Thanks, Jacob! From my perspective, the difference between CAFOs with negative welfare and those with slightly positive welfare is not very significant. Using metaphors, the zero point is often described by comparing it with suicidality. People with 0 welfare are indifferent wrt suicide. CAFOs with chickens whose welfare level is only a hair better than that do not appear like a good thing to me. As I say in the paper, a world with a small number of blissful chickens seems clearly better to me than a world with a large number of miserable chickens, even if their welfare is above 0. Since, from my perspective, the difference between CAFOs with positive and those with negative welfare is not very significant, this did not seem like a strong risk of misinterpretation to me. I can see that this would seem different, however, if for you the 0 welfare inflection point is crucially important.
Ah, that reasoning makes sense! From my perspective, the difference is (by definition) small, but (again, by definition) very meaningful since it differentiates lives worth creating and those that are not.
Thanks, Jacob! From my perspective, the difference between CAFOs with negative welfare and those with slightly positive welfare is not very significant. Using metaphors, the zero point is often described by comparing it with suicidality. People with 0 welfare are indifferent wrt suicide. CAFOs with chickens whose welfare level is only a hair better than that do not appear like a good thing to me. As I say in the paper, a world with a small number of blissful chickens seems clearly better to me than a world with a large number of miserable chickens, even if their welfare is above 0. Since, from my perspective, the difference between CAFOs with positive and those with negative welfare is not very significant, this did not seem like a strong risk of misinterpretation to me. I can see that this would seem different, however, if for you the 0 welfare inflection point is crucially important.
Ah, that reasoning makes sense! From my perspective, the difference is (by definition) small, but (again, by definition) very meaningful since it differentiates lives worth creating and those that are not.