Sorry for a negative comment, but I think that all of these interventions fail to really address wild animal suffering, and that that is pretty clear already. This is simply due to the fact that pretty much all interventions on WAW have only a temporary positive effect, or worse are zeroed out completely, by the malthusian trap.
wind farm deaths: probably not worse than death by predation or starvation. Also other people’s hobby horse already.
culling: not worse than predation or starvation. IMO often net positive, keeps populations in growth mode. (Of course, that depends on the suffering of insects though)
deterrence: temporary negative effect as some birds that were previously eating the crops starve, followed by no effect so long as the deterrence
(Addressing those “probably”s is probably useful)
Ok, well, that’s not the point. As you say in the conclusion:
“[...] Additionally, intervening in HWC is seen as acceptable; [...]”
I think we should be clear that that’s the core proposal here, and thus also build on that more. The artificial intelligence part is just a potentially useful tool. (Although now that I say this, that is potentially a hard post to write in the open? Maybe you tactically alluded to this but not actually say it? And if so and I missed it then I’ll delete this comment)
The unique thing AI can potentially is as you say, scale, but not scaling pest control & deterrence—rather future interventions that make progress on fixing the wild animal malthusian trap and ecosystem effects (ie. predation). Those sort of interventions are unavoidably going to sound like sci fi (😂 like a VR headset and free condoms for every rat 😂), but you can ground it as much as you can.
Thanks for engaging with the report. I’ll offer a response since Tapinder’s summer fellowship has ended and I was her manager during the project. I’ve made a general comment in response to Tristan that applies here too.
On your comment specifically, the “malthusian trap” is empirically not always supported. A population can approach or be at its carrying capacity and still have adequate resources, for instance if they simply do not reproduce as much due to less resource surplus.
Sorry for a negative comment, but I think that all of these interventions fail to really address wild animal suffering, and that that is pretty clear already. This is simply due to the fact that pretty much all interventions on WAW have only a temporary positive effect, or worse are zeroed out completely, by the malthusian trap.
wind farm deaths: probably not worse than death by predation or starvation. Also other people’s hobby horse already.
culling: not worse than predation or starvation. IMO often net positive, keeps populations in growth mode. (Of course, that depends on the suffering of insects though)
deterrence: temporary negative effect as some birds that were previously eating the crops starve, followed by no effect so long as the deterrence
(Addressing those “probably”s is probably useful)
Ok, well, that’s not the point. As you say in the conclusion:
“[...] Additionally, intervening in HWC is seen as acceptable; [...]”
I think we should be clear that that’s the core proposal here, and thus also build on that more. The artificial intelligence part is just a potentially useful tool. (Although now that I say this, that is potentially a hard post to write in the open? Maybe you tactically alluded to this but not actually say it? And if so and I missed it then I’ll delete this comment)
The unique thing AI can potentially is as you say, scale, but not scaling pest control & deterrence—rather future interventions that make progress on fixing the wild animal malthusian trap and ecosystem effects (ie. predation). Those sort of interventions are unavoidably going to sound like sci fi (😂 like a VR headset and free condoms for every rat 😂), but you can ground it as much as you can.
Thanks for engaging with the report. I’ll offer a response since Tapinder’s summer fellowship has ended and I was her manager during the project. I’ve made a general comment in response to Tristan that applies here too.
On your comment specifically, the “malthusian trap” is empirically not always supported. A population can approach or be at its carrying capacity and still have adequate resources, for instance if they simply do not reproduce as much due to less resource surplus.