Which metric would you use to compare welfare across species?
I don’t think we know enough about consciousness/qualia/etc. to say anything with conviction about what it’s like to be a nematode. And operationally, I don’t think you won’t be able to convince enough people/funders to take real action on soil animals because it’s just too epistemically unsound and doesn’t fit into people’s natural world views.
When I say net negative, I don’t mean if you try to help soil animals you somehow hurt more animals on the whole.
I mean that you will turn people away from the theory of animal suffering because advocating for soil animals will make them think the field/study of animal suffering as a whole is less epistemically sound or even common sense as they previously thought.
I’m going to write a post next week about this, but consider the backlash on twitter regarding Bentham’s Bulldog’s post about bees and honey. More people came out in force against him than for him. I think that post, for instance, reduced the appetite for animal suffering discussion/action
Thanks. Just one note. There is no need for people to care about soil animals to help these. I estimate the cheapest ways of saving human lives increase the welfare of soil animals much more cost-effectively than interventions targeting farmed animals, and lots of people already care about saving children in low income countries. Saving humans increases the production of food, this increases agricultural land, and this decreases the number of soil animals, which is good for my best guess they have negative lives. If one guesses they have positive lives, one can advocate for cost-effective forestation efforts, which also population already, and does not require convincing people to care about soil animals.
I don’t think we know enough about consciousness/qualia/etc. to say anything with conviction about what it’s like to be a nematode. And operationally, I don’t think you won’t be able to convince enough people/funders to take real action on soil animals because it’s just too epistemically unsound and doesn’t fit into people’s natural world views.
When I say net negative, I don’t mean if you try to help soil animals you somehow hurt more animals on the whole.
I mean that you will turn people away from the theory of animal suffering because advocating for soil animals will make them think the field/study of animal suffering as a whole is less epistemically sound or even common sense as they previously thought.
I’m going to write a post next week about this, but consider the backlash on twitter regarding Bentham’s Bulldog’s post about bees and honey. More people came out in force against him than for him. I think that post, for instance, reduced the appetite for animal suffering discussion/action
Thanks. Just one note. There is no need for people to care about soil animals to help these. I estimate the cheapest ways of saving human lives increase the welfare of soil animals much more cost-effectively than interventions targeting farmed animals, and lots of people already care about saving children in low income countries. Saving humans increases the production of food, this increases agricultural land, and this decreases the number of soil animals, which is good for my best guess they have negative lives. If one guesses they have positive lives, one can advocate for cost-effective forestation efforts, which also population already, and does not require convincing people to care about soil animals.