Thank you, so much, for the post! I would like to quote the passage that had the most impact (insight) on me:
someone who is concerned with minimizing the risk of futility may avoid single-shot bets with a low probability of success but accept combinations of bets that collectively make success probable. A hierarchicalist would not deem the combination of gambles to be any better than the gambles individually. For example, Shane might resist spending money on shrimp welfare because he thinks that there is a .1 chance that shrimp are sentient. However, he might accept distributing money among shrimp, honeybees, black soldier fly, mealworms, and silkworms; though he thinks each of these has a .9 chance of making no difference, he believes that the probability that the combination of bets will make a difference is .5.
Which leads to the conclusion:
If Shane’s reasoning is correct, then risk aversion about efficacy might not avoid the conclusion that we ought to help the many small. Instead, it might tell us that we should distribute our money across different species of dubious sentience in order to optimize the combined probability of making a difference and maximizing value.
And of course, the caveat they raised it also important:
However, there are reasons to doubt this. The probabilities of different gambles add up only when the outcomes of those gambles are independent of one another. Are facts about honeybee sentience independent of facts about black soldier fly sentience? That is, do the prospects of their sentience rise and fall together?
However, there are reasons to doubt this. The probabilities of different gambles add up only when the outcomes of those gambles are independent of one another. Are facts about honeybee sentience independent of facts about black soldier fly sentience? That is, do the prospects of their sentience rise and fall together?
In reply to my own comment above. I think it is important to recognize one further point: If one believes a species portofio approach to reduce risk of inefficacy doesn’t work because prospects of the concerned species’ sentience “rise and fall” together, one very likely also needs to, epistemologically speaking, put much less weight on the existence (and non-existence) of experimental evidence of sentience in their updating of views regarding animal sentience. The practical implication of this is that one might no longer be justified to say things like “the cleaner wrasse (the first fish purported to have passed the mirror test) is more likely to be sentient than other fish species.”
Thank you, so much, for the post! I would like to quote the passage that had the most impact (insight) on me:
Which leads to the conclusion:
And of course, the caveat they raised it also important:
In reply to my own comment above. I think it is important to recognize one further point: If one believes a species portofio approach to reduce risk of inefficacy doesn’t work because prospects of the concerned species’ sentience “rise and fall” together, one very likely also needs to, epistemologically speaking, put much less weight on the existence (and non-existence) of experimental evidence of sentience in their updating of views regarding animal sentience. The practical implication of this is that one might no longer be justified to say things like “the cleaner wrasse (the first fish purported to have passed the mirror test) is more likely to be sentient than other fish species.”