I think a polished version of this calculator could be an effective way to illustrate the importance of animal suffering.
That said, all of your assumptions differ from ACE’s (see here, here). Why is that?
Also, the spreadsheet assumes that all animal lives are pig lives.
Given that the average pig is more intelligent than the average wild shellfish, farmed shellfish, wild fish, farmed fish, or chicken (all more impacted by animal advocacy according to ACE), your calculator will be unfairly more striking to meat eaters who believe consciousness and intelligence are correlated.
My assumptions differ as I used the stated average cost to reduce a year of suffering from Doing Good Better, which was, from memory, 60 cents.
As I’ve said elsewhere, this was a very quick proof of concept to get a feel for whether developing this into a website or something similar would be useful—which is why there are a lot of assumptions. But even so, with an appropriate footnote, I’m not convinced that having a lot of assumptions is a bad thing. The object is to reduce suffering, not to have a ‘down to the wire’ rigorous calculator. Given that, I’m not even convinced that biasing the results, e.g. by making it more striking, would be bad either, again with the appropriate footer. Such techniques are extremely common in the advertising space, and for good reason—they work.
As an aside, you’re right about the pigs, but the ACE calculator shows 180 chickens are also spared a life of suffering by best guess estimate, at a cost of 28 cents a chicken. As chickens are also quite intelligent, might you suggest switching the calculator to chickens?
I think a polished version of this calculator could be an effective way to illustrate the importance of animal suffering.
That said, all of your assumptions differ from ACE’s (see here, here). Why is that?
Also, the spreadsheet assumes that all animal lives are pig lives.
Given that the average pig is more intelligent than the average wild shellfish, farmed shellfish, wild fish, farmed fish, or chicken (all more impacted by animal advocacy according to ACE), your calculator will be unfairly more striking to meat eaters who believe consciousness and intelligence are correlated.
Thanks for your feedback Mac.
My assumptions differ as I used the stated average cost to reduce a year of suffering from Doing Good Better, which was, from memory, 60 cents.
As I’ve said elsewhere, this was a very quick proof of concept to get a feel for whether developing this into a website or something similar would be useful—which is why there are a lot of assumptions. But even so, with an appropriate footnote, I’m not convinced that having a lot of assumptions is a bad thing. The object is to reduce suffering, not to have a ‘down to the wire’ rigorous calculator. Given that, I’m not even convinced that biasing the results, e.g. by making it more striking, would be bad either, again with the appropriate footer. Such techniques are extremely common in the advertising space, and for good reason—they work.
As an aside, you’re right about the pigs, but the ACE calculator shows 180 chickens are also spared a life of suffering by best guess estimate, at a cost of 28 cents a chicken. As chickens are also quite intelligent, might you suggest switching the calculator to chickens?