Thanks for sharing, Aditya! Relatedly, Faunalytics has estimates of the number of animal lives and living time per kg and portion of food.
I think increasing the consumption of animal-based foods is beneficial due to increasing the welfare of wild animals way more than it decreases the welfare of farmed animals. I estimate School Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals. I calculate those animals have a welfare range of 0.324 %, 1.79 %, and 3.09 % of that of silkworms, which implies a very low capacity for welfare on an individual basis, but I believe increasing the consumption of animal-based foods increases the living time of soil animals so much that effects on them still dominate those on farmed animals. I estimate buying beef decreases the living time of those soil animals by 95.8 M animal-years per $.
Iāve strong downvoted not because I believe @Vasco Grilošø doesnāt have a decent argument, but because I think posting āwhat about the downstream effect of xā as a reply on every thread is often counterproductive to the core discussion that posterās are trying trying to have.
Even more so because @Vasco Griloās opinion on farmed animal welfare has changed in the last ?6 months or soābefore that he would have pushed in the other direction. I think its great to have these well thought out opinions and discuss them as distinct post (as Vasco does), but I donāt think dropping the meat eating problem/ānematode effect on a lot of human and animal welfare threads is helpful.
Otherwise every discussion risks descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.
Thanks, Nick. I have upvoted your comment because I appreciate when people share the rationale for their strong down or upvotes. I guess (with low confidence) my comment may still be valuable at least to people who have not noted my point about increasing the consumption of animal-based foods in my related post, which is only at the end of the summary, raising awareness for impacts on soil animals, and normalising discussion about these. The major downsise is that many people like you already know my point, and do not like the repetition.
I think this critique is stronger as applied to other posts in which Vascoās comment runs a more significant risk of derailing the original posterās topic and intended discussion. Here, I think Vascoās point can be understood as somewhat complementary to the original idea. If dairy is not that bad, then the possibility that anti-dairy advocacy could have undesirable downstream effects on other animals may be an additional reason for deprioritizing such advocacy. In contrast, I think posting a comment like this in (e.g.) a global-health thread runs an elevated risk of the ādiscussion . . . descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.ā
(Copying my response from Hive with some edits) Thanks again for sharing the Faunalytics post I wasnāt aware of it, itās super cool!
I came across your EA forum post on that matter, I love that you arenāt afraid to think outside the box and while I do take wild animal suffering seriously, I question: - how much can these tiny organisms suffer, if they even can? - even if they felt the slightest of pain (let alone suffering), I think that focussing on these organisms may be a strategic blunder. Getting buy in for any of these ideas is nearly impossible IMO and might harm farm animals who we know with much higher certainty do suffer on factory farms.
For example there may be tardigrades living ON you!! can they suffer? (a creature with 100 neurons) or a similar one like tunicate also ~100 neurons, they canāt even move as adults! (they are used as a seafood alternative in many parts of the world)
Thanks for sharing, Aditya! Relatedly, Faunalytics has estimates of the number of animal lives and living time per kg and portion of food.
I think increasing the consumption of animal-based foods is beneficial due to increasing the welfare of wild animals way more than it decreases the welfare of farmed animals. I estimate School Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals. I calculate those animals have a welfare range of 0.324 %, 1.79 %, and 3.09 % of that of silkworms, which implies a very low capacity for welfare on an individual basis, but I believe increasing the consumption of animal-based foods increases the living time of soil animals so much that effects on them still dominate those on farmed animals. I estimate buying beef decreases the living time of those soil animals by 95.8 M animal-years per $.
Iāve strong downvoted not because I believe @Vasco Grilošø doesnāt have a decent argument, but because I think posting āwhat about the downstream effect of xā as a reply on every thread is often counterproductive to the core discussion that posterās are trying trying to have.
Even more so because @Vasco Griloās opinion on farmed animal welfare has changed in the last ?6 months or soābefore that he would have pushed in the other direction. I think its great to have these well thought out opinions and discuss them as distinct post (as Vasco does), but I donāt think dropping the meat eating problem/ānematode effect on a lot of human and animal welfare threads is helpful.
Otherwise every discussion risks descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.
Thanks, Nick. I have upvoted your comment because I appreciate when people share the rationale for their strong down or upvotes. I guess (with low confidence) my comment may still be valuable at least to people who have not noted my point about increasing the consumption of animal-based foods in my related post, which is only at the end of the summary, raising awareness for impacts on soil animals, and normalising discussion about these. The major downsise is that many people like you already know my point, and do not like the repetition.
I think this critique is stronger as applied to other posts in which Vascoās comment runs a more significant risk of derailing the original posterās topic and intended discussion. Here, I think Vascoās point can be understood as somewhat complementary to the original idea. If dairy is not that bad, then the possibility that anti-dairy advocacy could have undesirable downstream effects on other animals may be an additional reason for deprioritizing such advocacy. In contrast, I think posting a comment like this in (e.g.) a global-health thread runs an elevated risk of the ādiscussion . . . descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.ā
(Copying my response from Hive with some edits)
Thanks again for sharing the Faunalytics post I wasnāt aware of it, itās super cool!
I came across your EA forum post on that matter, I love that you arenāt afraid to think outside the box and while I do take wild animal suffering seriously, I question:
- how much can these tiny organisms suffer, if they even can?
- even if they felt the slightest of pain (let alone suffering), I think that focussing on these organisms may be a strategic blunder. Getting buy in for any of these ideas is nearly impossible IMO and might harm farm animals who we know with much higher certainty do suffer on factory farms.
For example there may be tardigrades living ON you!! can they suffer? (a creature with 100 neurons) or a similar one like tunicate also ~100 neurons, they canāt even move as adults! (they are used as a seafood alternative in many parts of the world)