I’ve only skimmed this thread, but I think you and Jack Malde both might find the following Forum wiki entries and some of the associated tagged posts interesting:
To state my own stance very briefly and with insufficient arguments and caveats:
I think it makes sense to focus on humans for many specific purposes, due to us currently being the only real “actors” or “moral agents” playing
I think it makes sense to think quite seriously about long-term effects on non-humans (including but not limited to nonhuman animals)
I think it might be the case that the best way to optimise those effects is to shepherd humans towards a long reflection
I think Jack is a bit overconfident about (a) the idea that the lives of nonhuman animals are currently net negative and (b) the idea that, if that’s the case or substantially likely to be the case, that would mean the extinction of nonhuman animals would be a good thing
I say more about this in comments on the post of Jack’s that you linked to
But I’m not sure this has major implications, since I think in any case the near-term effects we should care about most probably centre on human actions, human values, etc. (partly in order to have good long-term effects on non-humans)
I’ve only skimmed this thread, but I think you and Jack Malde both might find the following Forum wiki entries and some of the associated tagged posts interesting:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/non-humans-and-the-long-term-future
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/moral-weight
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/moral-patienthood
To state my own stance very briefly and with insufficient arguments and caveats:
I think it makes sense to focus on humans for many specific purposes, due to us currently being the only real “actors” or “moral agents” playing
I think it makes sense to think quite seriously about long-term effects on non-humans (including but not limited to nonhuman animals)
I think it might be the case that the best way to optimise those effects is to shepherd humans towards a long reflection
I think Jack is a bit overconfident about (a) the idea that the lives of nonhuman animals are currently net negative and (b) the idea that, if that’s the case or substantially likely to be the case, that would mean the extinction of nonhuman animals would be a good thing
I say more about this in comments on the post of Jack’s that you linked to
But I’m not sure this has major implications, since I think in any case the near-term effects we should care about most probably centre on human actions, human values, etc. (partly in order to have good long-term effects on non-humans)
Thanks Michael!