Yeah well a lot of neglectedness discourse does end up being “here’s a big number, here’s a small number, therefore neglected” without asking whether those numbers actually inform anyone’s marginal decision? I think shrimp welfare is also interesting because the bottleneck isn’t “people who care about shrimp don’t know it’s important” it’s that very few people care about shrimp at all.
One thing I’d find useful is more on how to handle cases where something is at the edge of your circle because of empirical uncertainty rather than moral uncertainty. I might be unsure whether to include shrimp because I’m uncertain about their sentience (empirical), or because I’m uncertain how to weigh their interests even if sentient (moral). These feel like they should cash out differently. The first suggests investing in research, the latte4 suggests the “neglected because few include them” logic you allude to.
Yeah well a lot of neglectedness discourse does end up being “here’s a big number, here’s a small number, therefore neglected” without asking whether those numbers actually inform anyone’s marginal decision? I think shrimp welfare is also interesting because the bottleneck isn’t “people who care about shrimp don’t know it’s important” it’s that very few people care about shrimp at all.
One thing I’d find useful is more on how to handle cases where something is at the edge of your circle because of empirical uncertainty rather than moral uncertainty. I might be unsure whether to include shrimp because I’m uncertain about their sentience (empirical), or because I’m uncertain how to weigh their interests even if sentient (moral). These feel like they should cash out differently. The first suggests investing in research, the latte4 suggests the “neglected because few include them” logic you allude to.