Executive summary: Estimating the relative moral value of human vs. animal welfare involves deep philosophical and empirical uncertainties, but is crucial for cause prioritization between human- and animal-focused interventions.
Key points:
Estimating animals’ capacity for welfare is challenging, requiring choices about welfare theories, evidence of variation, and quantification methods.
Existing animal welfare assessment tools lack cardinal scales needed to compare across species, limiting their usefulness for prioritization.
Alternatives to expected value maximization and simple welfare aggregation could significantly impact cause prioritization decisions.
Key research priorities include: developing non-hedonic welfare estimates, eliciting preferences on moral weights, creating scalar trait measures, determining pain intensity tradeoffs, and incorporating animal welfare into policy analysis.
Resolving uncertainties about welfare propensities, alternatives to welfare ranges, and whether farm animal lives are net negative could refine prioritization methods.
Approaches for generating moral weights under moral uncertainty are needed to inform decision-making given remaining philosophical disagreements.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Estimating the relative moral value of human vs. animal welfare involves deep philosophical and empirical uncertainties, but is crucial for cause prioritization between human- and animal-focused interventions.
Key points:
Estimating animals’ capacity for welfare is challenging, requiring choices about welfare theories, evidence of variation, and quantification methods.
Existing animal welfare assessment tools lack cardinal scales needed to compare across species, limiting their usefulness for prioritization.
Alternatives to expected value maximization and simple welfare aggregation could significantly impact cause prioritization decisions.
Key research priorities include: developing non-hedonic welfare estimates, eliciting preferences on moral weights, creating scalar trait measures, determining pain intensity tradeoffs, and incorporating animal welfare into policy analysis.
Resolving uncertainties about welfare propensities, alternatives to welfare ranges, and whether farm animal lives are net negative could refine prioritization methods.
Approaches for generating moral weights under moral uncertainty are needed to inform decision-making given remaining philosophical disagreements.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.