nor do we think that (for those that are sentient) we have a good enough understanding of what would help them to make action-oriented grants (which is Arthropoda’s focus) — in part because we don’t endorse precise-probabilities approaches to handling uncertainty, and so want to make grants that are aimed towards actions that appear robustly positive under a range of possible probability assignments/ways of handling uncertainty
In my mind, given 2 potential states of the worlds, one always has more, the same, or less expected welfare than the other. So I think any 2 potential states of the world are always comparable, although I would agree the vast majority of real comparisons are very uncertain.
In any case, I do not understand why expected welfare being imprecise (as a result of imprecise probabilities) would be a reason for prioritising research on farmed invertebrates over soil animals. Bob says “getting producers to shorten time to death during insect processing or stun farmed shrimp seems robustly good”, but I do not even know whether electrically stunning farmed shrimps increases or decreases animal welfare in expectation due to effects on soil animals. I believe pursuing robustly good actions, at least in the sense of mitigating the risk of decreasing welfare in expectation (amongst other considerarions), will very often require understanding effects on soil animals. I would be curious to know your thoughts on this, @Anthony DiGiovanni.
In my mind, given 2 potential states of the worlds, one always has more, the same, or less expected welfare than the other. So I think any 2 potential states of the world are always comparable, although I would agree the vast majority of real comparisons are very uncertain.
In any case, I do not understand why expected welfare being imprecise (as a result of imprecise probabilities) would be a reason for prioritising research on farmed invertebrates over soil animals. Bob says “getting producers to shorten time to death during insect processing or stun farmed shrimp seems robustly good”, but I do not even know whether electrically stunning farmed shrimps increases or decreases animal welfare in expectation due to effects on soil animals. I believe pursuing robustly good actions, at least in the sense of mitigating the risk of decreasing welfare in expectation (amongst other considerarions), will very often require understanding effects on soil animals. I would be curious to know your thoughts on this, @Anthony DiGiovanni.