I find that the simplest argument against the shrimp welfare movement is that if the same reasoning is applied to demodex mites or nematodes you could easily come up with expected value calculations that prove that every pursuit of humanity is irrelevant in comparison to the importance of our finding a solution to the suffering of these microscopic organisms.
Reductio ad absurdum, therefore these expected value calculation Fermi estimates are probably not a complete and or maybe even useful approach to ethics.
Iâm an ardent critic of the use of naive EV calculations in EA. But what determines whether something is a naive EV calculation isnât whether the probability is low, but whether the level of uncertainty in that probability is super high.
Any EV calc we âcame up withâ about mites would be uncertain to the point of being worthy of zero credence. It would be a Pascalâs mugging.
The case for stunning shrimp, as far as I can tell, is far less uncertain. I think Omnizoid is right that itâs hard to dispute it being a very strong bet.
But I also want to mention that the more I learn about our âsurest betsâ for doing good (e.g bednets) the more uncertain I discover them to be. This leads me to be super reluctant to go âall inâ on anything the way you suggest we might be inclined to with the EV calcs for microscopic organisms.
In conclusion: SWP looks like a highly cost-effective org for doing good in the world. We should support it, but we shouldnât go all in on it or any other cause/âintervention. The world is messy enough that we should be highly pluralistic (even while continuing to prioritize and make trade-offs)
I agree that thereâs a big difference between shrimps and nematodes, although the uncertainty for shrimp sentience remains extremely high, to the point where I think itâs not unreasonable that some people consider it something like a pascals mugging (personally I donât put it in that category).
Yes shrimp âsentienceâ or âcapacity to sufferâ is less uncertain than a mite, but itâs still very uncertain even under models like RPs which I think probably favor animals.
Things with a 50% chance of being very good arenât pascalâs muggings! Your decision theory canât be âPascalâs muggin means I ignore everything with probability less than .5 of being good.â
I agree we donât ignore everything with a probability of less than 0.5 of being good.
Can you clarify what you mean y â50% chance of being very good?â
1) Rethink priorities give Shrimp 23% chance of sentience 2) Their non-sentience adjusted welfare range than goes from 0 (at 5th percentile) to 1.095 (at 95% percentile). From zero to more than a human is such a large uncertainty range that I could accept arguments at this point that it might be âunworkableâ like Henry says (personally I donât think its unworkable) 3) Then After adjusting for sentience it looks like this.
Whatever way the cookie crumbles I think thatâs a lot smaller than a â50% chance of being very goodâ and also a high uncertainty range.
The calculations around shrimp welfare have very high uncertainty. Look at the confidence intervals on the rethink priorities welfare ranges.
Why this uncertainty is workable and demodex mite uncertainty is not Iâm not clear on.
But those guys almost definitely arenât conscious. Thereâs a difference between how you reason about absurdly low probabilities and decent probabilities.
(I also think that we shouldnât a priori rule out that the world might be messy such that weâre constnatly inadvertently harming huge numbers of conscious creatures).
I find that the simplest argument against the shrimp welfare movement is that if the same reasoning is applied to demodex mites or nematodes you could easily come up with expected value calculations that prove that every pursuit of humanity is irrelevant in comparison to the importance of our finding a solution to the suffering of these microscopic organisms.
Reductio ad absurdum, therefore these expected value calculation Fermi estimates are probably not a complete and or maybe even useful approach to ethics.
Iâm an ardent critic of the use of naive EV calculations in EA. But what determines whether something is a naive EV calculation isnât whether the probability is low, but whether the level of uncertainty in that probability is super high.
Any EV calc we âcame up withâ about mites would be uncertain to the point of being worthy of zero credence. It would be a Pascalâs mugging.
The case for stunning shrimp, as far as I can tell, is far less uncertain. I think Omnizoid is right that itâs hard to dispute it being a very strong bet.
But I also want to mention that the more I learn about our âsurest betsâ for doing good (e.g bednets) the more uncertain I discover them to be. This leads me to be super reluctant to go âall inâ on anything the way you suggest we might be inclined to with the EV calcs for microscopic organisms.
In conclusion: SWP looks like a highly cost-effective org for doing good in the world. We should support it, but we shouldnât go all in on it or any other cause/âintervention. The world is messy enough that we should be highly pluralistic (even while continuing to prioritize and make trade-offs)
I agree that thereâs a big difference between shrimps and nematodes, although the uncertainty for shrimp sentience remains extremely high, to the point where I think itâs not unreasonable that some people consider it something like a pascals mugging (personally I donât put it in that category).
Yes shrimp âsentienceâ or âcapacity to sufferâ is less uncertain than a mite, but itâs still very uncertain even under models like RPs which I think probably favor animals.
Things with a 50% chance of being very good arenât pascalâs muggings! Your decision theory canât be âPascalâs muggin means I ignore everything with probability less than .5 of being good.â
I agree we donât ignore everything with a probability of less than 0.5 of being good.
Can you clarify what you mean y â50% chance of being very good?â
1) Rethink priorities give Shrimp 23% chance of sentience
2) Their non-sentience adjusted welfare range than goes from 0 (at 5th percentile) to 1.095 (at 95% percentile). From zero to more than a human is such a large uncertainty range that I could accept arguments at this point that it might be âunworkableâ like Henry says (personally I donât think its unworkable)
3) Then After adjusting for sentience it looks like this.
Whatever way the cookie crumbles I think thatâs a lot smaller than a â50% chance of being very goodâ and also a high uncertainty range.
The calculations around shrimp welfare have very high uncertainty. Look at the confidence intervals on the rethink priorities welfare ranges. Why this uncertainty is workable and demodex mite uncertainty is not Iâm not clear on.
But those guys almost definitely arenât conscious. Thereâs a difference between how you reason about absurdly low probabilities and decent probabilities.
(I also think that we shouldnât a priori rule out that the world might be messy such that weâre constnatly inadvertently harming huge numbers of conscious creatures).
âBut those guys almost definitely arenât consciousâ. Based on what?