Good question and thanks for the concrete scenarios! I think my tl;dr here is something like âeven when you imagine ânormalishâ futures, they are probably weirder than you are imagining.â
Even if McDonaldâs fires all its staff, itâs not clear to me why it would drop its cage-free policy
I donât think we want to make the claim that McDonaldâs will definitely drop its cage free policy but rather the weaker claim that you should not assume that the value of a cage-free commitment will remain ~constant by default.
If Iâm assuming that we are in a world where all of the human labor at McDonaldâs has been automated away, I think that is a pretty weird world. As you note, even the existence of something like McDonaldâs (much less a specific corporate entity which feels bound by the agreements of current-day McDonaldâs) is speculative.
But even if we grant its existence: a ~40% egg price increase is currently enough that companies feel cover to be justified in abandoning their cage-free pledges. Surely âthe entire global order has been upended and the new corporate management is robotsâ is an even better excuse?
And even if we somehow hold McDonaldâs to their pledge, I find it hard to believe that a world where McDonaldâs can be run without humans does not quickly lead to a world where something more profitable than battery cage farming can be found. And, as a result, the cage-free pledge is irrelevant because McDonaldâs isnât going to use cages anyway. (Of course, this new farming method may be even more cruel than battery cages, illustrating one of the downsides of trying to lock in a specific policy change before we understand what the future will be like.)
To be clear: this is just me randomly spouting, I donât believe strongly in any of the above. I think itâs possible someone could come up with a strong argument why present-day corporate pledges will continue post-paradigm-shift. But my point is that you shouldnât assume that this argument exists by default.
AGI is more like the Internet. The cage-free McMuffins endure, just with some cool LLM-generated images on them.
Yeah I think this world is (by assumption) one where cage free pledges should not receive a massive discount.
No AGI
Note that some worlds where we wouldnât get AGI soon (e.g. large-scale nuclear war setting science back 200 years) are also probably not great for the expected value of cage-free pledges.
(It is good to hear though that even in the maximally dystopian world of universal Taco Bell there will be some upside for animals đ.)
Good question and thanks for the concrete scenarios! I think my tl;dr here is something like âeven when you imagine ânormalishâ futures, they are probably weirder than you are imagining.â
I donât think we want to make the claim that McDonaldâs will definitely drop its cage free policy but rather the weaker claim that you should not assume that the value of a cage-free commitment will remain ~constant by default.
If Iâm assuming that we are in a world where all of the human labor at McDonaldâs has been automated away, I think that is a pretty weird world. As you note, even the existence of something like McDonaldâs (much less a specific corporate entity which feels bound by the agreements of current-day McDonaldâs) is speculative.
But even if we grant its existence: a ~40% egg price increase is currently enough that companies feel cover to be justified in abandoning their cage-free pledges. Surely âthe entire global order has been upended and the new corporate management is robotsâ is an even better excuse?
And even if we somehow hold McDonaldâs to their pledge, I find it hard to believe that a world where McDonaldâs can be run without humans does not quickly lead to a world where something more profitable than battery cage farming can be found. And, as a result, the cage-free pledge is irrelevant because McDonaldâs isnât going to use cages anyway. (Of course, this new farming method may be even more cruel than battery cages, illustrating one of the downsides of trying to lock in a specific policy change before we understand what the future will be like.)
To be clear: this is just me randomly spouting, I donât believe strongly in any of the above. I think itâs possible someone could come up with a strong argument why present-day corporate pledges will continue post-paradigm-shift. But my point is that you shouldnât assume that this argument exists by default.
Yeah I think this world is (by assumption) one where cage free pledges should not receive a massive discount.
Note that some worlds where we wouldnât get AGI soon (e.g. large-scale nuclear war setting science back 200 years) are also probably not great for the expected value of cage-free pledges.
(It is good to hear though that even in the maximally dystopian world of universal Taco Bell there will be some upside for animals đ.)