OK, thank you Vasco, both for conversation and for recommendation.
I hope they do some good work and achieve something for arthropods.
Zlatko Jovičić
Karma: 72
Do you think there should still be some spending on animal welfare? Each 4 k$ or so spent on animal welfare could have saved one child if donated to GiveWell’s top charities.
I am a bit conflicted about it, but I think YES, we should spend some on animal welfare, but not all of our donation money.
My intuition is to take the word “philanthropy” and understand it literally. If you want to call yourself philanthropist you must be helping people… Because it literally means “love of people”.
Also if you asked most world religions what they mean by charity, I guess in most of the cases they would tell you “helping the poor” and “helping people” in general.
If we stop doing it, I think we’re making a mistake.
So I think a non-negotiable part of our donation budget should go to human charities. And the rest of it, we can spend freely on other causes, like X risk prevention and animal welfare, including arthropods.
X risk prevention seems to be especially good, as it could help both humans and animals at the same time.
P.S.
Could you recommend any charity directly concerned with soil animals and arthropods that you think is good and that you yourself donate to? I’d like to know, perhaps I could donate some.
Also I’m wondering if they do just research at this phase, or are they already actively helping?
And I think one should account for effects on all potential beings.
If you have certainty that intervention X harms group B much more than it helps group A, then you’re right that we should scrutinize such intervention much more, and probably, in most cases, refrain from doing it.
But, probably it would still be unwise to refrain from it in all cases. Because, if humanity didn’t prioritize its own interests, if it wasn’t partial to some extent, it would not be able to achieve any progress. Only our partiality and focusing on development of our own human civilization, technology and welfare has allowed us to even get to this point where we can discuss effects we have on animals. Taking care about our own interests has brought us to the edge of singularity and has opened up the theoretical possibility that we can some time in the future bring about this welfare to other beings as well.
But we should probably take care about ourselves first and make the world robustly good for humans. I wouldn’t feel particularly good about myself letting kids die due to concerns for insects or even chicken.
Situation in which kids die of preventable diseases is tragic and dystopian. I think we should first take care of our own dystopia and try to make conditions less dystopian to humans. If we successfully achieve this, then we can start using more and more of our resources for helping other animals, while making sure our own standard stays at some decent level.
I think for making decisions like this, it could be good to have a long term vision of what kind of world you would like to live in and to work towards such a vision… instead of just looking on single actions and judging how much positive and negative utility do they cause.
If the strategic long term goal is the world in which both humans and most other animals flourish and are spared from extinction, then we should work towards this goal strategically.
Letting kids die because they might eat chicken or letting birds die because they might eat bugs, doesn’t seem like a good step towards that goal.
If arthropods dominate your concerns from the very start, then probably no one else will ever be your priority.
And arthropod related calculus can likely spoil any other beneficial action that you might want to take for any other beneficiary. It can paralyze you and stop you from doing anything.
I on the other hand think in a different paradigm. The paradigm of “solving problems”.
Like malaria is a problem. Let’s solve it. Birds crashing into windows, that’s a problem, let’s solve it.
Once you have solved human problems and problems of some animals closer to us, you already have a world that looks much more like this vision that I mentioned.
Then the next step would be to help smaller animals and arthropods as well. But how?
Not by cutting down the days of those with net negative lives, but by finding advanced, probably AI-powered ways to turn every sentient life into net positive.
It doesn’t mean that we should overpopulate planet with insects because now they are happy. It means that their number should be ecologically sustainable and harmonious with other forms of life, while they who do live, they should be happy.
So my take is not “make happy insects / people” or whatever, but make insects/people happy.
But people first.
Because there are many moral frameworks that don’t consider them to be in the same category, and thinking that you’re sure that such frameworks are false is not intellectually humble.
Would you oppose killing a bird if this was the most cost-effective way of increasing its welfare? If yes, do you oppose euthanising pets even when this is the most cost-effective way of increasing their welfare?
Yes, I would oppose it, unless the bird is already suffering irredeemably like, terrible illness or disability. I would ignore the effects of future potential predation, as the bird can still live for some time before it happens. My judgement comes from my own subjective experience. I would rather be eaten at the age of 80, than be euthanized today. Of course I would not like to be eaten ever. But if I have to choose, better be eaten at 80 than be euthanized today. And I think this choice is completely normal.
