Could you expand on what you mean by the first part of that sentence, and what makes you say that?
I just meant that proposals to represent future non-human animals will likely gain less traction than the idea of representing future humans. But I agree that it would be perfectly possible to do it (as you say). And of course I’d be strongly in favour of having a Parliamentary Committee for all Future Sentient Beings or something like that, but again, that’s not politically feasible anytime soon. So we have to find a sweet spot where a proposal is both realistic and would be a significant improvement from our perspective.
It seems we could analogously subsidize liquid prediction markets for things like the results in 2045, conditional on passing X or Y policy, of whatever our best metrics are for the welfare or preference-satisfaction of animals, or of AIs whose experiences matter but who aren’t moral agents. And then people could say things like “The market expects that [proxy] will indicate in that [group of moral patients] will be better off in 2045 if pass [policy X] than if we pass [policy Y].”
Of course, coming up with such metrics is hard, but that seems like a problem we’ll want to fix anyway.
I agree, and I’d be really excited about such prediction markets! However, perhaps the case of nonhuman animals differs in that it is often quite clear what policies would be better for animals (e.g. better welfare standards), whether it’s current or future animals, and the bottleneck is just the lack of political will to do it. (But it would be valuable to know more about which policies would be most important—e.g. perhaps such markets would say that funding cultivated meat research is 10x as important as other reforms.)
By contrast, it seems less clear what we could do now to benefit future moral agents (seeing as they’ll be able to decide for themselves what to do), so perhaps there is more of a need for prediction markets.
I just meant that proposals to represent future non-human animals will likely gain less traction than the idea of representing future humans.
Ah, that makes sense, then.
However, perhaps the case of nonhuman animals differs in that it is often quite clear what policies would be better for animals (e.g. better welfare standards), whether it’s current or future animals, and the bottleneck is just the lack of political will to do it. [...]
By contrast, it seems less clear what we could do now to benefit future moral agents (seeing as they’ll be able to decide for themselves what to do), so perhaps there is more of a need for prediction markets.
This is an interesting point, and I think there’s something to it. But I also tentatively think that the distinction might be less sharp than you suggest. (The following is again just quick thoughts.)
Firstly, it seems to me that we should currently have a lot of uncertainties about what would be better for animals. And it also seems that, in any case, much of the public probably is uncertain about a lot of relevant things (even if sufficient evidence to resolve those uncertainties does exist somewhere).
There are indeed some relatively obvious low-hanging fruit, but my guess would be that, for all the really big changes (e.g., phasing out factory farming, improving conditions for wild animals), it would be hard to say for sure what would be net-positive. For example, perhaps factory farmed animals have net positive lives, or could have net positive lives given some changes in conditions, in which case developing clean meat, increasing rates of veganism, etc. could be net negative (from a non-suffering-focused perspective), as it removes wellbeing from the world.
Of course, even if facing such uncertainties, expected value reasoning might strongly support one course of action. Relatedly, in reality, I’m quite strongly in favour of phasing out factory farming, and I’m personally a vegetarian-going-on-vegan. But I do think there’s room for some uncertainty there. And even if there are already arguments and evidence that should resolve that uncertainty for people, it’s possible that those arguments and bits of evidence would be more complex or less convincing than something like “In 2045, people/experts/some metric will be really really sure that animals would’ve been better off if we’d done X than if we’d done Y.” (But that’s just a hypothesis; I don’t know how convincing people would find such judgements-from-the-future.)
Secondly, it seems that there are several key things where it’s quite clear what policies would be better for future moral agents, and the bottleneck is just the lack of political will to do it. (Or at least, where what would be better is about as clear as it is for many animal-related things.) E.g., reducing emissions; doing more technical AI safety research; more pandemic preparedness (i.e., I would’ve said that last year; maybe now things are more where they should be). Perhaps the reason is that these policies relate to issues where future moral agents won’t “be able to decide for themselves what to do”, or at least where it’d be much harder for them to do X than it is for us to do X.
Perhaps the summary of these ideas is that:
This sort of prediction market might be useful both for generating information and for building political will / changing motivations.
That might apply somewhat similarly both for what future moral agents would want and for what future moral patients would want
But that relies on getting the necessary support to set up such prediction markets and have people start paying attention, which might be harder in the case of future moral patients, as you note
Hi Michael,
thanks for the comment!
I just meant that proposals to represent future non-human animals will likely gain less traction than the idea of representing future humans. But I agree that it would be perfectly possible to do it (as you say). And of course I’d be strongly in favour of having a Parliamentary Committee for all Future Sentient Beings or something like that, but again, that’s not politically feasible anytime soon. So we have to find a sweet spot where a proposal is both realistic and would be a significant improvement from our perspective.
I agree, and I’d be really excited about such prediction markets! However, perhaps the case of nonhuman animals differs in that it is often quite clear what policies would be better for animals (e.g. better welfare standards), whether it’s current or future animals, and the bottleneck is just the lack of political will to do it. (But it would be valuable to know more about which policies would be most important—e.g. perhaps such markets would say that funding cultivated meat research is 10x as important as other reforms.)
By contrast, it seems less clear what we could do now to benefit future moral agents (seeing as they’ll be able to decide for themselves what to do), so perhaps there is more of a need for prediction markets.
Ah, that makes sense, then.
This is an interesting point, and I think there’s something to it. But I also tentatively think that the distinction might be less sharp than you suggest. (The following is again just quick thoughts.)
Firstly, it seems to me that we should currently have a lot of uncertainties about what would be better for animals. And it also seems that, in any case, much of the public probably is uncertain about a lot of relevant things (even if sufficient evidence to resolve those uncertainties does exist somewhere).
There are indeed some relatively obvious low-hanging fruit, but my guess would be that, for all the really big changes (e.g., phasing out factory farming, improving conditions for wild animals), it would be hard to say for sure what would be net-positive. For example, perhaps factory farmed animals have net positive lives, or could have net positive lives given some changes in conditions, in which case developing clean meat, increasing rates of veganism, etc. could be net negative (from a non-suffering-focused perspective), as it removes wellbeing from the world.
Of course, even if facing such uncertainties, expected value reasoning might strongly support one course of action. Relatedly, in reality, I’m quite strongly in favour of phasing out factory farming, and I’m personally a vegetarian-going-on-vegan. But I do think there’s room for some uncertainty there. And even if there are already arguments and evidence that should resolve that uncertainty for people, it’s possible that those arguments and bits of evidence would be more complex or less convincing than something like “In 2045, people/experts/some metric will be really really sure that animals would’ve been better off if we’d done X than if we’d done Y.” (But that’s just a hypothesis; I don’t know how convincing people would find such judgements-from-the-future.)
Secondly, it seems that there are several key things where it’s quite clear what policies would be better for future moral agents, and the bottleneck is just the lack of political will to do it. (Or at least, where what would be better is about as clear as it is for many animal-related things.) E.g., reducing emissions; doing more technical AI safety research; more pandemic preparedness (i.e., I would’ve said that last year; maybe now things are more where they should be). Perhaps the reason is that these policies relate to issues where future moral agents won’t “be able to decide for themselves what to do”, or at least where it’d be much harder for them to do X than it is for us to do X.
Perhaps the summary of these ideas is that:
This sort of prediction market might be useful both for generating information and for building political will / changing motivations.
That might apply somewhat similarly both for what future moral agents would want and for what future moral patients would want
But that relies on getting the necessary support to set up such prediction markets and have people start paying attention, which might be harder in the case of future moral patients, as you note