Interesting post! Re: âhow spotlight sizes should be chosenâ, I think a natural approach is to think about the relative priorities of representatives in a moral parliament. Take the meat eater problem, for example. Suppose you have some mental representatives of human interests, and some representatives of factory farmed animal interests. Then we can ask each representative: âHow high a priority is it for you to get your way on whether or not to prevent this child from dying of malaria?â The human representatives will naturally see this as a very high priorityâwe donât have many better options for saving human lives. But the animal representatives, even if they arenât thrilled by retaining another omnivore, have more pressing priorities than trying to help animals by eliminating meat-eaters one by one. Given how incredibly cost-effective animal-focused charities can be, it will make sense for them to make the moral trade: âOK, save this life, but then letâs donate more to the Animal Welfare Fund.â
Of course, for spotlighting to work out well for all representatives, itâs going to be important to actually follow through on supporting the (otherwise unopposed) top priorities of neglected representatives (like those for wild animal welfare). But I think the basic approach here does a decent job of capturing why it isnât intuitively appropriate to take animal interests into account when deciding whether to save a personâs life. In short: insofar as we want to take animal interests into account, there are better ways to do it, that donât require creating conflict with another representativeâs top priorities. Avoiding such suboptimal conflict, and instead being open to moral trade, seems an important part of being a âgood moral colleagueâ.
But the animal representatives, even if they arenât thrilled by retaining another omnivore, have more pressing priorities than trying to help animals by eliminating meat-eaters one by one.
Is it that obvious? I find it hard to come up with interventions that reduce farmed animal suffering (and farmed animal suffering only, ignoring all the rest) more robustly than âminimize the number of entities that incidentally perpetuate this farmed animal sufferingâ. I feel like this should actually be pretty high up the list for someone who strictly spotlights farmed animals (like the farmed animal representatives are supposed to in your spotlighting parliament, if I understand correctly).
Why donât the managers of the Animal Welfare Fund support preventing the existence of more potential meat-eaters, then? (via, e.g., increasing x-risks.) I presume because
most of their biggest donors donât spotlight farmed animals, are concerned about effects on other things, and would stop donating to the fund if the managers were to do that.
the fund managers themselves, like most farmed animal people, also donât spotlight farmed animals and are concerned about effects on other things.
Curious if you agree.
For the moral trade between the representatives of human victims of malaria and farmed animal representatives to be fair, in your setup, the preferences of the latter would have to actually stoplight farmed animals the same way the former spotlights human victims of malaria. I.e., the preferences of farmed animal representatives in your spotlighting parliament should not be those of real farmed animal advocates who are not spotlighting farmed animals (otherwise, they would obviously be pro-x-risks and stuff despite the downsides on other beings, the same way the representatives of human malaria victims are anti-poverty despite the meat-eater pb).
Interesting post! Re: âhow spotlight sizes should be chosenâ, I think a natural approach is to think about the relative priorities of representatives in a moral parliament. Take the meat eater problem, for example. Suppose you have some mental representatives of human interests, and some representatives of factory farmed animal interests. Then we can ask each representative: âHow high a priority is it for you to get your way on whether or not to prevent this child from dying of malaria?â The human representatives will naturally see this as a very high priorityâwe donât have many better options for saving human lives. But the animal representatives, even if they arenât thrilled by retaining another omnivore, have more pressing priorities than trying to help animals by eliminating meat-eaters one by one. Given how incredibly cost-effective animal-focused charities can be, it will make sense for them to make the moral trade: âOK, save this life, but then letâs donate more to the Animal Welfare Fund.â
Of course, for spotlighting to work out well for all representatives, itâs going to be important to actually follow through on supporting the (otherwise unopposed) top priorities of neglected representatives (like those for wild animal welfare). But I think the basic approach here does a decent job of capturing why it isnât intuitively appropriate to take animal interests into account when deciding whether to save a personâs life. In short: insofar as we want to take animal interests into account, there are better ways to do it, that donât require creating conflict with another representativeâs top priorities. Avoiding such suboptimal conflict, and instead being open to moral trade, seems an important part of being a âgood moral colleagueâ.
Interesting! This resembles Michael St. Julesâ hedging proposal.
Is it that obvious? I find it hard to come up with interventions that reduce farmed animal suffering (and farmed animal suffering only, ignoring all the rest) more robustly than âminimize the number of entities that incidentally perpetuate this farmed animal sufferingâ. I feel like this should actually be pretty high up the list for someone who strictly spotlights farmed animals (like the farmed animal representatives are supposed to in your spotlighting parliament, if I understand correctly).
Why donât the managers of the Animal Welfare Fund support preventing the existence of more potential meat-eaters, then? (via, e.g., increasing x-risks.) I presume because
most of their biggest donors donât spotlight farmed animals, are concerned about effects on other things, and would stop donating to the fund if the managers were to do that.
the fund managers themselves, like most farmed animal people, also donât spotlight farmed animals and are concerned about effects on other things.
Curious if you agree.
For the moral trade between the representatives of human victims of malaria and farmed animal representatives to be fair, in your setup, the preferences of the latter would have to actually stoplight farmed animals the same way the former spotlights human victims of malaria. I.e., the preferences of farmed animal representatives in your spotlighting parliament should not be those of real farmed animal advocates who are not spotlighting farmed animals (otherwise, they would obviously be pro-x-risks and stuff despite the downsides on other beings, the same way the representatives of human malaria victims are anti-poverty despite the meat-eater pb).