Many questions in this space rely on assumptions about whether insect lives are positive or negative, though I haven’t seen much discussion of this explicitly (mostly just heard them in conversations). Is there not much that can be done to learn more other than what has already been done?
If so, the insect welfare initiatives that are interested in creating more or less are going to need to be dropped by 1-2 OOMs to account for massive uncertainty (say, 5% higher that they are positive), which is weird. It also wouldn’t be very robust in that the probability we do something good vs bad is quite fragile (especially a problem for many non hedonistic utilitarian views).
I said in the post “I analyse the cost-effectiveness of increasing the welfare of soil animals via funding HIPF, which is the most cost-effective way of increasing welfare I am aware of”. This was for my best guess at the time that increasing agricultural land increases welfare due to decreasing the number of soil animals, and these having negative lives. However, I am now very uncertain not only about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives, but also about whether increasing agricultural land decreases or increases the number of soil animals. I recommend research informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively. In addition, I would prioritise more research on comparing the hedonistic welfare of different potential beings (animals, microoranisms, and AIs).
I estimated the cost-effectiveness of HIPF assuming “the [expected hedonistic individual] welfare per animal-year of soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes is −25 % that of fully happy soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes”. The expected cost-effectiveness only depends on the mean of the distribution of the individual welfare per animal-year as a fraction of that of fully happy animals. So one could have my best guess for the mean of this distribution while being arbitrarily uncertain. For example, a normal distribution with 5th and 95th percentiles of −5.25 (= −0.25 − 5) and 4.75 (= −0.25 + 5) would have a mean of −0.25 (my best guess), standard deviation of 11.1 (= 2*5/(0.95 − 0.05)), and probability of being negative of 50.9 % (= NORMDIST(0, −0.25, 11.1, 1)), which seems reasonable to me. A normal distribution with 5th and 95th percentiles of −50.25 (= −0.25 − 50) and 49.75 (= −0.25 + 50) would have the same mean of −0.25, standard deviation of 111 (= 2*50/(0.95 − 0.05)), and probability of being negative of 50.1 % (= NORMDIST(0, −0.25, 111, 1)). This is 9.00 (= (0.509 − 0.5)/(0.501 − 0.5)) times as close to 50 % as the probability of the 1st distribution being negative, but the expected cost-effectiveness would be the same for both distributions. What changes is that the cost-effectiveness of decreasing the uncertainty about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives is higher for the 2nd distribution.
Many questions in this space rely on assumptions about whether insect lives are positive or negative, though I haven’t seen much discussion of this explicitly (mostly just heard them in conversations). Is there not much that can be done to learn more other than what has already been done?
If so, the insect welfare initiatives that are interested in creating more or less are going to need to be dropped by 1-2 OOMs to account for massive uncertainty (say, 5% higher that they are positive), which is weird. It also wouldn’t be very robust in that the probability we do something good vs bad is quite fragile (especially a problem for many non hedonistic utilitarian views).
Do you have further takes here, Vasco?
Thanks for the interesting points, Noah.
I said in the post “I analyse the cost-effectiveness of increasing the welfare of soil animals via funding HIPF, which is the most cost-effective way of increasing welfare I am aware of”. This was for my best guess at the time that increasing agricultural land increases welfare due to decreasing the number of soil animals, and these having negative lives. However, I am now very uncertain not only about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives, but also about whether increasing agricultural land decreases or increases the number of soil animals. I recommend research informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively. In addition, I would prioritise more research on comparing the hedonistic welfare of different potential beings (animals, microoranisms, and AIs).
I estimated the cost-effectiveness of HIPF assuming “the [expected hedonistic individual] welfare per animal-year of soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes is −25 % that of fully happy soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes”. The expected cost-effectiveness only depends on the mean of the distribution of the individual welfare per animal-year as a fraction of that of fully happy animals. So one could have my best guess for the mean of this distribution while being arbitrarily uncertain. For example, a normal distribution with 5th and 95th percentiles of −5.25 (= −0.25 − 5) and 4.75 (= −0.25 + 5) would have a mean of −0.25 (my best guess), standard deviation of 11.1 (= 2*5/(0.95 − 0.05)), and probability of being negative of 50.9 % (= NORMDIST(0, −0.25, 11.1, 1)), which seems reasonable to me. A normal distribution with 5th and 95th percentiles of −50.25 (= −0.25 − 50) and 49.75 (= −0.25 + 50) would have the same mean of −0.25, standard deviation of 111 (= 2*50/(0.95 − 0.05)), and probability of being negative of 50.1 % (= NORMDIST(0, −0.25, 111, 1)). This is 9.00 (= (0.509 − 0.5)/(0.501 − 0.5)) times as close to 50 % as the probability of the 1st distribution being negative, but the expected cost-effectiveness would be the same for both distributions. What changes is that the cost-effectiveness of decreasing the uncertainty about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives is higher for the 2nd distribution.