Campaign coordinator for the World Day for the End of Fishing and Fish Farming, organizer of Sentience Paris 8 (animal ethics student group), enthusiastic donor.
Fairly knowledgeable about the history of animal advocacy and possible strategies in the movement. Very interested in how AI developments and future risks could affect non-human animals (both wild and farmed).
One action /ā sub-cause area I tend to conceive as more robustly good than many others is preventing the continued development of insect farming (Insect Institute, Observatoire National de lāElevage dāInsectes). Since farmed insects are so small (and that the implications of insect farming on the rest of the world donāt seem outsized), it seems intuitively unlikely that harms from preventing it could lead to more suffering than the counterfactual (as opposed to farming of bigger animals, where āenvironmentalā effects may dominate the welfare impact). Meanwhile, I have difficulty seeing how the amount of insect farms in the world could significantly impact other aspects of the long-term future (in the way, say, getting rid of animal farming altogether might), which reduces my worries about long-term cluelessness, increasing S-risks, etc.
Nonetheless, even this carries significant risk of being net-negative, the crux-being how significant insect suffering is. If it turns out mealworms arenāt sentient, for example, less mealworm farming would probably mean more fish suffering (for fishmeal), and perhaps more factory farming of land vertebrates for pet food. Not to mention, obviously, the opportunity cost associated with āhelpingā non-sentient animals.
Like you, I do also think that the Shrimp Welfare Project is an example of a very robust cause: in fact, this is the non-insect-farming org to which I currently donate the most.
Also, small nitpick: an āineffectiveā intervention will generally have a negative EV (see Tomasik), though of course, not necessarily an āextremely negativeā EV as I think was you concern in the post.
I appreciate this in part because the Lewis Bollard comment has stuck with me, but being a comment, itās just not ideal to link to when making this argument. Itās nice to have a moderately concise and very readable piece making the same case with varied examples, coming from someone with an activist background who is less likely to get the charge that gets thrown around occasionally that EAs reject conventional social movements because they donāt like the aesthetics, or because they just donāt find it easy enough to run a CEA on them.
I already registered! This is an exciting opportunity to learn more about Animal Welfare Economics, and who knows, perhaps meet some fellow EAs during the breaks?
Welfarism vs Abolitionism is a tough debate, for the reasons highlighted in this post. But this has become my reference article for when I stumble upon this thorny question in discussion with other advocates. Useful, concise, memorable thanks to a good use of concepts, parts and lists, and quite entertaining to read thanks to the examples and anecdotes.
This is a kind of post I like. Politely and concisely questioning an EA norm that has real-world consequences, without trying to answer all the questions. Iām interested to see if there will be further discussions of this in the comments (for now, I wonāt risk a position on this, I find myself modestly agreeing but donāt have much to add).
Hi Zoe! Nice article, thank you for supporting the World Day for the End of Fishing and Fish Farming. By the way, Iām not seeing the link to the article on your website, so Iāll leave it here for those who are curious.
Yes, I agree with that! This is what I consider to be the core concern regarding X-risk. Therefore, instead of framing it as āwhether it would be good or bad for everyone to die,ā the statement āwhether it would be good or bad for no future people to come into existenceā seems more accurate, as it addresses what is likely the crux of the issue. This latter framing makes it much more reasonable to hold some degree of agnosticism on the question. Moreover, I think everyone maintains some minor uncertainties about thisāeven those most convinced of the importance of reducing extinction risk often remind us of the possibility of āfutures worse than extinction.ā This clarification isnāt intended to draw any definitive conclusion, just to highlight that being agnostic on this specific question isnāt as counter-intuitive as the initial statement in your top comment might have suggested (though, as Jim noted, the post wasnāt specifically arguing that we should be agnostic on that point either).
I hope I didnāt come across as excessively nitpicky. I was motivated to write by impression that in X-risk discourse, there is sometimes (accidental) equivocation between the badness of our deaths and the badness of the non-existence of future beings. I sympathize with this: given the short timelines, I think many of us are concerned about X-risks for both reasons, and so itās understandable that both get discussed (and this isnāt unique to X-risks, of course). I hope you have a nice day of existence, Richard Y. Chappell, I really appreciate your blog!
[...] whether it would be good or bad for everyone to die
Iām sorry for not engaging with the rest of your comment (Iām not very knowledgeable on questions of cluelessness), but this is something I sometimes hear in X-risk discussion and I find it a bit confusing. Depending on what animals are sentient, itās likely that every few weeks, the vast majority of the worldās individuals die prematurely, often in painful ways (being eaten alive or starving). To my understanding, the case EA makes against X-risk is not the badness of death for the individuals whose lives will be somewhat shortenedābecause it would not seem compelling in that case, especially when aiming to take into consideration of the welfare /ā interests of most individuals on earth. I donāt think this is a complex philosophical point or some extreme skepticism: Iām just superficially observing that the situation of āeveryone dies prematurelyā[1] seems to be very close to what we already have, so it doesnāt seem that obvious that this is what makes X-risks intuitively bad.
