I co-founded 2 of and have worked at another of the 6 organizations that have worked on wild animal welfare with an EA lens. I’ve been writing or thinking about these things since around 2014. Here are a handful of thoughts related to this:
I think almost none of the people working in the space professionally are full on negative utilitarians. Probably many are very focused on reducing suffering (myself included), but pretty much everyone really likes animals—that’s why they work on making their lives better!
In 2018, I helped organize the first wild animal welfare summit for the space. We unanimously agreed that this perspective was an unproductive one, and I don’t think any group working in the space today (Wild Animal Initiative, Animal Ethics, Rethink Priorities) holds a view that is this strong. So I think in general, the space has been moving away from anything like what you’re discussing.
Speaking from personal experience, I was much more sympathetic to this sort of view when I first got involved. Wild animal suffering is really overwhelming, especially if you care about animals. For me, it was extremely sad to learn how horrible lives are for many animals (especially those who die young). But, the research I’ve done and read has both made me a lot less sympathetic to a totalizing view of wild animals of this sort (e.g. I think many more wild animals than I previously thought live good lives), and less sympathetic to taking such a radical action. I think that this problem seems really hard at first, so it’s easy to point to an intervention that provides conclusive results. But, research has generally made me think that we are both wrong about how bad many (though definitely not most) animal lives are, and how tractable these problems are. I think there are much more promising avenues for reducing wild animal suffering available.
People on the internet talk about reducing populations as being the project of wild animal welfare. My impression is that most or all of those folks don’t actually work on wild animal welfare. And the groups working in the space aren’t really engaged in the online conversation, probably in part because of disagreement with this view.
I hope that there are no negative utilitarians who hold 0 doubts about their ethics. I guess if I were a full negative utilitarian, or something, I probably wouldn’t be 100% confident in that belief. And given that irreversibility of the intervention you describe, if I wasn’t 100% confident, I’d be really hesitant to do anything like that. Instead, improving welfare is acceptable under a variety of frameworks, including negative utilitarianism, so it seems like we’d probably be inclined to just improve animal’s lives.
Overall, I think this concern is pretty unwarranted, though understandable given the online discussion. Everyone I know who works on wild animal welfare cares about animals a lot, and the space has been burdened by these concerns despite them not really referring to views held by folks who lead the space.
Also, one note:
[they will] conclude that the majority of animals on Earth would be better off dead
I think it’s pretty important to differentiate between people thinking animals would be better off dead (a view held by no one I know), and thinking that some animals who will live will have better lives if we reduce juvenile mortality via reduced fertility, and through the latter, that we would prevent a lot of very bad, extremely short lives. We already try to non-lethally reduce populations of many wild animals via fertility control (e.g. mosquitos, screwworms, horses, cats). These projects are mainstream (outside of EA), widely accepted as good, and for some of them, done for the explicit benefit of the animals who are impacted.
But, the research I’ve done and read has both made me a lot less sympathetic to a totalizing view of wild animals of this sort (e.g. I think many more wild animals than I previously thought live good lives), and less sympathetic to taking such a radical action.
This is very interesting to me.
Is there an accessible summary anywhere of the research underlying this shift in viewpoint?
Would you say this is a general shift in opinion in the WAW field as a whole?
Is there an accessible summary anywhere of the research underlying this shift in viewpoint?
I don’t think there has been a summary, but that sounds like a good thing to write. But to quickly summarize things that are probably most informing this:
I’m less confident in negative utilitarianism. I was never that confident in it, and feel much less so now. I don’t think this is due to novel research, but just my views changing upon reflecting on my own life. I still broadly probably have an asymmetric view of welfare, but am more sympathetic to weighing positive experiences to some degree (or maybe have just become a moral particularist). I also think if I am less confident in my ethics (which them changing over time indicates I ought to be), then taking reversible actions robust under a variety of moral frameworks that seem plausibly good seems like a better approach.
I feel a lot less confident that I know how long most animals’ subjective experiences last, in part due to research like Jason Schukraft on the subjective experience of time. I think the best argument that most animal lives are net-negative is something like “most animals die really young before they accumulate any positive welfare, so the painfulness of their death outweighs basically everything else.” This seems less true if their experiences are subjectively longer than they appear. I also have realized that I have a possibly bad intuition that 30 years of good experiences + 10 years of suffering is better than 3 minutes of good experiences and 1 minute of suffering, partially informing this.
I think learning more about specific animals has made me a lot less confident that we can broadly say things like “r-selectors mostly have bad lives.”
Would you say this is a general shift in opinion in the WAW field as a whole?
When I started working in wild animal welfare, basically no one with a bio/ecology background worked in the space. Now many do. Probably many of those people accurately believe that most things we wrote / argued historically were dramatic oversimplifications (because they definitely were). I’m not sure if opinion is shifting, but there is a lot more actual expertise now, and I’d guess that many of those new experts have more accurate views of animals’ lives, which I believe ought to incline one to be a least a bit skeptical of some claims made early in the space.
