I think in context, i.e. following OP’s sentence “If the key decision makers of the future decide they have to bring animals to other planets … introducing herbivores would be preferred …”—by ‘every individual animal’, OP means every individual animal brought to other planets—not every single animal in existence. OP also seems to focusing on terraforming rather than space colonization.
So I’m not sure why you think that it’s “an unreasonably demanding standard”. There are certainly ways of assigning value that would say that creating additional lives with negative experiences makes it worse for those lives compared to refraining from creating them (e.g. minimalist axiologies). These may be rarer within the EA community, but they definitely exist outside of it (e.g. some forms of Buddhist ethics). If that’s the case, and we’re only talking about the lives created, then opposing bringing animals will indeed help every single animal involved.
The implications of this is only that we find it preferable not to terraform—which isn’t paralysis—just opposition to that particular policy.
OP means every individual animal brought to other planets—not every single animal in existence.
Every policy we can take has some knock-on effect, however small, on a vast array of different people (and animals). We can’t just ignore some impacts by fiat. The justification for narrowing our scope and focusing only on some subset is typically because either some effects don’t matter morally (e.g. wild animals don’t matter, only humans) or because they are very small (most people will benefit and only a few will lose out). But OP rejects both these strategies, and takes a hard deontologic/rawlsian line, so even if he is only intending to discuss the impacts on some animals, logically he should apply the same to everyone—with paralysis the result.
The implications of this is only that we find it preferable not to terraform—which isn’t paralysis—just opposition to that particular policy.
No, because the world is so big and complicated that every single decision you make will make some animal worse off, and slightly change which animals will be born in the future, some of whom will suffer. OP is applying a standard here so demanding that, if applied generally, no action could pass muster.
I think in context, i.e. following OP’s sentence “If the key decision makers of the future decide they have to bring animals to other planets … introducing herbivores would be preferred …”—by ‘every individual animal’, OP means every individual animal brought to other planets—not every single animal in existence. OP also seems to focusing on terraforming rather than space colonization.
So I’m not sure why you think that it’s “an unreasonably demanding standard”. There are certainly ways of assigning value that would say that creating additional lives with negative experiences makes it worse for those lives compared to refraining from creating them (e.g. minimalist axiologies). These may be rarer within the EA community, but they definitely exist outside of it (e.g. some forms of Buddhist ethics). If that’s the case, and we’re only talking about the lives created, then opposing bringing animals will indeed help every single animal involved.
The implications of this is only that we find it preferable not to terraform—which isn’t paralysis—just opposition to that particular policy.
Every policy we can take has some knock-on effect, however small, on a vast array of different people (and animals). We can’t just ignore some impacts by fiat. The justification for narrowing our scope and focusing only on some subset is typically because either some effects don’t matter morally (e.g. wild animals don’t matter, only humans) or because they are very small (most people will benefit and only a few will lose out). But OP rejects both these strategies, and takes a hard deontologic/rawlsian line, so even if he is only intending to discuss the impacts on some animals, logically he should apply the same to everyone—with paralysis the result.
No, because the world is so big and complicated that every single decision you make will make some animal worse off, and slightly change which animals will be born in the future, some of whom will suffer. OP is applying a standard here so demanding that, if applied generally, no action could pass muster.