

I believe it is easier to do it in steps: first vertebrates and then non-vertebrates.

What do you think this concretely implies? I may agree that the most cost-effective way to get 10 people to care about ants flows through getting 10 people to care about vertebrates. However, it does not follow that supporting corporate or political campaigns for cage-free layers is close to the most cost-effective ways of helping invertebrates today.

So, all in all, I don't find the arguments above convincing enough to convince people to care about nematodes.

Which people? I think research on the moral weight of nematodes is valuable.

I feel a special duty towards her because I directly and maliciously impacted her welfare.

Would you still feel a special duty if you expected your action to impact Alice as much as Bob? For example, you can assume someone else will impact Bob in exactly the same way as you impact Alice if you chose to impact Alice, and that you are aware of this.

Do you consider you have "directly and maliciously" impacted chickens? I do not think this follows from eating eggs or chicken.

One potentially relevant difference is that I put more probability mass on models like the undiluted experience model, or others where the neuron count exponent is very low. However I’m deeply uncertain about moral weights in general.

The most cost-effective interventions for n close to 0 are the ones which most cost-effectively increase the welfare of soil invertebrates, and these are the ones that most cost-effectively increase or decrease agricultural land, not ones targeting farmed invertebrates. 

It’d also be helpful for me to see the top 5 interventions (instead of just the top one) as a function of the exponent, since otherwise I don’t have visibility into how the rank order moves as the exponent changes.

I have a graph with this in my analysis. It is at the start of the section "Cost-effectiveness per dollar". Below is the cost-effectiveness as a function of n of the interventions which are the most cost-effective for at least one value of n, and HSI. The Good Food Institute (GFI) is in green, HSI in blue, GWWC in red, and Helen Keller Intl's (HKI's) vitamin A supplementation in purple. For n = 0, I estimate GFI is 982 (= 2.18*10^6/(2.22*10^3)) times as cost-effective as HSI assuming decreasing agricultural land increases animal welfare. Flipping the signs of the welfare of soil invertebrates, GFI and HSI would decrease welfare, and GWWC and HKI's vitamin A supplementation would increase welfare.

The conclusion that HSI is not the most cost-effective intervention for n = 0 is robust because it is far from the one which increases/decreases agricultural land the most cost-effectively.

Published.

Hi Wladi.

Even bacteria behave adaptively, and they are certainly not sentient.

You may be interested in this conversation between Brian Tomasik and Luke Muehlhauser about whether simple systems have exactly 0 consciousness, or just very little. It relates to this discussion we had about whether sentience is binary. I agree with Brian that all organisms have more than exactly 0 consciousness (and sentience). Brian elaborates on this in Bacteria, Plants, and Graded Sentience.

Exact 0s are never empirically measured because instruments have a finite resolution. A sufficiently small value would explain exactly the same evidence. Exact 0s are stipulated to make physical laws simpler. I do not see any analogous reason to stipulate that bacteria have exactly 0 sentience.

You may be interested in the article "Beyond the Expanding Circle: Towards a Pluralist Account of Moral Progress" by Rafael Ruiz. Here is a crosspost for a summary by Rafael.

Do you think supporting corporate or political campaigns for cage-free layers is close to the most cost-effective ways of helping invertebrates? I believe the most cost-effective ways of helping any given group of animals are usually optimised with such animals in mind. For example, I would target (optimise for increasing the welfare of):

• Chickens instead of shrimps to increase the welfare of chickens.
• Shrimps instead of chickens to increase the welfare of shrimps.

Here are related thoughts from Lewis Bollard.

Lewis Bollard 59:00

yeah , I don't think farm animal advocates should be doing things on trophy hunting or dogs , yeah , like I . I think first of all it really matters of is this thing you're campaigning for actually going to lead support , to more support for farm animals in future ? And I think what we have seen in the us , for instance , is , like you , we've had huge progress for companion animals and that has just not trickled down to farming . It's like there has not been . There was this theory that like , well , you know , if we just get enough people to make enough progress on companion animals , then everyone will focus on farm animals . In fact , what happens is they just want more progress for companion animals , like rightly so , but like it's like actually no one ever switches over and if you try and switch them over , they're like no , I'm , I was there for the dogs , not the , you know , not the pigs . Yeah , yeah , instead , I think you need to get people started on the animals that matter .

