I think the cost from changes in public policies resulting from advocating for the consideration of effects on soil animals is realistically negligible.
I’m not sure why you say this—for animal advocacy organizations, you’re potentially asking them to change their interventions, causing fewer vertebrate lives to be saved. Maybe I should have been clear that while Birch talks about public policies, I think we can apply the same reasoning to charitable policies here.
Could you give concrete examples?
I suppose my thinking is that if we took all risks seriously that are 1) small in probability, and where we 2) largely just don’t have the information to know, we’d be suffering from complex cluelessness. As Greaves points out, we face this kind of cluelessness in many ordinary situations: choosing a career, deciding whether or not to give up coffee, whether to have a kid. In each decision of this type there are many possible outcomes of small probability, but which could end up being quite important (e.g. your kid could end up becoming a dictator; a career might cause you to marry a different person, etc.). In personal decision-making, most people largely ignore all these possibilities, and focus on the more certain and/or likely outcomes. In public decision-making contexts, I think the sensible approach is something similar, but investing more resources into researching the different outcomes in order to lower uncertainty first. I suspect you might say that in this case we have more evidence than the examples I’ve given, and I have to admit I’ve never looked into the evidence of sentience in nematodes, mites or springtails.
RP’s probability of sentience of nematodes is 6.8 %, which is not that small. The probability of dying in a car crash is around 2.70*10^-9 per km (= 10^-6/370), and many people still consider it reasonable to fasten seat belts for increased safety on short trips, even if they would prefer it to be optional.
Seatbelts are a good analogy, because actually most people didn’t think it important to fasten their seatbelts originally. It was only after policy makers became aware of the large number of casualties that they made laws and information campaigns to encourage the use of seatbelts. So this goes to show that when the risk is small and uncertain people tend to discount it; but when it becomes certain, and the cost of avoiding it is small, then people are willing to act. In the case you’ve presented, it is both small and uncertain. Hence my suggestion of focusing efforts on research first.
I personally think the proximate impacts are the driver of the overall effect.
By ‘proximate’ you mean short-term, and by ‘the overall effect’, you mean the long-term outcomes, right? Could you explain why you think that?
It seems very likely that worldviews will change slowly, requiring us to focus primarily on changing people now, in order to help most animals later. I expect that empathy for some animals (e.g. farmed animals) will gradually lead to empathy for others (e.g. wild animals). It is hard to expect people to care deeply about all animals when they’re still eating some of them. So my theory of change starts with efforts that increase caring for those animals that people are closest to, and gradually encourages more radical empathy—the expanding moral circle. And if sentience is probabilistic, that’s fine, it’s just a circle with fuzzy edges. I assume that most ‘traditional’ animal rights activists also believe in this vision of progress. And as I said in my last comment, changing interventions now, due to the effects on animals with a small probability of sentience, might mean switching to interventions which less effectively lead to a nonspeciesist future, e.g. by not encouraging people to become vegan (since eating meat has been shown to hinder empathy for animals), or by causing environmentalists to oppose the policies of animal organizations. So by focusing on these animals instead of focusing on changing minds or policies, we might help animals in the short term while harming progress in the long term.
I’m not sure why you say this—for animal advocacy organizations, you’re potentially asking them to change their interventions, causing fewer vertebrate lives to be saved. Maybe I should have been clear that while Birch talks about public policies, I think we can apply the same reasoning to charitable policies here.
Got it. I thought you were referring to public policies from governments, and assuming these would not be influenced by effects on soil animals. I agree organisations considering these may result in less vertebrates being helped, but, even in this case, I would still support the interventions increasing welfare the most accounting for effects on all beings.
As Greaves points out, we face this kind of cluelessness in many ordinary situations: choosing a career, deciding whether or not to give up coffee, whether to have a kid. In each decision of this type there are many possible outcomes of small probability, but which could end up being quite important (e.g. your kid could end up becoming a dictator; a career might cause you to marry a different person, etc.). In personal decision-making, most people largely ignore all these possibilities, and focus on the more certain and/or likely outcomes.
I agree that, for example, a random couple can neglect the probability of their children becoming dictators, but only because the probability of this is sufficiently low for its expected effects to be much smaller than the expected effects from other more likely possibilities. I guess the same applies to many of the situations you have in mind. I would be curious to know about examples of considerations being neglected despite their expected effects being estimated (not guessed, as philosophers often do) to be much larger that the expected effects of the considerations being covered.
