JBentham

Karma: 411

JBentham 25 Dec 2024 11:05 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Christoph Eggert🔸’s comment on: Donation Celebration Post
Could you provide some examples of people who have said that this is hypocritical? I’ve never seen anyone in the EA community say this, and if they did, they’d be wrong. There are plenty of non-vegan EAs who donate to animal welfare.

JBentham 23 Dec 2024 17:49 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Reservations about donating for animal welfare charities
Thanks for posting and for being open to outside perspectives!
The most obvious thing to ask is whether you’ve engaged with the previous literature on the cost-effectiveness of animal charities. For example, in October 2023, Rethink Priorities estimated that 1,132 DALYs are averted per $1,000 donated to corporate cage-free campaigns using their moral weights, and that 73 DALYs are averted per $1,000 if you assume low moral weights for chickens. They also found that shrimp stunning interventions may avert 38 DALYs per $1,000 donated to them, using their own moral weights. This compared with 19.1 DALYs averted per $1,000 donated to the Against Malaria Foundation. You can also check out their cross-cause cost-effectiveness model and play around with it.
The other question is what you mean when you say “my moral weights clearly go towards the humans here”. Does this mean that you’re solely incorporating the probability of sentience and the intensity of pleasure and suffering that each species experiences, or are you smuggling in speciesist discounts to your moral weights? Also, what would be your bar for preferring to donate to an animal charity? That should probably be worked out beforehand, otherwise the goalposts could shift.
Finally, I think each charity should be evaluated on its own merits. I don’t think The Humane League and Shrimp Welfare Project can be grouped together in the you’ve done, for instance. They do quite different things!

JBentham 23 Dec 2024 12:48 UTC
8 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: PabloAMC ’s Quick takes
As I commented there: I don’t think this is the kind of “ends justify the means” reasoning that MacAskill is objecting to. Vasco isn’t arguing that we should break the law. He’s just doing a fairly standard EA cause prioritization analysis. Arguing that people should not donate to global health doesn’t even contradict common-sense morality because as we see from the world around us, common-sense morality holds that it’s perfectly permissible to let hundreds or thousands of children die of preventable diseases. Utilitarians and other consequentialists are the ones who hold “weird” views here, because we reject the act/omission distinction in the first place.

(For my part, I try to donate in such a way that I’m net-positive from the perspective of someone like Vasco as well as global health advocates.)

JBentham 23 Dec 2024 12:39 UTC
2 points
2 ∶ 5
in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
It is admirable that you acknowledge that you are not using “reason and evidence to do the most good” and that you presumably accept that you have no leg to stand on when trying to persuade nativists who assign zero weight to people who live in other countries to give more to those who live abroad.

JBentham 23 Dec 2024 12:30 UTC
6 points
3 ∶ 5
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
Common-sense morality has nothing to say about cause prioritisation in the first place, so it rejects the problem only in the sense that it doesn’t subscribe to standard EA cause-neutrality and prioritisation frameworks. Global health EAs also violate common-sense morality when they argue that charity doesn’t begin at home (as in, within one’s own country). This is to be expected: EAs are committed to impartiality and welfarism, and the vast majority of humans are not.

