I think there is something to this. Besides economic growth, additional humans today could mean more humans (or beings descended from us, directly or artificially) across the far future, through their descendants.
I would be interested in further exploration of possible ripple effects of animal welfare work, too. For the most part, I expect far future indirect effects of animal welfare work to go through events that shape the distribution of values and attitudes of humans, our descendents and AIs. Some ideas:
Animal welfare work affects people’s values, attitudes and institutions, and engages people. There’s moral circle expansion and capacity building. The capacity here is the labour, knowledge and resources of a community of people sensitive to the welfare of nonhuman animals, and often nonhuman moral patients more generally. Animal advocacy work grows the capacity of the animal advocacy community. Effective animal advocacy (EAA) work grows the capacity of the EAA and EA communities. Perhaps the case for far future effects is weaker here than for economic growth, though.
More speculatively, the values and practices of future space colonies may disproprortionately reflect the values of early space colonizers from whom they inherit their institutions, attitudes and/​or genetic dispositions (which in turn influence their attitudes). Ensuring early space colonizers are more animal-friendly, by changing their attitudes or ensuring hard of soft selection in a way related to their attitudes could be very important. For example, requiring the food of early space colonizers to be plant-based will cause those with dispositions that lead them to use animals for food to self-select out of space colonization. Those dispositions would then be less common across the far future, if space colonizers have more children on average. The Earth-bound will have a maximum population size, but colonizers may not or could have a far larger one, and may grow their populations above replacement long-term for successful space exploration and colonization.
Also, note that, for however much psychological studies are worth, I think one of the more common theories in psychology right now explaining concern/​lack thereof about animals is that human supremacy is an expression of social dominance theory towards animals, that is, it is just an application of general desires for hierarchy (social dominance orientation), not something really specifically targeted towards animals. Creating norms and attitudes against domination of animals will reduce this general desire to dominate, reducing one of the psychological bases for prejudice in general. Depending on how much influence you think institutions vs inherent psychological traits have on human behavior and the potential of both to be changed, this could either be pretty low flowthrough impact or very high impact.
I think there is something to this. Besides economic growth, additional humans today could mean more humans (or beings descended from us, directly or artificially) across the far future, through their descendants.
I would be interested in further exploration of possible ripple effects of animal welfare work, too. For the most part, I expect far future indirect effects of animal welfare work to go through events that shape the distribution of values and attitudes of humans, our descendents and AIs. Some ideas:
Animal welfare work affects people’s values, attitudes and institutions, and engages people. There’s moral circle expansion and capacity building. The capacity here is the labour, knowledge and resources of a community of people sensitive to the welfare of nonhuman animals, and often nonhuman moral patients more generally. Animal advocacy work grows the capacity of the animal advocacy community. Effective animal advocacy (EAA) work grows the capacity of the EAA and EA communities. Perhaps the case for far future effects is weaker here than for economic growth, though.
More speculatively, the values and practices of future space colonies may disproprortionately reflect the values of early space colonizers from whom they inherit their institutions, attitudes and/​or genetic dispositions (which in turn influence their attitudes). Ensuring early space colonizers are more animal-friendly, by changing their attitudes or ensuring hard of soft selection in a way related to their attitudes could be very important. For example, requiring the food of early space colonizers to be plant-based will cause those with dispositions that lead them to use animals for food to self-select out of space colonization. Those dispositions would then be less common across the far future, if space colonizers have more children on average. The Earth-bound will have a maximum population size, but colonizers may not or could have a far larger one, and may grow their populations above replacement long-term for successful space exploration and colonization.
And, of course, potential AI value lock-in.
Also, note that, for however much psychological studies are worth, I think one of the more common theories in psychology right now explaining concern/​lack thereof about animals is that human supremacy is an expression of social dominance theory towards animals, that is, it is just an application of general desires for hierarchy (social dominance orientation), not something really specifically targeted towards animals. Creating norms and attitudes against domination of animals will reduce this general desire to dominate, reducing one of the psychological bases for prejudice in general. Depending on how much influence you think institutions vs inherent psychological traits have on human behavior and the potential of both to be changed, this could either be pretty low flowthrough impact or very high impact.