Thanks so much for your engagement and consideration. I appreciate your openness about the need for more work in tackling these difficult questions.
our current estimates of the gap between marginal animal and human funding opportunities is very different from the one in your post – within one order of magnitude, not three.
Holden has stated that “It seems unlikely that the ratio would be in the precise, narrow range needed for these two uses of funds to have similar cost-effectiveness.” As OP continues researching moral weights, OP’s marginal cost-effectiveness estimates for FAW and GHW may eventually differ by several orders of magnitude. If this happens, would OP substantially update their allocations between FAW and GHW?
Along with OP’s neartermist cause prioritization, your comment seems to imply that OP’s moral weights are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than Rethink’s. If that’s true, that is a massive difference which (depending upon the details) could have big implications for how EA should allocate resources between FAW charities (e.g. chickens vs shrimp) as well as between FAW and GHW.
Does OP plan to reveal their moral weights and/or their methodology for deriving them? It seems that opening up the conversation would be quite beneficial to OP’s objective of furthering moral weight research until uncertainty is reduced enough to act upon.
I’d like to reiterate how much I appreciate your openness to feedback and your reply’s clarification of OP’s disagreements with my post. That said, this reply doesn’t seem to directly answer this post’s headline questions:
How much weight does OP’s theory of welfare place on pleasure and pain, as opposed to nonhedonic goods?
Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human’s welfare than one unit of another animal’s welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?
How would OP’s views have to change for OP to prioritize animal welfare in neartermism?
Though you have no obligation to directly answer these questions, I really wish you would. A transparent discussion could update OP, Rethink, and many others on this deeply important topic.
Thanks again for taking the time to engage, and for everything you and OP have done to help others :)
As OP continues researching moral weights, OP’s marginal cost-effectiveness estimates for FAW and GHW may eventually differ by several orders of magnitude. If this happens, would OP substantially update their allocations between FAW and GHW?
We’re unsure conceptually whether we should be trying to equalize marginal returns between FAW and GHW or whether we should continue with our current approach of worldview diversification. If we end up feeling confident that we should be equalizing marginal returns and there are large differences (we’re uncertain about both pieces right now), I expect that we’d adjust our allocation strategy. But this wouldn’t happen immediately; we think it’s important to give program staff notice well in advance of any pending allocation changes.
Your comment seems to imply that OP’s moral weights are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than Rethink’s.
I’m wary of sharing precise numbers now, because we’re highly uncertain about all three of the parameters I listed and I don’t want people to over-update on our views. But the 2 orders of magnitude are coming from a combination of the three parameters I listed and not just moral weights. We may share more information on our views and methodology later, but I can’t commit to a particular date or any specifics on what we’ll publish.
I unfortunately won’t have time to engage with further responses for now, but whenever we publish research relevant to these topics, we’ll be sure to cross-post it on the Forum!
We think these discussions are valuable, and I hope we’ll be able to contribute more of our own takes down the line. But we’re working on a lot of other research we hope to publish, and I can’t say with certainty when we’ll share more on this topic.
Hi Emily,
Thanks so much for your engagement and consideration. I appreciate your openness about the need for more work in tackling these difficult questions.
Holden has stated that “It seems unlikely that the ratio would be in the precise, narrow range needed for these two uses of funds to have similar cost-effectiveness.” As OP continues researching moral weights, OP’s marginal cost-effectiveness estimates for FAW and GHW may eventually differ by several orders of magnitude. If this happens, would OP substantially update their allocations between FAW and GHW?
Along with OP’s neartermist cause prioritization, your comment seems to imply that OP’s moral weights are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than Rethink’s. If that’s true, that is a massive difference which (depending upon the details) could have big implications for how EA should allocate resources between FAW charities (e.g. chickens vs shrimp) as well as between FAW and GHW.
Does OP plan to reveal their moral weights and/or their methodology for deriving them? It seems that opening up the conversation would be quite beneficial to OP’s objective of furthering moral weight research until uncertainty is reduced enough to act upon.
I’d like to reiterate how much I appreciate your openness to feedback and your reply’s clarification of OP’s disagreements with my post. That said, this reply doesn’t seem to directly answer this post’s headline questions:
How much weight does OP’s theory of welfare place on pleasure and pain, as opposed to nonhedonic goods?
Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human’s welfare than one unit of another animal’s welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?
How would OP’s views have to change for OP to prioritize animal welfare in neartermism?
Though you have no obligation to directly answer these questions, I really wish you would. A transparent discussion could update OP, Rethink, and many others on this deeply important topic.
Thanks again for taking the time to engage, and for everything you and OP have done to help others :)
Hi Ariel,
As OP continues researching moral weights, OP’s marginal cost-effectiveness estimates for FAW and GHW may eventually differ by several orders of magnitude. If this happens, would OP substantially update their allocations between FAW and GHW?
We’re unsure conceptually whether we should be trying to equalize marginal returns between FAW and GHW or whether we should continue with our current approach of worldview diversification. If we end up feeling confident that we should be equalizing marginal returns and there are large differences (we’re uncertain about both pieces right now), I expect that we’d adjust our allocation strategy. But this wouldn’t happen immediately; we think it’s important to give program staff notice well in advance of any pending allocation changes.
Your comment seems to imply that OP’s moral weights are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than Rethink’s.
I’m wary of sharing precise numbers now, because we’re highly uncertain about all three of the parameters I listed and I don’t want people to over-update on our views. But the 2 orders of magnitude are coming from a combination of the three parameters I listed and not just moral weights. We may share more information on our views and methodology later, but I can’t commit to a particular date or any specifics on what we’ll publish.
I unfortunately won’t have time to engage with further responses for now, but whenever we publish research relevant to these topics, we’ll be sure to cross-post it on the Forum!
We think these discussions are valuable, and I hope we’ll be able to contribute more of our own takes down the line. But we’re working on a lot of other research we hope to publish, and I can’t say with certainty when we’ll share more on this topic.
Thank you again for the critique!