Hi Vasco. I am new on this forum, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the specifics of your work over the years. I see that you produce high quantities of seemingly high quality work on undervalued topics such as this one. I myself am very much interested in the sentience and welfare of such “primitive” organisms. Here are a few of my impressions on this post:
Although you take care of summarizing your research and clearly displaying your methodology, your work is still very enigmatic at first glance. Because your conclusion feels counter-intuitive and may spark defensiveness from animal advocates readers, not being able to understand clearly how you came to these conclusions make them feel untrustworthy.
The reasoning that links your work with your conclusion feels… odd. I’m feeling like there are parts missing. For example, from what I understand of this post, you recommend increasing land use to reduce soil animals lifespan because you estimate they have negative lives. However, you thus recommend changes in food consumption towards diets that include more animal-based foods like beef, because they require more agricultural land than any other foods. Why do you consider eating beef to be the most cost-effective option to increase land use ? As I believe most vegans (or vegetarians) developed a strong deontological reasoning for not eating animal-based products, implying that eating beef might be the best utilitarian way to reduce suffering does not feel right: increasing land use is, so why should they tolerate factory farming, or even extensive farming at all ? Are there not any other opportunities to increase land use ? For example, instead of arguing for changes in food consumption, we could argue in favor of considerably increasing the space allocated to farmed animals so that more of the land would be used, farmed animals’ welfare would be increased; and because land is limited, the actual consumption of animal-based products by humans could actually decrease; human health would thus be improved as well. You even considered the possibility of “paving all the Earth’s land”, but nothing in-between. Here’s another scenario: increasing the consumption of beef and land use implies huge greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, etc → climate change increases the probability of huge natural disasters and reduces the yield of agricultural production → billions are spent in damages and health issues that could have been best invested in climate-resilient agricultural practices and wild animals welfare issues. I feel like your conclusion lacks a more systematic view on these issues; and I understand that this work is about utilitarianism, but caring about the welfare of a few species (even in way higher numbers) while recommending more consumption of other poorly-treated species (even in way smaller numbers) feels odd, to me atleast.
I do not get why you consider “targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives” to be one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing animal welfare in the same way you consider increasing animal-based consumption is, because the latest suggestion implies that the former one already has been made. If research shows that soil animals have positive lives, then your recommendation for more animal-based foods consumption is actually counter-productive, which you acknowledge. I understand that you estimated around 55% probability that they have negative lives, which may be sufficient to consider the horrific possibility that such sheer numbers of animals live horrible lives and work on this question—but it also feels way too close to a 50% chance to actually recommend anything to me. It feels wrong to consider as cost-effective two recommendations that could potentially invalidate each-other: more research would already answer if we should increase land use or not, so recommending eating more beef does not belong here yet.
Your research is very interesting, but I feel like strongly endorsing such concrete and disruptive recommendations (i.e. increasing the consumption of beef) under such uncertainties and hypotheses feels odd. You even argue that eating cheaper plant-based foods allows for more donations, increasing cost-effectiveness even more; which seems to contradict your recommendation. Plus, you mention the “at a margin” problem, as most of the world already eats huge quantities of beef, way above healthy recommendations, so I don’t get why you would recommend eating more beef at all. I feel like such a recommendation would need way more arguments, especially in a systemic analysis of the whole food production chain. That increasing land use could increase global animal welfare is an interesting point—but that we should eat more beef is not a conclusion that I would endorse with this post’s arguments.
Thank you for sharing your work here. I do not expect you to answer thoroughly to every point I made if you do not think your time is worth it—I just felt like sharing a few thoughts on an interesting topic and participating in the forum—but I will gladly read your responses (or anyone’s) if you have some.
Great comment and welcome to the forum! looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts :).
Only one small comment which may help understanding @Vasco Grilo🔸 can say if I’m representing him incorrectly. I agree that the uncertainty is so high here that it doesn’t make sense to make strong practical recommendations. Vasco though is a mathematical utilitarian in a pretty pure form, so he’s seemingly happy to make strong recommendations where there’s little evidence and probabilities are close to 50⁄50. he’ll then even change those recommendations immediately after doing some more calculations. I don’t really understand how this can work in practice as communities of EA doers obviously can’t switch from advocating eating less meat to advocating huge farms on the basis of an extremely uncertain BOTEc. I’ve made a similar point to you on as few of his posts in the past.
