Hello! Iâm Toby. Iâm a Content Strategist at CEA. I work with the Online Team to make sure the Forum is a great place to discuss doing the most good we can. Youâll see me posting a lot, authoring the EA Newsletter and curating Forum Digests, making moderator comments and decisions, and more.
Before working at CEA, I studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and worked for a couple of years on a range of writing and editing projects within the EA space. Recently I helped run the Amplify Creative Grants program, to encourage more impactful podcasting and YouTube projects. You can find a bit of my own creative output on my blog, and my podcast feed.
Hey Hans, thanks for posting!
Iâm pushing back on this in case anyone new to the issue is reading.
Both of the assumptions you raise are ~empirical and can be investigated. We can investigate the release of painkilling chemicals into the body during trauma, and we can estimate the % of life that a death takes up for different animals. We canât confidently make claims in either direction without researchâespecially not based on anecdotes.
In my view, the claims you argue against shouldnât be referred to as âassumptionsâ. These claims are usually made on the basis of investigation and argument, and are explicitly not the assumptions on which an argument rests. In fact they are generally treated as important cruxes (especially the disutility of a violent death).
Overall this is a nice first engagement with the issue, but Iâd encourage you to look into existing research more before forming too strong a take.
If you want to engage more deeply (this is for readers too), I reckon this post is a great place to start. In it, Michael Plant makes a similar case to yours, but in even more detail.