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.
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.