Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on Do you think decreasing the consumption of animals is good/​bad? Think again?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Nice points!

I’m pretty skeptical of your points related to food shocks and abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios, especially given the academic controversy surrounding nuclear winter scenarios (which I don’t believe you’ve adequately updated on despite this controversy being pointed out to you beneath one of your other posts).

I did not update my analysis on why more global warming might be good to mitigate the food shocks caused by abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios following the comments because I was already aware of the controversy. I decided to defer to the results of Luisa Rodriguez, who thought about the matter much more than me. My position is similar to the one Toby Ord expresses in The Precipice (emphasis mine):

There are significant remaining uncertainties at all stages of our understanding of nuclear winter:

1. How many cities are hit with bombs?

2. How much smoke does this produce?

3. How much of the soot is lofted into the stratosphere?

4. What are the effects of this on temperature, light, precipitation.

5. What is the resulting reduction in crop yields?

6. How long does the effect last?

7. How many people are killed by such a famine? Some of these may be reduced through future research, while others may be impossible to resolve.

Some of these may be reduced through future research, while others may be impossible to resolve.

Skeptics of the nuclear winter scenario often point to these remaining uncertainties, as they show that our current scientific understanding is compatible with a milder nuclear winter. But uncertainty cuts both ways. The effect of nuclear winter could also be more severe than the central estimates. We don’t have a principled reason for thinking that the uncertainty here makes things better. Since I am inclined to believe that the central nuclear winter scenario is not an existential catastrophe, the uncertainty actually makes things worse by leaving this possibility open. If a nuclear war were to cause an existential catastrophe, this would presumably be because the nuclear winter effect was substantially worse than expected, or because of other—as yet unknown—effects produced by such an unprecedented assault on the Earth.

It would therefore be very valuable to have additional research on the uncertainties surrounding nuclear winter, to see if there is any plausible combination that could lead to a much deeper or longer winter, and to have fresh research on other avenues by which full-scale nuclear war might pose an existential risk.

I agree that:

Also, note that in any such scenario, the human population will be far lower than it is today, so the quantity of animal feed is almost certainly not going to be the thing that determines whether humanity recovers from collapse (especially if we’re assuming that such a scenario occurs in the next few decades before AGI, when animal product consumption is expected to be pretty high).

However, even if animal feed has a negligible impact on the likelihood of recovery, it may influence the chance of collapse.

Robin Hanson has also questioned whether farmland used to grow crops for animal feed would be ‘re-wilded’ - at least some of it will be used for development, which will actually reduce wild animal numbers. In any case, whether or not wild animals have net-negative lives is incredibly uncertain.

Agreed, but note that “uncertain effect with zero expected value” + “certain effect with positive expected value” = “uncertain effect with positive expected value”. If the combined effect is sufficiently uncertain, I think it is often better to learn more, and keep options open, instead of acting as if one of the options is robustly good/​bad.

So, the direct effects on factory farmed animals of reducing consumption, plus lower greenhouse gas emissions (which, given my skepticism about your food shock points, and the fact that climate change probably increases the risk of an existential catastrophe by reducing global stability and increasing the likelihood of extreme/​tail-risk climate scenarios), seem to make reducing consumption net-positive.

I would say this corresponds to the common sense view, and I believe it may well be right. However, because of what I said just above, I do not think we should act as if we are sure that is the case.

[JBentham]

I agree that animal feed may influence the chance of collapse, but I again think this will be negligible given high expected animal product consumption pre-AGI and the much smaller human population.

I certainly agree that we should not act as if we are sure, but I also think that saying we are completely “clueless” or “don’t know” is also inaccurate. We should of course take these considerations seriously, and think about them carefully and try to get more information about them (and to be clear, I also discount the climate-related worries for the possibility of AGI arriving before then).