On alt proteins, if we ever substantially beat price parity (say by 50%), itās just hard for me to see how we wouldnāt get mass consumer adoption. This comes from a model of most peopleās stated preferences as downstream of whatās most convenient and protects their egos most. Thatās the model I think best explains most peopleās historical responses to moral catastrophes. Under this model, people maintaining theyād stick to factory farmed meat over cultivated meat is hopefully a temporary cope which will go away once cultivated meat becomes much more convenient than factory farmed meat. So for me, that model is the main reason why I still think alt proteins are a good use of funds. (Probably the stronger argument against alt proteins is that it may be unclear whether reducing meat consumption is good when accounting for wild animal effects!)
On cage-free campaigns and shrimp stunning, my main caveat would be that since animal welfare interventions affect such a huge number of individuals, Iād still expect the magnitude of their direct welfare effects (ignoring indirect effects) to be huge relative to global health. Of course, that only underscores your point that the sign deserves more research, and I look forward to reading comments from others far more knowledgeable than I am on this.
Would Rethink Prioritiesā animal welfare research group look like a good investment under your views?
On alt proteins, if we ever substantially beat price parity (say by 50%), itās just hard for me to see how we wouldnāt get mass consumer adoption.
For an exact substitute like precision fermented egg whites I think I agree. But alt proteins are usually more like the difference between eating different animals (turkey bacon instead of pig bacon) and people often pay >>2x for preferred animals. Even if this gets down to only as different as cuts of meat within a given animal people often pay >>2x for specific cuts. And then people really love variety, so while I see a path to replacing say 2ā3 of a typical personās meat consumption the remaining portion is far harder.
I agree with your scenario. I still think itās plausible that if 2ā3 of most peopleās meat consumption was replaced, people would come around to the idea that they can reduce factory farming at no cost to their convenience. Hopefully this would lead to an erosion of peopleās defense mechanisms around animal welfare, helping animal welfare take off as a mass movement like historical successful ethical movements. But thatās totally speculative and not grounded in much other than desperation.
Also for the record, I hope you know I donāt consider you among āmost peopleā hereāI respect you as a person and the sincerity of your views on animal consciousness.
On cage-free campaigns and shrimp stunning, my main caveat would be that since animal welfare interventions affect such a huge number of individuals, Iād still expect the magnitude of their direct welfare effects (ignoring indirect effects) to be huge relative to global health.
Are you confident about this? I would say there is huge uncertainty. For sentience-adjusted welfare ranges proportional to āindividual number of neuronsā^āexponentā, and āexponentā from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable, GiveWellās top charitiesmay increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries way more cost-effectively than cage-free egg corporate campaigns, and the Shrimp Welfare Projectās (SWPās) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI).
Hey Vasco! Taking into account moral uncertainty over the neuron count exponent, your plot would still make the animal interventions you listed look far higher EV than GiveWell. The probability mass where the exponent is between 0 and 1, making the animal interventions look several OOMs better than GiveWell, would swamp the cases where the exponent is >1.
(Yes, this runs into the two envelopes problem, but I think there are good arguments for using human welfare as the unit of account.)
Furthermore, I personally donāt find neuron count exponents >1 as plausible as you do. If Iām interpreting this plot from your linked source post correctly, for broiler chickens, exponent 1 implies welfare range 1ā500 and exponent 2 implies welfare range 1ā100,000. I agree that these numbers would make GiveWell look better, but I donāt find those welfare ranges intuitively plausible.
Taking into account moral uncertainty over the neuron count exponent, your plot would still make the animal interventions you listed look far higher EV than GiveWell. The probability mass where the exponent is between 0 and 1, making the animal interventions look several OOMs better than GiveWell, would swamp the cases where the exponent is >1.
You are distributing the probability mass roughly evenly across the potential models (values of the exponent)? I worry about giving weights to models based on practically no evidence. In Bob Fischerās book about comparing welfare across species, there is just this justifying the weights (I read the whole book).
When we generated the mixture model, we assigned 60 percent weight to the simple additive model, 30 percent to the neurophysiological model, and 10 percent to the equality model. We did this because we suspect that collecting empirical data on the presence or absence of welfare-related traits is a more reliable methodology for generating welfare range estimates than using either the neurophysiological or equality models. However, the proper weight to give is the subject of a reasonable debate.
People usually give weights that are at least 0.1/āānumber of modelsā, which is at least 3.33 % (= 0.1/ā3) for 3 models, when it is quite hard to estimate the weights. However, giving weights which are not much smaller than the uniform weight of 1/āānumber of modelsā could easily lead to huge mistakes. As a silly example, if I asked random people with age 7 about whether the gravitational force between 2 objects is proportional to ādistanceā^-2 (correct answer), ādistanceā^-20, or ādistanceā^-200, I imagine I would get a significant fraction picking the exponents of ā20 and ā200. Assuming 60 % picked ā2, 20 % picked ā20, and 20 % picked ā200, one may naively conclude the mean exponent of ā45.2 (= 0.6*(-2) + 0.2*(-20) + 0.2*(-200)) is reasonable. Yet, there is lots of empirical evidence against this which the respondants are not aware of. The right conclusion would be that the respondants have practically no idea about the right exponent because they would not be able to adequately justify their picks.
If Iām interpreting this plot from your linked source post correctly, for broiler chickens, exponent 1 implies welfare range 1ā500 and exponent 2 implies welfare range 1ā100,000. I agree that these numbers would make GiveWell look better, but I donāt find those welfare ranges intuitively plausible.
You are reading the graph correctly. Why do you find an exponent of 2 implausible? My position is not so much that I find it plausible. It is more that I do not know how to check the plausibility of values ranging from 0 to 2 or so, and therefore do not want to rule them out.