Thanks for the relevant comment, Nick. I strongly upvoted it because I felt it was useful for me to think about this more.
I recommend funding A over B if I think funding A increases welfare more cost-effectively at the margin than funding B (in expectation). However, my numerical estimates of the cost-effectiveness do not integrate all the information I have. If my numerical estimates for the cost-effectiveness of 2 interventions are similar, other factors could easily be decisive.
I agree it would not make sense for a whole community to switch back and forth between 2 interventions with similar positive cost-effectiveness at the margin. The amount of resources moving from the most to the least cost-effective intervention at the margin should tend to 0 as the difference between the marginal cost-effectiveness of the interventions tends to 0.
I also agree it would not make for a single person to be constantly switching back and forth between 2 interventions with similar positive cost-effectiveness at the margin. Spending 1 year to switch to a career path which is 0.1 % more impactful per year, accounting for impact through work and donations, would only make sense if one could work for longer than 1 k years (= 1/10^-3) in the new path. This is way too long, and therefore the change would not be worth it.
However, I think the situation is different in the context of constantly switching back and forth between supporting or not an intervention due to large uncertainty about whether it increases or decreases welfare (in expectation). Constant switching leads to spending resources without achieving nothing, which is worse than supporting positive interventions. However, it is unclear whether achieving nothing is better or worse than supporting an intervention which can easily have a positive or negative cost-effectiveness.
In cases where there is large uncertainty about whether an intervention increases or decreases welfare (in expectation), I believe it is often better to support interventions decreasing that uncertainty. This is a major reason for my top recommendation of decreasing the uncertainty about whether soil nematodes have positive or negative lives, which I consider robustly better than constant switching. As I say in the summary, “I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land, the most cost-effective global health interventions, and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives”.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and welcome to the EA Forum, Guillaume!
you recommend increasing land use to reduce soil animals lifespan because you estimate they have negative lives
I recommend decreasing the living time (total animal-years), not lifespan (animal-years per animal), of soil animals via decreasing their density (animals per unit area) given my best guess that they have negative lives.
you thus recommend changes in food consumption towards diets that include more animal-based foods like beef, because they require more agricultural land than any other foods
Right.
implying that eating beef might be the best utilitarian way to reduce suffering does not feel right
I calculate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 1.39 billion fewer soil-animal-years, but just in 3.09 more cow-days. In other words, I estimate increasing the consumption of beef decreases the living time of soil animals 164 billion times as much as it increases the living time of cows. I think there is way more suffering in 164 billion soil-animal-years than in 1 cow-year. I calculate increasing the consumption of beef increases the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes (due to decreasing their living time) 113 k times as much as it changes the welfare of cows for my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.5. The ratio of 113 k is much lower than that of 164 billion because cows have more intense experiences than soil animals. However, increasing beef consumption affects so many more soil-animal-years than cow-years that I still conclude the effects on soil animals clearly dominate.
Why do you consider eating beef to be the most cost-effective option to increase land use ?
I do not. I estimatethat funding HIPF increases agricultural land 25.0 (= 1.29*10^3/51.6) times as cost-effectively as buying beef. As I say in the summary:
“I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land, the most cost-effective global health interventions, and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives”.
For example, instead of arguing for changes in food consumption, we could argue in favor of considerably increasing the space allocated to farmed animals so that more of the land would be used
I think the most cost-effective global health interventions decrease the living time of soil animals much more cost-effectively than interventions aiming to improve the conditions of farmed animals. I estimatethat cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campaigns decrease soil-animal-years 1.13 % (= 5.77*10^7/(5.09*10^9)) and 6.50 % (= 3.31*10^8/(5.09*10^9)) as cost-effectively as funding HIPF.
Here’s another scenario: increasing the consumption of beef and land use implies huge greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions
It is very unclear whether global warming increases or decreases animal welfare. I think it would be valuable to investigate the effects of global warming on soil animals, but this is not my top priority. For a given spending on a land use change intervention (like buying beef, or funding HIPF), I would be surprised if the effects of GHG emissions on soil animals were larger than the direct effects on them resulting from changing their density (the abundance of soil animals per unit area varies by biome).