Lewis Bollard 59:46

I have the same problem with like kind of non-human rights project approach of like we'll focus on , like elephants and chimpanzees , where I'm like , even if you win , I sadly don't think they will win , but even if you did , I don't think that trickles down to chickens and fish .

Lewis Bollard 59:59

Like I just think it gets people like to care even more about elephants and chimpanzees , and and so I think you have to focus on actual farm animal welfare stuff . Then in in terms of , yeah , what is a small win , like I think , getting like a small change to regulations that , like you know , is only incrementally making like the slaughter process a bit better regulated , or getting a commitment from a small company , or even just getting you know this recognized in official documents , or you know , I think there are other things like you can do that are not like the biggest thing . Or just , you know , just getting someone in the agriculture department who's working on animal welfare . I am very wary of the thing of like we should work on different issues in the hope that one day we will then be able to like pull people across to work on the issues we actually care about .

Lewis Bollard 1:00:45

Yeah , I also haven't seen that work out very well , but you can see the natural appeal of that and the other risk I've seen is that , like I've seen so many people who convince themselves of these stories where it's like when I was in the humane society , one thing that say is like well , yeah , we're not working on like farm animals now , even though we totally care about them , but like it's because it's just way more tractable to do this thing in congress . But you know , like , ultimately we'll switch across to farm animals . And I've seen people who've like retired now , who had like mindset their whole career and like how did it work out ? Like did that ever happen ? And I think , like I think part of the problem is you just like , once you start focusing on trophy hunting dogs , like you end up being really fixated on that . You end up like understandably , just like fixating on that goal . And that becomes the goal when you forget that it was like a tactic rather than , like you know , a piece . So yeah , if it was a tactic .

James Özden 1:01:33

Instead it becomes like the end itself yeah , yeah , yeah , we I've called this in the uk like drinking your own kool-aid , where you tell everyone you're doing of this reason . Actually you kind of forget internally and then you go off .

Here are related thoughts from Aidan Kankyoku.

What do these categories [pets, wild animals, vermin, and farmed animals] mean for movement strategy? First, the bad news: campaigning to shift public opinion on pets and wild animals is unlikely to spill over onto farmed animals and vermin.1

I know of some razor-sharp campaigners who are planning to focus their attention for the next few years on shutting down greyhound racetracks and breeding facilities for dogs used in horrific experiments. There are many reasons these campaigns could be worth running. But building momentum for the movement against factory farming is not one of them. It won’t soften the public up for caring about farmed animals, because they don’t think of dogs and farmed animals as being remotely the same cause area.

The activist momentum built for these campaigns won’t translate to factory farm campaigns, either. Activists are not fungible. Most people who get involved in activism have lots of causes they support, but only one or two that light a fire in their hearts and fill them with a burning desire to do whatever it takes to win. I’ve met activists who will show up outside SeaWorld week after week for years on end protesting their enslavement of orca whales, yet haven’t the slightest interest in joining a protest against fur, foie gras, or slaughterhouses. Others will pound the pavement collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to protect a few hundred mountain lions a year from hunters, yet aren’t much interested in the much worse plight of billions of farmed animals, and even eat the same factory farmed meat as everybody else. To be clear, I’m not criticizing these people; I admire them and I’m grateful for their work. But they teach me clearly that activists are not fungible. People who are activated to fight against greyhound racing or testing on beagles will stay home if the same organization pivots to campaigning against factory farms a few years later.

Hi PAMC.

What would be your overall recommendation?

Funding Rethink Priorities' (RP's) research on moral weights led by Bob Fischer, which can be done with a restricted donation to RP's worldview investigations team (WIT).

It seems cage-free dominates in the plot above, and GWWC [Giving What We Can] is also not a single intervention or area, so it confuses me a bit.

I prefer model 2 because it accounts for effects on soil microorganisms. Funding The Navigation Fund's (TNF's) cage-free campaigns fund has the highest cost-effectiveness for m equal to 0.85, and between 1 and 1.85 (among multiples of 0.05), but I can easily see m taking values below 0.85. I am very uncertain about moral weights.

I analysed concrete funding opportunities (like donating to GWWC) because cost-effectiveness may vary significantly within the same type of intervention or area.

