If these estimates will be used as multipliers for a hedonistic/suffering scale based on WFP’s pain intensity levels (as was done here recently), then the undiluted experience model might contradict the definition of disabling pain, and probably contradicts the definition of excruciating pain, because these can’t be ignored and they take up most or ~all of an animal’s attention, by definition. Furthermore, I think what you’d want to do instead anyway, if using WFP’s pain scale, is just use an equality model and assess more carefully where an animal is on WFP’s pain scale, taking into account potential distractions. Dilution wouldn’t change the badness of a given level of suffering (affective component of physical and psychological pain, which is what I think WFP’s scale is supposed to capture); it would reduce the level of suffering, and so move the experience towards the milder end of WFP’s pain scale. I’m confident that excruciating pain in humans is never or rarely significantly diluted (just through distraction by things other than similarly intense pain), and I doubt that disabling pain is significantly diluted, too.
WFP also has a post on the role of attention here, and, related to this, they wrote (bold mine):
Additionally, the potential for positive welfare may be also overestimated if factors other than attention are not considered. For example, pain caused by traumatic injury or pathological processes may lead to immobility, restricted movement or impaired behavioral responsiveness to potentially pleasurable opportunities [30]. Similarly, sickness, weakness, nausea, dizziness and other debilitating affects may demotivate animals from engaging in physically active, gregarious and positive behaviors [30].
Finally, positive and negative affective states may interact in complex ways other than those considered. For instance, evidence indicates that in environments where animals can engage in motivated behaviors the perceived intensity of pain is reduced. In chickens, experiments conducted by Mike Gentle two decades ago [21,31] have shown that the higher the motivation to engage in a behavior (hence attention diverted to it), the higher the degree of endogenous analgesia mediated by opioids. The possibility to express positive behaviors may therefore inhibit pain that would otherwise be felt as Hurtful or Annoying (pain of higher intensity cannot, by definition, be eliminated with distraction).
I also worry about most of the qualitative/non-quantitative models basically double-counting animals’ responses, if used as multipliers for WFP’s pain scale. Some animals may just not be capable of experiencing excruciating pain at all, but that should just be captured in the probability that they are in fact experiencing excruciating (or disabling) pain under given conditions, not as a multiplier for the badness of excruciating pain, except possibly for reasons that really do stack on top of excruciating pain. Maybe the number of JNDs or conscious subsystems stack on top, which are reflected in the quantitative models, but few if any of the qualitative indicators seem like they should stack on top.
I would personally shift the probabilities assigned to the qualitative models to the equality model, when you want to use the welfare ranges estimates as multipliers for a WFP pain intensity scale.[1]
But then, this also makes a uniform prior across the original subset of models look weird/suspicious.
Each of the eight models was assigned an equal probability of being correct.
Should we instead use a uniform prior over the new subset of models for multiplying WFP scales? Your credences in the models shouldn’t be sensitive to something like this.
If these estimates will be used as multipliers for a hedonistic/suffering scale based on WFP’s pain intensity levels (as was done here recently), then the undiluted experience model might contradict the definition of disabling pain, and probably contradicts the definition of excruciating pain, because these can’t be ignored and they take up most or ~all of an animal’s attention, by definition. Furthermore, I think what you’d want to do instead anyway, if using WFP’s pain scale, is just use an equality model and assess more carefully where an animal is on WFP’s pain scale, taking into account potential distractions. Dilution wouldn’t change the badness of a given level of suffering (affective component of physical and psychological pain, which is what I think WFP’s scale is supposed to capture); it would reduce the level of suffering, and so move the experience towards the milder end of WFP’s pain scale. I’m confident that excruciating pain in humans is never or rarely significantly diluted (just through distraction by things other than similarly intense pain), and I doubt that disabling pain is significantly diluted, too.
WFP also has a post on the role of attention here, and, related to this, they wrote (bold mine):
I also worry about most of the qualitative/non-quantitative models basically double-counting animals’ responses, if used as multipliers for WFP’s pain scale. Some animals may just not be capable of experiencing excruciating pain at all, but that should just be captured in the probability that they are in fact experiencing excruciating (or disabling) pain under given conditions, not as a multiplier for the badness of excruciating pain, except possibly for reasons that really do stack on top of excruciating pain. Maybe the number of JNDs or conscious subsystems stack on top, which are reflected in the quantitative models, but few if any of the qualitative indicators seem like they should stack on top.
I would personally shift the probabilities assigned to the qualitative models to the equality model, when you want to use the welfare ranges estimates as multipliers for a WFP pain intensity scale.[1]
But then, this also makes a uniform prior across the original subset of models look weird/suspicious.
Should we instead use a uniform prior over the new subset of models for multiplying WFP scales? Your credences in the models shouldn’t be sensitive to something like this.