Fwiw, one can very well agree that all pains are comparable in theory, but that the difference between a pinprick and genuine torture is so large that, in practice, the latter will often dominate. I find this harder to “debunk” than antiaggregationism.
Given our deep uncertainty on i) how many pinpricks outweigh torture and ii) moral weights and welfare ranges,[1]I certainly don’t find it implausible that nematodes, shrimp, or even chickens have experiences that are too mild, relative to other beings, to dominate EV calculations—despite their high numbers and assuming aggregationism.[2]
So sure, maybe, in principle, there is a number of warmed up nematodes that outbalances 1 trillion human-years of extreme torture. But this says nothing about tradeoffs we can(not) make between humans and nematodes in the real world.
And you said things that suggest you agree in this recent interview. You seemed to have deviated from your previous “nematodes (almost) surely dominate” view. Or did I miss something?
Thanks for the clarifying comment, Jim. I agree with all your points. For individual (expectedhedonistic) welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 1″, and “exponent 1” from 0.5 to 1.5, which I believe covers reasonable best guesses, I estimatethat the absolute value of the total welfare of:
Farmed shrimps ranges from 2.82*10^-7 to 0.282 times that of humans.
Soil nematodes ranges from 0.00252 to 902 k times that of humans.
Moreover, the above ranges underestimate uncertainty due to considering a single type of model for the individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year. At the same time, the results for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 1“ can be used to get results for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “proxy”^”exponent 2” if “proxy” is proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 3“. All of “exponent 1”, “exponent 2”, and “exponent 3” can vary. I am using different numbers because they are not supposed to be the same.
And you said things that suggests you agree in this recent interview. You seemed to have deviated from your previous “nematodes obviously dominate” view. Or did I miss something?
I think my previous view was more “it is very difficult for effects on soil animals or ones with a similar number of neurons not to be the major driver of the overall effect in expectation”. I would say this was my view in this post. The bullet of the summary starting with the following summarises it well. “I believe effects on soil animals are much larger than those on target beneficiaries”. In any case, I was certainly overconfident about the dominance of effects on soil animals or ones with a similar number of neurons.
Fwiw, one can very well agree that all pains are comparable in theory, but that the difference between a pinprick and genuine torture is so large that, in practice, the latter will often dominate. I find this harder to “debunk” than antiaggregationism.
Given our deep uncertainty on i) how many pinpricks outweigh torture and ii) moral weights and welfare ranges,[1]I certainly don’t find it implausible that nematodes, shrimp, or even chickens have experiences that are too mild, relative to other beings, to dominate EV calculations—despite their high numbers and assuming aggregationism.[2]
So sure, maybe, in principle, there is a number of warmed up nematodes that outbalances 1 trillion human-years of extreme torture. But this says nothing about tradeoffs we can(not) make between humans and nematodes in the real world.
Well, (i) matters only insofar as it is relevant to (ii), here, but I thought I’d acknowledge (i) separately, still.
And you said things that suggest you agree in this recent interview. You seemed to have deviated from your previous “nematodes (almost) surely dominate” view. Or did I miss something?
Thanks for the clarifying comment, Jim. I agree with all your points. For individual (expected hedonistic) welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 1″, and “exponent 1” from 0.5 to 1.5, which I believe covers reasonable best guesses, I estimate that the absolute value of the total welfare of:
Farmed shrimps ranges from 2.82*10^-7 to 0.282 times that of humans.
Soil nematodes ranges from 0.00252 to 902 k times that of humans.
Moreover, the above ranges underestimate uncertainty due to considering a single type of model for the individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year. At the same time, the results for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 1“ can be used to get results for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “proxy”^”exponent 2” if “proxy” is proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent 3“. All of “exponent 1”, “exponent 2”, and “exponent 3” can vary. I am using different numbers because they are not supposed to be the same.
I think my previous view was more “it is very difficult for effects on soil animals or ones with a similar number of neurons not to be the major driver of the overall effect in expectation”. I would say this was my view in this post. The bullet of the summary starting with the following summarises it well. “I believe effects on soil animals are much larger than those on target beneficiaries”. In any case, I was certainly overconfident about the dominance of effects on soil animals or ones with a similar number of neurons.