(To be clear, Iām not saying āanimals die so X-risk is goodā, my point is simply that I donāt agree that the fact that X-risks cause death is what makes them exceptionally bad, and (though Iām much less sure about that) to my understanding, that is not what initially motivated EAs to care about X-risks (as opposed to the possibility of creating a flourishing future, or other considerations I know less well)).
Not that I supposed that āprematurelyā was implied when you said āgood or bad for everyone to dieā. Of course, if we think that itās bad in general that individuals will die, no matter whether they die at a very young age or not, the case for X-risks being exceptionally bad seems weaker.
Itās interesting to stumble onto this eight years later. I wonder how people who are more knowledgeable than me about US politics (and catastrophic risks) think this has aged.
My bad, I wasnāt very clear when I used the term ācounterargumentā, and ānuanceā or something else might have fit better. It doesnāt argue against the fact that without humans, there wonāt be any species concerned with moral issues, only the case that humans are potentially so immoral that their presence might make the future worse than one with no humans. Which is indeed not really a ācounterargumentā to the idea that weād need humans to fix moral issues, but instead argues against the point that this would make it more likely positive than not for the future (since he argues that humans may have very bad moral values, and thus ensure a bad future).
If you are interested, Magnus Vinding outlines a few counterarguments to this idea in his article about Pause AI (though of course, heās far from alone in having argued this, but this is the first post that comes to mind).
I have a question, and then a consideration that motivates it, which is also framed as a question that you can answer if you like.
If an existential catastrophe occurs, how likely is it to wipe out all animal sentience on earth?
Iāve already asked that question here (and also, to some acquaintances working in AI Safety, but the answers have very much differedāit seems weāre quite far from a consensus on this, so it would be interesting to see perspectives from the varied voices taking part in this symposium.
Less important question, but that may clarify what motivates me to ask my main question: if you believe that a substantial part of X-risk scenarios entail animal sentience being left behind, do you then think that estimating the current and possible future welfare of wild animals is an important factor in evaluating the value of both existential risk reduction and interventions aimed at influencing the future? A few days ago, I was planning on making a post on invertebrate sentience being a possible crucial consideration when evaluating the value and disvalue of X-risk scenarios, but then thought that if this factor was rarely brought up, it could be that I was personally uninformed on the reasons why the experiences of invertebrates (if they are sentient) might not actually matter that much in future trajectories (aside from the possibility that they will all go extinct soon, which is why this question hinges on the prior belief that it is likely that sentient animals will continue existing on earth for a long time). There are probably different reasons to agree (or disagree) with this, and Iād be happy to hear yours in short, though itās not as important to me as my first question. Thank you for doing this!
This is a difficult one, and both my thoughts and my justifications (especially the few sources I cite) are very incomplete.
It seems to me for now that existential risk reduction is likely to be negative, as both human and AI-controlled futures could contain immense orders of magnitude more suffering than the current world (and technological developments could also enable more intense suffering, whether in humans or in digital minds). The most salient ethical problems with the extinction of earth-originating intelligent life seem to be the likelihood of biological suffering continuing on earth for millions of years (though itās not clear to me whether it would be more or less intense without intelligent life on earth), and the possibility of space (and eventually earth) being colonized by aliens (though whether their values will be better or worse remains an open question in my view).
Another point (which Iām not certain about how to weigh in my considerations) is that certain extinction events could massively reduce suffering on earth, by preventing digital sentience or even by causing the end of biological sentient life (this seems unlikely, and Iāve asked here how likely or unlikely EAs thought this was).
However, I am very uncertain of the tractability of improving future outcomes, especially considering recent posts by researchers at the Center on Long-Term Risk, or this one by a former researcher there, highlighting how uncertain it is that we are well-placed to improve the future. Nonetheless, I think that efforts made to improve the future, like the work of the Center for Reducing Suffering, the Center on Long-Term Risk, or the Sentience Institute, advocate for important values and could have some positive flow-through effects in the medium-term (though I donāt necessarily think that this robustly improves the longer term future). I will note, however, that I am biased since work related the Center for Reducing Suffering was the primary reason I got into EA.
I am very open to changing my mind on this, but for now Iām under 50% agree because it seems to me that, in short:
Extinction Risk Reduction could very well have negative expected value.
Efforts to improve the value of futures where we survive might have some moderate positive effects in the short-term.
Lots of uncertainties. I expect to have moved my cursor before the end of the week!
Thank you very much for answering both questions! This was clear and helpful.
