That might be right—I didn’t read the original post and I commented on your post not because I wanted to defend a particular side in the bee debate, but rather because I always found the evolutionary welfare arguments fascinating but dubious. I somehow decided to use this opportunity to get more towards the bottom of them. :)
That’s very fair! Yeah I feel the same way albeit maybe more relatively happy about the evolutionary arguments; certainly part of the value of writing up the evolutionary argument is having them critiqued; the eusociality stuff in particular I don’t think is original to me but I’m not aware of a clear writeup elsewhere (and I didn’t find when I was trying to look for something to link).
Thanks! Here’s the 2019 RP report on honeybee welfare and interventions in case you’re interested, other people are welcome to comment if there’s more recent work.
That’s very fair! Yeah I feel the same way albeit maybe more relatively happy about the evolutionary arguments; certainly part of the value of writing up the evolutionary argument is having them critiqued; the eusociality stuff in particular I don’t think is original to me but I’m not aware of a clear writeup elsewhere (and I didn’t find when I was trying to look for something to link).