The welfare ranges are extremely broad for the animals they do cover, and thatâs with questionable assumptions. I donât see how extending these to microbes would clarify anything.
I have come to believe this is a very fair objection. I believe you have acknowledged the uncertainty in RPâs welfare ranges much better than me in the past. At the same time, RP extending their welfare range table to soil animals and microorganisms (which does not involve calculating welfare ranges; it would just be a literature review) would help decrease the uncertainty about their (expectedhedonistic) welfare.
Imagine you knew all this information about nematodes. Still the fundamental question will remain how their âsufferingâ or âjoyâ compares to ours and how morally important it is.
Great point. I would currently prioritise decreasing the uncertainty about how the welfare of soil animals and microorganisms compares with that of humans over investigating ways of increasing their welfare. I asked RP 2 days ago about whether they âhave any plans for projects decreasing the uncertainty of interspecies comparisons of expected hedonistic welfareâ.
I remain very puzzled how you ever see us getting low enough error bars on the joy/âsuffering of microscopic worms that we could make decision based on it.
I do not know about any intervention which robustly increases welfare, and I am not confident this will ever change. However, I do not think people should give up on increasing welfare before much more effort is put into decreasing the uncertainty about interspecies comparisons of expected hedonistic welfare.
Thanks for the pushback, Henry!
I have come to believe this is a very fair objection. I believe you have acknowledged the uncertainty in RPâs welfare ranges much better than me in the past. At the same time, RP extending their welfare range table to soil animals and microorganisms (which does not involve calculating welfare ranges; it would just be a literature review) would help decrease the uncertainty about their (expected hedonistic) welfare.
Great point. I would currently prioritise decreasing the uncertainty about how the welfare of soil animals and microorganisms compares with that of humans over investigating ways of increasing their welfare. I asked RP 2 days ago about whether they âhave any plans for projects decreasing the uncertainty of interspecies comparisons of expected hedonistic welfareâ.
I do not know about any intervention which robustly increases welfare, and I am not confident this will ever change. However, I do not think people should give up on increasing welfare before much more effort is put into decreasing the uncertainty about interspecies comparisons of expected hedonistic welfare.