For example, even if we get AI agents to not book tickets to bullfights, I don’t see it as a win from a consequentialist perspective (that’s not too controversial a take?).
Why would this be? Ending bullfights may be a small victory in the short term as there are relatively few animals are involved. But still a victory.
However I’d argue it would be a bigger win in value shifts. As long as people enjoy watching a bull tortured in an arena it’s hard to imagine that they will be very sympathetic to animal welfare ideas. Likewise if a system thinks it’s ok to book tickets for bullfights/ propose them without being asked it’s hard to imagine that they deeply care about animal welfare. I’m not an expert in AI by any measure so I’m very interested in pushback from you on this thesis.
Lastly many resources at the moment go into fighting bullfight. If systems start to cancel them and bullfights get eventually forbidden those resources are freed to work in other areas of interest.
I would say I feel good when I hear that a given place has banned bullfighting, and find the practice horrifying. My claim is in the context of the animal welfare movement and how it should spend its resources.
Bullfighting causes intense suffering to a few thousand bulls, for a few hours each. This makes it a very small issue in a consequentialist, most likely less than 0.000001% of the suffering caused by the egg industry on a yearly basis. Then, the counterfactual impact of a single spectator at a bullfight on the outcome is probably low. It doesn’t seem like something altruistic resources are well-spent on.
Meanwhile, I don’t see attitude change as a clear a step toward a better world for animals. “A better world for animals” is a hideously complicated thing, and currently has little to no correlation with people’s attitudes. French people burnt cats alive for fun in the 16th century, but factory farming didn’t exist and human-caused suffering to animals was surely <1% of what it was today. A more pro-animal nation may contain more animal suffering (more pesticides, eating smaller and more numerous animals...). And I currently have no reason to believe that there is less total suffering in countries that have banned bullfighting entirely.
I totally agree on the consequentialist part. Regarding value change, I find Oscar Horta’s line of reasoning quite compelling. Value changes might take some time to materialize into actual improvements, but when they do, the effects tend to be long-lasting. For example, we still struggle with certain ideas of Descartes more than 400 years after his death.
On the positive side, the only reason why cage-free campaigns can be successful is that people genuinely care. When it comes to AI, my personal opinion is that values are incredibly important. If these systems become even more powerful than they already are, I would certainly prefer them to think that bullfights are appalling, rather than deciding it is a good idea to book tickets for them without even being asked.
Hi Hans. I wonder whether the bulls may have positive lives despite the suffering they experience in the bullfights. In addition, the effects of producing their feed on soil invertebrates may be much larger or smaller than the effects on the bulls. I estimate that producing 1 kg of beef changes the living time of soil invertebrates by 1.39 billion animal-years, and of soil arthropodsby 27.8 M animal-years.
I guess this comes back to the old net-negative-lives debate. If you apply the logic of the logger, having more bulls around is good. Otherwise it’s likely bad, even if a particular bull has a net positive live.
Why would this be? Ending bullfights may be a small victory in the short term as there are relatively few animals are involved. But still a victory.
However I’d argue it would be a bigger win in value shifts. As long as people enjoy watching a bull tortured in an arena it’s hard to imagine that they will be very sympathetic to animal welfare ideas. Likewise if a system thinks it’s ok to book tickets for bullfights/ propose them without being asked it’s hard to imagine that they deeply care about animal welfare. I’m not an expert in AI by any measure so I’m very interested in pushback from you on this thesis.
Lastly many resources at the moment go into fighting bullfight. If systems start to cancel them and bullfights get eventually forbidden those resources are freed to work in other areas of interest.
Thanks for engaging!
I would say I feel good when I hear that a given place has banned bullfighting, and find the practice horrifying. My claim is in the context of the animal welfare movement and how it should spend its resources.
Bullfighting causes intense suffering to a few thousand bulls, for a few hours each. This makes it a very small issue in a consequentialist, most likely less than 0.000001% of the suffering caused by the egg industry on a yearly basis. Then, the counterfactual impact of a single spectator at a bullfight on the outcome is probably low. It doesn’t seem like something altruistic resources are well-spent on.
Meanwhile, I don’t see attitude change as a clear a step toward a better world for animals. “A better world for animals” is a hideously complicated thing, and currently has little to no correlation with people’s attitudes. French people burnt cats alive for fun in the 16th century, but factory farming didn’t exist and human-caused suffering to animals was surely <1% of what it was today. A more pro-animal nation may contain more animal suffering (more pesticides, eating smaller and more numerous animals...). And I currently have no reason to believe that there is less total suffering in countries that have banned bullfighting entirely.
I totally agree on the consequentialist part. Regarding value change, I find Oscar Horta’s line of reasoning quite compelling. Value changes might take some time to materialize into actual improvements, but when they do, the effects tend to be long-lasting. For example, we still struggle with certain ideas of Descartes more than 400 years after his death.
On the positive side, the only reason why cage-free campaigns can be successful is that people genuinely care. When it comes to AI, my personal opinion is that values are incredibly important. If these systems become even more powerful than they already are, I would certainly prefer them to think that bullfights are appalling, rather than deciding it is a good idea to book tickets for them without even being asked.
Hi Hans. I wonder whether the bulls may have positive lives despite the suffering they experience in the bullfights. In addition, the effects of producing their feed on soil invertebrates may be much larger or smaller than the effects on the bulls. I estimate that producing 1 kg of beef changes the living time of soil invertebrates by 1.39 billion animal-years, and of soil arthropods by 27.8 M animal-years.
I guess this comes back to the old net-negative-lives debate. If you apply the logic of the logger, having more bulls around is good. Otherwise it’s likely bad, even if a particular bull has a net positive live.