In any case, the effects of GHG emissions being larger would be a reason for increasing or decreasing (depending on what would benefit soil animals) GHG emissions as cost-effectively as possible. If decreasing GHG emissions was among the most cost-effective ways of increasing the welfare of soil animals, I would recommend Founders Pledge’s Climate Fund (FPCF), not interventions targeting farmed animals.
billions are spent in damages and health issues that could have been best invested in climate-resilient agricultural practices and wild animals welfare issues
I do not see how decreasing GHG emissions would be a cost-effective way of fundraising for wild animal welfare. I estimate only 5.03 M 2023-$ were spent on wild animal welfare in 2023. This is a very tiny fraction of the global economy, so decreasing spending in areas outside wild animal welfare would basically have no impact on its funding.
I understand that you estimated around 55% probability that they have negative lives, which may be sufficient to consider the horrific possibility that such sheer numbers of animals live horrible lives and work on this question—but it also feels way too close to a 50% chance to actually recommend anything to me.
Yes, I guess the probability of soil animals having negative lives is around 55 %. Research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives would be valuable in either case, and this is a major reason I recommend it over funding HIPF.
I prefer sharing my uncertain views about topics I have thought about over being agnostic. There are no interventions outside research which I am reasonably confident increase welfare in expectation. I think electrically stunning shrimp is one of those which more clearly increases welfare in expectation, but I would say it is still unclear whether it increases or decreases welfare in expectation due to effects on soil animals. For my individual welfare per animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^0.5, I determined electrically stunning shrimp increases the welfare of these by 0.00144 QALY/shrimp. Thereare 94.3 shrimps per shrimp-kg. So infer electrically stunning shrimp increases the welfare of these by 0.136 QALY/shrimp-kg (= 0.00144*94.3). For my individual welfare per animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^0.5, I estimate replacing farmed shrimp with farmed fish changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 364 QALY/shrimp-kg (= 522 − 158). So I conclude electrically stunning farmed shrimp changes the welfare of soil animals more than it increases the welfare of shrimps if it results in the replacement of more than 0.0374 % (= 0.136/364) of the consumption of the affected farmed shrimp by farmed fish. I can easily see this happening for even a slight increase in the cost of shrimp. Moreover, there are 3*10^29 soil archaea and bacteria, 613 M (= 3*10^29/(4.89*10^20)) times as many as soil nematodes (the most abundant soil animals), and I would not be surprised if the effects on soil archaea and bacteria were much larger than those on soil animals, which further contributes to the uncertainty about whether electrically stunning shrimp increases or decreases welfare in expectation.
Side note. Personally, I value decreasing 1 h of suffering as much as creating 1 h of happiness if they have the same intensity. However, many people are suffering-focussed, and therefore value averting 1 h of suffering more than creating 1 h of happiness even if they have the same intensity, and do not want to create additional animal lives even if they are positive. For such suffering-focussed people, it matters less whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. I believe there is a pretty strong case for them wanting to increase agricultural land due to this decreasing animal-years a lot.
You even argue that eating cheaper plant-based foods allows for more donations, increasing cost-effectiveness even more; which seems to contradict your recommendation.
I do not think there is a contradiction. One could work on decreasing GHG emissions while driving a car to the office to save time, and therefore decrease GHG emissions more. Likewise, one could argue for increasing the consumption of beef while not eating beef to be more productive, and save money to donate more.
Plus, you mention the “at a margin” problem, as most of the world already eats huge quantities of beef, way above healthy recommendations, so I don’t get why you would recommend eating more beef at all.
I estimate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 9.06 fewer human-minutes due to negatively affecting human health, which would be 1.72*10^-5 (= 9.06/60/24/365.25) fewer QALYs assuming only fully happy life is lost (which slightly overestimates the negative effects on humans). At the same time, I calculate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 1.39 billion fewer soil-animal-years, and increases the welfare of the directly affected animals, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 19.3 kQALY for my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.5. So I estimate the increase in the welfare of animals is 1.12 billion (= 19.3*10^3/(1.72*10^-5)) times the decrease in the welfare of humans.
I think the focus on beef consumption is better explained by flipping the argument: if you are advocating for a reduction in beef consumption, you may be advocating for a substantial increase in animal suffering, and this should give you pause if the reason you are advocating is that you care deeply and desperately about animal suffering.
The general conclusion being that more research is needed in this area for people who care about soil animal welfare to work out whether soil animals live positive or negative lives, and only once this is done work out how this might be tractably actioned to increase or decrease the number of soil animals via land use change.