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 21:29 UTC
10 points
4 ∶ 0
on: What would an animal-friendly yet common sense moral framework look like? Rejecting hedonism, accepting incommensurability of values
Thank you for writing this, it was an interesting read.
Common sense morality is great. As Sidgwick argued, it’s actually a good approximation of utilitarianism: a utilitarian does want a world in which people do not steal or kill, and in which humans (being humans) look after their family and friends.
However, common sense morality is also a bit incoherent and contradictory, and (as you demonstrate) it has very little to say about how to prioritize when it comes to our positive duties toward other sentient beings. In my view (and in Sidgwick’s), utilitarianism best resolves these contradictions and guides us when it comes to prioritization.
I don’t think common sense morality has much to say about prioritization, because it barely asks us to do anything for others in the first place. It is, after all, relatively comfortable with thousands of children dying of preventable diseases each day, and with the suffering of billions of factory farmed animals each year. If you think these things require urgent action, all it has to say is “that’s fine, you do you”.
So I don’t think the common sense moralist can, on the one hand, say that we aren’t obligated to help other sentient beings, and then presume to tell those of us who do believe we are obligated to help other sentient beings how we should go about this. In other words, I don’t think that utilitarian conclusions about prioritization do go against common sense morality, because common sense morality has little to say about prioritization.
I’m not saying anything novel here. Indeed, you acknowledge this point when you say: “it is true that incommensurability of values does not provide immediate tools to weigh in different values. For example, how should we prioritize funding or reform efforts between health, education or housing?”
I don’t think the problem that common sense morality has with prioritization can be “explained away”, despite your attempt to do so. Ethics is about asking how we ought to live, and if an ethical theory cannot provide answers to this question, it should be discarded. And I disagree that utilitarians are ourselves guilty of “explaining away” when we “moderate” our conclusions. In fact, utilitarians are obligated to take human nature (including our own) into account, so considerations about burnout and human emotion when it comes to donations and careers aren’t merely “secondary considerations” but an integral part of applying utilitarianism in a sophisticated way.

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 20:46 UTC
11 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ian Turner’s comment on: GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
Given that EAs are tentatively committed to impartiality and welfarism, I don’t think the beliefs are particularly unconventional on this Forum.
It is also highly controversial to state that charity doesn’t begin at home (as in, within one’s country) and that we should instead equally consider the welfare of people no matter where they live. But it shouldn’t be controversial on this Forum.
Sophisticated (as opposed to naive) utilitarians shouldn’t break the law or violate commonly accepted negative duties. But they can say that one should donate to Cause X instead of Cause Y (and common-sense morality says it’s fine to donate to neither!) So I disagree that the same logic could be used to justify breaking the law.

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 20:05 UTC
9 points
6 ∶ 1
in reply to: JWS 🔸’s comment on: GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
I don’t think this is an example of “naive utilitarianism”. It’s a fairly standard EA cause prioritization analysis. Vasco is not arguing that we ought to break the law, or even that we should go against common-sense morality.
Indeed, common-sense morality finds itself in a bit of a pickle on this question: it cannot object to someone arguing that we ought not to donate to global health charities, because (as we see from the world around us) it deems it permissible to let thousands of children die every day of preventable disease. EAs (particularly the more utilitarian/consequentialist ones) are the weird ones because we reject the act/omission distinction.
(For my part, I try to donate in such a way that I’m net-positive from the perspective of both anti-speciesist animal welfare and global health advocates.)

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 19:56 UTC
30 points
14 ∶ 2
in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
I don’t think this is the kind of “ends justify the means” reasoning that MacAskill is objecting to. @Vasco Grilo🔸is not arguing that we should break the law. He is just doing a fairly standard EA cause prioritization analysis. Arguing that people should not donate to global health doesn’t even contradict common-sense morality because as we see from the world around us, common-sense morality holds that it’s perfectly permissible to let hundreds or thousands of children die of preventable diseases. Utilitarians and other consequentialists are the ones who hold “weird” views here, because we reject the act/omission distinction in the first place.
(For my part, I try to donate in such a way that I’m net-positive from the perspective of someone like Vasco as well as global health advocates.)

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 19:46 UTC
20 points
1 ∶ 0
on: THL v THL UK
This question was asked in last year’s AMA with THL UK. It was also addressed in THL UK’s marginal funding post this year. In summary:
- THL UK receives an annual grant from THL, but they are trying to reduce their dependence on them. In addition, because of US lobbying laws, THL’s grant to them can’t be used for legislative work (for instance, the recent Frankenchickens case) or lobbying work (for example, lobbying for fish welfare in the UK Parliament), and one might believe that such work has a greater chance of succeeding in the UK than the US.
- THL UK likely focuses more on fish welfare than THL as a whole.
- THL UK also engages in activities in other parts of Europe, not just the UK.
- UK donors may be more likely to donate to THL UK as they may be able to claim Gift Aid, although they could donate to THL via EA Funds and might be able to claim Gift Aid there.