By ‘proximate’ you mean short-term, and by ‘the overall effect’, you mean the long-term outcomes, right? Could you explain why you think that?
Sorry for the lack of clarity. By “proximate impacts”, I meant the effects I considered. By “the overall effect”, I meant all the effects, regardless of whether I considered them or not, across all space and time.
It seems very likely that worldviews will change slowly, requiring us to focus primarily on changing people now, in order to help most animals later.
I am suspicious of pursuing interventions which are worse for animals nearterm in the hope they are worth it due to poorly analysed longterm effects. ACE did a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in 2017 suggesting advocating for farmed animals results in greater support for habitat preservation, which I believe is harmful given my best guess that wild animals have negative lives. I am not confident the results are robust, but they illustrate one should not simply assume that helping farmed animals nearterm is beneficial to wild animals longterm.
We [ACE] hypothesized that the animal cruelty group [“shown a flyer that described the suffering endured by farmed animals, and stated that animals would be spared those harms if the reader were to cut out or cut back on meat”] would show greater support for the options that reduce WAS [wild animal suffering] than the control group [“shown a control flyer that advocated for volunteering at and donating to homeless shelters”] and that the control group would show greater support for options that reduce WAS than the environment group. In contrast to our hypothesis, we actually observed that the animal cruelty group had significantly greater “preferences for more habitat” than the environment group.
I acknowledge the examples I gave were kind of bad. If the probability of sentience here really is 6.8%, then that is significant. It’s prompted me to look into that evidence and it is truly more than I thought. So that’s an update.
I still think, even if they do deserve consideration, there’s an argument to be made for delaying that consideration. The argument is of the form “the world isn’t read yet”. I’m very aware that most vegetarians and vegans are also environmentalists. But that’s precisely because they think that environmental protection protects these animals—most have never thought about suffering in nature. My own anecdotal experience is that when I actually talk to such people, and make them aware of the ways that wild animals suffer, then they do tend to be in favor of interventions that would help them, at least if they’re not too environmentally disruptive.
So I feel quite confident that the pro-conservation attitude is an intermediary step. People need to care for animals → then they need to become aware of wild animal suffering → then they will favor intervention in nature.
If you only focus on the short term, taking such attitudes as fixed, then you can never hope to help very many of these animals.
So I feel quite confident that the pro-conservation attitude is an intermediary step. People need to care for animals → then they need to become aware of wild animal suffering → then they will favor intervention in nature.
Interventions promoting a pro-conservation attitude, arguably including the animal-rights movement, may be harmful even if that attitude is a necessary step to care about wild animals. If such interventions make a lot people care about preserving wilderness, but make only a few care about the welfare of wild animals to the extent of being willing to intervene in nature, they may still harm wild animals if these have negative lives.
If you only focus on the short term, taking such attitudes as fixed, then you can never hope to help very many of these animals.
I think one can help lots of soil animals without people caring about these. I estimate buying beef, and donating to GiveWell’s top charities decreases the living time of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by 89.3 M and 237 M animal-years per $, which is good for my best guess that they have negative lives.
Thanks for your response!
I’m not sure why you say this—for animal advocacy organizations, you’re potentially asking them to change their interventions, causing fewer vertebrate lives to be saved. Maybe I should have been clear that while Birch talks about public policies, I think we can apply the same reasoning to charitable policies here.
I suppose my thinking is that if we took all risks seriously that are 1) small in probability, and where we 2) largely just don’t have the information to know, we’d be suffering from complex cluelessness. As Greaves points out, we face this kind of cluelessness in many ordinary situations: choosing a career, deciding whether or not to give up coffee, whether to have a kid. In each decision of this type there are many possible outcomes of small probability, but which could end up being quite important (e.g. your kid could end up becoming a dictator; a career might cause you to marry a different person, etc.). In personal decision-making, most people largely ignore all these possibilities, and focus on the more certain and/or likely outcomes. In public decision-making contexts, I think the sensible approach is something similar, but investing more resources into researching the different outcomes in order to lower uncertainty first.
I suspect you might say that in this case we have more evidence than the examples I’ve given, and I have to admit I’ve never looked into the evidence of sentience in nematodes, mites or springtails.
