This seems to rest heavily on Rethink Prioritiesā Welfare Estimates. While their expected value for the āwelfare rangeā of chickens is 0.332 that of humans, their 90% confidence for that number spans 0.002 to 0.869, which is so wide that we canāt make much use of it.
Note that:
According to my results, corporate campaigns for broiler welfare are 1.71 k times as effective as the lowest cost to save a life among GWās top charities.
So, using RPās 5th percentile welfare range instead of the median one, corporate campaigns for broiler welfare are still 10.3 (= 1.71*10^3*0.002/ā0.332) times as effective. However, there is also large uncertainty in how bad are the lives of broilers and human relative to their median welfare ranges. This means the true 5th percentile will tend to be lower than the 10.3 I just calculated. I guess the uncertainty stemming from the median welfare range is similar to that from the mean experience relative to the median welfare range, so I think there is less than 10 % chance that corporate campaings for broiler welfare are less effective than the lowest cost to save a life among GWās top charities. I suppose RP will look into building on their moral weight project.
Seems to be a tendency in EA to try to use expected values when just admitting āI have no ideaā is more honest and truthful.
I am also concerned about acting as if expect values are resilient, i.e. assuming they will not easily change in the future in response to new information. On the other hand, large uncertainty in the welfare range of chickens does not necessarily imply the median welfare range lacks resilience. My understanding is that RPās research tried to integrate most of the available evidence, which means narrowing the interval of possible values may be difficult.
Hi Henry,
Thanks for engaging!
Note that:
So, using RPās 5th percentile welfare range instead of the median one, corporate campaigns for broiler welfare are still 10.3 (= 1.71*10^3*0.002/ā0.332) times as effective. However, there is also large uncertainty in how bad are the lives of broilers and human relative to their median welfare ranges. This means the true 5th percentile will tend to be lower than the 10.3 I just calculated. I guess the uncertainty stemming from the median welfare range is similar to that from the mean experience relative to the median welfare range, so I think there is less than 10 % chance that corporate campaings for broiler welfare are less effective than the lowest cost to save a life among GWās top charities. I suppose RP will look into building on their moral weight project.
I am also concerned about acting as if expect values are resilient, i.e. assuming they will not easily change in the future in response to new information. On the other hand, large uncertainty in the welfare range of chickens does not necessarily imply the median welfare range lacks resilience. My understanding is that RPās research tried to integrate most of the available evidence, which means narrowing the interval of possible values may be difficult.