it’s good to hear that there are more skeptical people working in this space on your front. i take the point about life for all animal welfare people being harder if the consensus becomes we need to care a lot about insects
I don’t understand the comparison to working with humans at all though, it seems a bit absurd. Basically 100 percent of people think humans matter, so it’s not even possible to find people who don’t care about them? whereas with insects getting people with 1% − 30% priors on sentience working on that seems reasonable? Orgs like GiveWell and Global health researchers are often skeptical about what they are researching. You’re right though that bias is an issue in all research, in it’s just about mitigating it.
There are skeptical scientists out there I’ve even seen them commenting on the forum—could they not be brought on board? I get that might be impossible if it’s a volunteer organization, but i would hope some people involved were on good terms/friends with more skeptical people.
My main point isn’t that i think people shouldn’t work on what they care about, it’s that we have purely highly motivated people funding/running a range of organizations that are researching a critically important question about animal welfare, which seems like potentially a strong source of bias.
it’s good to hear that there are more skeptical people working in this space on your front. i take the point about life for all animal welfare people being harder if the consensus becomes we need to care a lot about insects
I don’t understand the comparison to working with humans at all though, it seems a bit absurd. Basically 100 percent of people think humans matter, so it’s not even possible to find people who don’t care about them? whereas with insects getting people with 1% − 30% priors on sentience working on that seems reasonable? Orgs like GiveWell and Global health researchers are often skeptical about what they are researching. You’re right though that bias is an issue in all research, in it’s just about mitigating it.
There are skeptical scientists out there I’ve even seen them commenting on the forum—could they not be brought on board? I get that might be impossible if it’s a volunteer organization, but i would hope some people involved were on good terms/friends with more skeptical people.
My main point isn’t that i think people shouldn’t work on what they care about, it’s that we have purely highly motivated people funding/running a range of organizations that are researching a critically important question about animal welfare, which seems like potentially a strong source of bias.