Thanks for the relevant post, Wladimir and Cynthia. I strongly upvoted it. Do you have any practical ideas about how to apply the Sentience Bargain framework to compare welfare across species? I would be curious to know your thoughts on Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) research agenda on valuing impacts across species.
Thanks a lot, Vasco — and thanks for the upvote!
You’re absolutely right to push us toward the practical question of how to compare affective capacity across species. That’s ultimately where this line of work needs to go. At the same time, we’ve been deliberately cautious here, because we think this is one of those cases where moving too quickly to numbers or rankings risks making the waters muddier rather than clearer.
Our sense is that the comparison of affective capacity across species hinges on a set of upstream scientific questions that are still poorly articulated- especially around when sentience arises at all, and when it plausibly extends to very intense affective states. The aim of this piece was to stress-test a way of structuring those questions before turning them into quantitative tools.
That said, we do see this as complementary to RP’s research agenda on valuing impacts across species. In fact, we think cost–benefit reasoning about sentience and affective intensity can help discipline some of the assumptions that go into moral-weight or welfare-capacity estimates, rather than replacing them.
We’re currently working on a follow-up that moves closer to a practical comparative framework, and we’re very much treating the present work as groundwork for that. Happy to loop back and share it once it’s ready — and we’d be keen to hear your thoughts then as well.
Thanks, Wladimir. That makes sense. I look forward to your future work on this. Let me know if funding ever becomes bottleneck, in which case I may want to help with a few k$.
Yes, some dedicated funding would be very welcome to help expand and accelerate the comparative analysis of affective capacity. I have a few ideas I’d be keen to discuss once the follow-up piece is out and the framework is more fully specified.
Let’s definitely stay in touch — I’ll make sure to loop back..
Thanks for the relevant post, Wladimir and Cynthia. I strongly upvoted it. Do you have any practical ideas about how to apply the Sentience Bargain framework to compare welfare across species? I would be curious to know your thoughts on Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) research agenda on valuing impacts across species.
Thanks a lot, Vasco — and thanks for the upvote!
You’re absolutely right to push us toward the practical question of how to compare affective capacity across species. That’s ultimately where this line of work needs to go. At the same time, we’ve been deliberately cautious here, because we think this is one of those cases where moving too quickly to numbers or rankings risks making the waters muddier rather than clearer.
Our sense is that the comparison of affective capacity across species hinges on a set of upstream scientific questions that are still poorly articulated- especially around when sentience arises at all, and when it plausibly extends to very intense affective states. The aim of this piece was to stress-test a way of structuring those questions before turning them into quantitative tools.
That said, we do see this as complementary to RP’s research agenda on valuing impacts across species. In fact, we think cost–benefit reasoning about sentience and affective intensity can help discipline some of the assumptions that go into moral-weight or welfare-capacity estimates, rather than replacing them.
We’re currently working on a follow-up that moves closer to a practical comparative framework, and we’re very much treating the present work as groundwork for that. Happy to loop back and share it once it’s ready — and we’d be keen to hear your thoughts then as well.
Thanks, Wladimir. That makes sense. I look forward to your future work on this. Let me know if funding ever becomes bottleneck, in which case I may want to help with a few k$.
Thanks, Vasco — I really appreciate that.
Yes, some dedicated funding would be very welcome to help expand and accelerate the comparative analysis of affective capacity. I have a few ideas I’d be keen to discuss once the follow-up piece is out and the framework is more fully specified.
Let’s definitely stay in touch — I’ll make sure to loop back..