I happen to think that promoting empathy wholesale is likely better than promoting animal welfare, but I guess I haven’t presented an argument for that. The conclusion I’d draw is that we should be able to identify some targets which are better by our own lights as instrumental goals than short/medium run animal welfare. Promoting empathy for animals could be such.
I do see instrumental benefits to promoting animal welfare for the accessibility—though also instrumental harms. I’m not sure how these weigh against each other.
On optimising for long-term animal welfare: yes, changing societal views may have an effect on this, although I guess that the expected size of our influence there may be rather smaller than the expected size of our influence on whether there is a long-term society at all.
I happen to agree that promoting empathy (for animals) is probably better than promoting welfare directly, but a devil’s advocate might point out that beliefs often follow actions, and maybe directly changing people’s practices toward animals would be a more concrete way to change values.
I think whether there is a long-term society at all is relatively hard to change, except maybe in the case of AI risk. I think our expected influence through values is not obviously smaller and may be larger than our expected influence through whether there is a future, especially for non-mainstream values. This is doubly true if you’re a negative utilitarian, since for NUs there aren’t feasible ways to decrease the probability of a future ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/how-would-catastrophic-risks-affect-prospects-for-compromise/ ), and doing so isn’t nice to other value systems ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/reasons-to-be-nice-to-other-value-systems/ ), so you have to focus on improving the quality of the future. By the same token, it’s nicer for non-NUs to focus on improving the quality of the future (which is something NUs can support) than on making the future more likely (which is something NUs oppose).
Thanks for the considered thoughts. :-)
I happen to think that promoting empathy wholesale is likely better than promoting animal welfare, but I guess I haven’t presented an argument for that. The conclusion I’d draw is that we should be able to identify some targets which are better by our own lights as instrumental goals than short/medium run animal welfare. Promoting empathy for animals could be such.
I do see instrumental benefits to promoting animal welfare for the accessibility—though also instrumental harms. I’m not sure how these weigh against each other.
On optimising for long-term animal welfare: yes, changing societal views may have an effect on this, although I guess that the expected size of our influence there may be rather smaller than the expected size of our influence on whether there is a long-term society at all.
I happen to agree that promoting empathy (for animals) is probably better than promoting welfare directly, but a devil’s advocate might point out that beliefs often follow actions, and maybe directly changing people’s practices toward animals would be a more concrete way to change values.
I think whether there is a long-term society at all is relatively hard to change, except maybe in the case of AI risk. I think our expected influence through values is not obviously smaller and may be larger than our expected influence through whether there is a future, especially for non-mainstream values. This is doubly true if you’re a negative utilitarian, since for NUs there aren’t feasible ways to decrease the probability of a future ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/how-would-catastrophic-risks-affect-prospects-for-compromise/ ), and doing so isn’t nice to other value systems ( http://foundational-research.org/publications/reasons-to-be-nice-to-other-value-systems/ ), so you have to focus on improving the quality of the future. By the same token, it’s nicer for non-NUs to focus on improving the quality of the future (which is something NUs can support) than on making the future more likely (which is something NUs oppose).