Fertility control is the kind of intervention very few people would have a problem with as long as all the consequences were thought through, I guess it’s everything else in the space of possible solutions that makes me nervous.
I think the entire space of dramatically intervening in natural ecosystems in order to align them with our own moral preferences should make anyone nervous (including fertility control , that could go horribly wrong), especially when the space includes “wiping out animals”.
I’m not sure I’d call it one thing exactly, that covers everything from total extinction of all life to specific extinction of some species to merely human management of existing populations. The last option is something we already do to some extent, deer aren’t going to hunt themselves and we already wiped out most of the wolves.
The fact that I consider some plausible solutions repellent is not a reason not to look into the space, I’m just trying to explain why I’m averse to it.
One thing that is easy to forget is that we are already dramatically intervening in natural ecosystems without paying attention to the impact on animals. E.g. any city, road, mine, etc. is a pretty massive intervention. Or just using any conventionally grown foods probably impacts tons of insects via pesticides. Or contributing to climate change. At a minimum, ensuring those things are done in a way that is kinder way for animals seems like a goal that anyone could be on board with (assuming it is an effective use of charitable money, etc.).
I do also think that most things like you describe are already broadly done without animal welfare in mind. For example, we could probably come up with less harmful deer population management strategies than hunting, and we’ve already attempted to wipe out species (e.g. screwworms, probably mosquitos at some point in the future).
I co-founded 2 of and have worked at another of the 6 organizations that have worked on wild animal welfare with an EA lens.
I don’t recall there being this many EA-aligned orgs working on wild animal welfare! :O Which ones were they?
I know Utility Farm and Wild Animal Suffering Research merged into Wild Animal Initiative. There’s Animal Ethics and Rethink Priorities. Were the other orgs sub-projects of these?
Animal Charity Evaluators is the 6th, which did some surveying and research work in the space. I guess that counts. My phrasing was ambiguous. There have been 6, I co-founded 2 (UF and WAI), worked at another (Rethink Priorities).
I also think Abe was right to count ACE as working in wild animal welfare before, because their early explorations directly contributed to the formation of the field. For example, the intern that carried out their 2016 survey on attitudes toward wild animal welfare is now a researcher at Wild Animal Initiative. (You can see some of Luke Hecht’s recent work here.)
I co-founded 2 of and have worked at another of the 6 organizations that have worked on wild animal welfare with an EA lens. I’ve been writing or thinking about these things since around 2014. Here are a handful of thoughts related to this:
I think almost none of the people working in the space professionally are full on negative utilitarians. Probably many are very focused on reducing suffering (myself included), but pretty much everyone really likes animals—that’s why they work on making their lives better!
In 2018, I helped organize the first wild animal welfare summit for the space. We unanimously agreed that this perspective was an unproductive one, and I don’t think any group working in the space today (Wild Animal Initiative, Animal Ethics, Rethink Priorities) holds a view that is this strong. So I think in general, the space has been moving away from anything like what you’re discussing.
Speaking from personal experience, I was much more sympathetic to this sort of view when I first got involved. Wild animal suffering is really overwhelming, especially if you care about animals. For me, it was extremely sad to learn how horrible lives are for many animals (especially those who die young). But, the research I’ve done and read has both made me a lot less sympathetic to a totalizing view of wild animals of this sort (e.g. I think many more wild animals than I previously thought live good lives), and less sympathetic to taking such a radical action. I think that this problem seems really hard at first, so it’s easy to point to an intervention that provides conclusive results. But, research has generally made me think that we are both wrong about how bad many (though definitely not most) animal lives are, and how tractable these problems are. I think there are much more promising avenues for reducing wild animal suffering available.
People on the internet talk about reducing populations as being the project of wild animal welfare. My impression is that most or all of those folks don’t actually work on wild animal welfare. And the groups working in the space aren’t really engaged in the online conversation, probably in part because of disagreement with this view.
I hope that there are no negative utilitarians who hold 0 doubts about their ethics. I guess if I were a full negative utilitarian, or something, I probably wouldn’t be 100% confident in that belief. And given that irreversibility of the intervention you describe, if I wasn’t 100% confident, I’d be really hesitant to do anything like that. Instead, improving welfare is acceptable under a variety of frameworks, including negative utilitarianism, so it seems like we’d probably be inclined to just improve animal’s lives.
Overall, I think this concern is pretty unwarranted, though understandable given the online discussion. Everyone I know who works on wild animal welfare cares about animals a lot, and the space has been burdened by these concerns despite them not really referring to views held by folks who lead the space.
