This is a good point, thanks. Note that I have fitted 6 types of distributions to Muehlhauser’s guesses for various species here, and concluded that:
The mean moral weight is close to 1 for all the considered species, ranging from 0.5 to 5 excluding the lognormal and pareto distributions (for which it is even higher, but seemingly inaccurate).
I think a value close to 1 is not unreasonable. As described here, CE’s Weighted Animal Welfare Index total welfare score and probability of feeling pain imply the conditions of laying hens in CC in -QALY/​cyear is about 10 % of what my assumptions imply. 1 order of magnitude is not much considering the large uncertainty involved: the 95th percentile of the moral weight distribution I used is about 1 M times as large as the 5th percentile.
Moreover, I do not think we know enough about consciousness to confidently say that the moral cannot be larger than 1. As a result, for the reasons you mentioned, the mean moral weight will tend to be close to 1.
This is a good point, thanks. Note that I have fitted 6 types of distributions to Muehlhauser’s guesses for various species here, and concluded that:
I think a value close to 1 is not unreasonable. As described here, CE’s Weighted Animal Welfare Index total welfare score and probability of feeling pain imply the conditions of laying hens in CC in -QALY/​cyear is about 10 % of what my assumptions imply. 1 order of magnitude is not much considering the large uncertainty involved: the 95th percentile of the moral weight distribution I used is about 1 M times as large as the 5th percentile.
Moreover, I do not think we know enough about consciousness to confidently say that the moral cannot be larger than 1. As a result, for the reasons you mentioned, the mean moral weight will tend to be close to 1.