Kim: This is an interesting and well-structured post, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t include any information about how the material relates to any EA cause areas. I can guess at how thinking about life history might influence our views about, say, wild animal suffering, but I may be wrong, and I think many readers will be confused to see this on the EA Forum without further explanation.
Would you mind adding a brief explanation of how someone interested in animal issues within EA might benefit from learning this? Or some other description of how this material relates to EA issues? I’ll update the post to the “Frontpage” category if an explanation is added.
I have added some context at the beginning of the piece, since you are quite right that it might not be obvious that this post is about determining the grounds for some wild animal welfare claims.
Thanks for the edit! Moved to Frontpage. I’m still curious how moving away from generalizations lets us push against the idea that most wild animal lives are net-negative, but I have a better sense of where you’re coming from now.
Essentially, the life histories of most species are not well captured by the classification schemes used in animal welfare arguments (e.g., most species are neither r- nor K-selected). As a result, it seems much more difficult to argue that the welfare generalizations based on these schemes correspond to the actual affective experiences of most individuals.
I still don’t understand which claim you’re making, exactly.
Are you saying:
1) “most animals don’t have as many offspring as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 2) “most animals don’t have as short a life span as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 3) something else?
I thought the claim about r-/K-selection was always about number of offspring and lifespan, rather than other aspects of the model (competition, body size, etc.), and your article doesn’t seem to suggest that these are very different from what was previously argued.
r-K selection theory suggests that some particular life history characteristics, such as short lifespan and many offspring, are tied together by selection forces. This is not true for some large groups.
Just because you belong to a group with high fecundity does not mean that either 1. total expected adult lifespan is relatively short or 2. that the highest mortality occurs at the youngest ages. For example, see our post on insect life history and in particular our reply to Tomisk regarding variability in survivorship curves.
I think we need to dig into the data to get stats on things like number of offspring. We are saying that not all species that people might describe as r-selected have many offspring, and it would be better to look at the data for different species or species groups than to use life history generalizations.
Kim: This is an interesting and well-structured post, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t include any information about how the material relates to any EA cause areas. I can guess at how thinking about life history might influence our views about, say, wild animal suffering, but I may be wrong, and I think many readers will be confused to see this on the EA Forum without further explanation.
Would you mind adding a brief explanation of how someone interested in animal issues within EA might benefit from learning this? Or some other description of how this material relates to EA issues? I’ll update the post to the “Frontpage” category if an explanation is added.
I have added some context at the beginning of the piece, since you are quite right that it might not be obvious that this post is about determining the grounds for some wild animal welfare claims.
Thanks for the edit! Moved to Frontpage. I’m still curious how moving away from generalizations lets us push against the idea that most wild animal lives are net-negative, but I have a better sense of where you’re coming from now.
Essentially, the life histories of most species are not well captured by the classification schemes used in animal welfare arguments (e.g., most species are neither r- nor K-selected). As a result, it seems much more difficult to argue that the welfare generalizations based on these schemes correspond to the actual affective experiences of most individuals.
I still don’t understand which claim you’re making, exactly.
Are you saying:
1) “most animals don’t have as many offspring as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 2) “most animals don’t have as short a life span as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 3) something else?
I thought the claim about r-/K-selection was always about number of offspring and lifespan, rather than other aspects of the model (competition, body size, etc.), and your article doesn’t seem to suggest that these are very different from what was previously argued.
r-K selection theory suggests that some particular life history characteristics, such as short lifespan and many offspring, are tied together by selection forces. This is not true for some large groups.
Just because you belong to a group with high fecundity does not mean that either 1. total expected adult lifespan is relatively short or 2. that the highest mortality occurs at the youngest ages. For example, see our post on insect life history and in particular our reply to Tomisk regarding variability in survivorship curves.
I think we need to dig into the data to get stats on things like number of offspring. We are saying that not all species that people might describe as r-selected have many offspring, and it would be better to look at the data for different species or species groups than to use life history generalizations.
Thanks for the response!