Also, one note:
I think it’s pretty important to differentiate between people thinking animals would be better off dead (a view held by no one I know), and thinking that some animals who will live will have better lives if we reduce juvenile mortality via reduced fertility, and through the latter, that we would prevent a lot of very bad, extremely short lives. We already try to non-lethally reduce populations of many wild animals via fertility control (e.g. mosquitos, screwworms, horses, cats). These projects are mainstream (outside of EA), widely accepted as good, and for some of them, done for the explicit benefit of the animals who are impacted.
This is very interesting to me.
Is there an accessible summary anywhere of the research underlying this shift in viewpoint?
Would you say this is a general shift in opinion in the WAW field as a whole?
I don’t think there has been a summary, but that sounds like a good thing to write. But to quickly summarize things that are probably most informing this:
I’m less confident in negative utilitarianism. I was never that confident in it, and feel much less so now. I don’t think this is due to novel research, but just my views changing upon reflecting on my own life. I still broadly probably have an asymmetric view of welfare, but am more sympathetic to weighing positive experiences to some degree (or maybe have just become a moral particularist). I also think if I am less confident in my ethics (which them changing over time indicates I ought to be), then taking reversible actions robust under a variety of moral frameworks that seem plausibly good seems like a better approach.
I feel a lot less confident that I know how long most animals’ subjective experiences last, in part due to research like Jason Schukraft on the subjective experience of time. I think the best argument that most animal lives are net-negative is something like “most animals die really young before they accumulate any positive welfare, so the painfulness of their death outweighs basically everything else.” This seems less true if their experiences are subjectively longer than they appear. I also have realized that I have a possibly bad intuition that 30 years of good experiences + 10 years of suffering is better than 3 minutes of good experiences and 1 minute of suffering, partially informing this.
I think learning more about specific animals has made me a lot less confident that we can broadly say things like “r-selectors mostly have bad lives.”
When I started working in wild animal welfare, basically no one with a bio/ecology background worked in the space. Now many do. Probably many of those people accurately believe that most things we wrote / argued historically were dramatic oversimplifications (because they definitely were). I’m not sure if opinion is shifting, but there is a lot more actual expertise now, and I’d guess that many of those new experts have more accurate views of animals’ lives, which I believe ought to incline one to be a least a bit skeptical of some claims made early in the space.
Fertility control is the kind of intervention very few people would have a problem with as long as all the consequences were thought through, I guess it’s everything else in the space of possible solutions that makes me nervous.
Isn’t it only one thing in the space of possible solutions that makes you nervous: wiping out animals?
I think the entire space of dramatically intervening in natural ecosystems in order to align them with our own moral preferences should make anyone nervous (including fertility control , that could go horribly wrong), especially when the space includes “wiping out animals”.
I’m not sure I’d call it one thing exactly, that covers everything from total extinction of all life to specific extinction of some species to merely human management of existing populations. The last option is something we already do to some extent, deer aren’t going to hunt themselves and we already wiped out most of the wolves.
The fact that I consider some plausible solutions repellent is not a reason not to look into the space, I’m just trying to explain why I’m averse to it.
One thing that is easy to forget is that we are already dramatically intervening in natural ecosystems without paying attention to the impact on animals. E.g. any city, road, mine, etc. is a pretty massive intervention. Or just using any conventionally grown foods probably impacts tons of insects via pesticides. Or contributing to climate change. At a minimum, ensuring those things are done in a way that is kinder way for animals seems like a goal that anyone could be on board with (assuming it is an effective use of charitable money, etc.).
I do also think that most things like you describe are already broadly done without animal welfare in mind. For example, we could probably come up with less harmful deer population management strategies than hunting, and we’ve already attempted to wipe out species (e.g. screwworms, probably mosquitos at some point in the future).
This comment should clearly have more karma than mine.
I don’t recall there being this many EA-aligned orgs working on wild animal welfare! :O Which ones were they?
I know Utility Farm and Wild Animal Suffering Research merged into Wild Animal Initiative. There’s Animal Ethics and Rethink Priorities. Were the other orgs sub-projects of these?
You have 5⁄6 there already, so we’re only missing one.
I think Abraham suggested there were at least 8: he co-founded 2 and worked at another 6.
He said he worked at “another of the 6”. (Emphasis mine)
i.e. He co-founded 2 (UF and WAI) and worked at another 1, out of 6 total.
(I don’t know what the 6th is)
Woops, ya, you’re right.
Animal Charity Evaluators is the 6th, which did some surveying and research work in the space. I guess that counts. My phrasing was ambiguous. There have been 6, I co-founded 2 (UF and WAI), worked at another (Rethink Priorities).
In the time since Abraham wrote this comment, Animal Charity Evaluators recommended one of the orgs he started as a Top Charity! So ACE definitely counts now, and Abe needs to update his resume.
I also think Abe was right to count ACE as working in wild animal welfare before, because their early explorations directly contributed to the formation of the field. For example, the intern that carried out their 2016 survey on attitudes toward wild animal welfare is now a researcher at Wild Animal Initiative. (You can see some of Luke Hecht’s recent work here.)