Nice post! I’d encourage avoiding insect-based protein even if it becomes more available.
But entomophagy is not necessarily more humane than factory farming of livestock all things considered, and along some dimensions it’s actually worse, because it involves killing vastly more animals per unit of protein.
Conditional on insects having conscious experiences, I’d agree with you. I’m not convinced they do, and I don’t find stimulus-response alone to be sufficient for giving a creature nonzero moral weight. Plenty of people may disagree with me on that, though, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt a diet substitute that they think causes more harm.
FWIW stimulus-response is far from the only evidence we have for insect sentience. Table 1 in Jason Schukraft’s Invertebrate Sentience overview discusses some of the other criteria. The belief that some insects are sentient is pretty respectable in the scientific community; for example, Scientific American published an article on the subject this month.
Obviously the field is pretty speculative and I’m not an expert, but IMO the fact that many experts do take insect sentience seriously means we should probably put non-negligible credence in it.
Overall though, thanks for writing this post! It’s an important point. I suspect many people, when faced with ethical arguments for veganism, decide not to care about animals at all simply because they aren’t willing (or in a rare cases unable) to go vegan. Classic example of failing with abandon.
Yes, “let’s not fail with abandon” is a good summary of my argument to fellow omnivores.
That’s a really good overview by Rethink Priorities. The Invertebrate Sentience Table shifted my credence a little bit in favor of insects, but I think I tend to weight more highly the argument that some sentience criteria can prove too much. I’m not super impressed by a criteria that shares a “Yes” answer with plants and/or prokaryotes. In the same vein, contextual learning sounds impressive, but if I’m understanding that description correctly then it also applies to the recommendation feature of Google Search. I do, however, agree we should take the possibility seriously and continue looking for hard evidence either way.
Here’s a thought: is anyone currently testing where language models like GPT-4 fall on the sentience table?
Nice post! I’d encourage avoiding insect-based protein even if it becomes more available.
https://reducing-suffering.org/why-i-dont-support-eating-insects/
Conditional on insects having conscious experiences, I’d agree with you. I’m not convinced they do, and I don’t find stimulus-response alone to be sufficient for giving a creature nonzero moral weight. Plenty of people may disagree with me on that, though, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt a diet substitute that they think causes more harm.
FWIW stimulus-response is far from the only evidence we have for insect sentience. Table 1 in Jason Schukraft’s Invertebrate Sentience overview discusses some of the other criteria. The belief that some insects are sentient is pretty respectable in the scientific community; for example, Scientific American published an article on the subject this month.
Obviously the field is pretty speculative and I’m not an expert, but IMO the fact that many experts do take insect sentience seriously means we should probably put non-negligible credence in it.
Overall though, thanks for writing this post! It’s an important point. I suspect many people, when faced with ethical arguments for veganism, decide not to care about animals at all simply because they aren’t willing (or in a rare cases unable) to go vegan. Classic example of failing with abandon.
Yes, “let’s not fail with abandon” is a good summary of my argument to fellow omnivores.
That’s a really good overview by Rethink Priorities. The Invertebrate Sentience Table shifted my credence a little bit in favor of insects, but I think I tend to weight more highly the argument that some sentience criteria can prove too much. I’m not super impressed by a criteria that shares a “Yes” answer with plants and/or prokaryotes. In the same vein, contextual learning sounds impressive, but if I’m understanding that description correctly then it also applies to the recommendation feature of Google Search. I do, however, agree we should take the possibility seriously and continue looking for hard evidence either way.
Here’s a thought: is anyone currently testing where language models like GPT-4 fall on the sentience table?