Yes, I in general oppose euthanising pets because in many, or most of the cases we do it for our own sake and for our own convenience. If you have a pet stay with it till the end. If you wouldn’t euthanize your terminally ill mother, you shouldn’t euthanize your dog either. Mother can consent, dog can’t. We shouldn’t do it against their consent. If people are good proxy for what dog would choose, then most dogs would NOT choose euthanizia, for the very same reason why most people don’t choose euthanasia.
The ill dog can even have some real fun in last days with morphine or other drugs (I’m not joking… opioids cause euphoria and pleasure to everyone)
Money used for offsets can be used for other altruistic purposes. For example, according to Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), The Humane League (THL) helped 11 chickens per $ in 2024, and the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) helped 10.4 k shrimps per $ in 2024. So one has to decide between helping 1 chicken or 945 shrimps (= 10.4*10^3/11).
But if we’re talking about arthropods here, the offset I mentioned are interventions in favor of arthropods. Directly. Even if they weren’t offsets, they would be excellent interventions on their own terms. My estimate is that doing bird glass intervention with offset would likely have effects like this:
Bird windows—somewhat positive for birds, more negative for bugs
(lets say birds get 10 utils, bugs lose 100 utils), so it’s net −90 so far.
Paying offsets… since arthropod related offsets are extremely cheap and effective, you’re likely to buy way more utils for way less money. If you spent $50 on birds, you can likely for just $10 buy 1000 or more utils for arthropods. But bird intervention is the thing that would push you to consider offsets in the first place.
So in the end you can end up like −90 (bird windows) + 1000 (offset) = 910 total.
That’s fantastic in my book. And it works both towards increasing utility, and towards making a world less problematic and dystopian place. You eliminate windows that hurt birds and that make the world more dystopian, and it motivates you to help arthropods directly which increases utils very strongly.
I do not understand. Catching wild insects for human consumption would be more expensive than increasing the production of farmed insects, and this would require a greater population of farmed insects.
I was talking about birds. They eat insects in the wild. This lowers insect population. No farming is involved.
Which moral theories put birds and insects in different categories?
Maybe those that look at flourishing as well, and not just pleasure and pain. If you think there are some higher, and deeper values and flourishing, maybe birds can experience more of it. It’s basically the logic that was behind the famous quote: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” It’s a quote by John Stuart Mill.
The actions you have in mind described by the above have looked intuitive to lots of people at certain points in history, even if they were described differently when they were performed?
You make a good point here. But I think my defense of actions such as sending money to AMF or making bird windows are defended a little better here than most of the past defenses of colonialism, slavery, etc...
Regarding bird windows intervention I don’t feel very strongly about it at all. I never donated for such a thing, and some other charities would be higher on my priority list for donation. I would probably donate to something else. So far I mostly donated to Give Well charities, and once I donated to Animal Charity Evaluators fund.
So it’s not that I’m a big fan of this particular intervention. I am just defending the right of people to do it, if they choose, in principle. I’m just arguing that concern for arthropods shouldn’t stop you from trying to help birds if this is what you want to do. I’m arguing that those secondary effects, in this particular case probably don’t disqualify bird window intervention and they don’t make it a bad thing to do.
Vaccines are not naturally part of the human environment, and the diseases they mitigate could be a good way of keeping human population in check, even though they harm the people who suffer from them?
Unfortunate truth is that predation is often the only way to balance populations of various animals. But humans probably deserve better, because they have, through their own effort invented vaccines, and also agriculture and food industry that allows them to have greater populations.
And by the way human population growth is slowing down and could likely reverse by the end of this century. So our own lack of enthusiasm for kids keeps our numbers in check even without such diseases.
I am not sure if it makes sense to constantly compare how things work in human society versus how they work among animals. The difference between us are too big. For the start arthropods aren’t discussing human welfare in depth.
We are kind of willing to help them eventually. We think they matter. But most people think we should prioritize making our own civilization stronger and more robust and such things have typically led to moral progress as well.
In my opinion the world in which kids die and birds crash in the window is not solved. Prioritizing arthropods before problems like that are solved, could, IMO, lead to situation in which we never solve most of the problems.
Maybe you’re right if we’re strictly thinking on margin. In this case you can say, on margin, for me it’s best to help arthropods. And it might indeed be the case. In your particular case you have this kind of luck that your visceral care is so well aligned with utilitarian calculus. So you can help arthropods and feel great about it.
But IMO, marginal thinking most of the time relies on other people doing less effective things that are still necessary. Implicitly there’s reliance on other people doing other useful things. If everyone just cared about arthropods, we’d probably collapse as a civilization quite quickly.