Iād still expect the magnitude of their direct welfare effects (ignoring indirect effects) to be huge relative to global health
You cannot rule out indirect effects if you are confident the exponent is 0 to 1? In this case, I estimate effects on soil invertebrates are much larger than those on target beneficiaries.
The graph above covers microarthropods (springtails and mites) and nematodes, which are not covered in Bobās book. However, I have very little idea about whether cage-free egg campaigns increase or decrease welfare due to potentially dominant effects on soil ants and termites alone. These are macroarthropods like shrimps and black soldier flies (BSFs), which are covered in Bobās book.
Thanks for the well-argued and insightful post!
On alt proteins, if we ever substantially beat price parity (say by 50%), itās just hard for me to see how we wouldnāt get mass consumer adoption. This comes from a model of most peopleās stated preferences as downstream of whatās most convenient and protects their egos most. Thatās the model I think best explains most peopleās historical responses to moral catastrophes. Under this model, people maintaining theyād stick to factory farmed meat over cultivated meat is hopefully a temporary cope which will go away once cultivated meat becomes much more convenient than factory farmed meat. So for me, that model is the main reason why I still think alt proteins are a good use of funds. (Probably the stronger argument against alt proteins is that it may be unclear whether reducing meat consumption is good when accounting for wild animal effects!)
On cage-free campaigns and shrimp stunning, my main caveat would be that since animal welfare interventions affect such a huge number of individuals, Iād still expect the magnitude of their direct welfare effects (ignoring indirect effects) to be huge relative to global health. Of course, that only underscores your point that the sign deserves more research, and I look forward to reading comments from others far more knowledgeable than I am on this.
Would Rethink Prioritiesā animal welfare research group look like a good investment under your views?
For an exact substitute like precision fermented egg whites I think I agree. But alt proteins are usually more like the difference between eating different animals (turkey bacon instead of pig bacon) and people often pay >>2x for preferred animals. Even if this gets down to only as different as cuts of meat within a given animal people often pay >>2x for specific cuts. And then people really love variety, so while I see a path to replacing say 2ā3 of a typical personās meat consumption the remaining portion is far harder.
I agree with your scenario. I still think itās plausible that if 2ā3 of most peopleās meat consumption was replaced, people would come around to the idea that they can reduce factory farming at no cost to their convenience. Hopefully this would lead to an erosion of peopleās defense mechanisms around animal welfare, helping animal welfare take off as a mass movement like historical successful ethical movements. But thatās totally speculative and not grounded in much other than desperation.
Also for the record, I hope you know I donāt consider you among āmost peopleā hereāI respect you as a person and the sincerity of your views on animal consciousness.
Hi Ariel.
Are you confident about this? I would say there is huge uncertainty. For sentience-adjusted welfare ranges proportional to āindividual number of neuronsā^āexponentā, and āexponentā from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable, GiveWellās top charities may increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries way more cost-effectively than cage-free egg corporate campaigns, and the Shrimp Welfare Projectās (SWPās) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI).
Hey Vasco! Taking into account moral uncertainty over the neuron count exponent, your plot would still make the animal interventions you listed look far higher EV than GiveWell. The probability mass where the exponent is between 0 and 1, making the animal interventions look several OOMs better than GiveWell, would swamp the cases where the exponent is >1.
(Yes, this runs into the two envelopes problem, but I think there are good arguments for using human welfare as the unit of account.)
Furthermore, I personally donāt find neuron count exponents >1 as plausible as you do. If Iām interpreting this plot from your linked source post correctly, for broiler chickens, exponent 1 implies welfare range 1ā500 and exponent 2 implies welfare range 1ā100,000. I agree that these numbers would make GiveWell look better, but I donāt find those welfare ranges intuitively plausible.
You are distributing the probability mass roughly evenly across the potential models (values of the exponent)? I worry about giving weights to models based on practically no evidence. In Bob Fischerās book about comparing welfare across species, there is just this justifying the weights (I read the whole book).
People usually give weights that are at least 0.1/āānumber of modelsā, which is at least 3.33 % (= 0.1/ā3) for 3 models, when it is quite hard to estimate the weights. However, giving weights which are not much smaller than the uniform weight of 1/āānumber of modelsā could easily lead to huge mistakes. As a silly example, if I asked random people with age 7 about whether the gravitational force between 2 objects is proportional to ādistanceā^-2 (correct answer), ādistanceā^-20, or ādistanceā^-200, I imagine I would get a significant fraction picking the exponents of ā20 and ā200. Assuming 60 % picked ā2, 20 % picked ā20, and 20 % picked ā200, one may naively conclude the mean exponent of ā45.2 (= 0.6*(-2) + 0.2*(-20) + 0.2*(-200)) is reasonable. Yet, there is lots of empirical evidence against this which the respondants are not aware of. The right conclusion would be that the respondants have practically no idea about the right exponent because they would not be able to adequately justify their picks.
You are reading the graph correctly. Why do you find an exponent of 2 implausible? My position is not so much that I find it plausible. It is more that I do not know how to check the plausibility of values ranging from 0 to 2 or so, and therefore do not want to rule them out.
You cannot rule out indirect effects if you are confident the exponent is 0 to 1? In this case, I estimate effects on soil invertebrates are much larger than those on target beneficiaries.
The graph above covers microarthropods (springtails and mites) and nematodes, which are not covered in Bobās book. However, I have very little idea about whether cage-free egg campaigns increase or decrease welfare due to potentially dominant effects on soil ants and termites alone. These are macroarthropods like shrimps and black soldier flies (BSFs), which are covered in Bobās book.