I think some long-term EAs ignore harms to farmed animals. Not all or necessarily most, though. Actually, based on the most recent EA survey (āMean cause rating and sub groupingā, in section Group membership), cause prioritization between veg*ns and meat eaters only really differed very much on animal welfare (higher for veg*ns) and global poverty (higher for meat eaters).
If someone dies today, that makes humanity grow more slowly and makes the world a more volatile place.
I donāt really have much confidence in this claim. It sounds plausible, of course, but there are also potentially long-term negative effects from larger populations, like environmental harms. These will have to be weighed against each other.
Here is an excerpt from Candidate Scoring System about the value of population size:
Folk assumptions about āoverpopulationā are flawed and must be dropped, making it unclear whether our population growth is too high or too low for total human welfare (Greaves 2019, Ord 2014). 19% of economists agree that the economic benefits of an expanding world population outweigh the economic costs and 29% agree with provisos; 48% disagree (Fuller and Geide-Stevenson 2014). There are also non-human consequences of having a larger population. Humans eat meat, and animal agriculture and aquaculture generally involve negative welfare (Bogosian 2019). Much of the land we occupy would otherwise be occupied by wilderness, but itās not clear if wilderness has net negative animal welfare (Plant 2016). However, this consideration is small in the long run since we can expect animal farming to eventually become more humane or outmoded.
From what we can see, the social cost of the pollution of a typical person, even in the West, seems small in comparison to a personās whole life and impacts. Per our air pollution section, we can tentatively say that the social cost of carbon, including other impacts of air pollution besides climate change, is less than $200/āton. This is $3,200 per American per year. Meanwhile, American GDP per capita is $59,500. Thus, the average American seems to contribute far more to the world through labor than what they destroy via air pollution. There are other downsides of population growth, but they seem unlikely to be much worse than air pollution, and there are other upsides as well.
Changing population size now may also have a large effect on long-run fertility. Jones (2019) provides a model of economic growth with endogenous fertility and suggests that actual population growth may be either higher or lower than optimal, but in particular he shows that under certain assumptions insufficient fertility could lead to an indefinitely declining population with a corresponding stagnation of wealth and knowledge. This counts as an existential threat to humanity, albeit a relatively slow and mundane one that might be overturned by a Darwinian mechanism.
Of course, killing someone is worse than deciding not to give birth to someone.
Also, the Vox article here described how some EA Global attendees thought of global poverty as a ārounding errorā. I donāt know that this is very representative of longtermists, though.
I think some long-term EAs ignore harms to farmed animals. Not all or necessarily most, though. Actually, based on the most recent EA survey (āMean cause rating and sub groupingā, in section Group membership), cause prioritization between veg*ns and meat eaters only really differed very much on animal welfare (higher for veg*ns) and global poverty (higher for meat eaters).
I donāt really have much confidence in this claim. It sounds plausible, of course, but there are also potentially long-term negative effects from larger populations, like environmental harms. These will have to be weighed against each other.
Here is an excerpt from Candidate Scoring System about the value of population size:
Of course, killing someone is worse than deciding not to give birth to someone.
Also, the Vox article here described how some EA Global attendees thought of global poverty as a ārounding errorā. I donāt know that this is very representative of longtermists, though.