But if people like you benefit arthropods, that would probably be a great thing.
I might occasionally, but probably not always join you in this endeavor.
Here’s my kind-of logic. Basically it’s based on some principles:
that everyone matters—so if we can help birds in ways that seem cheap and straightforward we should do it
that side effects of certain interventions (in this case increased suffering of arthropods) can be compensated in a similar way as you compensate carbon emissions by buying carbon offsets. So if you increase suffering of arthropods by helping birds, you should make sure that you also decrease suffering of arthropods by helping them directly by interventions directly aimed at them. My hope is that such interventions could be much more effective, so that side effects of helping birds becomes a rounding error. This is just a HOPE not a claim that we can actually achieve this.
There are some other considerations but then it would get too long.
Regarding the following:
Based on age-structured mortality models for affected species like song sparrows, collision victims who survive gain approximately 1–2 additional years of life[1]. Whether this is net positive depends on comparing the suffering of window collision deaths versus alternative deaths (predominantly predation), plus the value of those additional life-years. Critically, if the difference in the amount of suffering caused by the new death outweighs the joy gained from an additional 1–2 years of life, the intervention could be net negative for birds themselves.
First, I think even if the pain that ends bird’s life in case of predation is indeed much worse than pain caused by hitting a window − 1-2 additional years of life are probably worth it. First of all hitting a window isn’t painless either. Second, a bird can survive hitting a window and end up disabled. Third, if the bird is killed by predation, it ends her life, so no matter how painful it was while it lasted, the bird doesn’t deal with trauma afterwards. It’s bad but lasts very short time. Unsuccessful predation that leaves bird dismembered and traumatized, but alive, is probably much worse.
Now even more importantly, I think we shouldn’t even think in this way. If we conclude that extra years of life are net negative for birds, what should we do? Should we go and kill all birds? This is a very negative attitude towards life. I think the good thing about suffering at the end of life is that it isn’t endless, and as soon as it ends, the there’s nothing more for those birds. It is not remembered it doesn’t leave trauma or disability (except in cases of unsuccessful predation) But I guess they should live as long as possible before that. Thinking otherwise would mean that we are in principle supporting painless euthanasia of animals, to protect them in advance from life itself. I think it’s not a good way to think about life.
I think there are some higher principles, such as that life is good in principle. And interventions should improve welfare, but not to the detriment of life itself. If some pain is inevitable part of life at this stage of our development, I think it’s better to accept it than to rebel against the idea of life itself.
We are always in triage?
I know this, but I think offsets can help us escape it. There are things that matter for different reasons. Birds matter because we love birds, and we want to help them, and helping them is generally good, if you are looking at the action in itself. Side effects are not immanent to helping birds. So for side effects, you “buy offsets” by helping arthropods directly.
Would you advocate for bird-safe glass if it increased the welfare of birds, but robustly increased suffering, and robustly decreased happiness accounting for effects on soil animals and microorganisms?
Probably yes, but with buying offsets. I can’t logically explain it but I think bird welfare matters for more reasons than just utility calculus. Birds matter in their own right… like they are ends in themselves. They are not means for increasing the amount of pleasure in the Universe. They matter for their own sake, and they have been important for humans for ages, and eating bugs might even be useful… Maybe it is way to keep insect population from exploding, which would likely produce many unhappy insects. So yes, I would help birds anyway, but in case I’m really sure about negative effects on bugs, I would try to eventually offset it by directly helping arthropods by some other intervention. Maybe not immediately, but eventually, helping arthropods would be on my agenda.
Would you advocate for an intervention which harms a group of people A much more than it benefits another group of people B? If not, one should also consider not advocating for an interventions which may harm a group of animals C much more than it benefits another group of animals D?
No. But I think the two situations are not really analogous.
First of all, all people are in the same category according to most moral theories. Birds and arthropods don’t seem to be in the same category. Second interventions that help one group of people and harm other group even more don’t seem like they could look good on any intuitive measure. It would seem like some form of exploitation, slavery, war, genocide, or something like this, which doesn’t look good.
Third, windows are not a natural part of environment, it’s something introduced by us, that directly harms birds. Predation of worms and bugs by birds has always been there and it might have benefits for the birds, for the ecosystem, and perhaps even for the bugs, if it keeps their number in check and avoids overpopulation, which could result in much worse life conditions, hunger, etc… Of course it won’t help the insect that’s eaten, but it might help the population of insects as whole by controlling their population.
