Thank you for this thought-provoking article, Vasco! In situations where we have clear, certain benefits in one area (here, knowing that use of slower-growing chicken breeds clearly reduces suffering for those chickens, even if their lives are longer) and a high degree of uncertainty on multiple dimensions in another (here the welfare consequences for arthropods), my inclination is that it’s often more effective to focus on the suffering we are confident we can alleviate, and avoid the non-negligible risk of relevant unintended negative consequences in the uncertain case (while simultaneously promoting further research on the latter effects).
Thanks for the comment, Cynthia! I would only neglect the uncertain effects on wild arthropods of chicken welfare reforms if I expected them to be much smaller than those on chickens. I do not think uncertainty per se is enough to discount a given effect. For example, it is very unclear whether a deal where there is a 50 % chance of one’s risk of deaths decreasing by 50 %, and a 50 % chance of it increasing by 70 % would increase or decrease one’s risk of death. However, I think it would be harmful due to increasing the risk of death in expectation by 10 % (= 0.5*(-0.5 + 0.7)). @cynthiaschuck, I have updated my comment.
Thank you for this thought-provoking article, Vasco! In situations where we have clear, certain benefits in one area (here, knowing that use of slower-growing chicken breeds clearly reduces suffering for those chickens, even if their lives are longer) and a high degree of uncertainty on multiple dimensions in another (here the welfare consequences for arthropods), my inclination is that it’s often more effective to focus on the suffering we are confident we can alleviate, and avoid the non-negligible risk of relevant unintended negative consequences in the uncertain case (while simultaneously promoting further research on the latter effects).
Thanks for the comment, Cynthia! I would only neglect the uncertain effects on wild arthropods of chicken welfare reforms if I expected them to be much smaller than those on chickens. I do not think uncertainty per se is enough to discount a given effect. For example, it is very unclear whether a deal where there is a 50 % chance of one’s risk of deaths decreasing by 50 %, and a 50 % chance of it increasing by 70 % would increase or decrease one’s risk of death. However, I think it would be harmful due to increasing the risk of death in expectation by 10 % (= 0.5*(-0.5 + 0.7)). @cynthiaschuck, I have updated my comment.