Those are fair point in themselves, but I donât think âless deer is fine, so long as they have a higher standard of livingâ has anything like the same commonsense standing as âwe should protect people from malaria with insecticide even if the insecticide hurts insectsâ.
And itâs not clear to me that assuming less deer is fine in itself even if their lives are good is avoiding taking a stance on the intractable philosophical debate, rather than just implicitly taking one side of it.
Oh I see Iâd misunderstood your point. I thought you were concerned about lowering the number of warble flies. This policy wouldnât lower the number of deerâit would maintain the population at the same level. This is for the sake of avoiding unwanted ecological effects. If you think itâs better to have more deer, fair enoughâbut then youâve got to weigh that against the very uncertain ecological consequences of having more deer (probably something like what happened in Yellowstone Nationa Park: fewer young trees, more open fields, fewer animals that depend on those trees, more erosion etc)
Those are fair point in themselves, but I donât think âless deer is fine, so long as they have a higher standard of livingâ has anything like the same commonsense standing as âwe should protect people from malaria with insecticide even if the insecticide hurts insectsâ.
And itâs not clear to me that assuming less deer is fine in itself even if their lives are good is avoiding taking a stance on the intractable philosophical debate, rather than just implicitly taking one side of it.
Oh I see Iâd misunderstood your point. I thought you were concerned about lowering the number of warble flies. This policy wouldnât lower the number of deerâit would maintain the population at the same level. This is for the sake of avoiding unwanted ecological effects. If you think itâs better to have more deer, fair enoughâbut then youâve got to weigh that against the very uncertain ecological consequences of having more deer (probably something like what happened in Yellowstone Nationa Park: fewer young trees, more open fields, fewer animals that depend on those trees, more erosion etc)
Oh, ok, I agree, if the number of deer is the same after as counterfactually, it seems plausibly net positive yes.