I agree with your logic, but I’m wondering how you psychologically deal with this? I find this type of thinking quite uncomfortable. In a way it taints all of our endeavors. Can anything be about what it was intended to be? Can bird safe glass be about birds?
Here’s the most uncomfortable part and what I’m genuinely afraid of: it is the possibility to arrive at negative conclusion about an intervention that is by our very strong intuitions very positive, benevolent and altruistic, and that probably does, indeed help birds.
So if, after research, you arrived at this conclusion that such bird safe glass indeed hurts arthropods more than it helps birds, what would you do with this fact?
Would you advocate for stopping this type of interventions? Would you conclude we should let birds die by crashing into windows?
I personally think this is not a good approach. I think this constant triage is very cruel and cold as it directly puts interests of one group directly against the interest of other group.
My approach is probably more naive and maybe wrong at first sight from the utilitarian point of view, though it maybe be actually good when considered from more sophisticated utilitarian perspectives.
My approach would be to let interventions benefiting birds be about birds without worrying about effects on arthropods, while at the same time trying to directly help arthropods as well, by some other interventions directly aimed at arthropod welfare.
Since you care a lot about arthropods and soil animals and think that their welfare should dominate our moral concerns, maybe it would be valuable to try to think of interventions that could directly help them without hurting other animals or damaging the whole ecosystems.
BTW, my hunch is that they don’t have net negative welfare, and even if they do have net negative welfare the solution is not to consider their extermination, but to wait until we’re so advanced technologically that we can turn their welfare positive instead of simply eliminating them.
I’m saying this because elimination of certain species that we consider to be suffering, would be a dangerous precedent, that’s first, and second it would damage biosphere. Some other animals eat them for food, so if you remove arthropods, you also remove food for those other animals.
So my take is to try to find very conservative ways of helping arthropods directly without eliminating them, without having strong negative effects on other animals and humans, and without causing us to evaluate every other intervention that is focused on other beneficiaries in terms of how it affects arthropods.
So my take is that concern for arthropods and concern for other beneficiaries should not be mixed. It should be two separate things. Both are worthy and valuable, but one should not be judged in terms of other.
Also, interventions that directly help arthropods and soil animals could plausibly have more effects on their welfare than interventions where effects on arthropods and soil animals are just a side effect.
This seems like a good initiative, I wasn’t aware of that. My idea was to more explicitly redirect some very small percentage of budget to effective charities. Probably human charities would be most politically viable, and also great for optics, as they could say “our donation saved so and so lives”.
Maybe 0.1% of government budget would be viable, what do you think?
There are many upsides for the government—they could brag about how many people they saved, they could be seen as more progressive than other countries, and they could make EA more widely recognized.
But perhaps they would need to be very careful about how they go about it. Probably choose human and farm animal charities, some split between the 2 but no less than 50% to human charities. Perhaps some allocation to X-risk as well. I’d probably go like this: 10% X-risk, 50% human charities, 40% farm animal charities.
Here’s what I calculated: A budget of very small political entity in Bosnia (not the whole country) in which I live is around $3.2 billion. 0.1% of this is $3.2 million. 50% of this that would go to human charities is $1.6 million. Divided by $5000 (per life saved) that could save around 320 lives per year. And that’s just 0.05% of the budget that would be allocated to human charities.
If you cure one AIDS patient, you might be condemning five malaria patients to death.
What if the AIDS patient will keep donating 10% of their income to AMF?
But more seriously, this particular ethical dilemma is so horrible that it makes me sick to even think about it.
My take is that within each country, we must make sure, through the healthcare system and insurance, that EVERYONE who is sick receives the therapy, no exceptions. Doesn’t matter how expensive their treatment is and how many children in Africa could be saved if the money was directed their way. No one should feel guilty because they are receiving expensive therapies.
Healthcare should be viewed separately from charity. When we’re giving to charity, we should give to most effective charities abroad, like AMF, or others from GiveWell’s list.
But when we’re talking about improving healthcare system, we should make sure that every single person receives treatment and that we don’t let anyone down. This is the basic of human dignity, how one society treats its members.
Such an attitude towards sickness would give everyone a peace of mind, that if they themselves get sick, they too would be taken care of.
So I think paying taxes that would be spent on healthcare is a great thing to do. I support high taxes and Universal Free Healthcare.
Now of course, I think this should be standard everywhere, in every single country, so that eventually there will be no need to make donations to AMF and like. Everyone who is sick would receive free healthcare in from their own healthcare system in their countries. Governments themselves would provide abundant bednets to everyone, and this would be seen as something as basic as having clean water and electricity… which unfortunately many countries still don’t have.
