Very cool analysis! I wonder how these orderings would change if the suffering levels were adjusted by brain complexity /â capacity for suffering. In other words, most people think that killing or hurting a cow is worse than killing or hurting a salmon, but your analysis seems to treat them as equivalent. I realize that this would introduce a lot more uncertainty into the calculations, and that thereâs potential for significant moral disagreement on this topic, but has there been any effort to do something like this with your data?
Thanks, sawyer! We havenât done that ourselves for exactly the reasons you mentionedâthere were already many degrees of uncertainty in the analysis just based on spotty data availability, so we felt that adding something with that amount of subjectivity would reduce the overall utility of the analysis because some people would agree with our decisions and some wouldnât. But the lists within species may work as a simple proxy, and the data and code are available to anyone with more investment who would like to make that adjustment themselves. If youâre thinking about doing it and would like to chat, feel free to reach out! Itâs my first name @ faunalytics.org.
Totally, that makes sense. I think unfortunately this is beyond my expertise at this point, but I appreciate you offering! For anyone else watching...in particular, Iâm envisioning something like the Excel tool created for this SSC adversarial collaboration, where a user can input their subjective âhuman life-year equivalentsâ for various animals, then connect that to your data and analysis, and output...something. Maybe new charts, but more realistically something more basic.
Thatâs a good idea and actually not too hard to implement in the grand scheme of things. Itâs not something that will get done right away, but I can add it to the list! And if anyone reading would like to collaborate to produce that, please get in touch!
Very cool analysis! I wonder how these orderings would change if the suffering levels were adjusted by brain complexity /â capacity for suffering. In other words, most people think that killing or hurting a cow is worse than killing or hurting a salmon, but your analysis seems to treat them as equivalent. I realize that this would introduce a lot more uncertainty into the calculations, and that thereâs potential for significant moral disagreement on this topic, but has there been any effort to do something like this with your data?
Thanks, sawyer! We havenât done that ourselves for exactly the reasons you mentionedâthere were already many degrees of uncertainty in the analysis just based on spotty data availability, so we felt that adding something with that amount of subjectivity would reduce the overall utility of the analysis because some people would agree with our decisions and some wouldnât. But the lists within species may work as a simple proxy, and the data and code are available to anyone with more investment who would like to make that adjustment themselves. If youâre thinking about doing it and would like to chat, feel free to reach out! Itâs my first name @ faunalytics.org.
Jo
Totally, that makes sense. I think unfortunately this is beyond my expertise at this point, but I appreciate you offering! For anyone else watching...in particular, Iâm envisioning something like the Excel tool created for this SSC adversarial collaboration, where a user can input their subjective âhuman life-year equivalentsâ for various animals, then connect that to your data and analysis, and output...something. Maybe new charts, but more realistically something more basic.
Thatâs a good idea and actually not too hard to implement in the grand scheme of things. Itâs not something that will get done right away, but I can add it to the list! And if anyone reading would like to collaborate to produce that, please get in touch!