Unfortunately these ranges have such wide confidence intervals that, putting aside the question of whether the methodology and ranges are even valid, it doesn’t seem to get us any closer to doing the necessary cost-benefit analyses.
Large uncertainty also means a high cost-effectiveness of animal welfare research which tries to decrease the uncertainty, given the high value of information.
That assumes that “further research” will reduce these confidence intervals significantly, which I am skeptical of.
You could fund 1000 PostDocs for 1000 years each to study “why is there something rather than nothing” or “is one person’s perception of blue the same as another’s” and it’s no given that you’ll get closer to an answer.
Thanks for the post, Henry.
Large uncertainty also means a high cost-effectiveness of animal welfare research which tries to decrease the uncertainty, given the high value of information.
That assumes that “further research” will reduce these confidence intervals significantly, which I am skeptical of.
You could fund 1000 PostDocs for 1000 years each to study “why is there something rather than nothing” or “is one person’s perception of blue the same as another’s” and it’s no given that you’ll get closer to an answer.