I think your thoughts about cause prioritisation are very interesting, and they have made me talk about animal suffering and effectiveness when I hold a lecture for my students in public health.
I worry efforts to preserve biodiversity may be harmful due to encouraging wildnerness preservation, and therefore increasing wild animal suffering. I also think fighting climate change may be harmful due to increasing wild animal suffering. I would even say helping people in poverty may be harmful via increasing factory-farming. I believe the effects of Cool Earth on animals can easily dominate those on humans, and there is lots of uncertainty about whether the effects on animals are positive or negative, so I do not know whether Cool Earth is overall beneficial or harmful. Relatedly:
I believe the large uncertainty about the effects of human welfare interventions on wild (and farmed) animals should push one towards prioritising:
Animal welfare interventions improving the conditions of animals instead of decreasing the number of animals with negative lives, or increasing the number of animals with positive lives. I recommend donating to the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP), which I estimate has been 64.3 k times as cost-effective as GW’s top charities (neglecting their effects on animals).
Learning more about helping invertebrates, whose total capacity for welfare vastly exceeds that of vertebrates. I recommend donating to (I ordered the organisations alphabetically):
The Arthropoda Foundation. Their research priorities are humane slaughter protocols, stocking densities and substrate research, and automated welfare assessment.
They intend “to use current and new funding” for, among other activities, “Conducting an analysis of agricultural pest control to better understand the best targets for welfare interventions — first identifying scientific gaps and then developing research plans to help fill them”.
I estimate paying farmers to use more humane pesticides to decrease the suffering of wild insects is 23.7 k times as cost-effective as GW’s top charities.
Thank you for another insightful and interesting comment as well, Vasco! It was really nice to discuss with you and want to say that I have great respect for you and your texts. You gave me a lot to think about. I am very curios about how you would like the world to look like, what would your utopia be? I understand that it might be much to write (if you haven’t written about it already), so it is no rush, and you don’t need to reply if you feel that you want to use your time in other ways instead. But thanks again for giving me new perspectives and knowledge, I hope that I was able to return the favor. :)
I am very curios about how you would like the world to look like, what would your utopia be?
Thanks for the question! I strongly endorse expectationaltotalhedonisticutilitarianism (maximising happiness, and minimising suffering), so my ideal world would have as much expected total hedonistic welfare as possible.
Nearterm, I would like people to consider digital sentience, factory-farming, and wild animal suffering the most pressing issues of our time (I have ordered them alphabetically). More importantly, I would like people to donate more to the Arthropoda Foundation, SWP or WAI. I think these are the organisations which more cost-effectively increase welfare. In addition, I believe increasing the donations to those organisations is the best strategy to maximise impact for the vast majority of people, even among people working in impact-focussed organisations.
Longterm, I would like the world to be filled with beings which have the most welfare per energy consumed. I estimate bees can experience 4.88 k times as much welfare per calorie consumption as humans. My estimates for the 5th and 95th percentile are 0 and 31.7 k, so I am not confident filling the universe with bees would be better than filling it with humans. Moreover, there may be other species or non-biological beings which experience even more welfare per energy consumed than bees. However, I would be surprised if humans were the beings experiencing the most welfare per energy consumption.
I believe the effects of Cool Earth on animals can easily dominate those on humans
I estimate the harm a random person caused to poultry birds and farmed aquatic animals in 2022 was 217 times the harm their GHG emissions caused to humans.
Thanks for another insightful comment, Ulf!
Great to know!
I worry efforts to preserve biodiversity may be harmful due to encouraging wildnerness preservation, and therefore increasing wild animal suffering. I also think fighting climate change may be harmful due to increasing wild animal suffering. I would even say helping people in poverty may be harmful via increasing factory-farming. I believe the effects of Cool Earth on animals can easily dominate those on humans, and there is lots of uncertainty about whether the effects on animals are positive or negative, so I do not know whether Cool Earth is overall beneficial or harmful. Relatedly:
Thank you for another insightful and interesting comment as well, Vasco! It was really nice to discuss with you and want to say that I have great respect for you and your texts. You gave me a lot to think about. I am very curios about how you would like the world to look like, what would your utopia be? I understand that it might be much to write (if you haven’t written about it already), so it is no rush, and you don’t need to reply if you feel that you want to use your time in other ways instead. But thanks again for giving me new perspectives and knowledge, I hope that I was able to return the favor. :)
Thanks a lot, Ulf!
Thanks for the question! I strongly endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (maximising happiness, and minimising suffering), so my ideal world would have as much expected total hedonistic welfare as possible.
Nearterm, I would like people to consider digital sentience, factory-farming, and wild animal suffering the most pressing issues of our time (I have ordered them alphabetically). More importantly, I would like people to donate more to the Arthropoda Foundation, SWP or WAI. I think these are the organisations which more cost-effectively increase welfare. In addition, I believe increasing the donations to those organisations is the best strategy to maximise impact for the vast majority of people, even among people working in impact-focussed organisations.
Longterm, I would like the world to be filled with beings which have the most welfare per energy consumed. I estimate bees can experience 4.88 k times as much welfare per calorie consumption as humans. My estimates for the 5th and 95th percentile are 0 and 31.7 k, so I am not confident filling the universe with bees would be better than filling it with humans. Moreover, there may be other species or non-biological beings which experience even more welfare per energy consumed than bees. However, I would be surprised if humans were the beings experiencing the most welfare per energy consumption.
I estimate the harm a random person caused to poultry birds and farmed aquatic animals in 2022 was 217 times the harm their GHG emissions caused to humans.