epistemic status: extremely quickly written thoughts, haven’t thought these through deeply, these are mostly vibes. i spent 10 minutes writing this out. i do not cite sources.
seems like non-human animals are suffering much more than humans, both in quantity of beings suffering & extent of suffering per being
it might be that non-human animals are less morally valuable than humans — i think i buy into this to some extent, but, like, you’d have to buy into this to a ridiculously extreme extent to think that humans are suffering more than non-human animals in aggregate
seems like animal welfare has been pretty tractable — in-particular, e.g. shrimp or insect welfare, where magnitudinal differences
it seems like there’s currently substantially more of a global focus (in terms of $ for sure, but also in terms of general vibes) on global health than on animal welfare, even holding suffering between the two groups constant
i generally feel pretty cautious about expanding into new(er) causes, for epistemic modesty reasons (for both empirical & moral uncertainty reasons)
this is particularly true for the sub-cause-areas within animal welfare that seem most promising, like shrimp & insect welfare as well as wild animal welfare
this is what’s preventing me from moving the dial ~all the way to the right
some things this question doesn’t take into acct:
within each of these areas, how is the $100mm being spent?
how would other funders react to this? would e.g. some other funder pull out of [cause] because $100mm just appeared?
etc — though i don’t think that these questions are particularly relevant to the debate
some cruxes around which i have the most uncertainty:
extent to which there continue to be tractable interventions in AW (compared to GH)
extent to which i believe that non-human lives have moral significance
epistemic status: extremely quickly written thoughts, haven’t thought these through deeply, these are mostly vibes. i spent 10 minutes writing this out. i do not cite sources.
seems like non-human animals are suffering much more than humans, both in quantity of beings suffering & extent of suffering per being
it might be that non-human animals are less morally valuable than humans — i think i buy into this to some extent, but, like, you’d have to buy into this to a ridiculously extreme extent to think that humans are suffering more than non-human animals in aggregate
seems like animal welfare has been pretty tractable — in-particular, e.g. shrimp or insect welfare, where magnitudinal differences
it seems like there’s currently substantially more of a global focus (in terms of $ for sure, but also in terms of general vibes) on global health than on animal welfare, even holding suffering between the two groups constant
i generally feel pretty cautious about expanding into new(er) causes, for epistemic modesty reasons (for both empirical & moral uncertainty reasons)
this is particularly true for the sub-cause-areas within animal welfare that seem most promising, like shrimp & insect welfare as well as wild animal welfare
this is what’s preventing me from moving the dial ~all the way to the right
some things this question doesn’t take into acct:
within each of these areas, how is the $100mm being spent?
how would other funders react to this? would e.g. some other funder pull out of [cause] because $100mm just appeared?
etc — though i don’t think that these questions are particularly relevant to the debate
some cruxes around which i have the most uncertainty:
extent to which there continue to be tractable interventions in AW (compared to GH)
extent to which i believe that non-human lives have moral significance
probably some others that i’m not thinking of