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 15:05 UTC
16 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: VettedCauses’s comment on: News from THL UK: Judge rules on our historic Frankenchicken case
Thanks for getting back to me. I think there is a spectrum of interpretations of Paragraph 29, some more favourable and some less favourable to animals.
The least favourable interpretation is that the law does not provide farms with a “conditional permission”—that is, the law does not establish a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals subject to a “proviso”. This was the position taken by a High Court judge in May 2023, and would have ruled out private prosecutions of farms.
The “victory” in the Court of Appeal came in the Court’s ruling that:
Paragraph 29 is correctly characterisied as a prohibition which is subject to a proviso. The keeping of animals for farming purposes is prohibited unless it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health and welfare… In this respect, therefore, [the Court does not] agree with the view of the judge, who considered that Paragraph 29 could not be read this way.
As Essex Court Chambers put it:
In disagreement with the judge, the Court held in summary that the relevant paragraphs of the Regulations establish a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals which have been bred by genetic selection with a view to achieving certain characteristics, unless it can reasonably be expected on the basis of the way that they have been bred that the animals can be kept without any detrimental effect on health and welfare… The Judgment is a significant analysis of the legal obligations that apply to keepers of meat chickens and is likely to have consequences for farmed animals generally. The way forward will be a matter for the Government or the courts in the event of prosecutions.
It is true that the most favourable interpretation for animals—that the law establishes a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals in the conditions that they are likely to be kept—was not upheld by the Court.
But I maintain that while this means that the bar is high, I don’t think it’s as high as it seems at first glance. You rightly point out that the Court said that “Paragraph 29 is a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals whose genotype and phenotype mean that, regardless of the conditions in which they are kept, they cannot be kept without detriment to their health or welfare”.
But they go on to say:
However, this needs some further explanation. There is a difference between detrimental characteristics which are inherent in the nature of the breed and which cannot be mitigated by changing the environmental conditions in which the animal is kept, and those which can be so mitigated… the conclusions contained in the RSPCA Report, if valid… appear to illustrate this difference. If it is correct (and I emphasise ‘if’) that, when compared with slow-growing chickens, a particular breed of fast-growing chickens suffers from increased heart problems with consequential higher mortality, or leg development disorders because the chicken cannot support its own weight, it would seem likely (contrary to the Secretary of State’s view, although this is ultimately a matter for scientific evidence) that no improvement in the environmental conditions in which such chickens are kept could mitigate those detrimental effects upon their health or welfare. Those consequences would be inherent in the particular breed of chicken and the keeping of such a breed would be prohibited by Paragraph 29. The same might be true of the problems caused by hock burn and foot burn as a result of prolonged periods of inactivity.
Similarly, Welfare Footprint write: “Although the adoption of better management practices – including lower stocking density, longer resting times and the provision of enrichment – is beneficial and desirable for improving broiler welfare, their impact is limited if the negative welfare effects inherently associated with the genetics for fast growth are not addressed.”
One question I do have is why THL UK took DEFRA to Court, instead of bringing a private prosecution of a factory farm. One reason might be that this was an attempt to affect the whole industry, whereas any positive Judgment in the case of a particular farm might still only apply to that farm, even if it establishes a precedent that can be used to bring successful prosecutions against other farms. In other words, taking DEFRA to Court may have been considered a quicker and more efficient route.
This might be of interest to: @Ozzie Gooen @MHR @MichaelStJules @bruce @Rasool.

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 10:13 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 3
in reply to: MHR🔸’s comment on: News from THL UK: Judge rules on our historic Frankenchicken case
I don’t think THL UK’s view of the case is as unreasonable as implied. (See my reply below.) And it’s reasonable for them to provide their view of what it implies for farmers. But the statement about the judges’ ruling does seem somewhat misleading because it suggests that the law is concerned with whether animals will suffer in practice, whereas it seems to be concerned with whether they will suffer in theory. In other words, something like “the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will invariably suffer because of how they have been bred” may be more accurate. But again, I don’t think this is as hard to prove as it might seem at first glance. (Again, see my reply below for a fuller analysis.)

