Generally, I’ll say that even when I disagree with Vasco, I admire his willingness to go where the evidence/​logic points to, even if the conclusion thus arrived at is extremely unwelcome (e.g. the meat eater problem for saving human lives, or the wild animal problem for the opposite).
FWIW CEARCH has previously looked into the meat eater problem and tried to quantify the downside for animal welfare (in equivalent human DALY terms) when saving a human life, while also trying to adjust for additional considerations such as wild animal suffering and bias (since we’re keenly aware that self-interest/​preconceived moral values pushes us to reason in a certain direction). Our conclusion is that saving human lives is net positive, but not as high as it would be if not for the meat eater problem.
I’m not sure how much I would update on Vasco’s argument (convenient as it is for our GHD work), and my main uncertainties relate both to (a) neuron count (I wouldn’t rely on LLMs to spit out the correct answer here, because even beyond the usual risks of hallucinations when there is a correct answer written out there, the true value for this probably doesn’t even exist in the written literature); and (b) the neuron/​welfare relationship (though Vasco’s regression is pretty interesting, and a reasonably good first step).
Overall, I think more research in this area (and more funding for such research) is clearly merited.
FWIW CEARCH has previously looked into the meat eater problem and tried to quantify the downside for animal welfare (in equivalent human DALY terms) when saving a human life, while also trying to adjust for additional considerations such as wild animal suffering and bias (since we’re keenly aware that self-interest/​preconceived moral values pushes us to reason in a certain direction). Our conclusion is that saving human lives is net positive, but not as high as it would be if not for the meat eater problem.
Have you considered sharing these calculations? Did you conclude that the impact on humans is larger than that on wild animals? I estimate the impact of donating to HIPF on wild animals is 87.6 k times that on humans.
(a) neuron count (I wouldn’t rely on LLMs to spit out the correct answer here, because even beyond the usual risks of hallucinations when there is a correct answer written out there, the true value for this probably doesn’t even exist in the written literature)
For my assumption that cropland replaces tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, 93.1 % of the increase in the welfare of soil animals comes from decreasing nematode-years, and Gemini’s guess for the number of neurons of the modal soil nematode, a L1 juvenile caenorhabditis elegans, is 79.5 % (= 240/​302) of that of an adult one established in the literature.
Overall, I think more research in this area (and more funding for such research) is clearly merited.
I think our estimates rely too much on subjective input that I don’t think it would be useful to others, though I will say that the RP estimates helped eliminate one major source of uncertainty (even if too much remains).
I wonder whether your reasons for keeping the calculations private should also make you want to keep the results private (although you only shared them in a qualitative way), as these follow from the same speculative inputs. I suggested sharing the calculations because I assume it would take little time, and could slightly update the views of a few people, and yours too if people comment on them.
I think people who have otherwise not looked into this might reasonably update a bit on the fact that someone (us) looked into this, but fundamentally, they shouldn’t update a lot or let this (or anything, really) change their minds without having looked into this themselves and satisfied their own worldview.
And to give more information on why I’d rather not publish our human-animal welfare comparisons—I try to regularly review this issue (e.g. there was a considerable revision after the RP moral weights were published, and a smaller one earlier this year), but to not touch this outside those regular revisions (I tend to let myself get sucked into spending too much time thinking about fundamental normative and epistemic issues in a way that is probably not very useful).
Publishing and inviting public suggestions/​comments/​criticisms would almost certainly cause me to spend too much time on this right now, in a way that would be detrimental to our other ongoing research (mainly effective giving) and our outreach/​donor advisory work with non-EA donors (mainly GHD, some AW). On this issue, I’d rather just wait and see what is published this year (and your work is certainly very relevant/​useful) and then re-evaluate at one go, maybe in early 2026.
Generally, I’ll say that even when I disagree with Vasco, I admire his willingness to go where the evidence/​logic points to, even if the conclusion thus arrived at is extremely unwelcome (e.g. the meat eater problem for saving human lives, or the wild animal problem for the opposite).
FWIW CEARCH has previously looked into the meat eater problem and tried to quantify the downside for animal welfare (in equivalent human DALY terms) when saving a human life, while also trying to adjust for additional considerations such as wild animal suffering and bias (since we’re keenly aware that self-interest/​preconceived moral values pushes us to reason in a certain direction). Our conclusion is that saving human lives is net positive, but not as high as it would be if not for the meat eater problem.
I’m not sure how much I would update on Vasco’s argument (convenient as it is for our GHD work), and my main uncertainties relate both to (a) neuron count (I wouldn’t rely on LLMs to spit out the correct answer here, because even beyond the usual risks of hallucinations when there is a correct answer written out there, the true value for this probably doesn’t even exist in the written literature); and (b) the neuron/​welfare relationship (though Vasco’s regression is pretty interesting, and a reasonably good first step).
Overall, I think more research in this area (and more funding for such research) is clearly merited.
Thanks, Joel!
Have you considered sharing these calculations? Did you conclude that the impact on humans is larger than that on wild animals? I estimate the impact of donating to HIPF on wild animals is 87.6 k times that on humans.
For my assumption that cropland replaces tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, 93.1 % of the increase in the welfare of soil animals comes from decreasing nematode-years, and Gemini’s guess for the number of neurons of the modal soil nematode, a L1 juvenile caenorhabditis elegans, is 79.5 % (= 240/​302) of that of an adult one established in the literature.
Agreed!
Hi Vasco,
I think our estimates rely too much on subjective input that I don’t think it would be useful to others, though I will say that the RP estimates helped eliminate one major source of uncertainty (even if too much remains).
Cheers,
Joel
Hi Joel,
I wonder whether your reasons for keeping the calculations private should also make you want to keep the results private (although you only shared them in a qualitative way), as these follow from the same speculative inputs. I suggested sharing the calculations because I assume it would take little time, and could slightly update the views of a few people, and yours too if people comment on them.
I think people who have otherwise not looked into this might reasonably update a bit on the fact that someone (us) looked into this, but fundamentally, they shouldn’t update a lot or let this (or anything, really) change their minds without having looked into this themselves and satisfied their own worldview.
And to give more information on why I’d rather not publish our human-animal welfare comparisons—I try to regularly review this issue (e.g. there was a considerable revision after the RP moral weights were published, and a smaller one earlier this year), but to not touch this outside those regular revisions (I tend to let myself get sucked into spending too much time thinking about fundamental normative and epistemic issues in a way that is probably not very useful).
Publishing and inviting public suggestions/​comments/​criticisms would almost certainly cause me to spend too much time on this right now, in a way that would be detrimental to our other ongoing research (mainly effective giving) and our outreach/​donor advisory work with non-EA donors (mainly GHD, some AW). On this issue, I’d rather just wait and see what is published this year (and your work is certainly very relevant/​useful) and then re-evaluate at one go, maybe in early 2026.
Thanks for clarifying, Joel! That makes a lot of sense.