this, like some of your other estimates relies rather heavily on an unconventional and extremely skewed pain scale, whereby a certain degree of pain is worth many times more than maximal pleasure
My guess that excruciating pain is 100 k (= 10*10^3/â0.1) times as intense as fully healthy life ( 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant) implies that 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/â(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain in humans neutralises 1 day of fully healthy life in humans. Do you think this is âunconventional and extremely skewedâ? Examples of excruciating pain include âscalding and severe burning events [in large parts of the body]â, or âdismemberment, or extreme tortureâ. I have not experienced excruciating pain myself, so I would not be surprised if it was 10 % as intense as I assumed, but this would not change my takeaways. I estimate the harms caused to mosquitoes are proportional to the intensity of excruciating pain, so AMF would cause 76.3 (= 0.1*763) times as much harm to mosquitoes as it benefits humans according to the updated mainline numbers.
I am not assuming excruciating pain is 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant (as you implied above). This is much more intense than fully healthy life, so I guess excruciating pain is much less than 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant.
I âm not sure this is actually how RP intend their welfare ranges to be used. My understanding (and I welcome clarification/âcorrection from RP on this point) is that when their researchers estimate that $creatureâs welfare range is 1.3% that of humans, they intend that to be interpreted as â$creatureâs pain sensations are at most 1.3% as intense as human experienceâ, not âto establish how intensely $creature feels pain, multiply 1.3% by a pain scale which may contain an arbitrarily large number of digits, to reach the conclusion that this creatureâs pain is potentially thousands of times as intense as human pleasure.â
I assumed the welfare per living time of fully healthy life in a given species is proportional to the welfare range of that species. This does not directly follow from RPâs welfare ranges, but does not obviously favour helping animals or humans. My understanding it that RPâs median welfare ranges refer to the ratio (âwelfare per time of the practically maximally happy animal-year (positive)âââwelfare per time of the practically maximally sad animal-year (negative)â)/â(âwelfare per time of the practically maximally happy human-yearâââwelfare per time of the practically maximally sad human-yearâ).
0.864 s (= 24*60^2/â(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain in humans neutralises 1 day of fully healthy life in humans. Do you think this is âunconventional and extremely skewed
Yes. I canât think of any pain in which I would prefer to die than suffer for 0.864 seconds per day, particularly not if the remaining aspects of my life were âpractically maximally happyâ.[1]
I find it even harder to imagine that an insect can distinguish between painful sensations to the degree that a pain scale with at least 100k points on it would be appropriate to approximate their welfare on,[2] still less that an appropriate use of such a scale is to multiply a human/âinsect welfare ratio to conclude that the complete cessation of function of that simple insect nervous system is a few orders of magnitude more intense conscious experience than the âpractically maximally happyâ (or even average) utility of a human.
I mean, theyâve only got 200k neurons to divide between all their functions. (This isnât an argument for neuron count being a good proxy for moral weights overall, merely an observation of how extreme the pain scale looks in the context of how simple the insectâs system for parsing stimuli appears to be)
My guess that excruciating pain is 100 k (= 10*10^3/â0.1) times as intense as fully healthy life ( 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant) implies that 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/â(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain in humans neutralises 1 day of fully healthy life in humans. Do you think this is âunconventional and extremely skewedâ? Examples of excruciating pain include âscalding and severe burning events [in large parts of the body]â, or âdismemberment, or extreme tortureâ. I have not experienced excruciating pain myself, so I would not be surprised if it was 10 % as intense as I assumed, but this would not change my takeaways. I estimate the harms caused to mosquitoes are proportional to the intensity of excruciating pain, so AMF would cause 76.3 (= 0.1*763) times as much harm to mosquitoes as it benefits humans according to the updated mainline numbers.
I am not assuming excruciating pain is 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant (as you implied above). This is much more intense than fully healthy life, so I guess excruciating pain is much less than 100 k times as intense as the maximally happy instant.
I assumed the welfare per living time of fully healthy life in a given species is proportional to the welfare range of that species. This does not directly follow from RPâs welfare ranges, but does not obviously favour helping animals or humans. My understanding it that RPâs median welfare ranges refer to the ratio (âwelfare per time of the practically maximally happy animal-year (positive)âââwelfare per time of the practically maximally sad animal-year (negative)â)/â(âwelfare per time of the practically maximally happy human-yearâââwelfare per time of the practically maximally sad human-yearâ).
Yes. I canât think of any pain in which I would prefer to die than suffer for 0.864 seconds per day, particularly not if the remaining aspects of my life were âpractically maximally happyâ.[1]
I find it even harder to imagine that an insect can distinguish between painful sensations to the degree that a pain scale with at least 100k points on it would be appropriate to approximate their welfare on,[2] still less that an appropriate use of such a scale is to multiply a human/âinsect welfare ratio to conclude that the complete cessation of function of that simple insect nervous system is a few orders of magnitude more intense conscious experience than the âpractically maximally happyâ (or even average) utility of a human.
If I did think [potential] sub second pain was as significant as an entire dayâs welfare, I would probably not endorse electrical stunning...
I mean, theyâve only got 200k neurons to divide between all their functions. (This isnât an argument for neuron count being a good proxy for moral weights overall, merely an observation of how extreme the pain scale looks in the context of how simple the insectâs system for parsing stimuli appears to be)