This is a very interesting take. Sometimes I’m wondering to which extent I have undergone such moral evolution myself, to which extent is my own thinking about all these thing virtuous.
By the standards of this forum, I sometimes feel like I’m not virtuous enough. Like I haven’t yet gone through this mental shift that would allow me to bite certain bullets.
Prioritizing humans might seem backwards or spaciest, but that’s how I still feel on a gut level. I tried to elaborate why.
Another thing I would like to add is, that even in my framework farm animals are in the second circle, that is, right next to humans. They are not the same category as insects or soil nematodes. And they indeed live in horrendous conditions. I think every effective altruist should allocate some money to them.
My intention was to try to keep those 10% to humans sacred, to prevent value drift, and trains to crazy town. I made a case for it. Am I right? I don’t know.
I am quite confident about the priorities thing. But perhaps there shouldn’t be such a harsh cutoff.
Perhaps we can do it like this donate 1 unit to the first circle, 1⁄2 to the second circle, and 1⁄4 to the third circle.
Translated into percentages it would be roughly 57% of donation money to the 1st circle (including X-risks), 29% to the second circle (farm animals) and 14% to the third circle (wild animals).
I outlined a lot of reasons for prioritizing humans, some, but not all of them are based on emotions and gut feelings. Many other are based on rational considerations. I’m not sure if these rational considerations are correct or if they might be misguided.
You’re right that asking people to donate more than 10% is too much. But here’s the thing. Animal charities are way more effective than human charities. So giving just another 1 or 2 percent to animal charities can be incredibly effective.
For this reason I love animal charities, they are extremely cheap ways of doing good.
But can we call ourselves philanthropists if we don’t donate anything to people?
According to Wikipedia: The word philanthropy comes from Ancient Greek φιλανθρωπία (philanthrōpía) ‘love of humanity’, from philo- ‘to love, be fond of’ and anthrōpos ‘humankind, mankind’.
Everyone can decide about percentages for themselves. My idea of preserving 10% for humans + existential risks, is just how I feel about it, perhaps to ensure we’re not losing our focus and not forgetting why we’re doing this in the first place.
So perhaps we can donate 10% to human charities and existential risk prevention, and another 2% to animal charities. (12% total)
Or if you really think that animal welfare is extremely important, perhaps you can donate 5% to human charities and 5% to animal charities.
I think by allocating less than 50% of donation money to humans and existential risks (which is 5% if you donate 10% in total) we risk losing focus.
When it comes to donation for existential risk prevention it can be counted in the same category as donations to human charities, because those donations help everyone, humans and animals, and the whole planet.
So 50% of donation money to humans + X-risk is in my entirely subjective opinion, a minimum.
I think it would be a mistake to confuse the life-affirming attitude with endorsement of the repugnant conclusion. Or that it makes eliminating factory farms less of a priority. I think this is too simple and too binary a way of thinking about it. Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
I agree that factory farming should be eventually eliminated entirely.
But I’m not so sure about non-factory less intensive types of farming.
You put it really great here: Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
I agree wholeheartedly.
(It’s not like the debate here is about whether animals in factory farms should be killed or not — they are going to be killed anyway, that’s the whole point of factory farms.)Another very strong point. Here’s how I look at it. The question is whether the world with some number of farm animals (cows, pigs, chicken, etc) is better than the one without them, even if it means that those animals will be continually grown for the purpose of being killed? That is what is better—to kill them once and for all (or stop reproducing them) - some sort of near extermination, perhaps to keep just a few specimens and keep them in zoos. Or to keep growing them and killing them perpetually. It’s very unpleasant to even think about it like this, but this is the only honest way of thinking about it. So thanks for bringing this up. I lean towards it being better to keep them in numbers significantly larger than just a few zoo individuals to preserve the species, but in number significantly lower than their current population. Perhaps the optimal number of those animals is equivalent to maximum number of them that we can support in humane conditions and without industrial farming… Perhaps like they were kept in the before industrial revolution. Maybe we could keep just 10% − 20% of animals in conditions like that. If they could live truly good lives, while providing us with food and agricultural products, and being slaughtered in humane ways. Then I think it’s better then near extermination, and also much better then current inhuman conditions in which they are kept. It would be great if we could perhaps keep the number as large as 50% of the current number, while improving their life conditions maximally, but I’m afraid it’s very hard to achieve.