JBentham 22 Dec 2024 10:06 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: VettedCauses’s comment on: News from THL UK: Judge rules on our historic Frankenchicken case
I disagree that this makes it “extremely” difficult to prove that a violation of Paragraph 29 has occurred. A judge might find it hard to imagine environmental conditions that even in theory could mitigate the suffering caused by their genetics. You could feed them less, but farmers already do this with breeder birds (to prevent them from becoming overweight) and this is itself a welfare concern because it can result in starvation.

As Welfare Footprint puts it: “Although the adoption of better management practices – including lower stocking density, longer resting times and the provision of enrichment – is beneficial and desirable for improving broiler welfare, their impact is limited if the negative welfare effects inherently associated with the genetics for fast growth are not addressed.”

It is a higher bar than implied by the post, though. (See my post below for a fuller analysis of the case.)

JBentham 19 Mar 2024 19:35 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: The Scale of Fetal Suffering in Late-Term Abortions
For what it’s worth, my impression is that the reason it’s not regularly administered is because doctors think it slightly increases the risk of complications for the mother (e.g. bleeding) and would make the procedure slightly more expensive and time-consuming. That, plus the assumption that the drugs given to the mother during the procedure are sufficient. Also, there have been efforts by pro-life lawmakers to draw attention to fetal pain, though this is probably a tactic to increase anti-abortion sentiment in general.

From this 2015 Washington Post article:

”Fetuses are routinely sedated during surgery, for reasons beyond the fear that the operation might cause them pain. Anesthetics stop a fetus from kicking around, making the operation safer. And though a fetus might not be conscious of pain, its body can respond to pain and stress in ways that interfere with its recovery. Painkillers alleviate that problem. That can happen directly or indirectly. During fetal surgery, women typically receive general anesthesia or sedation, making them unconscious or semi-conscious and pain-free. These drugs pass through the placenta to affect the fetus. For more involved operations, doctors inject extra painkillers directly into the fetus...

For as long as the fetus is alive during the abortion, it will experience some anesthetic effects depending on what drugs the mother receives. But would indirect anesthesia suffice to provide the “adequate relief” from pain that HB 479 demands? Just to make sure, Olszewski would prefer that fetuses are anesthetized directly during an abortion. He says that doctors can readily learn how to use an ultrasound-guided needle to deliver a cheap dose of painkillers to the fetus.”

JBentham 2 Feb 2024 20:03 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Emma_Slav’s comment on: AMA: Emma Slawinski, the RSPCA’s Director of Policy, Prevention and Campaigns.
Thank you! Great to see that you’re considering some of these questions and thanks for linking to your general election manifesto. I agree with the broad theme that, since some/many farms do abide by your standards (even when you’re not looking) and may not have done otherwise, millions of animals have better lives as a result. But for every farm found to be falling short during an undercover investigation, I imagine there are also many more getting away with it, which is what prompted my questions about compliance rates—hopefully we’ll be able to get better estimates as a result of the review into your assessment and monitoring process.

