Thanks for the post, Matthew! I strongly upvoted it. However, I do not think you mentioned the best case for farming insects, and feeding these to other animals. This will tend to increase cropland, and therefore decrease the number of wild animals, which is beneficial for my best guess that wild animals have negative lives. The effect on wild animals may be larger than those on the farmed insects. I estimate increasing the consumption of shrimp increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 9.39 times as much as it decreases the welfare of shrimp for feed crops replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands (assuming shrimp requires 2.97 mĀ²-year/āfood-kg).
Strong downvoted again. This is an article about āThe lies of big bugā and how the bug industry is misleading people about the good they are doing, and also their financial viability as a business. I donāt think your comment addresses the main points of the article.
If this was a post which focused on questions and tradeoffs between insect welfare and wild animal welfare than I think your comment would be very relevant.
One of the main points of the article is that insect farming is bad for insect welfare, so Vascoās comment seems on-topic enough for me. Maybe the link to that part of the argument could have been stated more clearly.
Maybe it seems repetitive if you see such comments a lot, but then it suggests that main posts are repeatedly neglecting the argument. Perhaps it would be better for main posts just to point out that this argument exists in their caveats and link to a discussion somewhere. If it might change the whole sign of whether something is good or bad, it seems like it should be at least mentioned.
For people like me who only come to read the occasional post, it does feel useful to be reminded of these other perspectives.
Thanks, Nick. I also upvoted your comment again. The post seems to be strongly suggesting that farming insects is harmful, so I think my comment pointing the main way I believe it could be beneficial is appropriate.
Yes I would go even further to say it assumes insect farming is harmful, but I donāt think thatās a good enough justification for a comment challenging that underlying assumptionāas discussing the assumption isnāt the purpose of the post. I would think the same thing about posting an argument for the āmeat-eating problemā on a given global health post, which in a similar vein assumes that saving human lives is good.
I think the best place for these discussions is on posts which specifically address that issue, or events like the Animal welfare vs. Global health debate week where these questions are ever bubbling up.
I donāt think commenting in this way on every (or a random-ish selection) of post that assumes insect farming is harmful is a helpful way to operate and promote healthy discussion on the forum, but I think its reasonable to disagree with me here as well. Maybe the OP might even disagree!
I agree it would not make sense to comment this way in every post or a random selection of posts. However, Matthew (the author of the post) is one of the people I know most sympathetic about considering effects on wild animals, and also has the best guess that wild animals have negative lives (like I do), which makes farming insects tendentially beneficial to wild animals.
It sounds like the benefit under this argument comes from reducing wild land. You could do that without causing lots of other insects (or other farmed animals) to suffer e.g. grow crops and burn them for energy instead, or manage the land to keep insect numbers down. So I donāt find this argument very persuasive that we should think of this as a positive benefit to intensive farming of insects or other animals, even supposing that insects (or other animals) have overall negative lives in the wild. Perhaps this isnāt the right location to discuss this in depth, though.
Thanks for the comment! The benefits from increasing insect farming come from replacing with cropland biomes which have less nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, and therefore decreasing the animal-years of these soil animals. I agree there are more cost-effective ways of achieving this. I have some cost-effectiveness estimates here. However, (counterfactually) decreasing the animal-years of farmed insects would still be harmful if it increased the suffering of wild animals more than it decreased the suffering of farmed animals. Here is an extreme somewhat silly analogy which might help. There are more cost-effective ways of increasing human welfare than giving cash to people in extreme poverty, but millionaires slealing cash from people in extreme poverty is still harmful in the sense of decreasing human welfare.
I think there are at least two relevant aspects hereāthe impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that itās not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insectsāit wouldnāt necessarily become wild, rather it could be used to grow other crops, and thereby have no large effect on wild animal welfare. Rates of deforestation seem to indicate there is plenty of demand for arable land. Also, biofuels seem to be being held back by land availability and worries over these competing with food crops, again potentially acting as a strong source of demand for land. So the effect of removing one source of demand seems complex, and it seems like it may just result in substitution by another type of farming. The marginal effect may be to affect deforestation ratesābut to what degree these are affected by changes in demand for crops is unclear to me.
Re the question of support this gives for insect farming, even if it had an overall positive effect, itās not clear it should be advocated if there would be other uses for that land that would be better e.g. growing biofuels. So it doesnāt clearly make a ācaseā for defending insect farming.
