Hi Vasco â your die roll example is helpful for illustrating my point, thanks!
So there is a sense in which I am âunaware or only coarsely awareâ of not only âsome possible worldsâ, but practically all possible worlds. However, I can still precisely estimate the probability of outcomes of rolling a dice.
When youâre predicting the âoutcomeâ of a die roll in the typical sense, all you care about is the number of pips on the upward-facing side of the die. So all the physical variations between the trajectories of the die rolls donât matter at this level of abstraction. You donât have coarse awareness here relative to the class of outcomes you care about.
By contrast (as I note in this section), impartial altruists intrinsically care about an extremely detailed set of information: how much welfare is instantiated across all of space and time. With respect to that class of value systems, we do have (severely) coarse awareness of the relevant outcomes. You might think we can precisely estimate the value of these coarse outcomes âbetter than chanceâ in some sense (more on this below), but at the part of the post youâre replying to, Iâm just making this more fundamental point: âSince we lack access to possible worlds, our precise guesses donât directly come from our value function v, but from some extra model of the hypotheses weâre aware of (and unaware of).â Do you agree with that claim?
still informative, at least negligibly so, as long as they are infinitesimaly better than chance
I recommend checking out the second post, especially thesetwo sections, for why I donât think this is valid.
That post also spells out my response to your claim âIt is obvious for me the 2nd option is much better.â I donât think anything is âobviousâ when making judgments about overall welfare across the cosmos. (ETA: I do think itâs obvious that you shouldnât do option 1 all-things-considered, because of various moral norms other than impartial altruism that scream against that option.) Interested to hear if thereâs something in your claim that that post fails to address.
You might think we can precisely estimate the value of these coarse outcomes âbetter than chanceâ in some sense (more on this below)
Yes, I do.
You might think we can precisely estimate the value of these coarse outcomes âbetter than chanceâ in some sense (more on this below), but at the part of the post youâre replying to, Iâm just making this more fundamental point: âSince we lack access to possible worlds, our precise guesses donât directly come from our value function v, but from some extra model of the hypotheses weâre aware of (and unaware of).â Do you agree with that claim?
Yes, I agree.
I donât think anything is âobviousâ when making judgments about overall welfare across the cosmos.
I think the vast majority of actions have a probability of being beneficial only slightly above 50 %, as I guess they decrease wild-animal-years, and wild animals have negative lives with a probability slightly above 50 %. However, I would still say there are actions which are robustly beneficial in expectation, such as donating to SWP. It is possible SWP is harmful, but I still think donating to it is robustly better than killing my family, friends, and myself, even in terms of increasing impartial welfare.
I recommend checking out the second post, especially thesetwo sections, for why I donât think this is valid.
I would still say there are actions which are robustly beneficial in expectation, such as donating to SWP. It is possible SWP is harmful, but I still think donating to it is robustly better than killing my family, friends, and myself, even in terms of increasing impartial welfare.
Itâs kinda funny to reread this 6 months later. Since then, the sign of your precise best guess flipped twice, right? You argued somewhere (canât find the post) that shrimp welfare actually was slightly net bad after estimating that it increases soil animal populations. Later, you started weakly believing animal farming actually decreases the number of soil nematodes (which morally dominate in your view), which makes shrimp welfare (weakly) good again.
(Just saying this to check if thatâs accurate because thatâs interesting. Iâm not trying to lead you into a trap where youâd be forced to buy imprecise credences or retract the main opinion you defend in this comment thread. As I suggest in this comment, letâs maybe discuss stuff like this on a better occasion.)
Since then, the sign of your precise best guess flipped twice, right?
I only looked into the impact of improving the conditions of farmed shrimps (in particular, by electrically stunning them) accounting for shrimps and soil animals in a recent post. However, I mentioned on June 28 âI am glad farmed shrimp are the animal-based food from Poore and Nemecek (2018) requiring the least agricultural land per food-kg. This means replacing farmed shrimp with other animal-based foods tendentially increases cropland, thus having the added benefit of increasing the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtailsâ. I was thinking that increasing cropland would decrease soil-animal-years. I commented on November 3 I am now uncertain about whether increasing agricultural land (cropland or pastures) increases or decreases soil-animal-years.
I have not spent much time figuring out whether my best guess is that increasing agricultural land increases or decreases soil-animal-years. I am sufficiently uncertain to believe the priority is further research on the welfare of soil animals, and what increases or decreases their population.