I’m honestly really hoping that soil animal lives work out net positive at the mite and springtail level, and that nematodes are sufficiently simple as to not possess the kind of conscious experience needed for welfare capacity. But I remain open to the troubling possibility of well-evidenced alternate conclusions, and support Vasco’s work to shed light on this area.
Thanks, Kestrel. I would also prefer soil animals to have positive lives, which would mean a much higher global welfare. However, that also lead to counterintuitive conclusions. I would estimate interventions increasing agricultural land, like cage-free and broiler welfare reforms, and saving human lives, would decrease welfare.
Hi Vasco. I am new on this forum, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the specifics of your work over the years. I see that you produce high quantities of seemingly high quality work on undervalued topics such as this one. I myself am very much interested in the sentience and welfare of such “primitive” organisms. Here are a few of my impressions on this post:
Although you take care of summarizing your research and clearly displaying your methodology, your work is still very enigmatic at first glance. Because your conclusion feels counter-intuitive and may spark defensiveness from animal advocates readers, not being able to understand clearly how you came to these conclusions make them feel untrustworthy.
The reasoning that links your work with your conclusion feels… odd. I’m feeling like there are parts missing. For example, from what I understand of this post, you recommend increasing land use to reduce soil animals lifespan because you estimate they have negative lives. However, you thus recommend changes in food consumption towards diets that include more animal-based foods like beef, because they require more agricultural land than any other foods. Why do you consider eating beef to be the most cost-effective option to increase land use ? As I believe most vegans (or vegetarians) developed a strong deontological reasoning for not eating animal-based products, implying that eating beef might be the best utilitarian way to reduce suffering does not feel right: increasing land use is, so why should they tolerate factory farming, or even extensive farming at all ? Are there not any other opportunities to increase land use ? For example, instead of arguing for changes in food consumption, we could argue in favor of considerably increasing the space allocated to farmed animals so that more of the land would be used, farmed animals’ welfare would be increased; and because land is limited, the actual consumption of animal-based products by humans could actually decrease; human health would thus be improved as well. You even considered the possibility of “paving all the Earth’s land”, but nothing in-between. Here’s another scenario: increasing the consumption of beef and land use implies huge greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, etc → climate change increases the probability of huge natural disasters and reduces the yield of agricultural production → billions are spent in damages and health issues that could have been best invested in climate-resilient agricultural practices and wild animals welfare issues. I feel like your conclusion lacks a more systematic view on these issues; and I understand that this work is about utilitarianism, but caring about the welfare of a few species (even in way higher numbers) while recommending more consumption of other poorly-treated species (even in way smaller numbers) feels odd, to me atleast.
I do not get why you consider “targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives” to be one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing animal welfare in the same way you consider increasing animal-based consumption is, because the latest suggestion implies that the former one already has been made. If research shows that soil animals have positive lives, then your recommendation for more animal-based foods consumption is actually counter-productive, which you acknowledge. I understand that you estimated around 55% probability that they have negative lives, which may be sufficient to consider the horrific possibility that such sheer numbers of animals live horrible lives and work on this question—but it also feels way too close to a 50% chance to actually recommend anything to me. It feels wrong to consider as cost-effective two recommendations that could potentially invalidate each-other: more research would already answer if we should increase land use or not, so recommending eating more beef does not belong here yet.
Your research is very interesting, but I feel like strongly endorsing such concrete and disruptive recommendations (i.e. increasing the consumption of beef) under such uncertainties and hypotheses feels odd. You even argue that eating cheaper plant-based foods allows for more donations, increasing cost-effectiveness even more; which seems to contradict your recommendation. Plus, you mention the “at a margin” problem, as most of the world already eats huge quantities of beef, way above healthy recommendations, so I don’t get why you would recommend eating more beef at all. I feel like such a recommendation would need way more arguments, especially in a systemic analysis of the whole food production chain. That increasing land use could increase global animal welfare is an interesting point—but that we should eat more beef is not a conclusion that I would endorse with this post’s arguments.
Thank you for sharing your work here. I do not expect you to answer thoroughly to every point I made if you do not think your time is worth it—I just felt like sharing a few thoughts on an interesting topic and participating in the forum—but I will gladly read your responses (or anyone’s) if you have some.
Great comment and welcome to the forum! looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts :).
