Thanks, Vasco, for doing this analysis! Here are some of my learnings:
Fish and shrimp suffering is so much greater than that of other farm animals. I knew about their much larger numbers already, but I feel it much more viscerally now after better understanding the steps in your calculations and the assumptions behind them.
The overall picture of neglectedness (i.e. disability vs funding) is insensitive to the way pain/disability is measured or to the assumptions behind animal moral value (e.g. welfare range). Unless you literally assume farm animals matter zero, any reasonable assumption will show how neglected farm animals are relative to humans.
Wild animals have even greater neglectedness. We had initially discussed including them in the analysis, but they would dominate everything else, even farm animals. I had thought that limiting the analysis to certain types of animals (e.g. land vertebrates or just mammals) would result in farm animals being more prominent, but wild animals dominate even among just mammals.
Thanks, Vasco, for doing this analysis! Here are some of my learnings:
Fish and shrimp suffering is so much greater than that of other farm animals. I knew about their much larger numbers already, but I feel it much more viscerally now after better understanding the steps in your calculations and the assumptions behind them.
The overall picture of neglectedness (i.e. disability vs funding) is insensitive to the way pain/disability is measured or to the assumptions behind animal moral value (e.g. welfare range). Unless you literally assume farm animals matter zero, any reasonable assumption will show how neglected farm animals are relative to humans.
Wild animals have even greater neglectedness. We had initially discussed including them in the analysis, but they would dominate everything else, even farm animals. I had thought that limiting the analysis to certain types of animals (e.g. land vertebrates or just mammals) would result in farm animals being more prominent, but wild animals dominate even among just mammals.