However, I would still say there are actions which are robustly beneficial in expectation, such as donating to SWP.
I was a bit overconfident here, although I flagged I may be wrong (see the 1st sentence of the quote just below). I do not know whether electrically stunning farmed shrimps, which has been the primary outcome of SWP, increases or decreases welfare due to uncertain effects on soil animals.
It is possible SWP is harmful, but I still think donating to it is robustly better than killing my family, friends, and myself, even in terms of increasing impartial welfare.
I still very much stand by this. Killing my family, friends, and myself would not help get more research on how to increase the welfare of soil animals.
Hi Vasco â your die roll example is helpful for illustrating my point, thanks!
When youâre predicting the âoutcomeâ of a die roll in the typical sense, all you care about is the number of pips on the upward-facing side of the die. So all the physical variations between the trajectories of the die rolls donât matter at this level of abstraction. You donât have coarse awareness here relative to the class of outcomes you care about.
By contrast (as I note in this section), impartial altruists intrinsically care about an extremely detailed set of information: how much welfare is instantiated across all of space and time. With respect to that class of value systems, we do have (severely) coarse awareness of the relevant outcomes. You might think we can precisely estimate the value of these coarse outcomes âbetter than chanceâ in some sense (more on this below), but at the part of the post youâre replying to, Iâm just making this more fundamental point: âSince we lack access to possible worlds, our precise guesses donât directly come from our value function v, but from some extra model of the hypotheses weâre aware of (and unaware of).â Do you agree with that claim?
I recommend checking out the second post, especially these two sections, for why I donât think this is valid.
That post also spells out my response to your claim âIt is obvious for me the 2nd option is much better.â I donât think anything is âobviousâ when making judgments about overall welfare across the cosmos. (ETA: I do think itâs obvious that you shouldnât do option 1 all-things-considered, because of various moral norms other than impartial altruism that scream against that option.) Interested to hear if thereâs something in your claim that that post fails to address.
Thanks for clarifying, Anthony.
Yes, I do.
Yes, I agree.
I think the vast majority of actions have a probability of being beneficial only slightly above 50 %, as I guess they decrease wild-animal-years, and wild animals have negative lives with a probability slightly above 50 %. However, I would still say there are actions which are robustly beneficial in expectation, such as donating to SWP. It is possible SWP is harmful, but I still think donating to it is robustly better than killing my family, friends, and myself, even in terms of increasing impartial welfare.
Thanks. I will do that.
Itâs kinda funny to reread this 6 months later. Since then, the sign of your precise best guess flipped twice, right? You argued somewhere (canât find the post) that shrimp welfare actually was slightly net bad after estimating that it increases soil animal populations. Later, you started weakly believing animal farming actually decreases the number of soil nematodes (which morally dominate in your view), which makes shrimp welfare (weakly) good again.
(Just saying this to check if thatâs accurate because thatâs interesting. Iâm not trying to lead you into a trap where youâd be forced to buy imprecise credences or retract the main opinion you defend in this comment thread. As I suggest in this comment, letâs maybe discuss stuff like this on a better occasion.)
I found this funny!
I only looked into the impact of improving the conditions of farmed shrimps (in particular, by electrically stunning them) accounting for shrimps and soil animals in a recent post. However, I mentioned on June 28 âI am glad farmed shrimp are the animal-based food from Poore and Nemecek (2018) requiring the least agricultural land per food-kg. This means replacing farmed shrimp with other animal-based foods tendentially increases cropland, thus having the added benefit of increasing the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtailsâ. I was thinking that increasing cropland would decrease soil-animal-years. I commented on November 3 I am now uncertain about whether increasing agricultural land (cropland or pastures) increases or decreases soil-animal-years.
I have not spent much time figuring out whether my best guess is that increasing agricultural land increases or decreases soil-animal-years. I am sufficiently uncertain to believe the priority is further research on the welfare of soil animals, and what increases or decreases their population.
I was a bit overconfident here, although I flagged I may be wrong (see the 1st sentence of the quote just below). I do not know whether electrically stunning farmed shrimps, which has been the primary outcome of SWP, increases or decreases welfare due to uncertain effects on soil animals.
I still very much stand by this. Killing my family, friends, and myself would not help get more research on how to increase the welfare of soil animals.