Only one small comment which may help understanding @Vasco Grilo🔸 can say if I’m representing him incorrectly. I agree that the uncertainty is so high here that it doesn’t make sense to make strong practical recommendations. Vasco though is a mathematical utilitarian in a pretty pure form, so he’s seemingly happy to make strong recommendations where there’s little evidence and probabilities are close to 50⁄50. he’ll then even change those recommendations immediately after doing some more calculations. I don’t really understand how this can work in practice as communities of EA doers obviously can’t switch from advocating eating less meat to advocating huge farms on the basis of an extremely uncertain BOTEc. I’ve made a similar point to you on as few of his posts in the past.
Thanks for the relevant comment, Nick. I strongly upvoted it because I felt it was useful for me to think about this more.
I recommend funding A over B if I think funding A increases welfare more cost-effectively at the margin than funding B (in expectation). However, my numerical estimates of the cost-effectiveness do not integrate all the information I have. If my numerical estimates for the cost-effectiveness of 2 interventions are similar, other factors could easily be decisive.
I agree it would not make sense for a whole community to switch back and forth between 2 interventions with similar positive cost-effectiveness at the margin. The amount of resources moving from the most to the least cost-effective intervention at the margin should tend to 0 as the difference between the marginal cost-effectiveness of the interventions tends to 0.
I also agree it would not make for a single person to be constantly switching back and forth between 2 interventions with similar positive cost-effectiveness at the margin. Spending 1 year to switch to a career path which is 0.1 % more impactful per year, accounting for impact through work and donations, would only make sense if one could work for longer than 1 k years (= 1/10^-3) in the new path. This is way too long, and therefore the change would not be worth it.
However, I think the situation is different in the context of constantly switching back and forth between supporting or not an intervention due to large uncertainty about whether it increases or decreases welfare (in expectation). Constant switching leads to spending resources without achieving nothing, which is worse than supporting positive interventions. However, it is unclear whether achieving nothing is better or worse than supporting an intervention which can easily have a positive or negative cost-effectiveness.
In cases where there is large uncertainty about whether an intervention increases or decreases welfare (in expectation), I believe it is often better to support interventions decreasing that uncertainty. This is a major reason for my top recommendation of decreasing the uncertainty about whether soil nematodes have positive or negative lives, which I consider robustly better than constant switching. As I say in the summary, “I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land, the most cost-effective global health interventions, and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives”.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and welcome to the EA Forum, Guillaume!
I recommend decreasing the living time (total animal-years), not lifespan (animal-years per animal), of soil animals via decreasing their density (animals per unit area) given my best guess that they have negative lives.
Right.
I calculate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 1.39 billion fewer soil-animal-years, but just in 3.09 more cow-days. In other words, I estimate increasing the consumption of beef decreases the living time of soil animals 164 billion times as much as it increases the living time of cows. I think there is way more suffering in 164 billion soil-animal-years than in 1 cow-year. I calculate increasing the consumption of beef increases the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes (due to decreasing their living time) 113 k times as much as it changes the welfare of cows for my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.5. The ratio of 113 k is much lower than that of 164 billion because cows have more intense experiences than soil animals. However, increasing beef consumption affects so many more soil-animal-years than cow-years that I still conclude the effects on soil animals clearly dominate.
I do not. I estimate that funding HIPF increases agricultural land 25.0 (= 1.29*10^3/51.6) times as cost-effectively as buying beef. As I say in the summary:
“I recommend funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) over that [“increasing the consumption of beef”]. I estimated buying beef is 3.72 % as cost-effective as funding HIPF, and that this decreases 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $ [whereas I estimate buying beef only decreaess 189 M soil-animal-years per $]”.
“I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land, the most cost-effective global health interventions, and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives”.
I think the most cost-effective global health interventions decrease the living time of soil animals much more cost-effectively than interventions aiming to improve the conditions of farmed animals. I estimate that cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campaigns decrease soil-animal-years 1.13 % (= 5.77*10^7/(5.09*10^9)) and 6.50 % (= 3.31*10^8/(5.09*10^9)) as cost-effectively as funding HIPF.
It is very unclear whether global warming increases or decreases animal welfare. I think it would be valuable to investigate the effects of global warming on soil animals, but this is not my top priority. For a given spending on a land use change intervention (like buying beef, or funding HIPF), I would be surprised if the effects of GHG emissions on soil animals were larger than the direct effects on them resulting from changing their density (the abundance of soil animals per unit area varies by biome).
