I donāt necessarily want to give extra weight to net harm, as Michael suggested. My primary concern is to avoid getting mugged. Some people think caring about insects already counts as getting mugged. I take that concern seriously, but donāt think it carries the day.
Does it make sense to be concerned about being mugged by a probability of sentience of, for example, 1 %, which I wouldguess is lower than that of nematodes? The risk of death due to driving a car in the United Kingdom (UK) is something like 2.48*10^-7 per 100 km, but people there do not feel mugged by some spending on road safety. I think not considering abundant animals with a probability of sentience of 1 % is more accurately described as neglecting a very serious risk, not as being mugged. I understand your concern is that the probability of sentience of 1 % is not robust, but I believe one should still not neglect it. I see the lack of robustness as a reason for further research.
My sense is that if youāre weighing nematodes, you should also consider things like conscious subsystems or experience sizes that could tell you larger-brained animals have thousands or millions of times more valenced experiences or more valence at a time per individual organism. For example, if a nematode realizes some valence-generating function (or indicator) once with its ~302 neurons, how many times could a chicken brain, with ~200 million neurons, separately realize a similar function? What about a cow brain, with 3 billion neurons?
Taking expected values over those hypotheses and different possible scaling law hypotheses tends, on credences I find plausible, to lead to expected moral weights scaling roughly proportionally with the number of neurons (see the illustration in the conscious subsystems post). But nematodes (and other wild invertebrates) could still matter a lot even on proportional weighing, e.g. as you found here.
My sense is that if youāre weighing nematodes, you should also consider things like conscious subsystems or experience sizes that could tell you larger-brained animals have thousands or millions of times more valenced experiences or more valence at a time per individual organism.
These numbers are already compatible with individual welfare per animal-year proportional to ānumber of neuronsā^0.5, which has been my speculative best guess. This suggests 1 fully happy human-year has 18.9 k (= 1/ā(5.28*10^-5)) times as much welfare as 1 fully happy soil-nematode-year.
Taking expected values over those hypotheses and different possible scaling law hypotheses tends, on credences I find plausible, to lead to expected moral weights scaling roughly proportionally with the number of neurons (see the illustration in the conscious subsystems post).
I have also been updating towards a view closer to this. I wonder whether it implies prioritising microorganisms (relatedly). There are 3*10^29 soil archaea and bacteria, 613 M (= 3*10^29/ā(4.89*10^20)) times as many as soil nematodes.
As a side note, what I do not find reasonable is individual welfare per animal-year being proportional to 2^ānumber of neuronsā.
But nematodes (and other wild invertebrates) could still matter a lot even on proportional weighing, e.g. as you found here.
Agreed. In addition to the estimates in that section for the effects on soil animals as a fraction of those on the target beneficiaries, I havesome for the total welfare of animal populations. For individual welfare per animal-year proportional to the number of neurons, I estimate the absolute value of the total welfare of soil nematodes is 47.6 times that of humans.
Hi Bob.
Does it make sense to be concerned about being mugged by a probability of sentience of, for example, 1 %, which I would guess is lower than that of nematodes? The risk of death due to driving a car in the United Kingdom (UK) is something like 2.48*10^-7 per 100 km, but people there do not feel mugged by some spending on road safety. I think not considering abundant animals with a probability of sentience of 1 % is more accurately described as neglecting a very serious risk, not as being mugged. I understand your concern is that the probability of sentience of 1 % is not robust, but I believe one should still not neglect it. I see the lack of robustness as a reason for further research.
My sense is that if youāre weighing nematodes, you should also consider things like conscious subsystems or experience sizes that could tell you larger-brained animals have thousands or millions of times more valenced experiences or more valence at a time per individual organism. For example, if a nematode realizes some valence-generating function (or indicator) once with its ~302 neurons, how many times could a chicken brain, with ~200 million neurons, separately realize a similar function? What about a cow brain, with 3 billion neurons?
Taking expected values over those hypotheses and different possible scaling law hypotheses tends, on credences I find plausible, to lead to expected moral weights scaling roughly proportionally with the number of neurons (see the illustration in the conscious subsystems post). But nematodes (and other wild invertebrates) could still matter a lot even on proportional weighing, e.g. as you found here.
Thanks, Michael.
These numbers are already compatible with individual welfare per animal-year proportional to ānumber of neuronsā^0.5, which has been my speculative best guess. This suggests 1 fully happy human-year has 18.9 k (= 1/ā(5.28*10^-5)) times as much welfare as 1 fully happy soil-nematode-year.
I have also been updating towards a view closer to this. I wonder whether it implies prioritising microorganisms (relatedly). There are 3*10^29 soil archaea and bacteria, 613 M (= 3*10^29/ā(4.89*10^20)) times as many as soil nematodes.
As a side note, what I do not find reasonable is individual welfare per animal-year being proportional to 2^ānumber of neuronsā.
Agreed. In addition to the estimates in that section for the effects on soil animals as a fraction of those on the target beneficiaries, I have some for the total welfare of animal populations. For individual welfare per animal-year proportional to the number of neurons, I estimate the absolute value of the total welfare of soil nematodes is 47.6 times that of humans.