Thanks for the post, Matthew! Very funny and heart-warming.
I estimate that when someone experiences profound love, their increased wellbeing leads to approximately 2.3 % (= 50 additional kcal consumed per day * 0.046 % per kcal) additional food consumption. Multiplying this by the roughly 4.71*10^13 soil nematodes affected per kcal of food production (from my back-of-the-envelope calculations based on van den Hoogen et al. (2019)), I get approximately 1.08*10^12 affected nematode-years per year of experiencing love. Conditional on my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.7, and assuming the welfare range of a nematode is 10^-6 as a fraction of that of humans, the welfare effects on soil animals could be 1.08*10^6 nematode-equivalent quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) per year of love experience.
Very interesting Fermi estimate. I was actually wondering about how many nematode-years were affected by 1 kcal just a few days ago, although not in the context of love. Claude’s numbers are quite off. Here is my version. Rice requires 0.00164 m^2-years per kcal. I very roughly estimate crops have 1.33 M soil nematodes per m^2, and other biomes besides pasture, and deserts and xeric shrublands have 1.72 M to 9.31 M soil nematodes per m^2. So I calculate increasing the area of crops by 1 m^2-year decreases 390 k (= (1.72 − 1.33)*10^6) to 7.98 M soil-nematode-years (= (9.31 − 1.33)*10^6). I am very uncertain about whether increasing cropland increases or decreases soil-nematodes-years. So my actual takeaway is more that increasing the area of crops by 1 m^2-year increases or decreases 390 k to 7.98 M soil-nematode-years. As a result, I calculate 1 kcal of rice increases or decreases 640 (= 0.00164*390*10^3) to 13.1 k soil-nematode-years (= 0.00164*7.98*10^6). In words, a few thousands of soil-nematode-years per kcal of rice.
For Claude’s assumption that profound love increases energy intake by 50 kcal/profound-love-day, and this being satisfied by consuming rice, I get a change of 32.0 k (= 640*50) to 655 k soil-nematode-years per profound-love-day (= 13.1*10^3*50), or 11.7 M (= 32.0*10^3*365.25) to 239 M soil-nematode-years per profound-love-year (= 655*10^3*365.25). In words, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of soil-nematode-years per profound-love-day.
Claude estimated 1.08 trillion soil-nematode-years per profound-love-year, 4.52 k (= 1.08*10^12/(239*10^6)) times my upper bound. I wonder how Claude can get these relatively simple calculations so off.
“I was actually wondering about how many nematode-years were affected by 1 kcal just a few days ago, although not in the context of love”. This is part of what makes @Vasco Grilo🔸 unique. Can anyone else on the forum claim to have been thinking about this a few days before this post?
Thanks, Nick. The background story may be funny. I was leaving home to meet my brother and grandpa for dinner. I was going to throw away a cardboard box into the bin, but it was too big to fit in. I was a bit in a rush. So I decided to leave it next to the bin instead of smashing it. This made me wonder about what would be the impact on soil animals of not having put the box into the bin, neglecting effects on my time (which was the real driver of my decision). I realised the people taking care of the garbage would probably do it, and therefore spend a tiny bit more of energy. This got me into very roughly calculating how many nematode-years are affected by increasing food consumption by 1 kcal. If I recall correctly, here is how I did the Fermi estimate in my drive to my grandpa’s house (do try this at home, not driving!). 1 g of rice has 4 kcal. So 1 kg of rice has 4 k kcal (= 10^3*4). I assumed rice has yields of 3 t/ha/year (5 t/ha/year would have been better), 0.3 kg/m^2/year (= 3*10^3/10^4). So I got an energy production for rice of 1.2 k kcal/m^2/year (= 4*10^3*0.3), which I think I wrongly converted to 10^-4 instead of 10^-3 m^2-year/kcal (= 1/(1.2*10^3)). I supposed increasing the area of rice fields by 1 m^2-year increased or decreased 3 M nematode-years. So I got a change in the living time of nematodes per kcal of 300 nematode-years (= 3*10^6*10^-4). Using the correct past result would have led to 3 k nematode-years (= 3*10^6*10^-3), which is inside the range of 640 to 13.1 k which I obtained above.
Thanks for the post, Matthew! Very funny and heart-warming.
Very interesting Fermi estimate. I was actually wondering about how many nematode-years were affected by 1 kcal just a few days ago, although not in the context of love. Claude’s numbers are quite off. Here is my version. Rice requires 0.00164 m^2-years per kcal. I very roughly estimate crops have 1.33 M soil nematodes per m^2, and other biomes besides pasture, and deserts and xeric shrublands have 1.72 M to 9.31 M soil nematodes per m^2. So I calculate increasing the area of crops by 1 m^2-year decreases 390 k (= (1.72 − 1.33)*10^6) to 7.98 M soil-nematode-years (= (9.31 − 1.33)*10^6). I am very uncertain about whether increasing cropland increases or decreases soil-nematodes-years. So my actual takeaway is more that increasing the area of crops by 1 m^2-year increases or decreases 390 k to 7.98 M soil-nematode-years. As a result, I calculate 1 kcal of rice increases or decreases 640 (= 0.00164*390*10^3) to 13.1 k soil-nematode-years (= 0.00164*7.98*10^6). In words, a few thousands of soil-nematode-years per kcal of rice.
For Claude’s assumption that profound love increases energy intake by 50 kcal/profound-love-day, and this being satisfied by consuming rice, I get a change of 32.0 k (= 640*50) to 655 k soil-nematode-years per profound-love-day (= 13.1*10^3*50), or 11.7 M (= 32.0*10^3*365.25) to 239 M soil-nematode-years per profound-love-year (= 655*10^3*365.25). In words, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of soil-nematode-years per profound-love-day.
Claude estimated 1.08 trillion soil-nematode-years per profound-love-year, 4.52 k (= 1.08*10^12/(239*10^6)) times my upper bound. I wonder how Claude can get these relatively simple calculations so off.
“I was actually wondering about how many nematode-years were affected by 1 kcal just a few days ago, although not in the context of love”. This is part of what makes @Vasco Grilo🔸 unique. Can anyone else on the forum claim to have been thinking about this a few days before this post?
Thanks, Nick. The background story may be funny. I was leaving home to meet my brother and grandpa for dinner. I was going to throw away a cardboard box into the bin, but it was too big to fit in. I was a bit in a rush. So I decided to leave it next to the bin instead of smashing it. This made me wonder about what would be the impact on soil animals of not having put the box into the bin, neglecting effects on my time (which was the real driver of my decision). I realised the people taking care of the garbage would probably do it, and therefore spend a tiny bit more of energy. This got me into very roughly calculating how many nematode-years are affected by increasing food consumption by 1 kcal. If I recall correctly, here is how I did the Fermi estimate in my drive to my grandpa’s house (do try this at home, not driving!). 1 g of rice has 4 kcal. So 1 kg of rice has 4 k kcal (= 10^3*4). I assumed rice has yields of 3 t/ha/year (5 t/ha/year would have been better), 0.3 kg/m^2/year (= 3*10^3/10^4). So I got an energy production for rice of 1.2 k kcal/m^2/year (= 4*10^3*0.3), which I think I wrongly converted to 10^-4 instead of 10^-3 m^2-year/kcal (= 1/(1.2*10^3)). I supposed increasing the area of rice fields by 1 m^2-year increased or decreased 3 M nematode-years. So I got a change in the living time of nematodes per kcal of 300 nematode-years (= 3*10^6*10^-4). Using the correct past result would have led to 3 k nematode-years (= 3*10^6*10^-3), which is inside the range of 640 to 13.1 k which I obtained above.