Thanks for writing this interesting article! I had a few objections, but it looks like most of them have been covered.
One thing I would still like to mention is using wild animals as the bar to cross. This only makes sense if the replacement is 1:1, meaning that if we didn’t farm x amount of animals, there would have existed an additional x amount of wild animals (not sure if x should be individuals, or some sort of “sentience units” that weigh vertebrates more for example). If this were the case then setting 0 equal to the expected welfare of a wild animal makes sense, because that would be what the farm animal is replacing, and therefore that would define whether it’s good for the farm animal to exist or not.
Although I don’t think the replacement is 1:1, but I don’t know in which direction it should lean. In terms of individuals I think farm animals replace many wild animals, especially invertebrates. More farm animals result in more plant crops to feed them, meaning more pesticides, meaning fewer wild bugs. On the other hand, the density of highly sentient animals are higher on farms than on wild land.
The danger of using wild animals as the bar when the replacement is not 1:1 could be the following example (with made up numbers): If we instead place the 0 at non-existence, imagine wild animals are actually at −5, and farm animals are at −1, but 10 farm animals replace 1 wild animal. Then every farm animal that exists actually decreases total utility by 0.5 (it subtracts 1 but adds −5/10). But using wild animals as the bar you’d think every farm animal increases total utility by 4
Thanks for writing this interesting article! I had a few objections, but it looks like most of them have been covered.
One thing I would still like to mention is using wild animals as the bar to cross. This only makes sense if the replacement is 1:1, meaning that if we didn’t farm x amount of animals, there would have existed an additional x amount of wild animals (not sure if x should be individuals, or some sort of “sentience units” that weigh vertebrates more for example). If this were the case then setting 0 equal to the expected welfare of a wild animal makes sense, because that would be what the farm animal is replacing, and therefore that would define whether it’s good for the farm animal to exist or not.
Although I don’t think the replacement is 1:1, but I don’t know in which direction it should lean. In terms of individuals I think farm animals replace many wild animals, especially invertebrates. More farm animals result in more plant crops to feed them, meaning more pesticides, meaning fewer wild bugs. On the other hand, the density of highly sentient animals are higher on farms than on wild land.
The danger of using wild animals as the bar when the replacement is not 1:1 could be the following example (with made up numbers): If we instead place the 0 at non-existence, imagine wild animals are actually at −5, and farm animals are at −1, but 10 farm animals replace 1 wild animal. Then every farm animal that exists actually decreases total utility by 0.5 (it subtracts 1 but adds −5/10). But using wild animals as the bar you’d think every farm animal increases total utility by 4
Good point, agree! I think my underlying assumption was that wild animals have on average >0 absolute utility but that of course can be wrong.