Reading the discussions here I cannot shake the intuition that utilitarianism with very big numbers is once again resulting in weird conclusions. AW advocates are basically describing earth as hell with a tiny sanctuary reserved for humans that are better off than average. I need more convincing. While I cannot disagree with the math or data, I think better theories of animal suffering are needed. At what point is a brain sufficiently developed, for example, to experience suffering in a way that is morally relevant, that we should care about? Are there qualitative differences that override all quantitative ones, and if so which are those?
All the same, I do not completely disagree because 1) moral circle widening is very important to me; 2) at the end of the day I would not compare causes, but specific interventions. There could very well be a highly effective intervention in the animal space that is better than anything GiveWell does, but I am unaware of it.
Hey Uri, thanks for your transparent comment! The cost-effectiveness estimates of cage-free campaigns being orders of magnitude more cost-effective than GiveWell Top Charities have several bases:
The Welfare Footprint Project’s incredibly exhaustive deep dive into every aspect of an egg-laying hen’s life: “Overall, an average of at least 275 hours of disabling pain, 2,313 hours of hurtful pain and 4,645 hours of annoying pain are prevented for each hen kept in an aviary instead of CC during her laying life, and 1,410 hours of hurtful pain and 4,065 hours of annoying pain prevented for each hen kept in an aviary instead of a FC during her laying life.”
Welfare range comparisons between humans and chickens. Rethink Priorities’ Welfare Range Project focused on finding proxies for consciousness and welfare, and enumerating which proxies various animals share with humans. Their methodology found that chickens feel pain approximately 1⁄3 as intensely as humans do. (Of course, different methodologies may give quite different answers.)
Doing the math with the suffering prevented by cage-free campaigns and Rethink’s welfare ranges will give a cost-effectiveness multiplier on the order of 1000x. But even if you assign chickens a welfare range like 0.001x that of humans, you’re still going to get a cost-effectiveness multiplier on the order of 10x.
Similarly, if you ignore Rethink’s research and instead derive a welfare range from neuron counts (to penalize chickens for their small brains), you still get cage-free campaigns outperforming GiveWell Top Charities by an order of magnitude.
All of this why I am quite confident that cage-free campaigns are indeed far more cost-effective than GiveWell-recommended charities.
Reading the discussions here I cannot shake the intuition that utilitarianism with very big numbers is once again resulting in weird conclusions. AW advocates are basically describing earth as hell with a tiny sanctuary reserved for humans that are better off than average. I need more convincing. While I cannot disagree with the math or data, I think better theories of animal suffering are needed. At what point is a brain sufficiently developed, for example, to experience suffering in a way that is morally relevant, that we should care about? Are there qualitative differences that override all quantitative ones, and if so which are those? All the same, I do not completely disagree because 1) moral circle widening is very important to me; 2) at the end of the day I would not compare causes, but specific interventions. There could very well be a highly effective intervention in the animal space that is better than anything GiveWell does, but I am unaware of it.
Hey Uri, thanks for your transparent comment! The cost-effectiveness estimates of cage-free campaigns being orders of magnitude more cost-effective than GiveWell Top Charities have several bases:
The Welfare Footprint Project’s incredibly exhaustive deep dive into every aspect of an egg-laying hen’s life: “Overall, an average of at least 275 hours of disabling pain, 2,313 hours of hurtful pain and 4,645 hours of annoying pain are prevented for each hen kept in an aviary instead of CC during her laying life, and 1,410 hours of hurtful pain and 4,065 hours of annoying pain prevented for each hen kept in an aviary instead of a FC during her laying life.”
Welfare range comparisons between humans and chickens. Rethink Priorities’ Welfare Range Project focused on finding proxies for consciousness and welfare, and enumerating which proxies various animals share with humans. Their methodology found that chickens feel pain approximately 1⁄3 as intensely as humans do. (Of course, different methodologies may give quite different answers.)
Doing the math with the suffering prevented by cage-free campaigns and Rethink’s welfare ranges will give a cost-effectiveness multiplier on the order of 1000x. But even if you assign chickens a welfare range like 0.001x that of humans, you’re still going to get a cost-effectiveness multiplier on the order of 10x.
Similarly, if you ignore Rethink’s research and instead derive a welfare range from neuron counts (to penalize chickens for their small brains), you still get cage-free campaigns outperforming GiveWell Top Charities by an order of magnitude.
All of this why I am quite confident that cage-free campaigns are indeed far more cost-effective than GiveWell-recommended charities.