(Not really an argument, although I do disagree with stuff like RP’s moral weights. Just kind of an impression / thought, that I am addressing to Vasco but also to invertebrate-suffering folks more broadly.)
Reading through this interesting and provocative (though also IMO incorrect) post and some of your helpfully linked resources & further analysis, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the worldview that must follow, once you believe that each random 1m^2 patch of boreal taiga, temperate grassland, and other assorted forest biomes (as you tabulate here; screenshot below), despite appearing to be an inert patch of dirt topped by a few shrubs or a tree, actually contains the moral equivalent of DOZENS of suffering humans (like 20 − 40 humans suffering 24⁄7 per cube of dirt)??
In this Brian-Tomasik style world, humans (and indeed, essentially every visible thing) are just a tiny, thin crust of intelligence and complexity existing atop a vast hellish ocean of immense (albeit simple/repetitive) suffering. (Or, if the people complaining that nematode lives might be net-positive are correct but all the other views on the importance of invertebrates are kept the same, then everything we see is the same irrelevant crust but now sitting atop a vast incomprehensible bulk of primordial pleasure.)
What is the best way to imagine this? I am guessing that insect-welfare advocates would object to my image of each cube of dirt containing dozens of suffering humans, saying stuff like:
“you can’t actually use RP-style moral weights to compare things in that way” (but they seem to make exactly these comparisons all the time?)
“it’s an equivalent amount of suffering, yes, but it’s such a different TYPE of suffering that you shouldn’t picture suffering humans, instead it would be more accurate to picture X” (what should X be? maybe something simpler than an adult human but still relatable, like crying newborns or a writhing, injured insect?)
“negative QALYs aren’t actually very bad; it’s more like having a stubbed toe 24⁄7 than being tortured 24/7” (I am very confused about the idea of negative QALYs, neutral points, etc, and it seems everyone else is too)
Here is a picture of some square meters of boreal tundra that I googled, if it helps:
I’d also be very curious to know what people make of the fact that at least the most famous nematode species has only 302 neurons that are always wired up in the exact same way. Philosophically, I tend to be of the opinion that if you made a computer simulation of a human brain experiencing torture, it would be very bad to run that simulation. But if you then ran the EXACT same simulation again, this would not be 2x as bad—it might not be even any worse at all than running it once. (Ditto for running 2 copies of the simulation on 2 identical computers sitting next to each other. Or running the simulation on a single computer with double-width wires.) How many of those 302 neurons can possibly be involved in nematode suffering? Maybe, idk, 10 of them? How many states can those ten neurons have? How many of those states are negative vs positive? You see what I’m getting at—how long before adding more nematodes doesn’t carry any additional moral weight (under the view I outlined above), because it starts just being “literally the exact same nematode experience” simply duplicated many times?
Anyways, perhaps this perspective—wherein human civilization is essentially irrelevant except insofar as we can take action that affects the infinite ocean of primitive-but-vast nematode experience—would seem more normal to me if I came from a more buddhist / hindu / jain culture instead of a mostly christian/western one—mahayana buddhism is always on about innumerable worlds filled with countless beings, things persisting for endless repetitions of lifetimes, and so forth. In contrast to christianity which places a lot of emphasis on individual human agency and the drama of historical events (like the roman empire, etc). Or one could view it as a kind of moral equivalent of the copernican / broader scientific revolution, when people were shocked to realize that the earth is actually a tiny part of an incomprehensibly vast galaxy. The galaxy is physically large, but it is mostly just rocks and gas, so (we console ourselves) it is not “morally large”; we are still at the center of the “moral universe”. But for many strong believers in animal welfare as a cause area, and doubly or triply so for believers in insect welfare, this is not the case.
Agreed with Marcus Abramovitch that (if nematode lives are indeed net-negative, and if one agrees with RP-style weights on the importance of very simple animals), I think it WOULD strongly suggest (both emotionally and logically) pursuing “charities that just start wildfires” (which IMO would be cost-effective—seems pretty cheap to set stuff on fire...), or charities that promote various kinds of existential risk. Vasco comments that nuclear war or bioweapons would likely result in even more insect suffering by diminishing the scope of human civilization, which makes a lot of sense to me. But there are other existential risks where this defense wouldn’t work. Deliberately hastening global warming (perhaps by building a CFC-emissions factory on the sly) might shift biomes in a favorable way for the nematodes. Steering an asteroid into the earth, or hastening the arrival of a catastrophically misaligned AI superintelligence, might effectively sterilize the planet where nukes can’t. And so on. All the standard longtermist arguments would then apply—even raising the chance of sterilizing the earth by a little bit would be worth a lot. From my perspective (as someone who disagrees with the premises of this insect-welfare stuff), these implications do seem socially dangerous.
