Thanks for your question, Sabs. Short answer: if (a) you think of your value purely in terms of the amount of welfare you can generate, (b) you think about welfare in terms of the intensities of pleasures and pains, (c) you’re fine with treating pleasures and pains symmetrically and aggregating them accordingly, and (d) you ignore indirect effects of benefitting humans vs. nonhumans, then you’re right about the key takeaway. Of course, you might not want to make those assumptions! So it’s really important to separate what should, in my view, be a fairly plausible empirical hypothesis—that the intensities of many animals’ pleasures and pains are pretty similar to the intensities of humans’ pleasures and pains—from all the philosophical assumptions that allow us to move from that fairly plausible empirical hypothesis to a highly controversial philosophical conclusion about how much you matter.
I think you should put this in big letters on the graph and that Peter should write it in his tweet thread. Currently this is going to get misunderstood and since you can predict this, I suggest it’s your responsibility to avoid it.
That graph and all tables need to be hard to share without the provisos you’ve given here.
In particular Edouard of Our World In Data said that they really care about their graphs being understood well and that when they see a graph being mistaken or with a bad legend they change it.
I think this is the right approach to ensure that graphs are shared with context.
Really appreciate this thread ^. I’m impressed that something misleading got pointed out by Nathan/Sabs and then was immediately improved.
Minor comment: I’d maybe re-title the image to something like “For each species, an estimate of their welfare range” or “Estimated welfare ranges per year of life of different species” ? I find “Placeholder Welfare Range Estimates (Life Years)” somewhat hard to parse. Although having written this, I’m not sure that my suggestions are better.
(And thanks for writing the post and working on this project!)
Re: the title of the image, that’s a helpful suggestion. I’m genuinely unsure what’s best. The most accurate title would be something like, “Welfare range estimates by species for welfare-to-DALYs-averted conversions,” but that doesn’t win any awards for accessibility.
ok. Well I don’t actually care about how much I think I matter (obviously the answer is “an enormous amount”), what I really care about is how much you think I matter, or how much the median EA thinks I matter. How many of these four assumptions you listed do you actually believe? If you do believe some of them, then presumably in your eyes I am worth some relatively low number of chickens, right? What happens if my neck is on the block and you have the choice between sacrificing me or wringing the necks of 100 chickens? That’s the really important key question here.
Hi Sabs. We can discuss this a bit in a comment thread, but the issues here are complicated. If you’d like to have a conversation, I’m happy to chat. Please DM me for a link to my calendar.
Brief replies to your questions:
I think you matter an enormous amount too. I am not saying this facetiously. It’s probably the thing I believe most deeply.
I don’t know how much the median EA thinks you matter.
I’m unsure about all four assumptions. However, I’m also unsure about their practical importance. You might not be comfortable with the results of any cross-species cost-effectiveness analysis.
If it’s you or a hundred chickens, I’d save you. I’d also save my children over a hundred (human) strangers. I don’t think this means that my children realize more welfare than those strangers. Likewise, I don’t think you realize 100x more welfare than a chicken can.
I think it’s also helpful to empathise the other way around too when working on these thought-experiments. Species-membership is merely a shortcut for speaking about typical cognitive and hedonic capacities in this report, species itself is irrelevant. You might be thinking that prioritising the torture of 1000 chickens over the life of one human being doesn’t make you feel valued as much as you should be.
But it could be the other way around in the real life as well. An illness could befall on us or our loved ones. It could very much be the case that my sister had cognitive/hedonic capacities comparable to a pig. I wouldn’t feel very much valued if my sister being tortured for a year was considered to be less of a deal compared to averting the 10 minutes long headache of a typical human being in this case.
I will respond with my interpretation of the report, so that the author might correct me to help me understand it better.
If you ask “If we have an option between preventing the birth of Sabs versus preventing the birth of an average chicken, how many chickens is Sabs worth?” then Sabs might be worth −10 chickens since chickens have net negative lives whereas you (hopefully) have a net positive life.
If you ask “Let’s compare a maximally happy Sabs and maximally happy chickens, how many chickens is Sabs worth?”, I don’t think these estimates respond to that either. It might be the case that chickens have a very large welfare range, but this is mostly because they have a potential for feeling excruciating pain even though their best lives are not that good.
I think you need to complement this research with “how much the badness of average experiences of animals compare with each other” to answer your question. This report by Rethink Priorities seems to be based on the range between the worst and the best experiences for each species.
This is exactly right, Emre. We are not commenting on the average amount of value or disvalue that any particular kind of individual adds to the world. Instead, we’re trying to estimate how much value different kinds of individuals could add to the world. You then need to go do the hard work of assessing individuals’ actual welfare levels to make tradeoffs. But that’s as it should be. There’s already been a lot of work on welfare assessment; there’s been much less work on how to interpret the significance of those welfare assessments in cross-species decision-making. We’re trying to advance the latter conversation.
Thank you for the prompt reply Bob. Just to be clear, I am happy about the scope of this project and am impressed by its quality. I do not intend to criticise the report for being mindful about its scope.
so although I’m not worth only 3 chickens, the key takeaway is that I’m worth around 50 chickens, is that the deal?
