Math nitpicks are helpful, thanks! Both were right—just doing math too quickly :).
RE welfare comparisons: I could imagine a difference between us being relative confidence that empirical research will improve our understanding? I think I might be less bullish on this sort of work because I don’t feel confident we’ll meaningfully reduce our uncertainty about welfare ranges. But, I’m not confident in this. Would you expect the most useful work for reducing your own uncertainty to be philosophical or empirical?
RE nematodes: I agree that this isn’t clear cut in some sense, but I feel fairly confident that they should be bracketed out unless we significantly advance in our understanding of animal consciousness (and see above—maybe my own lack of confidence in our ability to make empirical progress on this is part of the reason I’m more confident in casting them aside).
RE cage-free: yes — I think the meaningful counterfactual is that money spent on cage free otherwise not being spent on animal welfare at all, or being spent in mostly useless ways, and I’d endorse cage-free campaigns over that most likely, despite agreeing with you on non-target uncertainty being high, but I haven’t thought about it much.
RE welfare comparisons: I could imagine a difference between us being relative confidence that empirical research will improve our understanding?
I am not confident (empirical or philosophical) research on welfare comparisons across species will significantly decrease their uncertainty. However, the alternative for me is never finding out interventions that robustly increase welfare in expectation.
Would you expect the most useful work for reducing your own uncertainty to be philosophical or empirical?
I do not have a strong view either way. I think it is much easier to decrease i) the empirical uncertainty about anatomy and behaviour than ii) the philosophical uncertainty about how to go from those to quantitative comparisons of welfare across species. On the other hand, I believe ii) is much larger than i).
RE nematodes: I agree that this isn’t clear cut in some sense, but I feel fairly confident that they should be bracketed out unless we significantly advance in our understanding of animal consciousness
Nice, that was useful. I agree that the downside to this is some risk of interventions not being robust. I’m not really sure how to think about that trade off—on the other hand, increasing our certainty could make it really hard to do any interventions at all (e.g. a world where we think nematodes matter, but don’t know if they have good or bad lives seems really hard to operate in).
On motivational trade-offs — I definitely agree that there is some evidence threshold that would change my mind. I’m not totally ruling this possibility out. But maybe directly answering your question — no, motivational trade offs alone wouldn’t change it I don’t think. But, I haven’t thought much about it, and not sure that position will hold up to scrutiny.
Math nitpicks are helpful, thanks! Both were right—just doing math too quickly :).
RE welfare comparisons: I could imagine a difference between us being relative confidence that empirical research will improve our understanding? I think I might be less bullish on this sort of work because I don’t feel confident we’ll meaningfully reduce our uncertainty about welfare ranges. But, I’m not confident in this. Would you expect the most useful work for reducing your own uncertainty to be philosophical or empirical?
RE nematodes: I agree that this isn’t clear cut in some sense, but I feel fairly confident that they should be bracketed out unless we significantly advance in our understanding of animal consciousness (and see above—maybe my own lack of confidence in our ability to make empirical progress on this is part of the reason I’m more confident in casting them aside).
RE cage-free: yes — I think the meaningful counterfactual is that money spent on cage free otherwise not being spent on animal welfare at all, or being spent in mostly useless ways, and I’d endorse cage-free campaigns over that most likely, despite agreeing with you on non-target uncertainty being high, but I haven’t thought about it much.
I am not confident (empirical or philosophical) research on welfare comparisons across species will significantly decrease their uncertainty. However, the alternative for me is never finding out interventions that robustly increase welfare in expectation.
I do not have a strong view either way. I think it is much easier to decrease i) the empirical uncertainty about anatomy and behaviour than ii) the philosophical uncertainty about how to go from those to quantitative comparisons of welfare across species. On the other hand, I believe ii) is much larger than i).
Would medium confidence that nematodes engage in motivational trade-offs be enough for you to consider effects on them?
Nice, that was useful. I agree that the downside to this is some risk of interventions not being robust. I’m not really sure how to think about that trade off—on the other hand, increasing our certainty could make it really hard to do any interventions at all (e.g. a world where we think nematodes matter, but don’t know if they have good or bad lives seems really hard to operate in).
On motivational trade-offs — I definitely agree that there is some evidence threshold that would change my mind. I’m not totally ruling this possibility out. But maybe directly answering your question — no, motivational trade offs alone wouldn’t change it I don’t think. But, I haven’t thought much about it, and not sure that position will hold up to scrutiny.