I upvoted the article, it makes good points. But personally, I will mostly continue treating insects as moderately important. Your article implicitly assumes pure utilitarianism. Utilitarian calculations play an important role in my decision-making, but I don’t listen to them religiously. If I did, then there might still be more important things than insect suffering.
For example, I once thought that the conclusion of utilitarianism is that we should try to turn everything in the universe into hedonium (a homogeneous substance with limited consciousness, which is in a constant state of supreme bliss), even if our chances of success are minuscule (I see someone else argued for it here). But then I realised that I’m just not excited about that. So I concluded that I’m not a pure utilitarian. This argument about insects also makes me feel like I’m not a pure utilitarian.
I think the argument that insect suffering is of overwhelming importance doesn’t actually require pure utilitarianism. It probably works for any form of aggregationist, and maybe even partially agreggationist ethics. Indeed, itsw not clear the problem isn’t worse under certain formations of deontological views, where discounting the life of an insect relative to a human would be unacceptable
Imagine delegates of views you find actually significantly appealing. (At that level, I think the original post here is correct and your delegates will either use all their caring capacity for helping insects, or insects will be unimportant to them.) Instead of picking one of these delegates, you go with their compromise solution that might look something like, “Ask yourself if you have a comparative advantage at helping insects—If not, stay on the lookout for low-effort ways to help insects and low-effort ways to avoid causing great harm to the cause of helping insects, but otherwise do things that other delegates would prioritize where you have more of a comparative advantage.”
You can have a moral parliament view not just as an approach to moral uncertainty, but also as your approach to undecidedness about what to do in light of all the arguments and appeals you find yourself confronted with. There’s no guarantee that the feeling of undecidedness will go away under ideal conditions for moral reflection, in which case it would probably feel arbitrary and unsatisfying to go with an overall solution that says “insects matter by far the most” or “insects hardly matter at all as a cause area.”
I upvoted the article, it makes good points. But personally, I will mostly continue treating insects as moderately important. Your article implicitly assumes pure utilitarianism. Utilitarian calculations play an important role in my decision-making, but I don’t listen to them religiously. If I did, then there might still be more important things than insect suffering.
For example, I once thought that the conclusion of utilitarianism is that we should try to turn everything in the universe into hedonium (a homogeneous substance with limited consciousness, which is in a constant state of supreme bliss), even if our chances of success are minuscule (I see someone else argued for it here). But then I realised that I’m just not excited about that. So I concluded that I’m not a pure utilitarian. This argument about insects also makes me feel like I’m not a pure utilitarian.
I think the argument that insect suffering is of overwhelming importance doesn’t actually require pure utilitarianism. It probably works for any form of aggregationist, and maybe even partially agreggationist ethics. Indeed, itsw not clear the problem isn’t worse under certain formations of deontological views, where discounting the life of an insect relative to a human would be unacceptable
Imagine delegates of views you find actually significantly appealing. (At that level, I think the original post here is correct and your delegates will either use all their caring capacity for helping insects, or insects will be unimportant to them.) Instead of picking one of these delegates, you go with their compromise solution that might look something like, “Ask yourself if you have a comparative advantage at helping insects—If not, stay on the lookout for low-effort ways to help insects and low-effort ways to avoid causing great harm to the cause of helping insects, but otherwise do things that other delegates would prioritize where you have more of a comparative advantage.”
If you view all of morality as “out there” and objective, this approach might seem a bit unsatisfying because—on that view—either insects matter, or they don’t. But if Brian Tomasik is right about consciousness and if morality even as an effective altruist is still quite a lot about finding out “What motivates me to get up in the morning?,” rather than “What’s the one objectively important aim that all effective altruists should pursue?,” then saulius’s point goes through, IMO.
You can have a moral parliament view not just as an approach to moral uncertainty, but also as your approach to undecidedness about what to do in light of all the arguments and appeals you find yourself confronted with. There’s no guarantee that the feeling of undecidedness will go away under ideal conditions for moral reflection, in which case it would probably feel arbitrary and unsatisfying to go with an overall solution that says “insects matter by far the most” or “insects hardly matter at all as a cause area.”
Totally agree.