I personally think one should only care about expected welfare, so I would be happy to act based on a very low probability of animals’ welfare being sufficiently high to matter. What is your criteria for caring about animals of a given species? Do you have a minimum probability of sentience? If so, why that specific value? RP estimated a probability of 6.8 % of adult nematodes being sentient. People routinely care about events which are much less likely, although the welfare of nematodes conditional on sentience would still have to be sufficiently high for them to matter conditional on sentience.
I confirm the post is not parody. I found that remark funny in a good way.
I would also be curious to hear from people enthusiastic about invertebrate welfare, but not nematode welfare. RP estimated a probability of 8.2 % of silkworms being sentient, which is just 1.21 (= 0.082/​0.068) times their probability of adult nematodes being sentient.
Hi Henry,
I personally think one should only care about expected welfare, so I would be happy to act based on a very low probability of animals’ welfare being sufficiently high to matter. What is your criteria for caring about animals of a given species? Do you have a minimum probability of sentience? If so, why that specific value? RP estimated a probability of 6.8 % of adult nematodes being sentient. People routinely care about events which are much less likely, although the welfare of nematodes conditional on sentience would still have to be sufficiently high for them to matter conditional on sentience.
I confirm the post is not parody. I found that remark funny in a good way.
I would also be curious to hear from people enthusiastic about invertebrate welfare, but not nematode welfare. RP estimated a probability of 8.2 % of silkworms being sentient, which is just 1.21 (= 0.082/​0.068) times their probability of adult nematodes being sentient.