Basically, yes, assume that meat eating increases with the size of human population. But the scientific effort towards ending the need to meat eat also increases with the size of the human population, assuming marginal extra people are as equally likely to go into researching the problem as the average person. Under a simple model the two exactly balance out, as you can see in the spreadsheet.
I just think real life breaks the simple model in ways I have described below, in a way that preserves a meat-eater problem.
Yeah, but as you point out below, that simple model makes some unrealistic assumptions (e.g., that a solution will definitely be found that fully eliminates farmed animal suffering, and that a person starts contributing, in expectation, to solving meat eating at age 0). So it still seems to me that a better argument is needed to shift the prior.
I think Richard is right about the general case. It was a bit unintuitive to me until I ran the numbers in a spreadsheet, which you can see here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pRW3WinG1gzJM3RER2Q4Tl5kscJRESuG8qupHGN1Wnw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Basically, yes, assume that meat eating increases with the size of human population. But the scientific effort towards ending the need to meat eat also increases with the size of the human population, assuming marginal extra people are as equally likely to go into researching the problem as the average person. Under a simple model the two exactly balance out, as you can see in the spreadsheet.
I just think real life breaks the simple model in ways I have described below, in a way that preserves a meat-eater problem.
Yeah, but as you point out below, that simple model makes some unrealistic assumptions (e.g., that a solution will definitely be found that fully eliminates farmed animal suffering, and that a person starts contributing, in expectation, to solving meat eating at age 0). So it still seems to me that a better argument is needed to shift the prior.
Fair enough.
My central expectation is that value of one more human life created is roughly about even with the amount of nonhuman suffering that life would cause (based on here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eomJTLnuhHAJ2KcjW/comparison-between-the-hedonic-utility-of-human-life-and#Poultry_living_time_per_capita). I’m also willing to assume cultured meat is not too long away. Then the childhood delay til contribution only makes a fractional difference and I tip very slightly back into the pro natalist camp, while still accepting that the meat eater problem is relevant.