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Vasco Grilošø
Karma: 8,918
Welcome to the EA Forum, Robert! That makes sense.
For all the analyses relying on pain intensities I am aware of, from AIM and RP, the ratio between the intensity of a pain of a given category and that of another is the same across species. I have now asked Cynthia Schuck-Paim, who is the research director of WFP (the organisation defining the pain intensities).
Cynthia has just clarified the answer to both of the following questions can be āyesā.
If I understand correctly, even if it was known with certainty that:
1 h of disabling pain in humans was 10 times as bad as 1 h of hurtful pain in humans, 1 h of disabling pain in shrimps could be more/āless than 10 times as bas as 1 h of hurtful pain in shrimps? I think you are implying it could indeed be more/āless than 10 times as bad.
1 h of disabling pain in humans was 10 times as bad as 1 h of hurtful pain in humans, 10 h of disabling pain in humans could be more/āless than 10 times as bad as 10 h of hurtful pain in humans? I think you are implying it could indeed be more/āless than 10 times as bad.
I think my assumption of constant ratios within and across species still makes sense as the most agnostic assumption.
Thanks for clarifying, Cynthia!
Hi Joel,
Have you followed up on this shallow report in some way? Do you plan to do an intermediate report? Arsenal limitation is the intervention for which you estimated the highest cost-effectiveness, although I agree it is likely to fall in deeper evaluations.
Thanks for sharing, Sarah! I agree with your takes. I think it would be good to survey the users before making major changes like the ones described in 2 or 3.
Thanks for the comment, Cynthia! I would only neglect the uncertain effects on wild arthropods of chicken welfare reforms if I expected them to be much smaller than those on chickens. I do not think uncertainty per se is enough to discount a given effect. For example, it is very unclear whether a deal where there is a 50 % chance of oneās risk of deaths decreasing by 50 %, and a 50 % chance of it increasing by 70 % would increase or decrease oneās risk of death. However, I think it would be harmful due to increasing the risk of death in expectation by 10 % (= 0.5*(-0.5 + 0.7)). @cynthiaschuck, I have updated my comment.
Thanks for the reply, Cynthia! If I understand correctly, even if it was known with certainty that:
1 h of disabling pain in humans was 10 times as bad as 1 h of hurtful pain in humans, 1 h of disabling pain in shrimps could be more/āless than 10 times as bas as 1 h of hurtful pain in shrimps? I think you are implying it could indeed be more/āless than 10 times as bad.
1 h of disabling pain in humans was 10 times as bad as 1 h of hurtful pain in humans, 10 h of disabling pain in humans could be more/āless than 10 times as bad as 10 h of hurtful pain in humans? I think you are implying it could indeed be more/āless than 10 times as bad.
Thanks for the clarification! Strongly upvoted.
Hi Daniel,
I wonder whether it would be possible to donate anonymously or indirectly via other people to solve the issue.
Thanks for the great post, Matthew!
Theyāve already helped a staggering more than 3 billion shrimp avoid a horrifying fate. Thatās half the number of people in the United States [US]!
ā10 timesā, not āhalfā, as the US has around 300 M people. In addition, you linked to Faunalytics above, but I guess you meant to link to Shrimp Welfare Projectsā impact page (which says they have helped 3.3 billion shrimp per year; so 33 billion shrimp if they are accelerating the transition to electrical stunning by 10 years).
Got it; thanks. I was suspecting you might be thinking that, as lower temperature will tend to decreases the number of arthropods. I would like to run some calculations about that at some point.
Thanks for sharing, Ozzie! I think Bryan is right people barely care about how their income compares with that of their neighbours. However, I believe they care about how their income compares with that of their peers, which will remain the same to a significant extent even if people move to lower income areas.
Thanks for the good points, David!
I think Bryan convincingly argued people do not care much about how their wealth compares with that of their neighbours. However, they could still care about how their wealth compares with their peers, which will remain the same to a significant extent even if people move to lower income areas.
In any case, I still think the absolute level of wealth significantly matters for welfare. Otherwise, I would not expect self-reported happiness to increase with real gross domestic product (real GDP) per capita within the vast majority of countries.
Thanks for the interesting discussion, Abraham and Matthew! I have coincidentally been thinking about this over the past few days.
I agree thereās high uncertianty, but sometimes itās worth acting on +ev actions even given loads of uncertainty.
I agree. Uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive or negative lives should directionally update one towards supporting interventions which improve their lives, and away from ones which increase/ādecrease positive/ānegative animal-years. However, it could still be the case that oneās best guess for the welfare per animal-year is sufficiently away from 0 for the latter interventions to be more cost-effective. I am not aware of any quantitative analysis arguing one way or the other.
Hi Matthew,
Have you considered donating to the organisation you think has the highest marginal cost-effectiveness instead of offsetting your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? You would increase welfare more.
It would be nice if you could ask. Feel free to follow up here if they reply.
Great points, Marcus! I do not know whether following a plant-based diet directly benefits or harms animals due to effects on wild animals, but I think this mostly only undermines your 5th reason. Another important reason for me is that I expect a whole-food plant-based diet to be cheaper and healthier, thus increasing future earnings, and donations in expectation.
Thanks for the good context, Mia!
Thanks for the additional thoughts, Saulius!
I think itās difficult to improve on the handwavy argument that maybe wild animals suffer more, so we are better off if there are fewer of them. I think that people who care about small invertebrates are probably better off supporting invertebrate charities that you mentioned than funding such complex research project, which might not end up changing the behaviour of that many people (unless it changes Open Philanthropyās grantmaking).
Persuading people to improve the lives of wild arthropods is hard, but the welfare of arthropods can also be increased by increasing/ādecreasing forest area if they have positive/ānegative lives, and there many interventions causing this which are more broadly appealing. For example, one could double down on nature conservation, and promote terraforming if one thought wild arthropods to have positive lives.
Hi Axelle,
Rethink Priorities (RP) assumed 76.3 billion broilers were slaughtered in 2023, and FAOSTAT says 76.3 billion chickens were slaughtered for meat in 2023. Some of the chickens slaughtered for meat not being broilers (they could be laying hens, breeders, or male chicks) would contribute towards RP having overestimated the number of broilers.
I think my estimate for the number of broilers is higher than it should be due FAOSTAT overestimating the number of chickens. They say the following about livestock numbers (emphasis mine).
On the other hand, I would expect the vast majority of poultry birds to be chickens, so I do not think the above alone would explain my estimate being 1.86 times RPās.
Another consideration is that RP used a single value for the harvest age and mortality of broilers. In reality, they both vary, and the mean weighted by broilers slaughtered could be lower than what RP assumed, which would lead to a lower number of broilers alive.