Executive summary: The total moral value of the world may be negative and declining, as growing animal agriculture could be causing more suffering than improvements in human welfare offset.
Key points:
The total moral value of the world includes both humans and non-human animals, with the rise of industrial animal agriculture significantly impacting the latter.
The author’s analysis, focused on the period from 1961-2021, suggests net global welfare may be both negative and declining, due to the increased suffering of farmed animals outweighing human wellbeing.
The author notes several assumptions and limitations, including the exclusion of wild animals and insects, and the use of point estimates rather than confidence intervals.
The author used data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and human population data, along with estimates of welfare ranges across different species, to calculate the total welfare of a given species in a given year.
The analysis suggests that the suffering of farmed animals is so intense and their populations have grown so large that they may outweigh all of humanity’s progress.
The author concludes that humanity may have inadvertently set systems in motion that put the total welfare of the world on a steep downward trajectory, and calls for more rigorous research on animal welfare and the development of interventions aimed at improving total welfare.
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 total moral value of the world may be negative and declining, as growing animal agriculture could be causing more suffering than improvements in human welfare offset.
Key points:
The total moral value of the world includes both humans and non-human animals, with the rise of industrial animal agriculture significantly impacting the latter.
The author’s analysis, focused on the period from 1961-2021, suggests net global welfare may be both negative and declining, due to the increased suffering of farmed animals outweighing human wellbeing.
The author notes several assumptions and limitations, including the exclusion of wild animals and insects, and the use of point estimates rather than confidence intervals.
The author used data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and human population data, along with estimates of welfare ranges across different species, to calculate the total welfare of a given species in a given year.
The analysis suggests that the suffering of farmed animals is so intense and their populations have grown so large that they may outweigh all of humanity’s progress.
The author concludes that humanity may have inadvertently set systems in motion that put the total welfare of the world on a steep downward trajectory, and calls for more rigorous research on animal welfare and the development of interventions aimed at improving total welfare.
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.