I don’t think the first one actually tells us much, because I don’t think many of the wild-animal-welfare EAs I know were significantly influenced by the original result.
I’d never heard of it until I saw the talk debunking it.
FWIW, I remember that result (i.e. the paper by Ng) being moderately prominent among (mostly negative-leaning) people I discussed wild animal welfare with in 2016. However, I think they treated it as one of several lines of evidence pointing in the same direction, and so I doubt that learning about this result being wrong would have by itself have changed anyone’s bottom line in an immediately action-guiding way. (I do think it would have made people somewhat less confident that many wild animals’ lives are net bad.)
That being said, there are some other useful insights from that work and surrounding discussion besides correcting the error, e.g. “when the probability of suffering increases, the severity of suffering should decrease”, and this can be applied to animals who are likely to die shortly after being born, which have been part of the focus of wild animal welfare in EA.
I agree. I’m not sure when I first heard about it; it might actually have been Zach pointing out that it was wrong on Facebook, but even if the proof had been correct, it still seemed like it was proving too much, so I think I’d have assumed the assumptions were too strong.
I think that Toward Welfare Biology was, until maybe 2016 or so, the default thing people pointed to (along with Brian Tomasik’s website), as the introductory text to wild animal welfare. I saw it referenced a lot, especially when I started working in the space.
Weren’t that paper and Brian’s work pretty much the only EA-aligned (welfarist/consequentialist) writings on the topic until recently? And Towards Welfare Biology also covers more than just that one result.
I think there were a few other philosophy papers that were sort of EA aligned I think, but yeah, basically just those 2. So maybe it was the default by default.
Matheny and Chan’s (2005) attempted rebuttal of the ‘logic of the larder’ objection to veg*ism also is based on impacts on wild animals, though if I remember correctly they’re mostly using an unexamined premise that their lives are usually worth living in an argument about human diets rather than discussing wild animal welfare in any detail.
There probably are other classics I don’t remember off the top of my head. I’m sure Brian Tomasik or one of the orgs working on wild animal welfare has a bibliography somewhere.
I don’t think the first one actually tells us much, because I don’t think many of the wild-animal-welfare EAs I know were significantly influenced by the original result.
I’d never heard of it until I saw the talk debunking it.
FWIW, I remember that result (i.e. the paper by Ng) being moderately prominent among (mostly negative-leaning) people I discussed wild animal welfare with in 2016. However, I think they treated it as one of several lines of evidence pointing in the same direction, and so I doubt that learning about this result being wrong would have by itself have changed anyone’s bottom line in an immediately action-guiding way. (I do think it would have made people somewhat less confident that many wild animals’ lives are net bad.)
That being said, there are some other useful insights from that work and surrounding discussion besides correcting the error, e.g. “when the probability of suffering increases, the severity of suffering should decrease”, and this can be applied to animals who are likely to die shortly after being born, which have been part of the focus of wild animal welfare in EA.
I agree. I’m not sure when I first heard about it; it might actually have been Zach pointing out that it was wrong on Facebook, but even if the proof had been correct, it still seemed like it was proving too much, so I think I’d have assumed the assumptions were too strong.
Then again, this might be hindsight bias.
I think that Toward Welfare Biology was, until maybe 2016 or so, the default thing people pointed to (along with Brian Tomasik’s website), as the introductory text to wild animal welfare. I saw it referenced a lot, especially when I started working in the space.
Weren’t that paper and Brian’s work pretty much the only EA-aligned (welfarist/consequentialist) writings on the topic until recently? And Towards Welfare Biology also covers more than just that one result.
I think there were a few other philosophy papers that were sort of EA aligned I think, but yeah, basically just those 2. So maybe it was the default by default.
Some of Oscar Horta’s papers also mostly predate EA discourse on wild animals, e.g. his 2010 Debunking the idyllic view of natural processes. And even earlier, in 2003, there was Tyler Cowen’s Policing nature.
Matheny and Chan’s (2005) attempted rebuttal of the ‘logic of the larder’ objection to veg*ism also is based on impacts on wild animals, though if I remember correctly they’re mostly using an unexamined premise that their lives are usually worth living in an argument about human diets rather than discussing wild animal welfare in any detail.
There probably are other classics I don’t remember off the top of my head. I’m sure Brian Tomasik or one of the orgs working on wild animal welfare has a bibliography somewhere.
Pablo Stafforini has a great bibliography of articles on wild animal welfare that includes some earlier work coming from outside the EA space.