Executive summary: The Rethink Priorities Moral Weights Project may be biased towards favoring animals due to four key methodological decisions, potentially inflating animal welfare estimates by 10-1000 times compared to alternative approaches.
Key points:
The research team composition lacked skeptics of high animal moral weight, potentially introducing bias.
Assuming hedonism as the moral framework likely favors animals more than other approaches.
Dismissing neuron count as a significant factor may have increased animal welfare estimates by 5-100 times.
Not discounting behavioral proxies when comparing animals to humans may have inflated animal welfare ranges by 1-10 times.
These decisions cumulatively led to surprisingly high moral weights for animals compared to humans.
The author acknowledges potential counterarguments and expresses appreciation for the RP team’s work and responsiveness.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The Rethink Priorities Moral Weights Project may be biased towards favoring animals due to four key methodological decisions, potentially inflating animal welfare estimates by 10-1000 times compared to alternative approaches.
Key points:
The research team composition lacked skeptics of high animal moral weight, potentially introducing bias.
Assuming hedonism as the moral framework likely favors animals more than other approaches.
Dismissing neuron count as a significant factor may have increased animal welfare estimates by 5-100 times.
Not discounting behavioral proxies when comparing animals to humans may have inflated animal welfare ranges by 1-10 times.
These decisions cumulatively led to surprisingly high moral weights for animals compared to humans.
The author acknowledges potential counterarguments and expresses appreciation for the RP team’s work and responsiveness.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.