FWIW, trying to reduce their capture, e.g. by working on substitutes or fishery policy, could be bad, if they have bad lives and it’s better to have fewer of them, or their prey, copepods, have good lives and it’s better to have fewer paste shrimp to have more copepods.
Also, where+when there’s overfishing of paste shrimp, marginal reductions in the share of the population caught can increase their populations and actually increase long-run catch. So, we could end up helping people kill more of them. In general, I expect improvements in fishery management to have this effect, conditional on having much effect at all.
These types of risks of backfire are pretty general for work to reduce fishing, not just for paste shrimp.
I’d be more optimistic about improving welfare during capture.
...could be bad, if they have bad lives and it’s better to have fewer of them, or their prey, copepods, have good lives and it’s better to have fewer paste shrimp to have more copepods.
I think this line of reasoning (that I’ve seen on the forum several times, not specific to you) is weird and bad. There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that. And no life good enough for us to try to actively bring about more of it en masse just for the sake of the numbers. And interfering with food chains is its own can of warms.
’There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that’
I agree something seems very bad intuitively about trying to reduce the numbers of wild animals via killing them, but this seems too strong to me. What about a case where a pet dog is d in terrible pain, but will live a few more weeks? Most people seem to regard it as better for the dog to have it painlessly killed at that point. I guess that could be wrong, but I am skeptical. (I agree that human lives specifically can be net positive for their subjects overall despite featuring strongly more pain than pleasure, but I feel like that might depend precisely on the fact that humans can form thoughts like “I am glad to be alive” in such circumstances.)
I agree with your example, but I think even if my wording was too strong the point stands.
I mean, you’d at least take the dog to a vet first, right? This is a last resort? While with the shrimp we’re not thinking about this similarly at all and just deciding remotely.
“There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that”—holding this view while also thinking that it’s good to prevent the existence of factory farmed chickens would need some explaining IMO.
Also, the claim that Michael’s line of reasoning is “weird and bad” seems to imply that it being “weird” should count against it in some way, just as it being “bad” should count against it. But why/how exactly? After all, from most people’s perspective caring about shrimp at all is weird.
I think this is a reasonable position to take (although I think some possible lives must be bad enough to be worth preventing or ending early), but I don’t think it makes reducing paste shrimp capture look like a very promising intervention either. You’d decrease mortality rates and increase average life expectancies for the paste shrimp and do the opposite for copepods. That could still look morally ambiguous, depending on your beliefs about their moral weights and sentience and uncertainty about them, and so how you weigh paste shrimp vs copepod interests.
AFAIK, there’s no plausible deontological rule you violate by not specifically working to reduce paste shrimp fishing by other people, so it’s permissible to focus on something else.
And if you’re especially concerned with reducing total exploitation of animals by humans or moral/rational agents specifically for its own sake, this could increase catch and so backfire. (It may look good for reducing the share of animals exploited or maximizing the number of non-exploited animals.)
(Again, this applies pretty generally to fishing, not just for paste shrimp.)
Ah, got it, that makes a lot of sense! Thanks for spelling out the interaction effects for me (which I definitely was not tracking) — and thanks in general for looking into this a little!
FWIW, trying to reduce their capture, e.g. by working on substitutes or fishery policy, could be bad, if they have bad lives and it’s better to have fewer of them, or their prey, copepods, have good lives and it’s better to have fewer paste shrimp to have more copepods.
Also, where+when there’s overfishing of paste shrimp, marginal reductions in the share of the population caught can increase their populations and actually increase long-run catch. So, we could end up helping people kill more of them. In general, I expect improvements in fishery management to have this effect, conditional on having much effect at all.
These types of risks of backfire are pretty general for work to reduce fishing, not just for paste shrimp.
I’d be more optimistic about improving welfare during capture.
Thanks for noting that, Michael!
Readers may want to check Brian Tomasik’s posts on fishing for context.
I think this line of reasoning (that I’ve seen on the forum several times, not specific to you) is weird and bad. There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that. And no life good enough for us to try to actively bring about more of it en masse just for the sake of the numbers. And interfering with food chains is its own can of warms.
’There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that’
I agree something seems very bad intuitively about trying to reduce the numbers of wild animals via killing them, but this seems too strong to me. What about a case where a pet dog is d in terrible pain, but will live a few more weeks? Most people seem to regard it as better for the dog to have it painlessly killed at that point. I guess that could be wrong, but I am skeptical. (I agree that human lives specifically can be net positive for their subjects overall despite featuring strongly more pain than pleasure, but I feel like that might depend precisely on the fact that humans can form thoughts like “I am glad to be alive” in such circumstances.)
I agree with your example, but I think even if my wording was too strong the point stands.
I mean, you’d at least take the dog to a vet first, right? This is a last resort? While with the shrimp we’re not thinking about this similarly at all and just deciding remotely.
Yeah, I agree the cases seem very different.
“There’s no life bad enough for us to try to actively extinguish it when the subject itself can’t express a will for that”—holding this view while also thinking that it’s good to prevent the existence of factory farmed chickens would need some explaining IMO.
Also, the claim that Michael’s line of reasoning is “weird and bad” seems to imply that it being “weird” should count against it in some way, just as it being “bad” should count against it. But why/how exactly? After all, from most people’s perspective caring about shrimp at all is weird.
Agreed that this seems nonsensical on its face.
I think this is a reasonable position to take (although I think some possible lives must be bad enough to be worth preventing or ending early), but I don’t think it makes reducing paste shrimp capture look like a very promising intervention either. You’d decrease mortality rates and increase average life expectancies for the paste shrimp and do the opposite for copepods. That could still look morally ambiguous, depending on your beliefs about their moral weights and sentience and uncertainty about them, and so how you weigh paste shrimp vs copepod interests.
AFAIK, there’s no plausible deontological rule you violate by not specifically working to reduce paste shrimp fishing by other people, so it’s permissible to focus on something else.
And if you’re especially concerned with reducing total exploitation of animals by humans or moral/rational agents specifically for its own sake, this could increase catch and so backfire. (It may look good for reducing the share of animals exploited or maximizing the number of non-exploited animals.)
(Again, this applies pretty generally to fishing, not just for paste shrimp.)
Ah, got it, that makes a lot of sense! Thanks for spelling out the interaction effects for me (which I definitely was not tracking) — and thanks in general for looking into this a little!