Thanks for clarifying. That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischer’s estimates for conversion. That’s a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory. When I’m discussing this, I’ll probably stick to purely empirical claims, e.g., “we can make X chickens’ lives better in Y ways” or “we can reduce meat consumption by Z pounds” and be hand-wavy about the comparison between species. YMMV.
That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischer’s estimates for conversion.
Yupe, I relied on Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) median welfare range of chickens of 0.332. However, even for their 5th percentile of 0.002, which is 0.602 % (= 0.002/0.332) of their median, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 9.09 (= 0.00602*1.51*10^3) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities. Uncertainty in other variables besides the welfare range means there might be something like a 5 % chance of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare being less cost-effective than GiveWell’s top charities, but I believe we should be comparing the expected cost-effectiveness of both interventions, not a worst-case scenario of corporate campaigns with the expected scenario of GiveWell’s top charities.
That’s a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory.
Even if it is not knowable in theory[1], trade-offs are inevitable, so our actions implicitly attribute a given welfare range to chickens. So I would say we might as well rely on the best empirical estimate we have from RP instead of our vague intuitions.
Thanks for clarifying. That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischer’s estimates for conversion. That’s a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory. When I’m discussing this, I’ll probably stick to purely empirical claims, e.g., “we can make X chickens’ lives better in Y ways” or “we can reduce meat consumption by Z pounds” and be hand-wavy about the comparison between species. YMMV.
Yupe, I relied on Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) median welfare range of chickens of 0.332. However, even for their 5th percentile of 0.002, which is 0.602 % (= 0.002/0.332) of their median, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 9.09 (= 0.00602*1.51*10^3) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities. Uncertainty in other variables besides the welfare range means there might be something like a 5 % chance of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare being less cost-effective than GiveWell’s top charities, but I believe we should be comparing the expected cost-effectiveness of both interventions, not a worst-case scenario of corporate campaigns with the expected scenario of GiveWell’s top charities.
Even if it is not knowable in theory[1], trade-offs are inevitable, so our actions implicitly attribute a given welfare range to chickens. So I would say we might as well rely on the best empirical estimate we have from RP instead of our vague intuitions.
I think it is, as I strongly endorse expected total hedonistic utilitarianism.