I’m tempted to point out that increasing the population may not increase meat consumption much via effects on prices
The prices would have to increase by an unreasoble amount for this to change my conclusions. For a random person globally, and in China, India and Nigeria in 2022 to cause as much suffering to poultry birds and farmed aquatic animals as the person’s happiness, the animal suffering would have to be 6.45 % (= 1⁄15.5), 2.89 % (= 1⁄34.6), 19.3 % (= 1⁄5.17) and 43.3 % (= 1⁄2.31) of the one I calculated. In addition, I have assumed no growth in the consumption of animals per capita, whereas I expect this to increase as real GDP per capita increases.
meat consumption among the extreme poor is much lower than on average
I acknowledged the people helped by GiveWell and AIM would cause less harm to animals than random people, but I do think this resolves the meat-eater problem.
The harms would be smaller for a random person helped by such GiveWell’s grants or Ambitious Impact’s organisations. I assume they have an income below that of a random person in the respective country, the supply per capita of meat excluding aquatic animals roughly increases with the logarithm of the real GDP per capita, and I guess so do the number of poultry birds, farmed aquatic animals excluding shrimp, and shrimp per capita. Yet, self-reported life satisfaction also roughly increases with the logarithm of the real GDP per capita. So I believe the harms to farmed animals per person increase roughly linearly with self-reported life satisfaction, at least across countries. As a result, it is unclear to me whether the harms to farmed animals as a fraction of the human benefits would be higher or lower for a random person than for a random person helped by such GiveWell’s grants or Ambitious Impact’s organisations.
factory farm consumption is likely much smaller for beneficiaries in remote areas not reached by large scale animal agriculture
Great point. This is the kind of consideration supporters of extending human lives would ideally investigate. Note it is also harder for life-saving interventions to reach remote areas.
My actual reason to disagree is that I place much lower weight on animals than you, and I would axiomatically reject any moral weight on animals that implied saving kids from dying was net negative.
Nitpick. I think valuing animal welfare as highly as I do implies saving lives in many countries is harmful nearterm, but the overall effect may well be beneficial or harmful (not just harmful).
AIM is a more interesting case to consider because they are clearly more cause-agnostic than GiveWell and so can’t (or wouldn’t want to) make the same claim. However, that makes for a very simple hedging/offsetting defense. Given uncertainty about moral weights and risk aversion over the amount of value created, AIM should optimally fund both GHD and AW work.
I do not see how AIM being beneficial overall justifies them starting organisations which may well be causing lots of harm nearterm.
It wasn’t my intention to throw out random objections to make you respond to them. I don’t take seriously any of the claims I offered in the first paragraph.
I think valuing animal welfare as highly as I do implies saving lives in many countries is harmful nearterm, but the overall effect may well be beneficial or harmful (not just harmful).
I would axiomatically reject the former position in addition to the latter, so this distinction doesn’t matter to me.
I do not see how AIM being beneficial overall justifies them starting organisations which may well be causing lots of harm nearterm.
In the worlds where animals have low moral weight, their GHD work is very positive. In the world where animals have high moral weight, their AW work is very positive. The portfolio approach is a way to maximize expected utility under risk aversion. This point is made here and I elaborate more in replies.
In the worlds where animals have low moral weight, their GHD work is very positive. In the world where animals have high moral weight, their AW work is very positive. The portfolio approach is a way to maximize expected utility under risk aversion. This point is made here and I elaborate more in replies.
The portfolio approach should be considered across the whole world, not AIM. There are already lots of efforts to help humans, so I have a hard time seeing how the optimal global portfolio involves AIM incubating many organisations which help humans, but may easily be causing lots of harm nearterm.
I assume your argument also depends on the type of risk aversion. I think improving the conditions of farmed animals has a much lower chance of being harmful than saving human lives.
I reject risk aversion with respect to impartial welfare (although it makes all sense to be risk averse with respect to money) because it implies rejecting self-evident principles.
Thanks, Karthik.
The prices would have to increase by an unreasoble amount for this to change my conclusions. For a random person globally, and in China, India and Nigeria in 2022 to cause as much suffering to poultry birds and farmed aquatic animals as the person’s happiness, the animal suffering would have to be 6.45 % (= 1⁄15.5), 2.89 % (= 1⁄34.6), 19.3 % (= 1⁄5.17) and 43.3 % (= 1⁄2.31) of the one I calculated. In addition, I have assumed no growth in the consumption of animals per capita, whereas I expect this to increase as real GDP per capita increases.
I acknowledged the people helped by GiveWell and AIM would cause less harm to animals than random people, but I do think this resolves the meat-eater problem.
Great point. This is the kind of consideration supporters of extending human lives would ideally investigate. Note it is also harder for life-saving interventions to reach remote areas.
Nitpick. I think valuing animal welfare as highly as I do implies saving lives in many countries is harmful nearterm, but the overall effect may well be beneficial or harmful (not just harmful).
I do not see how AIM being beneficial overall justifies them starting organisations which may well be causing lots of harm nearterm.
It wasn’t my intention to throw out random objections to make you respond to them. I don’t take seriously any of the claims I offered in the first paragraph.
I would axiomatically reject the former position in addition to the latter, so this distinction doesn’t matter to me.
In the worlds where animals have low moral weight, their GHD work is very positive. In the world where animals have high moral weight, their AW work is very positive. The portfolio approach is a way to maximize expected utility under risk aversion. This point is made here and I elaborate more in replies.
The portfolio approach should be considered across the whole world, not AIM. There are already lots of efforts to help humans, so I have a hard time seeing how the optimal global portfolio involves AIM incubating many organisations which help humans, but may easily be causing lots of harm nearterm.
I assume your argument also depends on the type of risk aversion. I think improving the conditions of farmed animals has a much lower chance of being harmful than saving human lives.
I reject risk aversion with respect to impartial welfare (although it makes all sense to be risk averse with respect to money) because it implies rejecting self-evident principles.