Have any animal studies used “gambles” instead of duration-severity tradeoffs? Basically, you could expose animals repeatedly to two options:
probability p1 of pain with intensity level l1 for duration t vs probability p2 of pain with intensity level l2 for duration t
The probabilities should be statistically independent between trials. Note also that the durations are the same.
If an animal chooses the first consistently after repeated exposures, then this indicates p1*l1 < p2*l2,[1] which tells you something about the relative cardinal intensities of the two pains.
Then, you can vary the probabilities and intensities.
Causing animals pain this way in experiments might be unethical. But maybe we can do something similar with animals who are already in pain using pain relief or some other thing they’re motivated to get (although noting that pain will reduce motivation for other things other than avoiding the pain).
Well, there may be adjustments we need to make for other components of experience like baseline welfare or decision-theoretic biases/irrationality, but this is a first approximation.
Interesting idea! I will have to look into whether it has been tried on farmed animals or laboratory animals. I would have a concern similar to the concern I have with the classical conditioning experiments: aversion to the more intense pain might reflect reduced volition rather than welfare maximization. But it does seem plausible that volition is not as much of an issue when the pain is only administered with a low probability.
Have any animal studies used “gambles” instead of duration-severity tradeoffs? Basically, you could expose animals repeatedly to two options:
probability p1 of pain with intensity level l1 for duration t vs probability p2 of pain with intensity level l2 for duration t
The probabilities should be statistically independent between trials. Note also that the durations are the same.
If an animal chooses the first consistently after repeated exposures, then this indicates p1*l1 < p2*l2,[1] which tells you something about the relative cardinal intensities of the two pains.
Then, you can vary the probabilities and intensities.
Causing animals pain this way in experiments might be unethical. But maybe we can do something similar with animals who are already in pain using pain relief or some other thing they’re motivated to get (although noting that pain will reduce motivation for other things other than avoiding the pain).
Well, there may be adjustments we need to make for other components of experience like baseline welfare or decision-theoretic biases/irrationality, but this is a first approximation.
Interesting idea! I will have to look into whether it has been tried on farmed animals or laboratory animals. I would have a concern similar to the concern I have with the classical conditioning experiments: aversion to the more intense pain might reflect reduced volition rather than welfare maximization. But it does seem plausible that volition is not as much of an issue when the pain is only administered with a low probability.