(Pictured: how I imagine it must feel to be an insect-welfare advocate who believes that every couple meters of boreal taiga contains lifetimes of suffering??)
Not really an argument, although I do disagree with stuff like RP’s moral weights.
I liked your comment. At the same time, I would not dismiss the conclusions just because they are counterintuitive. I only see this as a reason for further investigation. I would be curious to know about your best guess for the welfare range of nematodes. I estimated the annual welfare of soil nematodes is −296 k times that of humans, so the welfare range of nematodes would have to be less than 3.38*10^-6 (= 1/(296*10^3)) times my estimate of 6.47*10^-6, 2.19*10^-11 (= 3.38*10^-6*6.47*10^-6), for my estimate of the absolute value of the welfare of nematodes to be smaller than that of humans.
“you can’t actually use RP-style moral weights to compare things in that way”
“it’s an equivalent amount of suffering, yes, but it’s such a different TYPE of suffering that you shouldn’t picture suffering humans, instead it would be more accurate to picture X” (what should X be? maybe something simpler than an adult human but still relatable, like crying newborns or a writhing, injured insect?)
[...]
Philosophically, I tend to be of the opinion that if you made a computer simulation of a human brain experiencing torture, it would be very bad to run that simulation. But if you then ran the EXACT same simulation again, this would not be 2x as bad—it might not be even any worse at all than running it once.
I think what matters is the intensity and duration of the pain, not its uniqueness. I believe 2 h of pain of a given intensity is exactly 2 times as bad as 1 h of pain of the same intensity, regardless of the specific content of the painful experiences. Intuitively, I do not see how the badness of my pain can depend on the extent to which there is a similar pain being experienced somewhere in the multiverse.
“negative QALYs aren’t actually very bad; it’s more like having a stubbed toe 24⁄7 than being tortured 24/7” (I am very confused about the idea of negative QALYs, neutral points, etc, and it seems everyone else is too)
In my post, −1 QALY is the welfare needed to neutralise 1 QALY.
I’d also be very curious to know what people make of the fact that at least the most famous nematode species has only 302 neurons that are always wired up in the exact same way.
It looks like there are around 1 M species of nematodes, 148 (= 1*10^6/(6.74*10^3)) times as many as the 6.74 k species of mammals.
Nematode species can be difficult to distinguish from one another. Consequently, estimates of the number of nematode species are uncertain. A 2013 survey of animal biodiversity suggested there are over 25,000.[4][5] Estimates of the total number of extant species are subject to even greater variation. A widely referenced 1993 article estimated there might be over a million species of nematode.[6] A subsequent publication challenged this claim, estimating the figure to be at least 40,000 species.[7] Although the highest estimates (up to 100 million species) have since been deprecated, estimates supported by rarefaction curves,[8][9] together with the use of DNA barcoding[10] and the increasing acknowledgment of widespread cryptic species among nematodes,[11] have placed the figure closer to one million species.[12]
Anyways, perhaps this perspective—wherein human civilization is essentially irrelevant except insofar as we can take action that affects the infinite ocean of primitive-but-vast nematode experience—would seem more normal to me if I came from a more buddhist / hindu / jain culture instead of a mostly christian/western one—mahayana buddhism is always on about innumerable worlds filled with countless beings, things persisting for endless repetitions of lifetimes, and so forth. In contrast to christianity which places a lot of emphasis on individual human agency and the drama of historical events (like the roman empire, etc). Or one could view it as a kind of moral equivalent of the copernican / broader scientific revolution, when people were shocked to realize that the earth is actually a tiny part of an incomprehensibly vast galaxy. The galaxy is physically large, but it is mostly just rocks and gas, so (we console ourselves) it is not “morally large”; we are still at the center of the “moral universe”. But for many strong believers in animal welfare as a cause area, and doubly or triply so for believers in insect welfare, this is not the case.
Great perspectives! Maybe a video about them could be interesting ;).
Agreed with Marcus Abramovitch that (if nematode lives are indeed net-negative, and if one agrees with RP-style weights on the importance of very simple animals), I think it WOULD strongly suggest (both emotionally and logically) pursuing “charities that just start wildfires” (which IMO would be cost-effective—seems pretty cheap to set stuff on fire...)