JBentham 25 Jan 2024 16:39 UTC
19 points
1 ∶ 0
on: AMA: Emma Slawinski, the RSPCA’s Director of Policy, Prevention and Campaigns.
Hi Emma, thanks for your work. It was encouraging to see the plight of chickens being featured so prominently by the RSPCA at the beginning of the year. Some questions:
- How do you respond to accusations of “humane washing”, and do you think your standards are the best they could be? For instance, your standards allow for pigs to be gassed in slaughterhouses despite the RSPCA having called for a ban on the gassing of pigs in 2018 and expressed concern about chickens being exposed to highly aversive levels of carbon dioxide?
- There has also been a lot of coverage recently (some of it driven by the concerns of your President, the broadcaster Chris Packham) about the atrocious welfare standards on UK salmon farms, including the high prevalence of sea lice infestation and high mortality rates. Yet, in a submission to a Parliamentary committee, you said that 100% of salmon production in the UK is RSPCA-certified, meaning that as a September 2023 report found, RSPCA-certified farms with mortality rates of up to 74 percent can carry the label.
- Even though your standards are clearly better for farmed animals, how confident are you that farms are actually adhering to them? A number of investigations over the years have found poor welfare for animals at RSCPA-assured farms. I see that your scheme involves pre-announced inspections unless there has been a complaint, in which case unannounced inspections may occur. Would you be willing to move to unannounced inspections across the board? We now have CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses in the UK (though it has led to some improvement, the degree to which the footage is being monitored is in question) - would you support mandatory CCTV on RSPCA-certified farms too?
- How many farms have been RSCPA-certified over the years and how many have you removed from the scheme due to poor welfare practices?
- How do you balance engagement with industry with ensuring that your standards are as stringent as possible? I see that the egg industry has recently complained about your proposed new standards (around natural lighting and verandas) for egg-laying hens.
- I see that you have an email campaign encouraging supermarkets to adopt the Better Chicken Commitment. How combative are you willing to be if they don’t?
- Do you see the Better Chicken Commitment as complementary to your existing scheme? Are there any major differences between your own scheme and the Commitment? As your website notes, only 1.2% of chicken produced in the UK is RSCPA-assured, so if retailers and suppliers follow through on the Commitment do you envisage that this percentage will rise?
- The RSPCA has tremendous respect and therefore has social and political capital. What would you say to people who think you should use some of that capital to more forcefully argue that people should drastically reduce or eliminate their consumption of animal products, particularly chickens, turkeys, eggs, fishes and pigs?
- What are some of the major pledges on farmed animal welfare that you’d like to see from political parties ahead of this year’s UK general election?

JBentham 12 Jan 2024 17:41 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What “Saving Private Ryan” can teach us about EA
Thank you for this post. I agree that utilitarians and EAs in general should keep common-sense morality in mind, on consequentialist grounds.

One difficulty with this is that it’s not always clear what common-sense morality prescribes. It’s likely but not at all certain that public opinion would endorse the mission in Saving Private Ryan in the real world, for instance.

You also mention the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an example of wartime consequentialism (which you’re contrasting with common-sense morality), but a majority of Americans endorse the bombings, and a lot of the people who oppose the bombings do so not because they think the ends never justify the means but because they disagree on whether Japan would have surrendered in the counterfactual.

Finally, to draw on another wartime Spielberg film, it’s interesting that common-sense morality considers Oskar Schindler a hero. He worked in a role that many would consider ethically dubious and accumulated enough wealth (“I could have got more out… If I’d made more money”) and influence to save more than 1,000 lives.

All of this is to say that we shouldn’t caricature common-sense morality and overstate its differences with utilitarianism. As Sidgwick recognised more than a century ago, they are more similar than some utilitarians and common-sense proponents think.

JBentham 10 Jan 2024 20:44 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: dstudioscode’s comment on: Whose life matters more—a baby’s or an adult’s?
I don’t think that this is a problem, unless the concern is that this undermines support for reproductive freedoms. But in the real world, all things are not equal, and we can defend the legalisation of abortion without having to deny that the well-being of potential beings matters.

JBentham 7 Jan 2024 15:52 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Whose life matters more—a baby’s or an adult’s?
Not all utilitarians are hedonists or totalists, which is why you’ll get different answers to the question. Personally, I agree with the reasoning you presented and would save the baby (all things being equal).

JBentham 14 Dec 2023 7:13 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
I notice that on your Distributions page, you have distributions pencilled in for the Democratic Republic of the Congo up to 2025. Are these distributions contingent on additional funding? If not, which countries would you be most likely to expand your distributions to in 2024 and 2025 if your funding gap is closed? Thanks!