I think the best real life comparison is the one I already raised. People in countries undergoing economic development (either now, for developing countries, or in the past, for developed countries) doing family planning and choosing to have, say, two children instead of five, because they can provide for two children much better than they can for five. It’s hard to argue this isn’t out of love or an affirmation of life. It’s hard to say this is any way life-denying, negative utilitarian, anti-natalist, nihilist, or pessimistic. It’s simply parents trying to care best for their children, and affirming the value of having kids and parenthood, while attempting to balance quantity of lives with quality of lives as best they can figure out.Yes I agree, there’s no moral obligation, IMO, to have as many children as possible.
Regarding the rest of what you wrote I agree to a large extent.
My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:
I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say “Most suffering is not in that category.”, and I entirely agree.
However, I’m inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if it’s a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether there’s a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether it’s such a strong positive value that it “outweighs” the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).
I think it matters a lot how long does extreme suffering last. People regularly experience some pretty horrible suffering, but still they don’t consider their life not worthy of living.
Take for example childbirth, or kidney colic. Most people go on after such events, without being traumatized for life.
Also, extreme pain might render people unconscious. I don’t know how often it happens, if it happens in animals as well, and how good of a protection against extreme pain and suffering it is. But it might be a thing worthy of research.
Experiences such as being eaten, probably last quite short, and being last experiences in life of animals will likely not traumatize them, as they will be dead.
Close encounters with predators, injuries that animals survive, are more problematic and could lead to lasting trauma.
In general extreme suffering should be minimized as much as possible. But when thinking of extreme suffering I often have certain non-trivial duration in mind as well. If the lion kills its pray relatively quickly, the pain they experience, even if extreme, might not be that important in big scheme of things if it last just a couple of seconds.
I do not deny the existence of extreme suffering in nature, but I think it’s not so common and when it happens it’s often of short duration.
I very well do think that reducing of such extreme suffering should be among the top priorities.
More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but I’d be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they can’t spread their wings. I assume, eg, “tasting food” feels very different when you’ve only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.
Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! That’s not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.
You’re right here. Animals on factory farms probably have capacity to feel pleasure, but it’s severely reduced and undermined by the conditions in which they live. That’s why I think we should eat less meat (at least if we consider direct effects) and donate to charities that help those animals.
If we consider 2nd, 3rd, etc… order effects, I really don’t know. If we’re talking about these animals their lives should be improved. The way to do it is to eat less meat and to donate to those charities.
This will probably help them.
Whether this will also indirectly hurt someone else, and whether this is more important, I’m really not sure.
Thanks for your reply and feedback.
I will first focus on this paragraph that you wrote:
In the takeaways, however, you don’t focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, it’s probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more “maximizing” takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesn’t seem to have affected the world much for now).
And I can only respond in somewhat illogical manner. Because, if we follow logic, then you’re probably right.
So the first thing: my life-affirming stance isn’t necessarily a life-maximizing stance. Especially if this involves deliberately shifting our consumption patterns in such a way that we farm as many animals as possible or deliberately increase the extent of wildlife habitats.
If I were to support veganism, it would not be because it increases the farming of small animals on margin (indirect effect), but because I believe that reducing meat consumption lowers demand for farming animals, lowering their numbers, thus allowing us to keep those who remain in better, more humane conditions (direct effect). So when I’m thinking about deciding whether to eat chicken, I think primarily about chicken welfare. If I decided to donate to a charity that deals with welfare of certain animals, I primarily think about those very animals that the charity deals with.
Second, and very important thing: I really don’t know how far is too far when it comes to taking into consideration indirect effects. I’m afraid that taking indirect effects too much into consideration could lead to some situations that are very difficult to resolve. It can lead to strong cluelessness, the situation in which we’re never sure if we’re doing good at all, or if it is in fact counterproductive. Imagine this process:
First we do action A to help species B, and we’re convinced doing A is very good.
Then we realize that helping B indirectly hurts species C to a much greater extent, so doing A is very bad, and we stop.
Then we realize that hurting C, is in fact great, because it indirectly helps species D to even greater extent, so doing A, once again becomes very good.
Then we go back to doing A, but not to help B, but to help D.
We might on some level love B, empathize with them, identify with them somewhat, and when we were doing A to help B, this felt like a genuine care—our actions and our emotions were in harmony.
But D? - we don’t really care much about D. Our theory tells us that Ds are very numerous and that helping them might outweigh all our other moral concerns due to their sheer number, even if they aren’t conscious at all. But there is still some probability they might be, and due to their sheer number we can’t afford to dismiss it.
