Thanks for sharing, Mo! I think it is a pretty good sketch. Some points are a bit outdated, or not quite accurate, but I would say one can definetely get a sense of where I am coming from.
Do you have a sense as to why people haven’t quite bridged the inferential gap between wherever they are and your work, despite your (patient, repeated, very thorough) attempts to explain?
With respect to my work on soil animals? I guess people who have read the posts, and like quantitative analyses understand my arguments. However, many of those still disagree on empirical grounds. For example, if they believe the expected total welfare of soil animals is negligible compared with that of farmed animals, in contrast to my estimates. In addition, many disagree for fundamental moral reasons. For instance, if they value averting more intense pain much more strongly than what is justified by its intensity, in contrast to valuing averting pain proportionally to its duration, intensity, and probability as implied by expectationaltotalhedonisticutilitarianism (which I strongly endorse).
By all means, show us the way by doing it better 😃 I’d be happy to read more about where you are coming from, I think your work is interesting and if you are right, it has huge implications for all of us.
That’s interesting, but not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting something that would, e.g., explain why you tell people to “ignore the signs of my estimates for the total welfare” when you share posts with them. That is a particular style and it says something about whether one should take your work in a literal spirit or not, which falls under the meta category of why you write the way you write; and to my earlier point, you’re sharing this suggestion here with me in a comment rather than in the post itself 😃 Finally, the fact that there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive or negative lives is exactly the point I raised about why I have trouble engaging with your work. The meta post I am suggesting, by contrast, motivate and justify this style of reasoning as a whole, rather than providing a particular example of it. The post you’ve shared is a link in a broader chain. I’m suggesting you zoom out and explain what you like about this chain and why you’re building it.
I was not clear in my last comment. I meant my top recommendation of investigating whether soil animals have positive or negative lives does not depend on whether the animal populations I analysed have positive or negative welfare. It depends on interventions changing the welfare of soil animals much more than that of their target beneficiaries in expectation. This is also supported by my estimates that the absolute value of the total welfare of soil animals is much larger than that of other animal populations.
Here is some context about how I make recommendations.
Out of curiosity, what do you think of GPT5-medium’s attempt at sketching an answer to Seth’s request for the “start here to understand my work” post?
Thanks for sharing, Mo! I think it is a pretty good sketch. Some points are a bit outdated, or not quite accurate, but I would say one can definetely get a sense of where I am coming from.
Do you have a sense as to why people haven’t quite bridged the inferential gap between wherever they are and your work, despite your (patient, repeated, very thorough) attempts to explain?
With respect to my work on soil animals? I guess people who have read the posts, and like quantitative analyses understand my arguments. However, many of those still disagree on empirical grounds. For example, if they believe the expected total welfare of soil animals is negligible compared with that of farmed animals, in contrast to my estimates. In addition, many disagree for fundamental moral reasons. For instance, if they value averting more intense pain much more strongly than what is justified by its intensity, in contrast to valuing averting pain proportionally to its duration, intensity, and probability as implied by expectationaltotal hedonistic utilitarianism (which I strongly endorse).
By all means, show us the way by doing it better 😃 I’d be happy to read more about where you are coming from, I think your work is interesting and if you are right, it has huge implications for all of us.
Thanks, Seth. You may be interested in my post Total number of neurons and welfare of animal populations. There is lots of uncertainty about which wild animals have positive or negative lives. So you can ignore the signs of my estimates for the total welfare of populations of wild animals.
That’s interesting, but not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting something that would, e.g., explain why you tell people to “ignore the signs of my estimates for the total welfare” when you share posts with them. That is a particular style and it says something about whether one should take your work in a literal spirit or not, which falls under the meta category of why you write the way you write; and to my earlier point, you’re sharing this suggestion here with me in a comment rather than in the post itself 😃 Finally, the fact that there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive or negative lives is exactly the point I raised about why I have trouble engaging with your work. The meta post I am suggesting, by contrast, motivate and justify this style of reasoning as a whole, rather than providing a particular example of it. The post you’ve shared is a link in a broader chain. I’m suggesting you zoom out and explain what you like about this chain and why you’re building it.
I was not clear in my last comment. I meant my top recommendation of investigating whether soil animals have positive or negative lives does not depend on whether the animal populations I analysed have positive or negative welfare. It depends on interventions changing the welfare of soil animals much more than that of their target beneficiaries in expectation. This is also supported by my estimates that the absolute value of the total welfare of soil animals is much larger than that of other animal populations.
Here is some context about how I make recommendations.