Thank you for a well written post. The fact that there are 10 quintillion insects makes it hard to care about insect welfare. At some point, when deciding whether it is effective to improve insect welfare, we have to compare to the effectiveness of other interventions, like improving human welfare. How many insect lives are worth one human life?
This is just estimating, but if the answer is one billion or less, then I should care more about insect life than human life, which doesn’t seem right. If the answer is a quadrillion or more, it seems like any intervention will not have sufficient impact. Therefore this only makes sense with an ethical theory that places one human life between a billion and a quadrillion insects.
I’m not sure what the right answer here is but it seems like something that needs a good answer in order to claim effectiveness.
This doesn’t seem like the ideal reasoning I would use.
On one hand, the fact that animal life is worth a lot (ratio is “one human life is worth less than a billion”) can’t be a reason to be skeptical by itself—you either determine this is true or it isn’t (which can be very hard admittedly).
If animal life’s “tradeoff ratio” to other life is too small, it is entirely possible it is too small to be an effective intervention. But it’s not based on feelings or a numerical cutoff but instead many factors of impact and effectiveness.
Thank you for a well written post. The fact that there are 10 quintillion insects makes it hard to care about insect welfare. At some point, when deciding whether it is effective to improve insect welfare, we have to compare to the effectiveness of other interventions, like improving human welfare. How many insect lives are worth one human life?
This is just estimating, but if the answer is one billion or less, then I should care more about insect life than human life, which doesn’t seem right. If the answer is a quadrillion or more, it seems like any intervention will not have sufficient impact. Therefore this only makes sense with an ethical theory that places one human life between a billion and a quadrillion insects.
I’m not sure what the right answer here is but it seems like something that needs a good answer in order to claim effectiveness.
This doesn’t seem like the ideal reasoning I would use.
On one hand, the fact that animal life is worth a lot (ratio is “one human life is worth less than a billion”) can’t be a reason to be skeptical by itself—you either determine this is true or it isn’t (which can be very hard admittedly).
If animal life’s “tradeoff ratio” to other life is too small, it is entirely possible it is too small to be an effective intervention. But it’s not based on feelings or a numerical cutoff but instead many factors of impact and effectiveness.