So now we’re doing A, not to help B (direct beneficiaries) whom we love , but to help D (indirect beneficiaries) about whom we don’t really care, and this feels emotionally very alienating and weird.
We’re just waiting until we learn that helping Ds is in fact terrible, because it harms Es, which are even more numerous, etc...
Since this process can be quite long, at each step of this process we can be quite unsure of whether what we’re doing is good at all, and this lack of conviction can make our motivation to help and donate grow much weaker. We can start thinking “If I’m unsure if it helps or hurts (in sense of increasing or decreasing aggregate welfare), maybe I shouldn’t do anything at all, and instead mind my own business”.
So I’m wondering can we really afford to completely divorce our actions (donations, etc...) from our love, care and emotions? Or alternatively, can we afford to maintain even a modicum of love and genuine care while we’re doing good?
I mean if we remove love and use just reasoning, maybe then indeed, the only logical project that we should pursue is eventually turning the Universe into hedonium.
But if we involve love and emotions, then perhaps it makes sense to help chicken because we care about chicken, to help people because we care about people, to help shrimps, because we care about shrimps, etc… In short to do focus our considerations on direct beneficiaries and thus retain this harmony between emotions and actions.
I think this is the way most people became altruists and effective altruists in the first place.
They donated money for malaria nets, in order to help those who receive nets. They donated to chicken charities in order to help chicken, etc… Imagining children dying of malaria or chicken living in terrible conditions was a strong motivating factor to step in and do something about it.
But nowadays, all I see is discussions about 2nd, 3rd, 4th order indirect effects of our actions.
But, logic is on your side, not on mine. Maybe I’m too lazy. Maybe I don’t want to make effort to consider those distant indirect effects. Maybe I don’t want to follow the logic to its conclusion. Maybe. I don’t know.
I probably lack certain virtues needed for such detached thinking.
But maybe such detached thinking too lacks something important that is fails to identify.
I really don’t know.
You’re probably right about factory farming. I do think that we should eat less meat, and some drop in number of farm animals would probably be good.
But I wanted to say in which direction would life affirming stance take us if fully accepted.
Unfortunately it would also point us towards greater acceptance of repugnant conclusion which is another thing that I dislike and that feels wrong.
But the thing about repugnant conclusion is what it really means “barely worth living”. How high this bar is, is very subjective.
If such lives are truly worth living, it might not matter that much if it’s barely.
But if the bar is too low, then they might indeed be not worth living, according to most who wouldn’t agree with the bar. The bar is subjective, this is the problem.
And it’s very hard to talk about lives being or not being worth living when it comes to existing beings.
It’s easier when planning for the future. If certain cows and chickens are never to be born / hatched in the first place, we can’t really say they were harmed by not being born / hatched.
So reducing number of farm animals is probably not that bad.
It’s more that life affirming stance makes reduction of farming less of a priority, but still certainly permissible and probably something to be endorsed, as with current numbers it’s very hard to ensure adequate welfare for those animals.
Could you clarify a bit?
This reminds me of doomsday argument, and even more of “black balls” from Bostrom’s Vulnerable World Hypothesis.
But I find some issues with it:
First of all there’s no guarantee that there is such a technology that inevitably leads to extinction.
Second, even if there is such a technology, there’s no guarantee that we will ever develop it, regardless of how many people are born in the future. (We might use proper safety measures and avoid it forever, or until we go extinct from some other cause)
Third, even if we do develop it eventually, the speed of its arrival probably depends on many of factors of which the total number of human lives probably isn’t most important. (As more important factors I’d mention, presence/absence of AGI/ASI and whether they are aligned, whether we are pursuing differential technological development or not, how robust our institutions are at preventing existential risks, how good is global coordination and cooperation, how closely the development of potentially harmful technologies is monitored, etc.)
Fourth, even if such a deterministic relationship does exist, and 200 billion human lives inevitably leads to development of such a technology, from utilitarian point of view it doesn’t seem to matter much when we’ll reach 200 billion humans who have ever lived, as whenever we reach it, the total amount of humans who have ever lived will be the same.
In my opinion the trajectory of population might be more important than the sheer number you end up with.
Ideal trajectory is that of slow/moderate growth as long as the planets we occupy (Earth and whatever other planet we occupy in the future) can support increasing number of people without significantly compromising living standards and exhausting resources.
After that point population should stabilize. Neither grow nor shrink but stay constant.