In any case, the effects of GHG emissions being larger would be a reason for increasing or decreasing (depending on what would benefit soil animals) GHG emissions as cost-effectively as possible. If decreasing GHG emissions was among the most cost-effective ways of increasing the welfare of soil animals, I would recommend Founders Pledge’s Climate Fund (FPCF), not interventions targeting farmed animals.
I do not see how decreasing GHG emissions would be a cost-effective way of fundraising for wild animal welfare. I estimate only 5.03 M 2023-$ were spent on wild animal welfare in 2023. This is a very tiny fraction of the global economy, so decreasing spending in areas outside wild animal welfare would basically have no impact on its funding.
Yes, I guess the probability of soil animals having negative lives is around 55 %. Research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives would be valuable in either case, and this is a major reason I recommend it over funding HIPF.
I prefer sharing my uncertain views about topics I have thought about over being agnostic. There are no interventions outside research which I am reasonably confident increase welfare in expectation. I think electrically stunning shrimp is one of those which more clearly increases welfare in expectation, but I would say it is still unclear whether it increases or decreases welfare in expectation due to effects on soil animals. For my individual welfare per animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^0.5, I determined electrically stunning shrimp increases the welfare of these by 0.00144 QALY/shrimp. There are 94.3 shrimps per shrimp-kg. So infer electrically stunning shrimp increases the welfare of these by 0.136 QALY/shrimp-kg (= 0.00144*94.3). For my individual welfare per animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^0.5, I estimate replacing farmed shrimp with farmed fish changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 364 QALY/shrimp-kg (= 522 − 158). So I conclude electrically stunning farmed shrimp changes the welfare of soil animals more than it increases the welfare of shrimps if it results in the replacement of more than 0.0374 % (= 0.136/364) of the consumption of the affected farmed shrimp by farmed fish. I can easily see this happening for even a slight increase in the cost of shrimp. Moreover, there are 3*10^29 soil archaea and bacteria, 613 M (= 3*10^29/(4.89*10^20)) times as many as soil nematodes (the most abundant soil animals), and I would not be surprised if the effects on soil archaea and bacteria were much larger than those on soil animals, which further contributes to the uncertainty about whether electrically stunning shrimp increases or decreases welfare in expectation.
Side note. Personally, I value decreasing 1 h of suffering as much as creating 1 h of happiness if they have the same intensity. However, many people are suffering-focussed, and therefore value averting 1 h of suffering more than creating 1 h of happiness even if they have the same intensity, and do not want to create additional animal lives even if they are positive. For such suffering-focussed people, it matters less whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. I believe there is a pretty strong case for them wanting to increase agricultural land due to this decreasing animal-years a lot.
I do not think there is a contradiction. One could work on decreasing GHG emissions while driving a car to the office to save time, and therefore decrease GHG emissions more. Likewise, one could argue for increasing the consumption of beef while not eating beef to be more productive, and save money to donate more.
I estimate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 9.06 fewer human-minutes due to negatively affecting human health, which would be 1.72*10^-5 (= 9.06/60/24/365.25) fewer QALYs assuming only fully happy life is lost (which slightly overestimates the negative effects on humans). At the same time, I calculate increasing the consumption of beef by 1 kg results in 1.39 billion fewer soil-animal-years, and increases the welfare of the directly affected animals, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes by 19.3 kQALY for my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.5. So I estimate the increase in the welfare of animals is 1.12 billion (= 19.3*10^3/(1.72*10^-5)) times the decrease in the welfare of humans.
Thank you too for engaging with the post!
I think the focus on beef consumption is better explained by flipping the argument: if you are advocating for a reduction in beef consumption, you may be advocating for a substantial increase in animal suffering, and this should give you pause if the reason you are advocating is that you care deeply and desperately about animal suffering.
The general conclusion being that more research is needed in this area for people who care about soil animal welfare to work out whether soil animals live positive or negative lives, and only once this is done work out how this might be tractably actioned to increase or decrease the number of soil animals via land use change.
I’m honestly really hoping that soil animal lives work out net positive at the mite and springtail level, and that nematodes are sufficiently simple as to not possess the kind of conscious experience needed for welfare capacity. But I remain open to the troubling possibility of well-evidenced alternate conclusions, and support Vasco’s work to shed light on this area.
Thanks, Kestrel. I would also prefer soil animals to have positive lives, which would mean a much higher global welfare. However, that also lead to counterintuitive conclusions. I would estimate interventions increasing agricultural land, like cage-free and broiler welfare reforms, and saving human lives, would decrease welfare.