The post you recommended seems like a very nice outline of the premises in (wild) animal welfare and problem with being able to tell how good an animal’s life is, and how that measures up in the grand scheme of things. It is unfortunately dense and long and from 10 years ago, but it make me see this is well-trodden ground and left me wanting to know what the more recent developments are.
Edit: I want to add that the tone of this comment felt dismissive to me when I first read it. I think I’m sensitive to being considered shallow for disagreeing so the word choices of “if you are new” and “this is a nice first engagement...to engage more deeply...is a great place to start” set me off. I’ve read a bit. I have heard some counter arguments. I’m not completely uninformed. I’m unconvinced. (So far.)
You might want to see this academic paper specifically arguing against the net-negative view (empirically calling these assuptions into question). I critiqued it in my PhD thesis (which I really should put online somewhere...), and argued for a more agnostic view. You can read it below:
Heather Browning and Walter Veit (2023) provide several reasons to be skeptical of [the net negative view]: first, most deaths will be short, relative to the length of the animal’s life; second, for the most intense deaths (most obviously, predation) a “shock response” may numb the pain that is felt; third, stressors experienced during the animals’ lives (such as an awareness of proximate predators, or a disease response) are “not sufficient to assume negative experience without additional evidence linking this to welfare”; fourth, wild animals’ lives will also be filled with many positive experiences, often paired with any bad affects (e.g. the pleasure of eating and the pain of hunger); and finally, the baseline, purely ordinary moments of life might be experienced positively, since it is advantageous if animals value their lives and seek to keep living, and especially exploring and discovering.
Browning and Veit’s argument presents a compelling case for agnosticism regarding the balance of positive and negative experiences in the lives of wild animals: without really knowing how intense the bad and good experiences of wild animals are, we cannot say whether their lives are bad overall. But their optimism that wild animals will generally have positive lives is less convincing. Their arguments also provide reasons for discounting the badness of experiences that we normally consider terrible for humans, such as severe injury or violent death, the constant threat of danger or starvation. The fact that these experiences might (respectively) be partially numbed, brief, or are paired with experiences that are good, do little to dampen their horror, especially for those who die because of them at a young age. While we do not know how other animals will experience these states, it is at least reasonable to suppose that they involve a similar level of suffering. Secondly, while it is certainly possible that purely ordinary experiences of animals are positive, there is no evolutionary necessity for them to be so, since animals are already driven to keep living by negative experiences, such as hunger and fear. Lastly, the positive experiences which Browning and Veit point to, such as the joy of discovery, are equally paired with negative ones, such as boredom. Consequently, we still have strong reasons to think that wild animals suffer greatly, and a strong case for agnosticism about whether their lives are worth living. We can also say that, even if their lives are generally worth living, they are no more so than are human lives in times of famine or war; in fact, we should expect the lives of wild animals to be worse, since their mortality rates are higher. This is not altogether denied by Browning and Veit, who acknowledge that “whether or not it dominates, there is a large amount of suffering in nature” (Ibid.).
Hey Tandena, thanks for raising this. I do think in retrospect that the comment was a bit patronising. Apologies.
I also now worry that this comment will also seem patronising. I’d appreciate that feedback if it does—I’m considering getting a bit more involved in promoting good quality content through commenting, but it’s a hard line to tread.
It is unfortunately dense and long and from 10 years ago, but it make me see this is well-trodden ground and left me wanting to know what the more recent developments are.
Yep, I started looking for other posts and then realised it would take too long for me to justify it. It’s worth spending some time with an LLM finding more readings, there is a lot of good stuff here.
I have heard some counter arguments. I’m not completely uninformed. I’m unconvinced. (So far.)
I was writing the comment kind of specifically for someone in this position to see. I think that it isn’t a good post to read if you are still exploring the question; the arguments are forceful, appealing and engaging but uninformed in pretty crucial areas, meaning that overall they can be misleading. I wrote the comment because it seemed like the post was getting disproportionate attention given this fact, and might therefore be taken as having more authority than it does.
To be clear, my first posts on the Forum were of similar quality or worse, and I’m glad the author posted this. I hope that Hans keeps exploring the question and posting.
Thank you for sharing the link. I completely agree that MichaelPlant articulated this position far better than I did, and I highly recommend reading his post. I suspect mine gained so much traction not necessarily because of its quality, but because the issue itself is of paramount importance. Getting these things right is crucial, even if it often feels like an impossible task.
I did not find this patronizing! I recognize that this is a charged topic and really appreciate you moving the discussion to higher quality format/content. Don’t overthink too much, I am one person and being a little neurotic. You cleared the air.
I’ve probably missed quite a lot. I’m aware of this article about how animals die and the signs of distress very small animals exhibit. Gonna take your advice and try to get up to speed to see what I’ve missed.
The post you recommended seems like a very nice outline of the premises in (wild) animal welfare and problem with being able to tell how good an animal’s life is, and how that measures up in the grand scheme of things. It is unfortunately dense and long and from 10 years ago, but it make me see this is well-trodden ground and left me wanting to know what the more recent developments are.
Edit: I want to add that the tone of this comment felt dismissive to me when I first read it. I think I’m sensitive to being considered shallow for disagreeing so the word choices of “if you are new” and “this is a nice first engagement...to engage more deeply...is a great place to start” set me off. I’ve read a bit. I have heard some counter arguments. I’m not completely uninformed. I’m unconvinced. (So far.)
You might want to see this academic paper specifically arguing against the net-negative view (empirically calling these assuptions into question). I critiqued it in my PhD thesis (which I really should put online somewhere...), and argued for a more agnostic view. You can read it below:
Hey Tandena, thanks for raising this. I do think in retrospect that the comment was a bit patronising. Apologies.
I also now worry that this comment will also seem patronising. I’d appreciate that feedback if it does—I’m considering getting a bit more involved in promoting good quality content through commenting, but it’s a hard line to tread.
Yep, I started looking for other posts and then realised it would take too long for me to justify it. It’s worth spending some time with an LLM finding more readings, there is a lot of good stuff here.
I was writing the comment kind of specifically for someone in this position to see. I think that it isn’t a good post to read if you are still exploring the question; the arguments are forceful, appealing and engaging but uninformed in pretty crucial areas, meaning that overall they can be misleading. I wrote the comment because it seemed like the post was getting disproportionate attention given this fact, and might therefore be taken as having more authority than it does.
To be clear, my first posts on the Forum were of similar quality or worse, and I’m glad the author posted this. I hope that Hans keeps exploring the question and posting.
Thank you for sharing the link. I completely agree that MichaelPlant articulated this position far better than I did, and I highly recommend reading his post. I suspect mine gained so much traction not necessarily because of its quality, but because the issue itself is of paramount importance. Getting these things right is crucial, even if it often feels like an impossible task.
Thanks Hans, and yes you’re absolutely right, I agree this is a crucial issue.
I did not find this patronizing! I recognize that this is a charged topic and really appreciate you moving the discussion to higher quality format/content. Don’t overthink too much, I am one person and being a little neurotic. You cleared the air.
I’ve probably missed quite a lot. I’m aware of this article about how animals die and the signs of distress very small animals exhibit. Gonna take your advice and try to get up to speed to see what I’ve missed.