Here’s a selection from their bottom-line point estimates for how many animals of a given species are morally equivalent to one human:
The chart is actually estimates for how many animal life years of a given species are morally equivalent to one human life year. Though you do get the comparison correct in the paragraph after the table.
~
The post weighs the increasing welfare of humanity over time against the increasing suffering of livestock, and concludes that human extinction would be a very good thing.
You’d have to ask Kyle Fish but it’s not necessarily the case that he endorses this conclusion about human extinction and he certainly didn’t actually say that (note if you CTRL+F for “extinction” it is nowhere to be found in the report). I think there’s lots of reasons to think that human extinction is very bad even given our hellish perpetuation of factory farming.
concludes that human extinction would be a big welfare improvement
I don’t think he concludes that either, nor do I know if he agrees with that. Maybe he implies that? Maybe he concludes that if our current trajectory is maintained / locked-inthen human extinction would be a big welfare improvement? Though Kyle is also clear to emphasize the uncertainty and tentativeness of his analysis.
Though Kyle is also clear to emphasize the uncertainty and tentativeness of his analysis.
I think if you want to emphasize uncertainty and tentativeness it is a good idea to include something like error bars, and to highlight that one of the key assumptions involves fixing a parameter (the weight on hedonism) at the maximally unfavourable value (100%).
It is bizarre to me that people would disagree-vote this as it seems to be a true description of the edit you made. If people think the edit is bad they should downvote, not disagreevote.
Two nitpicks:
The chart is actually estimates for how many animal life years of a given species are morally equivalent to one human life year. Though you do get the comparison correct in the paragraph after the table.
~
You’d have to ask Kyle Fish but it’s not necessarily the case that he endorses this conclusion about human extinction and he certainly didn’t actually say that (note if you CTRL+F for “extinction” it is nowhere to be found in the report). I think there’s lots of reasons to think that human extinction is very bad even given our hellish perpetuation of factory farming.
Thanks; edited to change those to “here’s a selection from their bottom-line point estimates comparing animals to humans” and [EDIT: see above].
I don’t think he concludes that either, nor do I know if he agrees with that. Maybe he implies that? Maybe he concludes that if our current trajectory is maintained / locked-in then human extinction would be a big welfare improvement? Though Kyle is also clear to emphasize the uncertainty and tentativeness of his analysis.
I think if you want to emphasize uncertainty and tentativeness it is a good idea to include something like error bars, and to highlight that one of the key assumptions involves fixing a parameter (the weight on hedonism) at the maximally unfavourable value (100%).
Edited again; see above.
It is bizarre to me that people would disagree-vote this as it seems to be a true description of the edit you made. If people think the edit is bad they should downvote, not disagreevote.
Eh; I interpret this upvote+disagree to mean “I think it’s good that you posted that you made the edit, but the edit it doesn’t fix the problem”