New-ish to the community and trying to resolve the following question—where do existential risks that threaten the future of [insert any non-human species] fit into discussions about prioritisation?
Though it’s rarely presented in this way, I understand most conversations/conclusions about priority areas to consider:
Humans
Immediate causes of human suffering and/or loss of life
Long-term risk to the ongoing existence of human life
Animals
Immediate causes of non-human suffering and/or loss of life
I understand that some long-term risks to the ongoing existence of human life will also impact on non-humans, but suppose that there are some risks that exist only for (some or all) non-humans.
As well as direct answers to my question, I’m wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of further reading/discussion about this, so I might:
Update my understanding—it’s likely I’ve just missed or misinterpreted some of the discussion about this
Consider the argument for/against prioritising animal x-risk—I instinctively feel it is odd that this doesn’t figure in most attempts at prioritising cause areas that I have seen. This seems a little incoherent with (1) the focus on longtermism within the EA community and (2) the fairly wide moral circle drawn by EA community
When we worry about human extinction, it isn’t that we put a disvalue on extinction itself. Rather, human extinction is bad because there will be no future human-generated value (for example, no future human happiness, no future human flourishing etc...)
When we care about animal extinctions, it generally isn’t for this reason. It is quite hard to say exactly why we care (Jeff McMahan [pg 277] points out that if we think extinction in itself is bad, then we should prefer a planet filled with the only first amoebas to one like ours).
If, as is the case for many EAs, the reason to care about any extinction is because it leads to less future value (let’s say happiness for simplicity), each individual animal extinction is not obviously bad/ equally bad. For one, we don’t know which animal species have happy lives. Also, if one animal goes extinct, in many cases this won’t decrease the amount of animals in the ecosystem. In some cases it may increase it.
Not sure if that fully answers your question, or just complicates things. Thanks for asking though!
Thank you for this answer. I am not sure I agree with this, for the reasons outlined below (in case useful information for you, I upvoted and disagree-voted this):
Paragraph 1: Somewhat minor point, I think you may be drawing a distinction without a difference, i.e. extinction being bad because of the effects of it (no future human happiness, flourishing etc) is putting a disvalue on extinction, because it inherently causes those effects.
In an animal context I would put this as: if an animal species has net positive lives, then extinction is inherently bad, and where there is uncertainty, an animal species should be assumed to have net positive lives. I do not have strong thoughts of how certain animal species trade off against each other (I would have to do further research), but my prior is that this is the direction of the sign even if by a small amount, in part because assuming the opposite by default could be used to justify negative things. I agree factory farmed animals likely have net negative lives, but I cannot see e.g. the species of chickens, i.e. any chicken ever, having a net negative life. Beyond that there is also the biodiversity loss and downstream effects of that (e.g. biodiversity loss being linked with increased risk of natural pandemics), and the fact that human’s track record with interfering with nature is not great, but I will leave the argument as equivalent to how you phrased it initially.
Paragraph 2: I summarised how I think of extinction of animals in the last paragraph. The quote “if we think extinction in itself is bad, then we should prefer a planet filled with the only first amoebas to one like ours” given the arguments surrounding it in your answer was one that surprised me. Regardless of whether that is true (‘amoeba’ did not come up when I did ctrl-f of the document linked, so I would have to read it in more detail to try to find the context), it does not seem very actionable. Given the current world we live in (i.e. a world filled with many species that aren’t amoebas), saying that people who care about minimizing extinction want to return to that state (given a lot of extinction required to do so) would need further justification. So it seems like less of a relevant comment.
Paragraph 3: As I think the happiness/future value argument can still apply to animals, I still think animal extinction should be seen as bad (although it is less bad than human extinction). I’ve already mentioned that I think the baseline assumption is that species of animals have positive lives unless their is evidence that they don’t. Without data, I would not update on or make decisions based on ‘one animal going extinct may increase the number of animals’. I can see that being possible, particularly in the short term, but I could also see that having negative biodiversity and downstream effects as well.
Overall: My main stance on this animal x-risk should be researched or included in the conversation more than it currently is, even if the outcome of that research ends up being ‘this should still not be prioritized’. I can see this potentially changing some calculations e.g. how much climate change should be prioritised as a cause area, and which particular interventions for climate change (there are more people working on this than other xrisks, but I would expect that like global poverty there will be neglected areas). After all, climate change is a big extinction risk for animals.
