Organisations using Rethink Prioritiesâ mainline welfare ranges should consider effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails.
1. Reductio ad absurdum: If we consider the lives of nematodes and mites meaningful, suddenly all human welfare questions become meaningless compared to the question of how our behaviour affects nematode/âmite welfare. The conclusion will be that we either need to nuke ourselves or completely restructure society around maximising nematode wellbeing. This is impractical, and like many internally consistent but impractical philosophies (nihilism, antinatalism, Kaczynskiism) arenât conducive to a functioning society.
2. Poor analysis: The calculations are always the same: huge numbers multiplied by tiny numbers, all of which are highly uncertain and unlikely to become more certain with âmore researchâ (highly doubt any study is going to illuminate the moral value of mite suffering)
3. Looks crazy: Even mentioning the issue to say why it doesnât matter has a significant cost: the fact that it was considered seriously enough to warrant rebuttal makes the organisation look crazy to normal people, in the same way that Rethink Priorities running an analysis on whether nuking Australia would be net good or bad would look crazy.
Reductio ad absurdum: If we consider the lives of nematodes and mites meaningful, suddenly all human welfare questions become meaningless compared to the question of how our behaviour affects their welfare. The conclusion will be that we either need to nuke ourselves or completely restructure society around maximising nematode wellbeing. This is impractical, and like many internally consistent but impractical philosophies (nihilism, antinatalism, Kaczynskiism) arenât conducive to a functioning society.
I think there is actually a reasonable middle ground here. If indeed the vast majority of all meaningful lives are those of soil organisms, I think an EA approach would imply:
Taking the most effective actions to help these beings. Demanding that soil life be included in all existing animal welfare work is analogous to demanding that GiveWell include animal welfare in all its calculations. More targeted interventions directly focused on helping soil life are likely to be far more impactful. Currently, this probably looks like invertebrate welfare research, perhaps with some movement building.
Working for long term solutions, recognizing and avoiding unintended consequences, which could include damage to the movement, biodiversity loss, or even redirecting evolution toward greater suffering.
Balancing âutilonâ nematode well-being with âwarm fuzzyâ human and larger animal well-being. Most people feel little-to-no empathy for beings they canât even see. Itâs wonderful that thereâs some who do intuitively care for these tiny beings, but in order to bring the rest of us along theyâll need to understand where weâre starting from.
Taking the most effective actions to help these beings
More targeted interventions directly focused on helping soil life are likely to be far more impactful
Seems like weâre far from a consensus even on whether more or fewer of these organisms is the goal. You suggest that biodiversity loss is bad but Vasco Grilo suggests more monoculture farms is better because that leads to fewer microorganisms and he considers their lives net negative.
Give 1000 researchers 1000 years to study nematodes and demodex mites and I donât believe theyâll be able to tell you whether their lives are worth living, let alone exactly what interventions would improve them.
The conclusion will be that we either need to nuke ourselves or completely restructure society around maximising nematode wellbeing.
I simply recommend donating more to GiveWellâs funds. Killing humans would be counterproductive. It would mean less human-years, and therefore less agricultural-land-years, and more animal-years of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails, which I think is harmful given my best guess that they have negative lives.
Looks crazy: Even mentioning the issue to say why it doesnât matter has a significant cost
I feel like the same could be said, although to a lesser extent, about caring about invertebrates, and AIM, ACE, AWF, and RP have supported interventions helping these.
Why not advocate for massive desertification efforts and spreading radioactive material to sterilise the soil.? Bring CFCs back to eradicate ozone.
same could be said, although to a lesser extent, about caring about invertebrates
Yep agree. Invertebrates is approximately the point on the moral consideration spectrum at which the huge numbers * tiny numbers with highly uncertainty makes the ethics too fuzzy and volatile to be fruitful. Somewhere between lobsters and maggots the numbers shoot off towards infinities and the whole thing becomes not worth thinking about.
The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. I think this fundraising multiplier would be very low for desertification efforts even if they decrease the living time of soil animals more cost-effectively than GiveWellâs top charities, such that advocating for supporting these is more cost-effective.