Ideally population should stop growing at around 80% of the carrying capacity of the planets we occupy, as approaching 100% would be too risky.
Now population decline is typically a bad trajectory for 2 reasons:
It is a symptom of some problems in society (unless intentional)
Over the long term it leads to extinction
For this reason, I think population decline can only be good as a short term intentional / consensual process in overcrowded worlds.
If we’re already overcrowded (which I doubt), in that case it wouldn’t be too bad if population falls a bit, but it must be a short term and reversible decline.
And we’re witnessing some concerning trends, like TFR staying well below replacement for long term and failing to recover in most of the developed nations. And the developing nations are also on the same track, just lagging a couple of decades.
Even if population decline improves sustainability, that would be a good consequence, but the process itself might still be bad, because it’s not result of intentional decision, but of increasing number of people failing to reproduce in sufficient number due to various limitations of our society. So population decline, even if it improves sustainability (which would be a beneficial side effect), would still reveal some structural problems of our current society and economic system, and these problems would likely still need some fixing even if we decide it’s OK for population to fall a bit for a short while.
The point is that we should be able to reproduce in sufficient number if we want to. It seems that right now we aren’t even able to do it. Most of the people end up with smaller number of kids than what they wanted.
Depopulation is Bad
Since I believe that humans have positive both instrumental and intrinsic value, I believe that depopulation in principle is bad, because if it’s an entrenched long term trend, it would lead towards extinction. That being said, short term population decline is not necessarily the worst thing in the world, and could even be beneficial in certain extreme scenarios, such as severely overpopulated and resource depleted world, which I don’t believe to be the case for our world.
Regarding instrumental value—I think we have a potential to have an extremely positive instrumental value in the Universe. If things go in a proper direction we could populate the Universe with sentient beings who live in utopian conditions. We could create digital worlds also filled with beings who live in delightful conditions. We definitely have potential for this, and I believe we have enough wisdom to actually achieve it. Not achieving this would be, as Bostrom points out, an astronomical waste. Right now we’re the only known species with such potential.
On the other hand we’re also causing a lot of farm animal suffering (but perhaps we’re also reducing wild animal suffering even more), and there’s a risk that we could export suffering to other worlds in the Universe, which would be astronomically bad.
But none of this is given or guaranteed. It depends on us. We have agency. Since we have agency, we can use this agency to produce enormous amounts of positive value both for ourselves and other sentient beings. So, I root for us, and I believe that we can and we should fulfill our potential for doing good.
Regarding intrinsic value—I also believe we have positive intrinsic value. Most of people are glad that they are alive, and they always seek to prolong their life if they can. That’s the default attitude of most of the people towards life. Not only is life filled with many pleasures (food, music, art, sunsets, reading, philosophy, friendship, love, sex, etc...) but we find many aspects of it meaningful. Even our struggles and challenges can sometimes be seen as meaningful, such as in case of mountain climbing or marathon running. This, of course, is not to say that suffering is good—the types of suffering that can be “good” and meaningful are very rare and very specific, and generally mild. (Very few people would consider marathon running to be torture)
Now to go back to depopulation itself. By default it’s bad. But it’s not only bad because it reduces population, but it’s also bad because it’s a symptom of dysfunctional society in which people struggle to fulfill one of their most basic biological functions, to reproduce. There must be something deeply wrong about society in which people struggle to reproduce. Sub-replacement fertility is one of the symptoms of such social pathology.
In my opinion, for a society to be considered healthy, it must have at least stable population. Growth isn’t the prerequisite for health of society, but stable population is.
The only exception to that rule would be an extremely overcrowded world in which people intentionally and consensually try to reduce their numbers by procreating less, until they reach a sustainable population. But that’s an exception.
As a rule, depopulation is pathological, especially if it’s unintentional, which I believe is the case in our world.
I also believe that recognizing depopulation as a symptom of social pathology could be a starting point in our efforts to improve our societies—not only in order to bring TFR above 2.1 again, but also for its own sake (as everyone prefers to live in a healthier society)
I roughly have the same opinion on this matter as you. I like how well you articulated it.
I’m not sure if we’re right, but I think the conclusion about net negative lives could be rushed, unsubstantiated and dangerous.
And even if some lives are net negative, so what? IMO we should think more carefully whether “slightly net negative = not worth living”.
Some people might have slightly net negative lives, but they never think about suicide or euthanasia.
From what I know about how we humans deal with it, euthanasia is usually used to prevent unbearable suffering with no hope of cure, not to save someone from slightly net negative life.