Why do you think excruciating pain is 10k as intense as disabling pain? If I use these conversion factors (p. 30) instead, chicken welfare campaigns seem to win.
The guesses from Laura Duffy you link to say exruciating pain is 60 to 150 times as intense as fully healthy life (“1 year of excruciating pain = 60 to 150 DALYs”). These imply 9.6 min (= 24*60/150) to 24 min (= 24*60/60) of excruciating pain would be needed to neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life. Do you think this is reasonable? Excruciating pain is defined as follows by Welfare Footprint Project (WFP; emphasis mine):
All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible.
Some more clarification from Cynthia Schuck-Paim, WFP’s scientific director:
Examples [of excruciating pain] would include severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture.
Intuitively, I feel like 1 s of excruciating pain per day every day would make my (roughly fully healthy) life neutral, supposing it did not have any effects outside that second. As I say in my cost-effectiveness analysis of HSI:
My assumptions for the pain intensities imply each of the following individually neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life:
10 days (= 1⁄0.1) of annoying pain.
1 day of hurtful pain.
2.40 h (= 24⁄10) of disabling pain.
0.864 s (= 24*60^2/(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain.
A high bar to beat would be Shrimp Welfare Project
Agreed, Joey:
Why do you think excruciating pain is 10k as intense as disabling pain? If I use these conversion factors (p. 30) instead, chicken welfare campaigns seem to win.
Hi Tejas,
The guesses from Laura Duffy you link to say exruciating pain is 60 to 150 times as intense as fully healthy life (“1 year of excruciating pain = 60 to 150 DALYs”). These imply 9.6 min (= 24*60/150) to 24 min (= 24*60/60) of excruciating pain would be needed to neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life. Do you think this is reasonable? Excruciating pain is defined as follows by Welfare Footprint Project (WFP; emphasis mine):
Some more clarification from Cynthia Schuck-Paim, WFP’s scientific director:
Intuitively, I feel like 1 s of excruciating pain per day every day would make my (roughly fully healthy) life neutral, supposing it did not have any effects outside that second. As I say in my cost-effectiveness analysis of HSI: