So what should one do in a situation like this? Well, we can take our cue from people in finance. What do finance people do when there is a risky business that might fail but might become worth a lot? They diversify! They invest in a hundred companies like this, knowing that though 90 of them may fail, the rest will succeed enough to make it worth it.
Investing in many companies to increase the chance of a big win makes sense because each investment has a potentially very large upside, but limited downside. In contrast, I believe charitable donations can have both a large upside and downside. For example, my best guess is that GiveWellâs top charities increase the welfare of soil animals 610 k times as much as they increase the welfare of humans in expectation, but that the probability of them increasing welfare is only slightly above 50 %. They decrease soil-animal-years, but my probability for soil animals having negative lives is only slightly below 50 %.
But itâs also partly for reasons of moral uncertaintyâwhile I am a utilitarian, it wouldnât be completely shocking if deontology turned out to be right. If deontology is right and animals have rights, then eating meat is about as bad as being a serial killer.
It seems pretty clear to me that more animal farming decreases animal deaths due to increasing animal-years of soil animals way more than it decreases the animal-years of farmed animals, and soil animals having shorter lives than farmed animals (ânumber of deathsâ = âanimal-yearsâ/ââlife expectancyâ). Moreover, I also think animal farming decreases animal deaths weighted by the absolute value of the expected welfare per animal-year of the animals involved. I estimate animal farming changes the welfare of soil animals much more than it decreases the welfare of farmed animals.
My guess would be others are the same; if people could only give to one charity, probably very few people would go all in on the shrimp.
@Benthamâs Bulldog, why farmed shrimps instead of soil animals? I estimate soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes have 8.89 M (= 1.76*10^23/â(1.98*10^16)) times as many neurons in total as farmed shrimps, and I think the total number of neurons underestimates the importance of soil animals relative to shrimps. You assume you agree with this too? In the post linked above, you say the âestimate that shrimp suffer about 3.1% as intensely as humansâ âis a highly conservative estimateâ, whereas Rethink Priorities (RP) estimates shrimps have 10^-6 as many neurons as humans (see Table 5 here).
What matters is increasing welfare as much as possible per $, and this need not imply prioritising increasing the welfare of the animals accounting for the vast majority of total welfare in absolute terms. However, I estimate the Shrimp Welfare Projectâs (SWPâs) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increases the welfare of shrimps only 0.0292 % as cost-effectively as the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Researchâs (CEARCHâs) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) increases the welfare of humans, and soil animals due to it decreasing 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $.
Suppose there are three possibilities which entail surprising moral conclusions. Suppose you give them each 30% odds. You might be tempted to dismiss them because any individual one is likely false. But the odds are ~2/â3 that one of them is right. So if you diversify, if you take lots of high risk but high reward morally speculative actions, odds are decent that some of your actions will do lots of good!
Agreed. At the same time, taking more actions also means a higher chance of some doing lots of harm.
Thanks for the post, Matthew.
Investing in many companies to increase the chance of a big win makes sense because each investment has a potentially very large upside, but limited downside. In contrast, I believe charitable donations can have both a large upside and downside. For example, my best guess is that GiveWellâs top charities increase the welfare of soil animals 610 k times as much as they increase the welfare of humans in expectation, but that the probability of them increasing welfare is only slightly above 50 %. They decrease soil-animal-years, but my probability for soil animals having negative lives is only slightly below 50 %.
It seems pretty clear to me that more animal farming decreases animal deaths due to increasing animal-years of soil animals way more than it decreases the animal-years of farmed animals, and soil animals having shorter lives than farmed animals (ânumber of deathsâ = âanimal-yearsâ/ââlife expectancyâ). Moreover, I also think animal farming decreases animal deaths weighted by the absolute value of the expected welfare per animal-year of the animals involved. I estimate animal farming changes the welfare of soil animals much more than it decreases the welfare of farmed animals.
@Benthamâs Bulldog, why farmed shrimps instead of soil animals? I estimate soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes have 8.89 M (= 1.76*10^23/â(1.98*10^16)) times as many neurons in total as farmed shrimps, and I think the total number of neurons underestimates the importance of soil animals relative to shrimps. You assume you agree with this too? In the post linked above, you say the âestimate that shrimp suffer about 3.1% as intensely as humansâ âis a highly conservative estimateâ, whereas Rethink Priorities (RP) estimates shrimps have 10^-6 as many neurons as humans (see Table 5 here).
What matters is increasing welfare as much as possible per $, and this need not imply prioritising increasing the welfare of the animals accounting for the vast majority of total welfare in absolute terms. However, I estimate the Shrimp Welfare Projectâs (SWPâs) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increases the welfare of shrimps only 0.0292 % as cost-effectively as the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Researchâs (CEARCHâs) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) increases the welfare of humans, and soil animals due to it decreasing 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $.
Agreed. At the same time, taking more actions also means a higher chance of some doing lots of harm.