Excruciating pain is 1 k times as bad as disabling pain[3].
Disabling pain is 100 times as bad as hurtful pain.
Hurtful pain is 10 times as bad as annoying pain.
Call me a linearity-pilled likert-maxer, but this seems a bit wild. I’ve previously read the articles you linked to, and think it’s plausible that intense suffering can be way worse than we we’d be inclined to imagine, but don’t think it’s obvious by any means or that this necessarily implies the profound possibilities of suffering indicated here.
After some introspection, which seems near state of the art on this question, I’d guess a range of hedonic experience of −1000 to 100 where:
100 is peak experience.
5 is my average experience.
2 would be average day with annoying pain.
-20 is depression.
-600 is probably worst experience.
-1000 seems worst conceivable.
If I take your scale seriously (linearized below) and normalize hurtful pain to −5 (which would be more compatible with your assumptions), then I have to accept that my worst experienced suffering (which certainly felt like I was maxing out my psychological capacity for distress), was 0.12% of what’s possible. That strikes me as a bit odd. But hey, intuitions differ.
After some introspection, which seems near state of the art on this question, I’d guess a range of hedonic experience of −1000 to 100 where:
100 is peak experience.
5 is my average experience.
2 would be average day with annoying pain.
-20 is depression.
-600 is probably worst experience.
-1000 seems worst conceivable.
This implies adding 7.2 min (= 5/1000*24*60) of the worst conceivable experience to everyday of your life would make it neutral. Would you really be indifferent between living or not living a life like yours plus 7.2 min of e.g. being burned alive every single day? I have a strong intuition that adding a few minutes of torture to a random day of my life would make it a terrible day. I assume excruciating is 100 k times as bad as hurtful pain. This means 1.16 days (= 10^5/86400) of hurtful pain is as bad as 1 s of excruciating pain, which feels about right. It implies adding 1 s of excruciating pain everyday would make a random human life neutral, given my assumption that their welfare per time awake is the negative of that of hurtful pain.
In any case, the annual disability of farmed animals is much larger than that of humans even for much less variation in the various types of pain. Assuming hurtful pain is 10 times as bad as annoying pain, disabling pain is 10 times as bad as hurtful pain, and excruciating pain is 10 times as bad as disabling pain, such that excruciating pain is 1 k times as bad as annoying pain (instead of 1 M times as I supposed in the post):
This implies adding 7.2 min (= 5/1000*24*60) of the worst conceivable experience to everyday of your life would make it neutral. Would you really be indifferent between living or not living a life like yours plus 7.2 min of e.g. being burden alive every single day?
Sounds about right. 10 minutes means bad life. 5 minutes means still life worth living.
In any case, the annual disability of farmed animals is much larger than that of humans even for much less variation in the various types of pain.
Good to know. It mostly makes a difference for humans and cows coming from ~0 to ~5% of disability in your model it seems?
And I appreciate you continuing to bang the drum for animal welfare stuff. It’s made me think about it more.
Sounds about right. 10 minutes means bad life. 5 minutes means still life worth living.
Then we just have very different intuitions.
Good to know. It mostly makes a difference for humans and cows coming from ~0 to ~5% of disability in your model it seems?
Yes, mostly that. I did not rely on data from WFP to model the annual disability of humans and cows, so their annual disability remained the same. The annual disability of the other groups decreased because of the lower weight of extreme suffering. Below is a table with the original assumptions and the ones I mentioned in my last comment.
Group
Annual disability as a fraction of the total
Original assumptions
Assumptions of the last comment
Humans
0.489%
3.14%
Farmed cows
0.430%
2.77%
Farmed pigs
1.88%
1.71%
Farmed broilers (chickens)
29.3%
29.0%
Farmed hens (chickens)
5.52%
6.73%
Farmed fish
31.6%
28.7%
Farmed decapod shrimp
26.6%
24.2%
Farmed insects
4.19%
3.81%
And I appreciate you continuing to bang the drum for animal welfare stuff. It’s made me think about it more.
Quick question on the intution pump about 7 minutes of the worst conceivable experience every day. Would you be aware that it happens after the fact? For me at least, a lot of what would make the randomly tortured day so terrible is how it affected the rest of my day, rather than the excruciating moments of pain themselves.
