“In that post, I contrasted human welfare improvements, which have many significant indirect and long-run effects, with animal welfare improvements, which appear not to. That is not to say that interventions which improve animal welfare do not have these large long-run effects, but that the long-run effects of such interventions are enacted via shifts in the views of humans rather than directly via the welfare improvement.”
I think I can offer even more insight on what you’re saying and why people are confused.
What I believe you’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, but “work focused primarially on improving the lives of animals today (e.g., THL’s talk of ‘animals spared’) is unlikely to be as high-impact as work focused primarially on improving the lives of humans today (though that also might not be the best cause overall) because humans today have various flow-through effects (e.g., economic development) and animals do not.”
I think this is an important conclusion that appears accepted but not widely internalized by many nonhuman-animal-focused EAs.
However, what you actually say are things like “I contrasted human welfare improvements, which have many significant indirect and long-run effects, with nonhuman animal welfare improvements, which appear not to”. The term “animal welfare improvements” is ambiguous, though, and does not necessarily refer solely to targeting nonhuman animals in the present.
For example, it’s possible that by producing enough vegetarians (e.g., through leafleting) we get a large impact not from sparing nonhuman animals alive today, but produce enough of an anti-speciesist shift to prevent large quantities of nonhuman animal suffering in the far future (c.f., Brian Tomasik’s thesis). I don’t necessarily agree (or disagree) with this thesis, but you have not yet refuted it.
So when an nonhuman-animal-focused EA comes along and reads this, they conflate their focus on long-run animal goals with your crtique of short-run animal goals and think you’re making claims that you’re not, and then argue against you for things you may not have said.
Given this, perhaps more clarity could be introduced by clarifying the short-run nature of what you’re discussing, by explicitly using the term “short-run” and/or providing concrete examples?
Well, I’m updating towards thinking it’s hard to share my conclusions, even when I think I’m being very specific!
The statement that you ascribe to me is one that I believe but am not certain of, and is not what I’m trying to claim.
Yes, there’s a useful distinction between short/medium-run (including today, but also, say, the next few thousand years), and long-run. I don’t think we have strong reasons for thinking that improving animal welfare in the very long run is necessarily a bad cause in the ‘instrumental goal’ sense, in that it’s a mistake to optimise for it. I do think that optimising for long-term animal welfare is not the best place to stop in picking an instrumental goal, because it’s quite hard to see how things affect it. And I do wish to claim that it’s a mistake to optimise for improving animal welfare in the medium term (whether as a proxy for very long-run animal welfare or otherwise).
I realise that by splitting the conclusions in a different post from the argument (which was written first), I may not have filled in all the steps of the argument. I think it all goes through, but if there’s a step you’re concerned about I’d have a go at providing explicit reasoning for that step.
My worry is that I see you claimed with Jacy that “(iv) That setting out to improve animal welfare (in the short or medium term) seems extremely unlikely to be the best sub-goal to aim for to meet the goal of making the long-term future flourish.”
I do find this claim to be plausible, but, to the best of my understanding, I see nowhere in “Human and animal interventions: the long-term view” that you actually defend that claim.
Hence the worry of you asserting more than you have demonstrated, and the source of confusion.
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.
“In that post, I contrasted human welfare improvements, which have many significant indirect and long-run effects, with animal welfare improvements, which appear not to. That is not to say that interventions which improve animal welfare do not have these large long-run effects, but that the long-run effects of such interventions are enacted via shifts in the views of humans rather than directly via the welfare improvement.”
I think I can offer even more insight on what you’re saying and why people are confused.
What I believe you’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, but “work focused primarially on improving the lives of animals today (e.g., THL’s talk of ‘animals spared’) is unlikely to be as high-impact as work focused primarially on improving the lives of humans today (though that also might not be the best cause overall) because humans today have various flow-through effects (e.g., economic development) and animals do not.”
I think this is an important conclusion that appears accepted but not widely internalized by many nonhuman-animal-focused EAs.
However, what you actually say are things like “I contrasted human welfare improvements, which have many significant indirect and long-run effects, with nonhuman animal welfare improvements, which appear not to”. The term “animal welfare improvements” is ambiguous, though, and does not necessarily refer solely to targeting nonhuman animals in the present.
For example, it’s possible that by producing enough vegetarians (e.g., through leafleting) we get a large impact not from sparing nonhuman animals alive today, but produce enough of an anti-speciesist shift to prevent large quantities of nonhuman animal suffering in the far future (c.f., Brian Tomasik’s thesis). I don’t necessarily agree (or disagree) with this thesis, but you have not yet refuted it.
So when an nonhuman-animal-focused EA comes along and reads this, they conflate their focus on long-run animal goals with your crtique of short-run animal goals and think you’re making claims that you’re not, and then argue against you for things you may not have said.
Given this, perhaps more clarity could be introduced by clarifying the short-run nature of what you’re discussing, by explicitly using the term “short-run” and/or providing concrete examples?
Well, I’m updating towards thinking it’s hard to share my conclusions, even when I think I’m being very specific!
The statement that you ascribe to me is one that I believe but am not certain of, and is not what I’m trying to claim.
Yes, there’s a useful distinction between short/medium-run (including today, but also, say, the next few thousand years), and long-run. I don’t think we have strong reasons for thinking that improving animal welfare in the very long run is necessarily a bad cause in the ‘instrumental goal’ sense, in that it’s a mistake to optimise for it. I do think that optimising for long-term animal welfare is not the best place to stop in picking an instrumental goal, because it’s quite hard to see how things affect it. And I do wish to claim that it’s a mistake to optimise for improving animal welfare in the medium term (whether as a proxy for very long-run animal welfare or otherwise).
Ah, then I notice I am confused!
I worry then that the criticisms are right and you are trying to assert more than you have argued for.
Could you clarify the worry?
I realise that by splitting the conclusions in a different post from the argument (which was written first), I may not have filled in all the steps of the argument. I think it all goes through, but if there’s a step you’re concerned about I’d have a go at providing explicit reasoning for that step.
My worry is that I see you claimed with Jacy that “(iv) That setting out to improve animal welfare (in the short or medium term) seems extremely unlikely to be the best sub-goal to aim for to meet the goal of making the long-term future flourish.”
I do find this claim to be plausible, but, to the best of my understanding, I see nowhere in “Human and animal interventions: the long-term view” that you actually defend that claim.
Hence the worry of you asserting more than you have demonstrated, and the source of confusion.
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.