Thanks! Yes, small invertebrates have been on my mind ever since Brian Tomasik wrote about them 10+ years ago and cautioned against walking on grass. I’m sort of reducitarian about grass… I’ve also donated to the “inverts” project of RP! It’s a cause area I’m quite excited about, though I’m not sure whether I’m more excited about helping arthropods or nematodes.
Your updated estimates have huge credible intervals! What is the main source of the uncertainty in the model, or the main sources?
I’ll compress some of my summaries of your articles to remove the older numbers and clarify your updated views in the second article by quoting from the comment. Ty!
The 90k (or 90.3k) figure is based on this sentence from this article:
Nonetheless, I calculate GiveWell’s top charities increase the welfare of soil animals 90.3 k times as much as they increase the welfare of humans, which is a way higher ratio than the ones I just mentioned.
Great. You may also be interested in donating to Arthropoda Foundation. I donated a few k$ to them last year. You are most likely aware of them. If relevant to readers, here is the post announcing their launch, and here is their post during the last Marginal Funding Week. They have been funding research informing how to increase the welfare of farmed arthropods, and “are particularly interested in research with a clear path to impact, whether by shaping future science or informing real-world decision-making”.
Your updated estimates have huge credible intervals! What is the main source of the uncertainty in the model, or the main sources?
The ranges only account for uncertainty in the individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year. I consider this roughly proportional to the expected welfare range. So you can say I am just accounting for uncertainty in the expected welfare range. I believe this the overwhelming driver of the overall uncertainty. Here are the expected welfare ranges as a fraction of that of humans as a function of the exponent of the individual number of neurons.
The 90k (or 90.3k) figure is based on this sentence from this article
Got it. I consider the above ratio reasonable too, but my current best guess is much lower, as I commented above.
Thanks! Yes, small invertebrates have been on my mind ever since Brian Tomasik wrote about them 10+ years ago and cautioned against walking on grass. I’m sort of reducitarian about grass… I’ve also donated to the “inverts” project of RP! It’s a cause area I’m quite excited about, though I’m not sure whether I’m more excited about helping arthropods or nematodes.
Your updated estimates have huge credible intervals! What is the main source of the uncertainty in the model, or the main sources?
I’ll compress some of my summaries of your articles to remove the older numbers and clarify your updated views in the second article by quoting from the comment. Ty!
The 90k (or 90.3k) figure is based on this sentence from this article:
I’ll avoid citing the precise number.
Great. You may also be interested in donating to Arthropoda Foundation. I donated a few k$ to them last year. You are most likely aware of them. If relevant to readers, here is the post announcing their launch, and here is their post during the last Marginal Funding Week. They have been funding research informing how to increase the welfare of farmed arthropods, and “are particularly interested in research with a clear path to impact, whether by shaping future science or informing real-world decision-making”.
The ranges only account for uncertainty in the individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year. I consider this roughly proportional to the expected welfare range. So you can say I am just accounting for uncertainty in the expected welfare range. I believe this the overwhelming driver of the overall uncertainty. Here are the expected welfare ranges as a fraction of that of humans as a function of the exponent of the individual number of neurons.
Got it. I consider the above ratio reasonable too, but my current best guess is much lower, as I commented above.