RPâs probability of sentience of crayfish (similar to lobsters) is only 1.54 (= 0.453/â0.294) times RPâs probability of sentient of black soldier flies (BSFs).
I think if you see desertification as good (you seem to be saying it is), you should have very high suspicion that your ethical framework has led you astray somewhere.
I think desertification is beneficial because deserts, and xeric shrublands is the biome with the least soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by far, and my best guess is that these have negative lives, such that decreasing their population is good (although I am highly uncertain).
1. Reductio ad absurdum: If we consider the lives of nematodes and mites meaningful, suddenly all human welfare questions become meaningless compared to the question of how our behaviour affects nematode/âmite welfare. The conclusion will be that we either need to nuke ourselves or completely restructure society around maximising nematode wellbeing. This is impractical, and like many internally consistent but impractical philosophies (nihilism, antinatalism, Kaczynskiism) arenât conducive to a functioning society.
2. Poor analysis: The calculations are always the same: huge numbers multiplied by tiny numbers, all of which are highly uncertain and unlikely to become more certain with âmore researchâ (highly doubt any study is going to illuminate the moral value of mite suffering)
3. Looks crazy: Even mentioning the issue to say why it doesnât matter has a significant cost: the fact that it was considered seriously enough to warrant rebuttal makes the organisation look crazy to normal people, in the same way that Rethink Priorities running an analysis on whether nuking Australia would be net good or bad would look crazy.
I think there is actually a reasonable middle ground here. If indeed the vast majority of all meaningful lives are those of soil organisms, I think an EA approach would imply:
Taking the most effective actions to help these beings. Demanding that soil life be included in all existing animal welfare work is analogous to demanding that GiveWell include animal welfare in all its calculations. More targeted interventions directly focused on helping soil life are likely to be far more impactful. Currently, this probably looks like invertebrate welfare research, perhaps with some movement building.
Working for long term solutions, recognizing and avoiding unintended consequences, which could include damage to the movement, biodiversity loss, or even redirecting evolution toward greater suffering.
Balancing âutilonâ nematode well-being with âwarm fuzzyâ human and larger animal well-being. Most people feel little-to-no empathy for beings they canât even see. Itâs wonderful that thereâs some who do intuitively care for these tiny beings, but in order to bring the rest of us along theyâll need to understand where weâre starting from.
Seems like weâre far from a consensus even on whether more or fewer of these organisms is the goal. You suggest that biodiversity loss is bad but Vasco Grilo suggests more monoculture farms is better because that leads to fewer microorganisms and he considers their lives net negative.
Give 1000 researchers 1000 years to study nematodes and demodex mites and I donât believe theyâll be able to tell you whether their lives are worth living, let alone exactly what interventions would improve them.
A road to nowhere with great reputational cost
Thanks, Henry. Upvoted.
I simply recommend donating more to GiveWellâs funds. Killing humans would be counterproductive. It would mean less human-years, and therefore less agricultural-land-years, and more animal-years of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails, which I think is harmful given my best guess that they have negative lives.
I feel like the same could be said, although to a lesser extent, about caring about invertebrates, and AIM, ACE, AWF, and RP have supported interventions helping these.
Why not advocate for massive desertification efforts and spreading radioactive material to sterilise the soil.? Bring CFCs back to eradicate ozone.
Yep agree. Invertebrates is approximately the point on the moral consideration spectrum at which the huge numbers * tiny numbers with highly uncertainty makes the ethics too fuzzy and volatile to be fruitful.
Somewhere between lobsters and maggots the numbers shoot off towards infinities and the whole thing becomes not worth thinking about.
The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. I think this fundraising multiplier would be very low for desertification efforts even if they decrease the living time of soil animals more cost-effectively than GiveWellâs top charities, such that advocating for supporting these is more cost-effective.
RPâs probability of sentience of crayfish (similar to lobsters) is only 1.54 (= 0.453/â0.294) times RPâs probability of sentient of black soldier flies (BSFs).
I think if you see desertification as good (you seem to be saying it is), you should have very high suspicion that your ethical framework has led you astray somewhere.
I think desertification is beneficial because deserts, and xeric shrublands is the biome with the least soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by far, and my best guess is that these have negative lives, such that decreasing their population is good (although I am highly uncertain).