Very interesting post, as is often the case with you. Insightful and pragmatic. However, I feel like a closer investigation on charities that effectively ensure that large herbivores are helped. Itās plausible that broader conservationist initiatives which have only part of their focus on wild herbivores could still have a larger effects than smaller charities that seem to work mostly at the individual level. In any case, I think itās likely that youāre right, and if you are, it would be very interesting to see where donations are most likely to effectively increase the population of large herbivores. Do you currently have any idea of the potential effectiveness of those organizations ?
I appreciated this postāI find it good to see arguments related to wild animal ethics developed in a framework that isnāt strictly consequentialist. I was a bit surprised by the references to creating new ecosystems on other planets, as that seems to be a quite different matter, and hadnāt really been introduced in the postābut maybe your original writeup contained previous references to this, which made the reference make more sense?
I realized that there was not even one comment on this post, so I wanted to quickly drop in to say that this one of my favorite posts Iāve read on the forum. It has stuck with me in the past months. I appreciate how it remains relatively simple in its categories, while pointing out facts about our position in the world that we tend to take for granted.
It sometimes feels to me like in fundamental philosophical debates about value in EA (such as the value of existence or the moral value of individuals from different species), the crux is a sort of core, visceral intuition (I especially feel this way about questions regarding outweighing disvalue through value, or the importance of existence) - and the main defenders of suffering-focused ethics acknowledge this at times, supporting their arguments through vivid real-life examples that aim a the guts. It seems unlikely that any consensus will emergeāthough there is clearly a majority view for now that goes against suffering-focused views, but it is interesting to remind us where we are all speaking from, and this might be something that individuals with very different ethical positions can agree upon. An example of where this may help is during debates on the claim that āwe are biased against taking suffering seriously because we have experienced little to no extreme sufferingā is equally true as āwe donāt realize how important happiness is because we havenāt experienced extreme happinessā. I think that reminding ourselves that we are among the happier individuals existing right now on this planet makes might more likely to consider that we should, by default, be more prone to ignoring the intensity that suffering often reaches, than the intensity that happiness often reaches.
Very engaging post! I appreciated how it covered the many different aspects of the decision-making and transition process: rational, practical, social and emotional. I feel like this would have value to animal advocates who are not particularly interested in EA, as it would be a very concrete way of introducing the difficult questions one grapples with when considering impact. However, I am not sure where else this could be posted in order for members of this wider audience to access it.
I hope this is not too much of a digression from the core of the post, but I was struck to see that you cited Brian Tomasikās article as being more or less the spark that set the organization off on the course of reevaluating their interventions, and eventually changing their domain of action. I often notice individuals in EA organizationsāor non-EA animal advocatesāciting Tomasik as someone who has led them to reevaluate their considerations, and sometimes even to change the type of interventions that they put in place. He also seems to have come first in advocating for earning-to-give (in 2006), appears to be one of the most cited advocates for reducing wild-animal suffering (2009), created the second-ever table trying to evaluate direct suffering caused by animal foods (2007), and wrote the first article dedicated to s-risks (2013). These things have all been substantially expanded upon since, and some, such as Wild Animal Welfare, are even considered by somes as EA causes in their own right. Would I be wrong in considering Brian Tomasikās influence as having been comparably far-reaching within the movement (especially on the level of ideas) as Toby Ordās or Nick Bostromās ?
(Side note: I know this is probably not the most important subject to think about, but I find it helpful to get a clearer picture of where the core concepts and claims that make up Effective Altruism come from, in order to be more aware of the contingencies of the movement; also, trying to vaguely keep track of this helps me reflect on the influence that sharing ideas can haveāand that is something where on the surface level, Tomasikās record seems out of the ordinary, especially for someone who isnāt much of a public figure).
I suspect that all of the species that are currently of significantly debated consciousnessācall them swing state speciesāare conscious. This would include crabs, lobsters, fish, and most insects, but it wouldnāt include oysters or AI. Thereās fairly widespread agreement that such beings arenāt conscious.
Since he states here (and on another occasion in the article) that oysters arenāt conscious, he most likely believes that itās not morally wrong to eat oysters (and he probably also includes mussels and other bivalves in this category).
As someone involved both in EA and less-EA animal advocacy, I really appreciate this post because it goes into a subject that is sometimes treated in a bit of a handwavey way with nuance and humility. And through pointing out all the caveats and assumptions in your argument in sufficient detail, it allows laypeople like me to learn more about the key issues surrounding cultivated meat.
I found this point to be one of the most important things here, and Iām curious to know if there had been reports, or simply articles, written on the impact that anti-cultivated-meat measures and sentiment could has had on alt proteins and even animal advocacy in general. It seems limited for now but these negative reactions could continue into the future.
A point I would also love to read more about is expectations of how the plant-based meat market could grow in the decades to come. I personally donāt know what the standard predictions in that space are. Itās especially disorienting given that when I talk to non-EA vegans, many seem to believe that plant-based meat is a fast-growing market, while EAs sometimes wave off the whole endeavor as a complete flop.