Thanks for your comment. This is a complicated topic, so it’s easy for well-meaning folks to talk past one another. For that reason, I’ll encourage you again to reach out to schedule a call to discuss in further detail.
Since this area is so under-explored, I think there is a large range of reasonable expectations about the outcome of the sort of project I outline in the post. I can try to give you some insight into why I’m more optimistic than you are, but that’s not to say that your pessimism is outside the range of reasonable attitudes one could take to the project.
One reason I’m optimistic is because in my own limited experience exploring questions of comparative moral value, the returns have thus far been quite high. Let me give just one example.
The subjective experience of time is plausibly an important determinant of realized welfare and capacity for welfare. There are plausible empirical proxies we can use to approximate differences in the subjective experience of time. Critical flicker-fusion frequency (CFF) is an especially well-studied measure, so I’ll use it in this example, but I think there are probably better metrics. (I’m currently writing a report on this subject; stay tuned for details.) If CFF tracks the subjective experience of time, then higher values represent more subjective moments per objective unit of time. The typical human has a max CFF threshold of around 60 Hz. Chickens have a max CFF threshold around 87 Hz. Honey bees have a max CFF threshold of around 200 Hz. So that’s an example of a way we might directly compare three important animals on a metric that might track an important welfare determinant.
Now I’m not saying CFF is a perfect measure of the subjective experience of time. It’s not. In fact, my best guess is that there’s only a ~30% chance it tracks the subjective experience of time under the best conditions. (Again, see my forthcoming report for extensive discussion.) But the illustrative point here is that there may exist empirically measurable proxies for features we care about that allow us to compare capacity for welfare across species. If we don’t at least try to locate such proxies, we’ll never know if they exist. Given the stakes, it seems reasonable to me to devote a small fraction of our collective resources to think more carefully about these very difficult issues.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your comment. This is a complicated topic, so it’s easy for well-meaning folks to talk past one another. For that reason, I’ll encourage you again to reach out to schedule a call to discuss in further detail.
Since this area is so under-explored, I think there is a large range of reasonable expectations about the outcome of the sort of project I outline in the post. I can try to give you some insight into why I’m more optimistic than you are, but that’s not to say that your pessimism is outside the range of reasonable attitudes one could take to the project.
One reason I’m optimistic is because in my own limited experience exploring questions of comparative moral value, the returns have thus far been quite high. Let me give just one example.
The subjective experience of time is plausibly an important determinant of realized welfare and capacity for welfare. There are plausible empirical proxies we can use to approximate differences in the subjective experience of time. Critical flicker-fusion frequency (CFF) is an especially well-studied measure, so I’ll use it in this example, but I think there are probably better metrics. (I’m currently writing a report on this subject; stay tuned for details.) If CFF tracks the subjective experience of time, then higher values represent more subjective moments per objective unit of time. The typical human has a max CFF threshold of around 60 Hz. Chickens have a max CFF threshold around 87 Hz. Honey bees have a max CFF threshold of around 200 Hz. So that’s an example of a way we might directly compare three important animals on a metric that might track an important welfare determinant.
Now I’m not saying CFF is a perfect measure of the subjective experience of time. It’s not. In fact, my best guess is that there’s only a ~30% chance it tracks the subjective experience of time under the best conditions. (Again, see my forthcoming report for extensive discussion.) But the illustrative point here is that there may exist empirically measurable proxies for features we care about that allow us to compare capacity for welfare across species. If we don’t at least try to locate such proxies, we’ll never know if they exist. Given the stakes, it seems reasonable to me to devote a small fraction of our collective resources to think more carefully about these very difficult issues.