Another potentially useful takeaway is that these interventions Vasco considered, or at least diet change interventions like Veganuary and School Plates, are not robustly positive in expectation, when considering exactly the near-term animal effects. So why would we support them?
These interventions don’t seem justified by their direct cost-effectiveness, unless we have adequate reason to single out those effects and ignore or discount the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates. We’d need a good reason to single out the direct effects, or refer to even more indirect or longer term reasons (e.g. moral circle expansion, space colonization and s-risks).
I personally only care about the expected (posterior) impact. One can get a smaller expected impact by positing a more certain prior impact, but I do not know what would be the justification for being a priori very confident about the impact being 0.
I agree the interventions I considered are not robustly beneficial in expectation. However, I would not single out interventions changing the consumption of animal-based food (among the ones I analysed, all besides the broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns, and HSI). I estimate broiler welfare and cage-free corporate campaigns benefit soil animals 444 and 28.2 times as much as they benefit chickens.
Jim Buhler clarified what would be needed to neglect the uncertain nearterm effects of interventions targeting animals. I think the effects after 100 years or so are negligible, but that people neglecting nearterm effects due to their uncertainty should neglect more uncertain longterm effects even more.
Another potentially useful takeaway is that these interventions Vasco considered, or at least diet change interventions like Veganuary and School Plates, are not robustly positive in expectation, when considering exactly the near-term animal effects. So why would we support them?
These interventions don’t seem justified by their direct cost-effectiveness, unless we have adequate reason to single out those effects and ignore or discount the effects on wild terrestrial invertebrates. We’d need a good reason to single out the direct effects, or refer to even more indirect or longer term reasons (e.g. moral circle expansion, space colonization and s-risks).
Thanks, Michael.
I personally only care about the expected (posterior) impact. One can get a smaller expected impact by positing a more certain prior impact, but I do not know what would be the justification for being a priori very confident about the impact being 0.
I agree the interventions I considered are not robustly beneficial in expectation. However, I would not single out interventions changing the consumption of animal-based food (among the ones I analysed, all besides the broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns, and HSI). I estimate broiler welfare and cage-free corporate campaigns benefit soil animals 444 and 28.2 times as much as they benefit chickens.
Jim Buhler clarified what would be needed to neglect the uncertain nearterm effects of interventions targeting animals. I think the effects after 100 years or so are negligible, but that people neglecting nearterm effects due to their uncertainty should neglect more uncertain longterm effects even more.