Thanks for your reply! I can see your perspective.
On your last point, but future-focused WAW interventions, I’m thinking of things that you mention in the tractability section of your post:
Here is a list of ways we could work on this issue (directly copied from the post by saulius[9]):
“To reduce the probability of humans spreading of wildlife in a way that causes a lot of suffering, we could:
Directly argue about caring about WAW if humans ever spread wildlife beyond Earth
Lobby to expand the application of an existing international law that tries to protect other planets from being contaminated with Earth life by spacecrafts to planets outside of our solar system.
Continue building EA and WAW communities to ensure that there will be people in the future who care about WAW.
Spread the general concern for WAW (e.g., through WAW documentaries, outreach to academia).”
That is, things aimed at improving (wild) animals’ lives in the event of space colonisation.
Relatedly, I don’t think you necessarily need to show that “interfering with nature could be positive for welfare”, because not spreading wild animals in space wouldn’t be interfering with nature. That said, it would be useful in case we do spread wild animals, then interventions to improve their welfare might look more like interfering with nature, so I agree it could be helpful.
My personal guess is that a competent organisation that eventually advocates for humanity to care about the welfare of all sentient beings would be good to exist. It would probably have to start by doing a lot of research into people’s existing beliefs and doing testing to see what kinds of interventions get people to care. I’m sure there must be some existing research about how to get people to care about animals.
I’m not sure either way how important this would be compared with other priorities, though. I believe some existing organisations believe the best way to reduce the expected amount of future suffering is to focus on preventing the cases where the amount of future suffering is very large. I haven’t thought about it, but that could be right.
Thanks for your reply! I can see your perspective.
On your last point, but future-focused WAW interventions, I’m thinking of things that you mention in the tractability section of your post:
That is, things aimed at improving (wild) animals’ lives in the event of space colonisation.
Relatedly, I don’t think you necessarily need to show that “interfering with nature could be positive for welfare”, because not spreading wild animals in space wouldn’t be interfering with nature. That said, it would be useful in case we do spread wild animals, then interventions to improve their welfare might look more like interfering with nature, so I agree it could be helpful.
My personal guess is that a competent organisation that eventually advocates for humanity to care about the welfare of all sentient beings would be good to exist. It would probably have to start by doing a lot of research into people’s existing beliefs and doing testing to see what kinds of interventions get people to care. I’m sure there must be some existing research about how to get people to care about animals.
I’m not sure either way how important this would be compared with other priorities, though. I believe some existing organisations believe the best way to reduce the expected amount of future suffering is to focus on preventing the cases where the amount of future suffering is very large. I haven’t thought about it, but that could be right.