I appreciate your quantitative thinking. But I believe it’s unfair to say that a fish is 10,000X worth less than a human because a fish has fewer neurons. What if suffering has a minimum threshold of neurons and then declining marginal suffering after that? We don’t know (as you point out in your last paragraph).
“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” —Einstein
I didn’t know fish had 10M neurons. Thanks!
I appreciate your quantitative thinking. But I believe it’s unfair to say that a fish is 10,000X worth less than a human because a fish has fewer neurons. What if suffering has a minimum threshold of neurons and then declining marginal suffering after that? We don’t know (as you point out in your last paragraph).
“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”
—Einstein
Yes, I agree, there is lots of uncertainty! Moreover:
In addition to the importance of the death toll, one has to take into account its neglectedness and tractability.
Longterm effects should also be assessed, as they can concern most the expected impact of averting deaths (e.g. via expansion of the moral circle).