Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on Increasing the welfare of soil animals will remain much more cost-effective than increasing digital welfare over at least the next few decades?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Thanks for the comment, Noah.

I am looking forward to the results of RP’s Digital Consciousness Project, but I do not expect any significant updates to my views. It focusses on the probability of consciousness, but I think this says very little about the (expected hedonistic) welfare per unit time. This is because I believe there is much more uncertainty in the welfare per unit time conditional on consciousness than in the probability of consciousness.

I suspect the number of digital minds is not among the most relevant parameters to track. It may not be proportional to total digital welfare because more digital minds will tend to have less individual welfare per unit time. I would focus more on the digital welfare per FLOP, and FLOPs per year.

I am also interested in more comparisons between the promise of increasing biological and digital welfare. Nice to know you are working on a piece!