Thanks for your question, Sabs. Short answer: if (a) you think of your value purely in terms of the amount of welfare you can generate, (b) you think about welfare in terms of the intensities of pleasures and pains, (c) you’re fine with treating pleasures and pains symmetrically and aggregating them accordingly, and (d) you ignore indirect effects of benefitting humans vs. nonhumans, then you’re right about the key takeaway. Of course, you might not want to make those assumptions! So it’s really important to separate what should, in my view, be a fairly plausible empirical hypothesis—that the intensities of many animals’ pleasures and pains are pretty similar to the intensities of humans’ pleasures and pains—from all the philosophical assumptions that allow us to move from that fairly plausible empirical hypothesis to a highly controversial philosophical conclusion about how much you matter.
I think you should put this in big letters on the graph and that Peter should write it in his tweet thread. Currently this is going to get misunderstood and since you can predict this, I suggest it’s your responsibility to avoid it.
That graph and all tables need to be hard to share without the provisos you’ve given here.
Added clarification to Twitter thread—thanks
Thanks, Nathan. This is a good point.
In particular Edouard of Our World In Data said that they really care about their graphs being understood well and that when they see a graph being mistaken or with a bad legend they change it.
I think this is the right approach to ensure that graphs are shared with context.
I’ve redone the summary image, Nathan. Thanks again for recommending this.
Really appreciate this thread ^. I’m impressed that something misleading got pointed out by Nathan/Sabs and then was immediately improved.
Minor comment: I’d maybe re-title the image to something like “For each species, an estimate of their welfare range” or “Estimated welfare ranges per year of life of different species” ? I find “Placeholder Welfare Range Estimates (Life Years)” somewhat hard to parse. Although having written this, I’m not sure that my suggestions are better.
(And thanks for writing the post and working on this project!)
Good of you to say, Lizka. Thanks.
Re: the title of the image, that’s a helpful suggestion. I’m genuinely unsure what’s best. The most accurate title would be something like, “Welfare range estimates by species for welfare-to-DALYs-averted conversions,” but that doesn’t win any awards for accessibility.
It’s also per period of time, and humans live much longer than chickens.
ok. Well I don’t actually care about how much I think I matter (obviously the answer is “an enormous amount”), what I really care about is how much you think I matter, or how much the median EA thinks I matter. How many of these four assumptions you listed do you actually believe? If you do believe some of them, then presumably in your eyes I am worth some relatively low number of chickens, right? What happens if my neck is on the block and you have the choice between sacrificing me or wringing the necks of 100 chickens? That’s the really important key question here.
Hi Sabs. We can discuss this a bit in a comment thread, but the issues here are complicated. If you’d like to have a conversation, I’m happy to chat. Please DM me for a link to my calendar.
Brief replies to your questions:
I think you matter an enormous amount too. I am not saying this facetiously. It’s probably the thing I believe most deeply.
I don’t know how much the median EA thinks you matter.
I’m unsure about all four assumptions. However, I’m also unsure about their practical importance. You might not be comfortable with the results of any cross-species cost-effectiveness analysis.
If it’s you or a hundred chickens, I’d save you. I’d also save my children over a hundred (human) strangers. I don’t think this means that my children realize more welfare than those strangers. Likewise, I don’t think you realize 100x more welfare than a chicken can.
I think it’s also helpful to empathise the other way around too when working on these thought-experiments. Species-membership is merely a shortcut for speaking about typical cognitive and hedonic capacities in this report, species itself is irrelevant. You might be thinking that prioritising the torture of 1000 chickens over the life of one human being doesn’t make you feel valued as much as you should be.
But it could be the other way around in the real life as well. An illness could befall on us or our loved ones. It could very much be the case that my sister had cognitive/hedonic capacities comparable to a pig. I wouldn’t feel very much valued if my sister being tortured for a year was considered to be less of a deal compared to averting the 10 minutes long headache of a typical human being in this case.
I will respond with my interpretation of the report, so that the author might correct me to help me understand it better.
If you ask “If we have an option between preventing the birth of Sabs versus preventing the birth of an average chicken, how many chickens is Sabs worth?” then Sabs might be worth −10 chickens since chickens have net negative lives whereas you (hopefully) have a net positive life.
If you ask “Let’s compare a maximally happy Sabs and maximally happy chickens, how many chickens is Sabs worth?”, I don’t think these estimates respond to that either. It might be the case that chickens have a very large welfare range, but this is mostly because they have a potential for feeling excruciating pain even though their best lives are not that good.
I think you need to complement this research with “how much the badness of average experiences of animals compare with each other” to answer your question. This report by Rethink Priorities seems to be based on the range between the worst and the best experiences for each species.
This is exactly right, Emre. We are not commenting on the average amount of value or disvalue that any particular kind of individual adds to the world. Instead, we’re trying to estimate how much value different kinds of individuals could add to the world. You then need to go do the hard work of assessing individuals’ actual welfare levels to make tradeoffs. But that’s as it should be. There’s already been a lot of work on welfare assessment; there’s been much less work on how to interpret the significance of those welfare assessments in cross-species decision-making. We’re trying to advance the latter conversation.
Thank you for the prompt reply Bob. Just to be clear, I am happy about the scope of this project and am impressed by its quality. I do not intend to criticise the report for being mindful about its scope.
Didn’t take it that way at all! I appreciate your taking the time to comment and help clarify what we’ve done.