Error
Unrecognized LW server error:
Field "fmCrosspost" of type "CrosspostOutput" must have a selection of subfields. Did you mean "fmCrosspost { ... }"?
Unrecognized LW server error:
Field "fmCrosspost" of type "CrosspostOutput" must have a selection of subfields. Did you mean "fmCrosspost { ... }"?
Thanks for the post, Stijn!
Just one note. I think you assume wild animal welfare is negative, but this is unclear, so it is arguably better to avoid pursuing actions which assume it is negative/positive. People may get attached to the horse fields, and converting these to dense forests could be good if they turn out to have higher wild animal welfare per area. Besides improving farmed animal welfare, I would focus on understanding wild animal welfare and building a movement around it, as Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) as been doing.
In any case, I believe it is good to have a vision of what to do conditional on wild animal welfare being negative/positive.
thanks Vasco! Good comments. I added some things about people preferring a world with fewer higher welfare animals above a world with many more animals that have a higher probability of having a very negative welfare. Many people are risk averse, favor an asymmetric population axiology, favor avoiding suffering over creating happiness.
I also added that we should do more research on wild animal welfare and turn the grassland into forests if research shows that animal welfare in forests is sufficiently higher.
Wild animal welfare research and movement building is surely very good, but here I wanted to present something specific that people could actually choose to do right now, instead of “looking for what we could do in the future”.
This makes a number of non-trivial assumption and unsourced claims about a number of different issues, from relative moral value of animals to the carrying capacity of different biomes; I know that many of these are seen as common wisdom in EA, but I think failing to lay them out greatly weakens the conclusions.
Also, some questions to think about: Why are insects ignored? How does the transition happen, legally or economically? What are the impacts of land use changes, and do farmers sell the land? (To whom?) Do social norms around meat undermine the viability of a transition?
Thanks for the questions, David. Insects are not really ignored. When I refer to small animals, that includes insects. The transition can happen in many ways, both legally (regulations that decrease chicken farming), economically (taxing chicken meat). Farmers can be asked to sell the land to the government, who turns it into grassland habitat. Social norms could be the major obstacle. Individual consumers can always resist social norms and decrease their consumption of products from small animals, even if that goes against the social norms. And we could of course change social norms. Also, there may be social norms about meat consumption in general, but not about chicken meat consumption. The ask is to reduce chicken meat consumption, which is more feasible than going vegan.