I think this makes good sense as a toy theoretical model, and updates me some way towards these conclusions, but not very far because this sort of armchair theorising (while valuable and fun) is hard to get accurate for something as messy and empirical as this, as you note. So I think if someone were to investigate this further the key steps would be to:
look at empirical literature, or conduct primary research, on pleasure/pain symmetry and whether this holds (maybe this would be intractable though)
do some more involved population dynamics modelling, e.g. with a system of ODEs for food, prey juveniles, prey adults, predator juveniles and predator adults (I think this would be very tractable, but less crux-y)
That said, I think contraception as an intervention mode stands on its own without these more speculative theoretical arguments (unless wild animals have quite positive lives on average, such that preventing them from coming into existence is bad, but this seems unlikely).
Nice!
I think this makes good sense as a toy theoretical model, and updates me some way towards these conclusions, but not very far because this sort of armchair theorising (while valuable and fun) is hard to get accurate for something as messy and empirical as this, as you note. So I think if someone were to investigate this further the key steps would be to:
look at empirical literature, or conduct primary research, on pleasure/pain symmetry and whether this holds (maybe this would be intractable though)
do some more involved population dynamics modelling, e.g. with a system of ODEs for food, prey juveniles, prey adults, predator juveniles and predator adults (I think this would be very tractable, but less crux-y)
That said, I think contraception as an intervention mode stands on its own without these more speculative theoretical arguments (unless wild animals have quite positive lives on average, such that preventing them from coming into existence is bad, but this seems unlikely).