Seatbelts are a good analogy, because actually most people didn’t think it important to fasten their seatbelts originally. It was only after policy makers became aware of the large number of casualties that they made laws and information campaigns to encourage the use of seatbelts. So this goes to show that when the risk is small and uncertain people tend to discount it; but when it becomes certain, and the cost of avoiding it is small, then people are willing to act. In the case you’ve presented, it is both small and uncertain. Hence my suggestion of focusing efforts on research first.
By ‘proximate’ you mean short-term, and by ‘the overall effect’, you mean the long-term outcomes, right? Could you explain why you think that?
It seems very likely that worldviews will change slowly, requiring us to focus primarily on changing people now, in order to help most animals later. I expect that empathy for some animals (e.g. farmed animals) will gradually lead to empathy for others (e.g. wild animals). It is hard to expect people to care deeply about all animals when they’re still eating some of them. So my theory of change starts with efforts that increase caring for those animals that people are closest to, and gradually encourages more radical empathy—the expanding moral circle. And if sentience is probabilistic, that’s fine, it’s just a circle with fuzzy edges. I assume that most ‘traditional’ animal rights activists also believe in this vision of progress. And as I said in my last comment, changing interventions now, due to the effects on animals with a small probability of sentience, might mean switching to interventions which less effectively lead to a nonspeciesist future, e.g. by not encouraging people to become vegan (since eating meat has been shown to hinder empathy for animals), or by causing environmentalists to oppose the policies of animal organizations. So by focusing on these animals instead of focusing on changing minds or policies, we might help animals in the short term while harming progress in the long term.
Thanks for the follow-up, Tristan.
Got it. I thought you were referring to public policies from governments, and assuming these would not be influenced by effects on soil animals. I agree organisations considering these may result in less vertebrates being helped, but, even in this case, I would still support the interventions increasing welfare the most accounting for effects on all beings.
I agree that, for example, a random couple can neglect the probability of their children becoming dictators, but only because the probability of this is sufficiently low for its expected effects to be much smaller than the expected effects from other more likely possibilities. I guess the same applies to many of the situations you have in mind. I would be curious to know about examples of considerations being neglected despite their expected effects being estimated (not guessed, as philosophers often do) to be much larger that the expected effects of the considerations being covered.
Sorry for the lack of clarity. By “proximate impacts”, I meant the effects I considered. By “the overall effect”, I meant all the effects, regardless of whether I considered them or not, across all space and time.
I am suspicious of pursuing interventions which are worse for animals nearterm in the hope they are worth it due to poorly analysed longterm effects. ACE did a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in 2017 suggesting advocating for farmed animals results in greater support for habitat preservation, which I believe is harmful given my best guess that wild animals have negative lives. I am not confident the results are robust, but they illustrate one should not simply assume that helping farmed animals nearterm is beneficial to wild animals longterm.
Thanks, again, for the response.
I acknowledge the examples I gave were kind of bad. If the probability of sentience here really is 6.8%, then that is significant. It’s prompted me to look into that evidence and it is truly more than I thought. So that’s an update.
I still think, even if they do deserve consideration, there’s an argument to be made for delaying that consideration. The argument is of the form “the world isn’t read yet”. I’m very aware that most vegetarians and vegans are also environmentalists. But that’s precisely because they think that environmental protection protects these animals—most have never thought about suffering in nature. My own anecdotal experience is that when I actually talk to such people, and make them aware of the ways that wild animals suffer, then they do tend to be in favor of interventions that would help them, at least if they’re not too environmentally disruptive.
So I feel quite confident that the pro-conservation attitude is an intermediary step. People need to care for animals → then they need to become aware of wild animal suffering → then they will favor intervention in nature.
If you only focus on the short term, taking such attitudes as fixed, then you can never hope to help very many of these animals.
Interventions promoting a pro-conservation attitude, arguably including the animal-rights movement, may be harmful even if that attitude is a necessary step to care about wild animals. If such interventions make a lot people care about preserving wilderness, but make only a few care about the welfare of wild animals to the extent of being willing to intervene in nature, they may still harm wild animals if these have negative lives.
I think one can help lots of soil animals without people caring about these. I estimate buying beef, and donating to GiveWell’s top charities decreases the living time of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by 89.3 M and 237 M animal-years per $, which is good for my best guess that they have negative lives.