More generally, if an action A involves doing P and Q, where P is good and Q is bad, but there are ways of doing P that donāt involve the harm of Q, then the implication would seem to be to advocate one of those other ways of doing P and not to defend Aāin this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
Thanks for the post, Matthew! I strongly upvoted it. However, I do not think you mentioned the best case for farming insects, and feeding these to other animals. This will tend to increase cropland, and therefore decrease the number of wild animals, which is beneficial for my best guess that wild animals have negative lives. The effect on wild animals may be larger than those on the farmed insects. I estimate increasing the consumption of shrimp increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 9.39 times as much as it decreases the welfare of shrimp for feed crops replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands (assuming shrimp requires 2.97 mĀ²-year/āfood-kg).
Strong downvoted again. This is an article about āThe lies of big bugā and how the bug industry is misleading people about the good they are doing, and also their financial viability as a business. I donāt think your comment addresses the main points of the article.
If this was a post which focused on questions and tradeoffs between insect welfare and wild animal welfare than I think your comment would be very relevant.
One of the main points of the article is that insect farming is bad for insect welfare, so Vascoās comment seems on-topic enough for me. Maybe the link to that part of the argument could have been stated more clearly.
Maybe it seems repetitive if you see such comments a lot, but then it suggests that main posts are repeatedly neglecting the argument. Perhaps it would be better for main posts just to point out that this argument exists in their caveats and link to a discussion somewhere. If it might change the whole sign of whether something is good or bad, it seems like it should be at least mentioned.
For people like me who only come to read the occasional post, it does feel useful to be reminded of these other perspectives.
Thanks, Nick. I also upvoted your comment again. The post seems to be strongly suggesting that farming insects is harmful, so I think my comment pointing the main way I believe it could be beneficial is appropriate.
Yes I would go even further to say it assumes insect farming is harmful, but I donāt think thatās a good enough justification for a comment challenging that underlying assumptionāas discussing the assumption isnāt the purpose of the post. I would think the same thing about posting an argument for the āmeat-eating problemā on a given global health post, which in a similar vein assumes that saving human lives is good.
I think the best place for these discussions is on posts which specifically address that issue, or events like the Animal welfare vs. Global health debate week where these questions are ever bubbling up.
I donāt think commenting in this way on every (or a random-ish selection) of post that assumes insect farming is harmful is a helpful way to operate and promote healthy discussion on the forum, but I think its reasonable to disagree with me here as well. Maybe the OP might even disagree!
I agree it would not make sense to comment this way in every post or a random selection of posts. However, Matthew (the author of the post) is one of the people I know most sympathetic about considering effects on wild animals, and also has the best guess that wild animals have negative lives (like I do), which makes farming insects tendentially beneficial to wild animals.
Fair (didnāt know that context) - if @Benthamās Bulldog agrees Iāll withdraw the downvote.
For reference, Matthew recommended donating to GiveWell to decrease the number of wild animals.
It sounds like the benefit under this argument comes from reducing wild land. You could do that without causing lots of other insects (or other farmed animals) to suffer e.g. grow crops and burn them for energy instead, or manage the land to keep insect numbers down. So I donāt find this argument very persuasive that we should think of this as a positive benefit to intensive farming of insects or other animals, even supposing that insects (or other animals) have overall negative lives in the wild. Perhaps this isnāt the right location to discuss this in depth, though.
Thanks for the comment! The benefits from increasing insect farming come from replacing with cropland biomes which have less nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, and therefore decreasing the animal-years of these soil animals. I agree there are more cost-effective ways of achieving this. I have some cost-effectiveness estimates here. However, (counterfactually) decreasing the animal-years of farmed insects would still be harmful if it increased the suffering of wild animals more than it decreased the suffering of farmed animals. Here is an extreme somewhat silly analogy which might help. There are more cost-effective ways of increasing human welfare than giving cash to people in extreme poverty, but millionaires slealing cash from people in extreme poverty is still harmful in the sense of decreasing human welfare.
I think there are at least two relevant aspects hereāthe impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that itās not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insectsāit wouldnāt necessarily become wild, rather it could be used to grow other crops, and thereby have no large effect on wild animal welfare. Rates of deforestation seem to indicate there is plenty of demand for arable land. Also, biofuels seem to be being held back by land availability and worries over these competing with food crops, again potentially acting as a strong source of demand for land. So the effect of removing one source of demand seems complex, and it seems like it may just result in substitution by another type of farming. The marginal effect may be to affect deforestation ratesābut to what degree these are affected by changes in demand for crops is unclear to me.
Re the question of support this gives for insect farming, even if it had an overall positive effect, itās not clear it should be advocated if there would be other uses for that land that would be better e.g. growing biofuels. So it doesnāt clearly make a ācaseā for defending insect farming.
More generally, if an action A involves doing P and Q, where P is good and Q is bad, but there are ways of doing P that donāt involve the harm of Q, then the implication would seem to be to advocate one of those other ways of doing P and not to defend Aāin this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
Thanks for the clarifications! I seem to agree with all your points.