I wonder whether it is worth for me to invest significant time in writing comments like mine above. It seems that they are often downvoted, and that I can sometimes tell before hand when this is going to be case. So, to the extent karma is a good proxy for what people value, I wonder whether I am just spending signicant time on doing something which has little value.
I am sad to see your comment getting downvotes as I do think it contributes a lot of value to the discussion.
I can guess why you might be getting them. You often respond to cause-prio posts with “what about corporate campaigns for chicken welfare?”, and many people now probably switch off and downvote when they see this. Maybe just keep the chicken comparison to one line and link to your original post/comment?
Also, you comment is 3200 words long—about 3x longer than the actual post. I think a 200-word summary-of-the-comment with bullet points would be really useful for readers who have only read this post and are unable to pick up the finer points of your modeling critique.
On animal welfare
I think that if you adopt RP’s moral weight estimates and reject speciesism, it is almost inevitable that the most cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing will be animal welfare interventions.
My understanding is that CEARCH is not against evaluating animal welfare interventions in principle, but in practice we are not doing so while comparisons between human and animal welfare remain so shaky. Our research direction is also partly driven by the value of information, ie. how much resources we can plausibly redirect and the impact this will have. Maybe this is too deterministic of me, but I feel that banging the drum about corporate chicken campaigns will only open so many wallets.
I am sad to see your comment getting downvotes as I do think it contributes a lot of value to the discussion.
I can guess why you might be getting them. You often respond to cause-prio posts with “what about corporate campaigns for chicken welfare?”, and many people now probably switch off and downvote when they see this. Maybe just keep the chicken comparison to one line and link to your original post/comment?
Also, you comment is 3200 words long—about 3x longer than the actual post. I think a 200-word summary-of-the-comment with bullet points would be really useful for readers who have only read this post and are unable to pick up the finer points of your modeling critique.
On animal welfare
I think that if you adopt RP’s moral weight estimates and reject speciesism, it is almost inevitable that the most cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing will be animal welfare interventions.
My understanding is that CEARCH is not against evaluating animal welfare interventions in principle, but in practice we are not doing so while comparisons between human and animal welfare remain so shaky. Our research direction is also partly driven by the value of information, ie. how much resources we can plausibly redirect and the impact this will have. Maybe this is too deterministic of me, but I feel that banging the drum about corporate chicken campaigns will only open so many wallets.
Thanks for the feedback on the votes and animal welfare comparison!