I think you might be neglecting the effect of increasing animal welfare motivation in the general population. Eg, I can donate X to save nematodes or termites, but all things considered, my intervention is tiny. Have you considered that cage-free campaigns (or others) may make animal welfare considerations more important to people? I see ~no way to purposefully and meaningfully influence nematodes' lives unless we figure out how to "expand the moral circle".

I think interventions targeting farmed chickens will overwhelmingly build capacity to help farmed vertebrates, including via motivating the general population to help farmed vertebrates. I do not know whether interventions helping farmed vertebrates increase or decrease welfare. So I also do not know if the capacity built via helping farmed chickens will increase or decrease welfare.

In any case, it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence if helping farmed chickens was the best way to build capacity to help soil invertebrates. Here are some of my related thoughts.

I believe funding Arthropoda Foundation is the most cost-effective way of building capacity to help soil invertebrates. Here are some related thoughts from Bob.

Hello Ariel.

I feel personally responsible for the suffering of hens, both because I used to contribute to it and because factory farming wouldn't be happening without humanity. I care about tiny wild animals too, but I feel less of a duty towards them.

The effects on land use caused by changes in food consumption would also not happen without humanity. Do you think humanity is more responsible for causing cage-free layers to exist than the changes in land use caused by them replacing caged layers? If not, why would the effects on chickens be special relative to those on soil invertebrates resulting from the changes in land use? 

Alongside Brian Tomasik's blog, your arguments have contributed to me shifting most of my animal welfare giving to invertebrates.

Nice to be mentioned alongside Brian Tomasik. Have you considered supporting the interventions which increase/decrease agricultural land the most cost-effectively (if your best guess is that increasing/decreasing agricultural land increases welfare)? I think interventions targeting invertebrates are very unlikely to be the most cost-effective if moral weight is proportional to "individual number of neurons"^n (model 1) or "basal metabolic rate (BMR) at 25 ºC"^m (model 2). Below is a graph showing the most cost-effective intervention among 16 I analysed as a function of n and m. The Shrimp Welfare Project's (SWP's) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) only has the highest cost-effectiveness for values of m slighly below 1.

If you have a moral parliament or otherwise give deontology and/or special duties some weight, that's a reason to support corporate campaigns. What do you think?

People endorsing deontology often care about not causing harm, and I believe corporate campaigns for cage-free layers may increase suffering a lot. I estimate their cost-effectiveness is -7.33 kQALY/$ for n = 0.2, and n = 0.188 explains very well the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges presented in Bob's book (see the last graph in my comment above).

Why would we have a special duty to help chickens, but not soil ants and termites?

I think reasonable moral parliaments will give some weigth to increasing suffering a lot being bad, and I believe corporate campaigns for cage-free layers may increase suffering a lot. So I think corporate campaigns for cage-free layers may easily be bad under many moral views.

Hello.

Perhaps the largest uncertainty is the impact on wild animal welfare. One could consider second-order effects on soil nematode wildlife, which, taken seriously, would violently swing the estimates of whether cage-free is indeed good or bad; see @Vasco Grillo's posts. However, it contains a lot of uncertainty and has a stronger dependence on fully embracing utilitarianism, which gives pause to many, including myself.

Thanks for covering this. My take that corporate campaigns for cage-free layers could be good or bad for animals does not depend on caring about soil nematodes, or fully embracing utilitarianism. I think their effects on soil ants and termites could be much larger than those on chickens. So my take would not change if I attributed a moral weight of exactly 0 to soil springtails, mites, and nematodes. One can also be concerned about such campaigns decreasing the welfare of soil ants and termites a lot without fully embracing utilitarianism.

Here are my estimates for the cost-effectiveness of funding The Navigation Fund's cage-free campaigns fund assuming moral weight is proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent".

As illustrated below, an exponent of 0.188 explains the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges in Bob Fischer's book very well. In agreement with the bottom left graph above, such exponent implies a 50 % chance of the campaigns increasing welfare. This results from very uncertain effects on soil animals being much larger than the effects on chickens, as it is illustrated in the bottom right graph above.

Hello Toby. I do not know whether the following would be good topics for a themed week. However, I would like to know how effects on soil invertebrates affect people's cause prioritisation, or why they neglect such effects. Here is a related analysis I did.