Iâve never been able to understand how any serious consideration of insect welfare doesnât immediately lead to the unacceptable conclusion that any cause other than the welfare of demodex mites or nematodes is almost meaningless.
You can also be morally uncertain about the moral weights of animals in other ways, although Iâve recently argued against it being very important here, so for me, itâs mostly attitudes towards risk and uncertainty/âambiguity and aggregation, and, of course, the particular probabilities and other numbers involved.
Iâm personally inclined to focus on arthropods using a decent share of my altruistic budget, but not most of it. Iâm fairly concerned about mites, but not specifically demodex mites. I donât care much about nematodes (which are not arthropods, and seem particularly unlikely to matter much to me).
The breadth of the confidence intervals in any animal suffering research, particularly once it moves away from vertebrates, makes me feel like this work wonât ever lead to any actionable conclusions beyond âtorturing things is bad, avoid if possibleâ, which we sort of knew from the start.
Just to clarify: the problem is that we donât know what is and isnât torture. Is freezing insects the humane way to kill themâor is it a slow and painful way for them to die? The default view among entomologists is the former, but there are lots of physiological considerations that point in the other direction. I think youâre assuming that we know a lot more than we do about how to improve the lives of insects on farms given the options available.
âSlowâ and âpainfulâ very different.
âSlowâ yes, you could study how long it takes for freezing to kill them or stop their neurons firing, though this doesnât seem like very useful information.
âPainfulâ is the key and the problem: I donât see any way toward quantifying how subjectively âpainfulâ something is for an insect and how much we should spend to avoid that pain, hence there will always be a stalemate when it comes to implementation.
(Not speaking for this group.)
Adding to what others have said already, you could also have moral/ânormative uncertainty about decision theory and aim to do well across multiple attitudes to risk and uncertainty/âambiguity, and some attitudes will prioritize animals that seem less likely to be conscious more or less than others, some possibly severely discounting invertebrates. You can also be morally uncertain about moral aggregation (by addition in particular, say), and then helping humans might look better on non-aggregative (or only partially aggregative) views.
You can also be morally uncertain about the moral weights of animals in other ways, although Iâve recently argued against it being very important here, so for me, itâs mostly attitudes towards risk and uncertainty/âambiguity and aggregation, and, of course, the particular probabilities and other numbers involved.
Iâm personally inclined to focus on arthropods using a decent share of my altruistic budget, but not most of it. Iâm fairly concerned about mites, but not specifically demodex mites. I donât care much about nematodes (which are not arthropods, and seem particularly unlikely to matter much to me).
I agree that the field is full of uncertainty.
The breadth of the confidence intervals in any animal suffering research, particularly once it moves away from vertebrates, makes me feel like this work wonât ever lead to any actionable conclusions beyond âtorturing things is bad, avoid if possibleâ, which we sort of knew from the start.
Just to clarify: the problem is that we donât know what is and isnât torture. Is freezing insects the humane way to kill themâor is it a slow and painful way for them to die? The default view among entomologists is the former, but there are lots of physiological considerations that point in the other direction. I think youâre assuming that we know a lot more than we do about how to improve the lives of insects on farms given the options available.
âSlowâ and âpainfulâ very different. âSlowâ yes, you could study how long it takes for freezing to kill them or stop their neurons firing, though this doesnât seem like very useful information. âPainfulâ is the key and the problem: I donât see any way toward quantifying how subjectively âpainfulâ something is for an insect and how much we should spend to avoid that pain, hence there will always be a stalemate when it comes to implementation.