It would be better to call this: Animal Welfare vs Human Welfare Debate Week
When your scope extends to “any intervention which primarily aims to increase the wellbeing of animals, or decrease their suffering, and...the same for humans”, the term “global health” only represents a sub-set of possible interventions.
Thanks for bringing this up Barry! The exact phrasing has gone through a lot of workshopping, but I didn’t spot this. Perhaps I should change the debate statement to “global health and wellbeing” to cover this area. On your specific suggestion, I disagree because “Animal Welfare vs Human Welfare” seems to suggest a necessary trade-off between animal and human welfare, whereas I’m hoping that we will be discussing the best ways to increase welfare overall, whether for humans or animals.
Thanks Toby! Health is part of wellbeing, so “global wellbeing” would be sufficient.
However, it’s worth noting that “global wellbeing” should apply to all moral patients, whereas “global health” is usually understood as a human-specific set of interventions.
Exactly- I was also thinking of “global wellbeing” but then realised that would also include animals. “Global health and wellbeing” is the name for the cause area in OpenPhilanthropy’s terminology which only applies to humans, so I think that would have meaning to some people (although it is easy to overestimate average EA context when you’ve been around it so long). Another alternative is to do something like we did on the last debate week, and have definitions of the terms appear when you hover over them in the banner. I’ll chat to Will, who is developing the banner, about our options when I see him tomorrow. Cheers!
It seems like the whole premise of this debate is (rightly) based on the idea that there is in fact a necessary trade-off between human and animal welfare, no? I.e. if we give the $100 million towards the most cost-effective human focused intervention we can think of then we are necessarily not giving it towards the most cost-effective animal-focused intervention we can think of, no? Of course it is theoretically possible that there exists some intervention which is simultaneously the most cost-effective intervention on both a humans-per-dollar and animals-per-dollar but that seems extremely unlikely.
Yep- there is a trade-off in the sense that the money will go to one, and the other will miss out. I wasn’t very clear in my previous comment- sorry! What I meant is that we ideally aren’t pitting human and animal welfare against each other. Most arguments, I expect, will be claiming that giving the money in one direction will increase welfare overall. In fact, this increase in welfare will accrue to either animals or humans, but the question was never “which is more deserving of welfare”, it was “which option will produce the most welfare”. Does that make it clearer? It’s a subtler point than I thought while making it.
It would be better to call this: Animal Welfare vs Human Welfare Debate Week
When your scope extends to “any intervention which primarily aims to increase the wellbeing of animals, or decrease their suffering, and...the same for humans”, the term “global health” only represents a sub-set of possible interventions.
Thanks for bringing this up Barry! The exact phrasing has gone through a lot of workshopping, but I didn’t spot this. Perhaps I should change the debate statement to “global health and wellbeing” to cover this area.
On your specific suggestion, I disagree because “Animal Welfare vs Human Welfare” seems to suggest a necessary trade-off between animal and human welfare, whereas I’m hoping that we will be discussing the best ways to increase welfare overall, whether for humans or animals.
Thanks Toby! Health is part of wellbeing, so “global wellbeing” would be sufficient.
However, it’s worth noting that “global wellbeing” should apply to all moral patients, whereas “global health” is usually understood as a human-specific set of interventions.
Exactly- I was also thinking of “global wellbeing” but then realised that would also include animals. “Global health and wellbeing” is the name for the cause area in OpenPhilanthropy’s terminology which only applies to humans, so I think that would have meaning to some people (although it is easy to overestimate average EA context when you’ve been around it so long).
Another alternative is to do something like we did on the last debate week, and have definitions of the terms appear when you hover over them in the banner. I’ll chat to Will, who is developing the banner, about our options when I see him tomorrow.
Cheers!
I’ve just been informed that “global health and wellbeing” actually is intended by OP to include animal welfare- so I’m disagree-reacting the above comment.
Maybe you should have a separate debate week on the most appropriate name for the “global health” cause area ;o)
It seems like the whole premise of this debate is (rightly) based on the idea that there is in fact a necessary trade-off between human and animal welfare, no? I.e. if we give the $100 million towards the most cost-effective human focused intervention we can think of then we are necessarily not giving it towards the most cost-effective animal-focused intervention we can think of, no? Of course it is theoretically possible that there exists some intervention which is simultaneously the most cost-effective intervention on both a humans-per-dollar and animals-per-dollar but that seems extremely unlikely.
Yep- there is a trade-off in the sense that the money will go to one, and the other will miss out. I wasn’t very clear in my previous comment- sorry!
What I meant is that we ideally aren’t pitting human and animal welfare against each other. Most arguments, I expect, will be claiming that giving the money in one direction will increase welfare overall. In fact, this increase in welfare will accrue to either animals or humans, but the question was never “which is more deserving of welfare”, it was “which option will produce the most welfare”. Does that make it clearer? It’s a subtler point than I thought while making it.