I would be open to donating to such charities in principle. I do not shy away from counterintuitive conclusions. However, I am just very sceptical they would be cost-effective, or even just beneficial instead of harmful. Their scale would necessarily be limited due to the illegal nature of their work, which means supporting them would also likely be illegal, and therefore have to be super cost-effective to outweigh the expected decrease in future donations linked to the risk of fines, and being arrested, and outweigh the expected decrease in direct impact linked to the risk reputational damage worsening one’s career. I also do not know whether fires decrease the number of nematodes. I guess they do nearterm, because I think 90 % of nematodes are in the top 15 cm of soil, and I assume this would still heat up sufficiently to kill the nematodes. However, the fire might increase the number of nematodes longer term.
Deliberately hastening global warming (perhaps by building a CFC-emissions factory on the sly) might shift biomes in a favorable way for the nematodes. Steering an asteroid into the earth, or hastening the arrival of a catastrophically misaligned AI superintelligence, might effectively sterilize the planet where nukes can’t. And so on.
I think my point that increasing the risk of catastrophes increases animal-years also holds for the catastrophes above. It is way way harder to end life on Earth than to cause human extinction, and this is way way harder than just marginally decreasing human population. So I believe increasing the risk of large catastrophes would overwhelmingly decrease human-years, thus decreasing cropland, and increasing animal-years, while only infinitesimaly increasing the probability o extinction of all life on Earth.
All the standard longtermist arguments would then apply—even raising the chance of sterilizing the earth by a little bit would be worth a lot. From my perspective (as someone who disagrees with the premises of this insect-welfare stuff), these implications do seem socially dangerous.
I do not think reducing the nearterm risk of human extinction is astronomically cost-effective. Likewise, I do not think increasing the risk of extinction of all life on Earth is astronomically cost-effective. In addition, I believe the best ways of increasing the risk of extinction of all life on Earth involve a peaceful gradual expansion of the activities of humans and their eventual non-biological descendents.
(Not really an argument, although I do disagree with stuff like RP’s moral weights. Just kind of an impression / thought, that I am addressing to Vasco but also to invertebrate-suffering folks more broadly.)
Reading through this interesting and provocative (though also IMO incorrect) post and some of your helpfully linked resources & further analysis, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the worldview that must follow, once you believe that each random 1m^2 patch of boreal taiga, temperate grassland, and other assorted forest biomes (as you tabulate here; screenshot below), despite appearing to be an inert patch of dirt topped by a few shrubs or a tree, actually contains the moral equivalent of DOZENS of suffering humans (like 20 − 40 humans suffering 24⁄7 per cube of dirt)??
In this Brian-Tomasik style world, humans (and indeed, essentially every visible thing) are just a tiny, thin crust of intelligence and complexity existing atop a vast hellish ocean of immense (albeit simple/repetitive) suffering. (Or, if the people complaining that nematode lives might be net-positive are correct but all the other views on the importance of invertebrates are kept the same, then everything we see is the same irrelevant crust but now sitting atop a vast incomprehensible bulk of primordial pleasure.)
What is the best way to imagine this? I am guessing that insect-welfare advocates would object to my image of each cube of dirt containing dozens of suffering humans, saying stuff like:
“you can’t actually use RP-style moral weights to compare things in that way” (but they seem to make exactly these comparisons all the time?)
“it’s an equivalent amount of suffering, yes, but it’s such a different TYPE of suffering that you shouldn’t picture suffering humans, instead it would be more accurate to picture X” (what should X be? maybe something simpler than an adult human but still relatable, like crying newborns or a writhing, injured insect?)
“negative QALYs aren’t actually very bad; it’s more like having a stubbed toe 24⁄7 than being tortured 24/7” (I am very confused about the idea of negative QALYs, neutral points, etc, and it seems everyone else is too)
Here is a picture of some square meters of boreal tundra that I googled, if it helps:
I’d also be very curious to know what people make of the fact that at least the most famous nematode species has only 302 neurons that are always wired up in the exact same way. Philosophically, I tend to be of the opinion that if you made a computer simulation of a human brain experiencing torture, it would be very bad to run that simulation. But if you then ran the EXACT same simulation again, this would not be 2x as bad—it might not be even any worse at all than running it once. (Ditto for running 2 copies of the simulation on 2 identical computers sitting next to each other. Or running the simulation on a single computer with double-width wires.) How many of those 302 neurons can possibly be involved in nematode suffering? Maybe, idk, 10 of them? How many states can those ten neurons have? How many of those states are negative vs positive? You see what I’m getting at—how long before adding more nematodes doesn’t carry any additional moral weight (under the view I outlined above), because it starts just being “literally the exact same nematode experience” simply duplicated many times?
