Even just the effects on wild insects could be important, so anyone who is interested in insect welfare should be interested in these effects, too, or have good reason to ignore them, which I’d be interested in knowing (and possibly challenging).
I’d also tentatively put mites, springtails and farmed insect larvae at similar welfare ranges and probabilities of sentience, although quite uncertain. So, if you count farmed insect larvae as worthy of moral consideration at all, you should probably count mites and springtails, too, and to similar degrees on welfarist grounds.
I think some potentially good reasons to ignore the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates are the following:
You think we’ll have much larger expected impact on invertebrates with the invertebrate work we (or you) support or will support. Maybe (y)our portfolio of interventions will be positive in expectation across groups of welfare ranges and probabilities of sentience.
I think this requires at least comparing to estimates of the effects of vertebrate-targeting interventions on wild terrestrial invertebrates, e.g. Vasco’s, to be justified. So you aren’t exactly ignoring the effects at all. That ~36% of the world’s habitable land is used for animal agriculture, directly or for feed,[1] seems like a good reason to believe that animal agriculture is one of the main ways we affect wild (terrestrial) invertebrates and that some of the highest leverage vertebrate interventions will be among the highest leverage for wild invertebrates.
You think the impacts on wild terrestrial invertebrates are generally good anyway, but don’t differ enough between interventions to outweigh reasons for sometimes prioritizing vertebrates (e.g. normative uncertainty or a portfolio that’s robustly good across sentience and welfare range groups).
I’d want to know why. I have some doubts for animal product reduction, e.g. work to support alternative proteins and veg food advocacy.
You’re clueless about the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates (e.g. given uncertainty about their expected average welfare, or tradeoffs between natural deaths and crop deaths) and you ignore them on the basis of cluelessness, using imprecise credences.
Even as someone suffering-focused, I’m currently clueless about the expected effects of crop agriculture on wild terrestrial invertebrates. It seems like pesticide deaths could be far worse than natural deaths, generally at least as intense at their worst as natural deaths and often more drawn out, enough to make up for and possibly outweigh the reduction in population sizes. I think the (expected) effects could go either way, and we probably need more primary research to decide which way.
However, I do think beef/​grazing/​pasture reduces wild terrestrial invertebrate suffering. So, if you’re ignoring some effects, it seems like you should separate the crop and pasture effects and deal with them separately. They affect different individuals living in different areas.
FWIW, this is not the same as assuming the expected effects are precisely 0 and then ignoring them because of that. It would be an incredibly suspicious coincidence if the expected effects were exactly 0. You’d have to ignore (almost) all evidence about the actual lives of these animals and the effects of agriculture, and rely (almost) entirely on a symmetric prior, and that doesn’t seem justified to me.
Non-consequentialist /​ non-welfarist reasons.
I don’t personally consider these to be good reasons, but I see ethics as mostly subjective, so they can be good reasons to other people.
Even just the effects on wild insects could be important, so anyone who is interested in insect welfare should be interested in these effects, too, or have good reason to ignore them, which I’d be interested in knowing (and possibly challenging).
I’d also tentatively put mites, springtails and farmed insect larvae at similar welfare ranges and probabilities of sentience, although quite uncertain. So, if you count farmed insect larvae as worthy of moral consideration at all, you should probably count mites and springtails, too, and to similar degrees on welfarist grounds.
I think some potentially good reasons to ignore the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates are the following:
You think we’ll have much larger expected impact on invertebrates with the invertebrate work we (or you) support or will support. Maybe (y)our portfolio of interventions will be positive in expectation across groups of welfare ranges and probabilities of sentience.
I think this requires at least comparing to estimates of the effects of vertebrate-targeting interventions on wild terrestrial invertebrates, e.g. Vasco’s, to be justified. So you aren’t exactly ignoring the effects at all. That ~36% of the world’s habitable land is used for animal agriculture, directly or for feed,[1] seems like a good reason to believe that animal agriculture is one of the main ways we affect wild (terrestrial) invertebrates and that some of the highest leverage vertebrate interventions will be among the highest leverage for wild invertebrates.
You think the impacts on wild terrestrial invertebrates are generally good anyway, but don’t differ enough between interventions to outweigh reasons for sometimes prioritizing vertebrates (e.g. normative uncertainty or a portfolio that’s robustly good across sentience and welfare range groups).
I’d want to know why. I have some doubts for animal product reduction, e.g. work to support alternative proteins and veg food advocacy.
You’re clueless about the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates (e.g. given uncertainty about their expected average welfare, or tradeoffs between natural deaths and crop deaths) and you ignore them on the basis of cluelessness, using imprecise credences.
Even as someone suffering-focused, I’m currently clueless about the expected effects of crop agriculture on wild terrestrial invertebrates. It seems like pesticide deaths could be far worse than natural deaths, generally at least as intense at their worst as natural deaths and often more drawn out, enough to make up for and possibly outweigh the reduction in population sizes. I think the (expected) effects could go either way, and we probably need more primary research to decide which way.
However, I do think beef/​grazing/​pasture reduces wild terrestrial invertebrate suffering. So, if you’re ignoring some effects, it seems like you should separate the crop and pasture effects and deal with them separately. They affect different individuals living in different areas.
FWIW, this is not the same as assuming the expected effects are precisely 0 and then ignoring them because of that. It would be an incredibly suspicious coincidence if the expected effects were exactly 0. You’d have to ignore (almost) all evidence about the actual lives of these animals and the effects of agriculture, and rely (almost) entirely on a symmetric prior, and that doesn’t seem justified to me.
Non-consequentialist /​ non-welfarist reasons.
I don’t personally consider these to be good reasons, but I see ethics as mostly subjective, so they can be good reasons to other people.
7% for crops for direct human consumption, 1% for urban and built-up land, including settlements and infrastructure, and 12-13% for logging for wood. I expect almost all of the rest of habitable land to be left alone, some possibly abandoned and allowed to rewild.
Thanks for the great points, Michael!