Thanks for clarifying. You’re right that the argument at that step isn’t spelled out explicitly. It’s supposed to go:
1. Short/medium term animal welfare improvements have small long-run effects compared to other things we can effect in the short/medium term.
2. It would be very surprising if optimising for something which doesn’t have long-run effects could be comparably good with optimising for the best identifiable thing which does have long-run effects. (Even if at certain times optimising for these two things would recommend the same interventions.)
Both those claims make sense, and I agree you have demonstrated them, but I could see them being easily misinterpreted based on what I said in the beginning.
Thanks for clarifying. You’re right that the argument at that step isn’t spelled out explicitly. It’s supposed to go:
1. Short/medium term animal welfare improvements have small long-run effects compared to other things we can effect in the short/medium term.
2. It would be very surprising if optimising for something which doesn’t have long-run effects could be comparably good with optimising for the best identifiable thing which does have long-run effects. (Even if at certain times optimising for these two things would recommend the same interventions.)
Both those claims make sense, and I agree you have demonstrated them, but I could see them being easily misinterpreted based on what I said in the beginning.