You say SWP’s HSI “seems to be one of the most cost effective [programs] on the planet”. Is this mostly because it has helped lots of shrimp per $ (I estimated 15 k shrimp per $)? If so, and your best guess is that soil animals have negative lives in expectation, you should consider CEARCH’s HIPF much more cost-effective because it affects way more animals (I estimated it decreases 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $)? For SWP’s HSI to have increased the welfare of shrimp more cost-effectively than HIPF increases welfare, HSI having helped 1 shrimp would have to be better than HIPF decreasing 338 k soil-animal-years (= 5.07*10^9/(15*10^3)). Assuming that welfare per animal-year is proportional to “number of neurons as a fraction of that of humans”^”exponent of the number of neurons”[1], HIPF is always way more cost-effective than HSI has been.
I am very uncertain about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives, but it is common for people to have a best guess that wild invertebrates have negative lives. I supposed the welfare per animal-year of soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes is −25 % that of fully happy soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes. I assumed this holds for all biomes, but I guess there is variation in reality. Karolina Sarek, Joey Savoie, and David Moss estimated−42 % for the “wild bug” in 2018, which is more negative than what I assumed.
I believe recommending on equal foot many interventions with similar marginal cost-effectiveness would definitely make sense. However, I estimate HSI has been only 0.0292 % as cost-effective as HIPF, which is a very large difference. I suspect we mostly disagree about the differences in cost-effectiveness, not about what to recommend conditional on the differences in cost-effectiveness.
I describe this formula in the 2nd bullet of the summary here. For an exponent of 0.188, the formula explains78.6 % of the variance in the welfare ranges in Bob Fischer’s book about comparing welfare across species. The results I presented in the top post are for my preferred exponent of 0.5, which results in a welfare per soil-animal-year much closer to 0 than the exponent of 0.188 that explains very well the welfare ranges in Bob’s book.
Thanks for the comment, Haven.
You say SWP’s HSI “seems to be one of the most cost effective [programs] on the planet”. Is this mostly because it has helped lots of shrimp per $ (I estimated 15 k shrimp per $)? If so, and your best guess is that soil animals have negative lives in expectation, you should consider CEARCH’s HIPF much more cost-effective because it affects way more animals (I estimated it decreases 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $)? For SWP’s HSI to have increased the welfare of shrimp more cost-effectively than HIPF increases welfare, HSI having helped 1 shrimp would have to be better than HIPF decreasing 338 k soil-animal-years (= 5.07*10^9/(15*10^3)). Assuming that welfare per animal-year is proportional to “number of neurons as a fraction of that of humans”^”exponent of the number of neurons”[1], HIPF is always way more cost-effective than HSI has been.
I am very uncertain about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives, but it is common for people to have a best guess that wild invertebrates have negative lives. I supposed the welfare per animal-year of soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes is −25 % that of fully happy soil ants/termites/springtails/mites/nematodes. I assumed this holds for all biomes, but I guess there is variation in reality. Karolina Sarek, Joey Savoie, and David Moss estimated −42 % for the “wild bug” in 2018, which is more negative than what I assumed.
I believe recommending on equal foot many interventions with similar marginal cost-effectiveness would definitely make sense. However, I estimate HSI has been only 0.0292 % as cost-effective as HIPF, which is a very large difference. I suspect we mostly disagree about the differences in cost-effectiveness, not about what to recommend conditional on the differences in cost-effectiveness.
I describe this formula in the 2nd bullet of the summary here. For an exponent of 0.188, the formula explains 78.6 % of the variance in the welfare ranges in Bob Fischer’s book about comparing welfare across species. The results I presented in the top post are for my preferred exponent of 0.5, which results in a welfare per soil-animal-year much closer to 0 than the exponent of 0.188 that explains very well the welfare ranges in Bob’s book.