Anyways, perhaps this perspective—wherein human civilization is essentially irrelevant except insofar as we can take action that affects the infinite ocean of primitive-but-vast nematode experience—would seem more normal to me if I came from a more buddhist / hindu / jain culture instead of a mostly christian/western one—mahayana buddhism is always on about innumerable worlds filled with countless beings, things persisting for endless repetitions of lifetimes, and so forth. In contrast to christianity which places a lot of emphasis on individual human agency and the drama of historical events (like the roman empire, etc). Or one could view it as a kind of moral equivalent of the copernican / broader scientific revolution, when people were shocked to realize that the earth is actually a tiny part of an incomprehensibly vast galaxy. The galaxy is physically large, but it is mostly just rocks and gas, so (we console ourselves) it is not “morally large”; we are still at the center of the “moral universe”. But for many strong believers in animal welfare as a cause area, and doubly or triply so for believers in insect welfare, this is not the case.
Agreed with Marcus Abramovitch that (if nematode lives are indeed net-negative, and if one agrees with RP-style weights on the importance of very simple animals), I think it WOULD strongly suggest (both emotionally and logically) pursuing “charities that just start wildfires” (which IMO would be cost-effective—seems pretty cheap to set stuff on fire...), or charities that promote various kinds of existential risk. Vasco comments that nuclear war or bioweapons would likely result in even more insect suffering by diminishing the scope of human civilization, which makes a lot of sense to me. But there are other existential risks where this defense wouldn’t work. Deliberately hastening global warming (perhaps by building a CFC-emissions factory on the sly) might shift biomes in a favorable way for the nematodes. Steering an asteroid into the earth, or hastening the arrival of a catastrophically misaligned AI superintelligence, might effectively sterilize the planet where nukes can’t. And so on. All the standard longtermist arguments would then apply—even raising the chance of sterilizing the earth by a little bit would be worth a lot. From my perspective (as someone who disagrees with the premises of this insect-welfare stuff), these implications do seem socially dangerous.
(Pictured: how I imagine it must feel to be an insect-welfare advocate who believes that every couple meters of boreal taiga contains lifetimes of suffering??)
Thanks for the comment, Jack!
I liked your comment. At the same time, I would not dismiss the conclusions just because they are counterintuitive. I only see this as a reason for further investigation. I would be curious to know about your best guess for the welfare range of nematodes. I estimated the annual welfare of soil nematodes is −296 k times that of humans, so the welfare range of nematodes would have to be less than 3.38*10^-6 (= 1/(296*10^3)) times my estimate of 6.47*10^-6, 2.19*10^-11 (= 3.38*10^-6*6.47*10^-6), for my estimate of the absolute value of the welfare of nematodes to be smaller than that of humans.
At least Ambitious Impact (AIM), Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), and RP assume welfare per animal-year is proportional to RP’s mainline welfare ranges, as I did.
I think what matters is the intensity and duration of the pain, not its uniqueness. I believe 2 h of pain of a given intensity is exactly 2 times as bad as 1 h of pain of the same intensity, regardless of the specific content of the painful experiences. Intuitively, I do not see how the badness of my pain can depend on the extent to which there is a similar pain being experienced somewhere in the multiverse.
In my post, −1 QALY is the welfare needed to neutralise 1 QALY.
It looks like there are around 1 M species of nematodes, 148 (= 1*10^6/(6.74*10^3)) times as many as the 6.74 k species of mammals.
Great perspectives! Maybe a video about them could be interesting ;).
I would be open to donating to such charities in principle. I do not shy away from counterintuitive conclusions. However, I am just very sceptical they would be cost-effective, or even just beneficial instead of harmful. Their scale would necessarily be limited due to the illegal nature of their work, which means supporting them would also likely be illegal, and therefore have to be super cost-effective to outweigh the expected decrease in future donations linked to the risk of fines, and being arrested, and outweigh the expected decrease in direct impact linked to the risk reputational damage worsening one’s career. I also do not know whether fires decrease the number of nematodes. I guess they do nearterm, because I think 90 % of nematodes are in the top 15 cm of soil, and I assume this would still heat up sufficiently to kill the nematodes. However, the fire might increase the number of nematodes longer term.
I think my point that increasing the risk of catastrophes increases animal-years also holds for the catastrophes above. It is way way harder to end life on Earth than to cause human extinction, and this is way way harder than just marginally decreasing human population. So I believe increasing the risk of large catastrophes would overwhelmingly decrease human-years, thus decreasing cropland, and increasing animal-years, while only infinitesimaly increasing the probability o extinction of all life on Earth.
I do not think reducing the nearterm risk of human extinction is astronomically cost-effective. Likewise, I do not think increasing the risk of extinction of all life on Earth is astronomically cost-effective. In addition, I believe the best ways of increasing the risk of extinction of all life on Earth involve a peaceful gradual expansion of the activities of humans and their eventual non-biological descendents.