A note: I think ‘we’ in the first (EDIT: second) paragraph implies more consensus than the actually is, given that I have not really heard this discussed much at all.
Thanks for this detailed response! I think there are a few points where a response from me may be useful.
1. “extinction being bad because of the effects of it (no future human happiness, flourishing etc) is putting a disvalue on extinction, because it inherently causes those effects”
I think this is just one of our cruxes- I think that extinction, like death, is not disvaluable in itself, but is generally linked to another disvalue. If we want to engage in trade-offs, make informed decisions etc… then we should look for the ultimate value/ dis-value, and not focus on something which almost always correlates.
2. “if an animal species has net positive lives, then extinction is inherently bad, and where there is uncertainty, an animal species should be assumed to have net positive lives”
To me, it sounds as though you are treating extinction as contingently bad (in this case, bad because the animals of the species do or may have net positive lives). If you knew for sure that the animals had net negative lives, would you still think their extinction was bad?
FWIW I’d agree that, for chesterton’s fencey reasons, it is better not to cause animal extinctions. But we were discussing whether we should treat animal extinctions with the weight of an X-risk (i.e. a human extinction). For that, we need a little more than an assumption that the animal’s lives are net positive.
3. Amoebas
I think this may be a straightforward misunderstanding. In McMahan’s paper, in the last paragraph on page 9 in the pdf or 276 in the book, he is making a quick argument against caring about extinction intrinsically. I do not think that people who are concerned with biodiversity and extinction value either intrinsically, and therefore was not suggesting that they should attempt to return us to amoeba-world. (plus, to be pernickety, someone who cared about extinction intrinsically wouldn’t want to return us anywhere, they would just want to stop evolution where it was—assuming avoiding extinction is their sole value) In my opinion they are tracking nearby values with those terms (and would often be better off directly pursuing those values).
4. As I think the happiness/future value argument can still apply to animals, I still think animal extinction should be seen as bad (although it is less bad than human extinction)
This is a good point, and it definitely still should in many cases. However, I think the questions of the value that individuals of that species get from their lives, and the counter-factual impact of an extinction (will that ecological niche be otherwise occupied) are clearly important. This logic also applies to human extinction. For example, we can discuss whether it is bad for humans to go extinct by being replaced by another species (AI, Aliens etc..) or if we should worry less about human extinction because of the chance another species evolves intelligence sufficient to take our place.
5. ‘we’ in the first paragraph implies more consensus than the actually is
I think it is pretty core to EA-related approaches to X-risk that extinction is not intrinsically bad, but is bad because of further reasons.
Hey, thanks also for the detailed response.
I don’t think that part is our disagreement. Maybe the way I would phrase the question is whether there should be an additional multiplier put on extinction in addition to the expected future loss of wellbeing. If I was to model it, the answer would be ‘no’ to avoid double counting (i.e. the effect of extinction is the effect of future loss of wellbeing). The disagreement is how this is not by default assumed to apply to animals as well.
“If you knew for sure that the animals had net negative lives, would you still think their extinction was bad?” Not sure how likely such a situation is to come up, as I’m not sure how I would know this for sure. Because that seems like not just being sure that every of that species that exists now has a net negative life, it’s assuming that every of that species that might exist in the future also will have. But to answer the question philosophically and not practically, I would not say that the extinction of a species that will definitely have guaranteed suffering is bad.
“But we were discussing whether we should treat animal extinctions with the weight of an X-risk (i.e. a human extinction). For that, we need a little more than an assumption that the animal’s lives are net positive.” Definitely agreed for prioritising between things that more than the just the assumption of net positive is required. But research would be required to know that, and as far as I can tell there has been very little done (and there are ~8.7 million animal species).
I see thanks—I can now find the section you were referring to. I don’t think I agree the full argument as made follows, but I haven’t made the full thing and I don’t want this to be a thread discussing this one particular paper!
Agreed there are nuances re animals. However, outside philosophy I’m not sure how many people you’d have arguing against ‘human extinction is bad even if humans are replaced by another species’!
My bad, I meant primarily the second paragraph (referring to how animal extinction was valued, and given the lack of discussions around this—I had it more general then decided to specify the paragraph… then picked the wrong one!). Agreed with your response here, will edit the original.