Thanks for the question, Kai! In my example, I was assuming 7 min of the worst conceivable experience were added on top of the baseline welfare, but you are right that the 7 min would affect the baseline welfare. It is hard to make the thought experiment realistic, because 7 min of the worst conceivable experience would likely lead to permanent effects or death. For reference, this is how WFP describes excruciating pain (the worst type of pain):
All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible.
As further context, according to WFP, hens experience excruciating pain in mostly fatal situations.
The bar in purple (“acute peritonitis (fatal)”) and thickest bar in red (“vent wound (fatal)”) respect fatal situations[1].
Call me a linearity-pilled likert-maxer, but this seems a bit wild. I’ve previously read the articles you linked to, and think it’s plausible that intense suffering can be way worse than we we’d be inclined to imagine, but don’t think it’s obvious by any means or that this necessarily implies the profound possibilities of suffering indicated here.
After some introspection, which seems near state of the art on this question, I’d guess a range of hedonic experience of −1000 to 100 where:
100 is peak experience.
5 is my average experience.
2 would be average day with annoying pain.
-20 is depression.
-600 is probably worst experience.
-1000 seems worst conceivable.
If I take your scale seriously (linearized below) and normalize hurtful pain to −5 (which would be more compatible with your assumptions), then I have to accept that my worst experienced suffering (which certainly felt like I was maxing out my psychological capacity for distress), was 0.12% of what’s possible. That strikes me as a bit odd. But hey, intuitions differ.
Thanks for the comment, Joel!
This implies adding 7.2 min (= 5/1000*24*60) of the worst conceivable experience to everyday of your life would make it neutral. Would you really be indifferent between living or not living a life like yours plus 7.2 min of e.g. being burned alive every single day? I have a strong intuition that adding a few minutes of torture to a random day of my life would make it a terrible day. I assume excruciating is 100 k times as bad as hurtful pain. This means 1.16 days (= 10^5/86400) of hurtful pain is as bad as 1 s of excruciating pain, which feels about right. It implies adding 1 s of excruciating pain everyday would make a random human life neutral, given my assumption that their welfare per time awake is the negative of that of hurtful pain.
In any case, the annual disability of farmed animals is much larger than that of humans even for much less variation in the various types of pain. Assuming hurtful pain is 10 times as bad as annoying pain, disabling pain is 10 times as bad as hurtful pain, and excruciating pain is 10 times as bad as disabling pain, such that excruciating pain is 1 k times as bad as annoying pain (instead of 1 M times as I supposed in the post):
Sounds about right. 10 minutes means bad life. 5 minutes means still life worth living.
Good to know. It mostly makes a difference for humans and cows coming from ~0 to ~5% of disability in your model it seems?
And I appreciate you continuing to bang the drum for animal welfare stuff. It’s made me think about it more.
Then we just have very different intuitions.
Yes, mostly that. I did not rely on data from WFP to model the annual disability of humans and cows, so their annual disability remained the same. The annual disability of the other groups decreased because of the lower weight of extreme suffering. Below is a table with the original assumptions and the ones I mentioned in my last comment.
Humans0.489%3.14%Farmed cows0.430%2.77%Farmed pigs1.88%1.71%Farmed broilers (chickens)29.3%29.0%Farmed hens (chickens)5.52%6.73%Farmed fish31.6%28.7%Farmed decapod shrimp26.6%24.2%Farmed insects4.19%3.81%Thanks! I appreciate the support too.
Quick question on the intution pump about 7 minutes of the worst conceivable experience every day. Would you be aware that it happens after the fact? For me at least, a lot of what would make the randomly tortured day so terrible is how it affected the rest of my day, rather than the excruciating moments of pain themselves.
Thanks for the question, Kai! In my example, I was assuming 7 min of the worst conceivable experience were added on top of the baseline welfare, but you are right that the 7 min would affect the baseline welfare. It is hard to make the thought experiment realistic, because 7 min of the worst conceivable experience would likely lead to permanent effects or death. For reference, this is how WFP describes excruciating pain (the worst type of pain):
As further context, according to WFP, hens experience excruciating pain in mostly fatal situations.
The bar in purple (“acute peritonitis (fatal)”) and thickest bar in red (“vent wound (fatal)”) respect fatal situations[1].
The one in grey concerns “fractures (depop/transport)”, and the one in orange “keel bone fractures”.