Over at "Why people give to developing-world charities" I explained that I gave primarally to developing-world charities because it was the most efficient cause I could find within the causes that are socially supported by my immediate surroundings. I then explained a bit of my life with concern to not being an ideal utilitarian.

Brian and others were nice enough to respond. I wanted to continue this conversation in a new thread so as to not derail the old one, and so I can have a thread that's all about me! Sometimes I like being the center of attention!

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Utilitarian Forums

Brian Tomasik wrote:Thanks, Peter! Unsuspecting Felicifia participants are some of the best people onto whom to heap woes.

Indeed! Planning out a utilitarian life, especially while a college student, is probably one of the highest utility things I could be doing, and I appreciate the help.

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Utilitarian Career

Brian Tomasik wrote:

peterhurford wrote:I'm still a college student

Any ideas on future career plans?

I'm specializing in learning about political science and psychology, with the hope to specifically focus on how people come to form their opinions on things regarding policy. I eventually want to go to graduate school and get a degree of some sort (either political science or psychology), and then get employed as a professor.

I hope to use my professor position to influence public opinion directly as well as study it indirectly. I hope to specifically explore how people think about utlitarianism and utilitarian issues (moral psychology). For instance, what caused us folks to join a utilitarian forum devoted to extensively abstract notions of suffering, compared to the other folks who don't?

I also want to live frugally and be a professional donor, and donate at least 10%, if not vastly more, of my income to the most efficient causes I can find. I imagine I'd live with a female life partner who may place constraints on the size of the donation or the targets of the donation, but we'll see. My current girlfriend seems on board with donating large portions of money and cares enough about nonhuman animals ("nonhumans") to reduce meat intake considerably, but not eliminate it outright.

As I mentioned before, I currently donate 10% of my earnings as a student researcher (approximately $4000 annual income) directly and unrestrictedly to Givewell (The Clear Fund).

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Thoughts on Veganism

Brian Tomasik wrote:That said, I'm not a fan of eating fish (especially small fish) because it takes a lot of them to produce a given quantity of meat.

I definitely concede that it takes a lot of fish to produce a given quantity of meat, though I do not think the conditions of fish farming are nearly as bad as the conditions of factory farming for land nonhumans. However, now further reflecting on the amount of salmon present in sushi and the capacity of pain for fish, agree that I would do better (with regard to utilitarianism) to avoid eating fish in the future.

...Veggie rolls in sushi are pretty good. If I can find cream cheese, maybe I could make a pseudo-Philadelphia roll and be set.

~

Brian Tomasik wrote:You might consider eating more dairy if you want to keep the amount of animal protein constant.

Indeed. How do you (or others) handle protein?

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Thoughts on Social Pressure

Brian Tomasik wrote:

peterhurford wrote:I face a fair amount of social pressure -- some of my college friends are vegetarian, but I only know one vegan. None of my family is vegetarian. None of my friends or family are willing to donate any more than 2% of their income.

That's tough. OTOH, it means there's more upside if you can persuade others to get interested in these topics.

In addition, you can make more friends who can pressure you in the right direction. For example, you can find some of us on Facebook here or here or here.

I agree it's a good opportunity to convince others, but I haven't yet enjoyed success, though admittedly I've been meek in trying. I joined the Utilitarian group -- I'm wary of joining a "Suffering in Nature" group because I'm not yet willing to commit publicly and visibly.

I also agree with the need for utilitarian friends to push me in the right direction. Luckily, a fair amount (~3-4) of my vegetarian friends are vegetarian for strictly utilitarian reasons.

The toughest obstacles I have with regard to veganism right now are constructing a more vegan diet (cheese, eggs, and dairy seem ubiquitous enough to be nearly unavoidable) and in informing my meat eating family.

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Abstract Thoughts on Optimal Philanthropic Targets

Brian Tomasik wrote:BTW, any ideas on your preferred charity?

Currently, my preferred charity is making unrestricted donations directly to GiveWell (The Clear Fund). I see them as presenting a strong and thorough case for ridding a death by malaria for $2000 (upper bound) via AMF, and in doing so enabling a human to live a normal life, and contributing to the general development and empowerment of the region. I expect anything they allocate my money towards to be at least as good as this or better, given their current research.

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Utilitarian Philosophy Background

My kind of utilitarian philosophy is to morally value nonhumans to the degree that they suffer, and aim to reduce as much suffering as I can. Thus I would want a donation with maximum suffering reduction per dollar. I don't consider myself a negative utilitarian though, so I would be just as fine with increasing happiness per dollar, though I see suffering as far more salient for the person and far better understood with regard to elimination relative to increasing happiness.

I think three interesting things need to be clear here:

First, I care nothing for people who do not yet exist, unless they are going to exist. What I mean by this is that I think nothing is lost if someone ends up not existing, and I have no desire to intentionally bring people into existence for their sake. However, I still care about future generations in so far as its inevitable they will exist, and I want them to have lives worth living (indeed the best possible lives) once brought into existence. This is an authentic intuition of mine, and the fact that it avoids the Repugnant Conclusion is just a plus. I don't think I'm an average utilitarian either, however, as I don't endorse killing people even if it would bring the average up. My goal is to take the population as it is, and make it happier.

Second, I value the individual human more than the individual nonhuman. I think death matters for humans in a way that it doesn't for nonhumans, because humans have a great amount more preferences thwarted upon death than nonhumans would. I also think humans have a far greater capacity for the kind of life I value than nonhumans would. I think these existential concerns also give humans a greater capacity for suffering than nonhumans.

Third, I'm pretty anti-Pascal on expected value. You could call this risk-averse if you like, but as I've said before, I'm not willing to take long-shots on "really high utility / really low probability" calculations, especially and specifically the numerator and/or denominator has a high margin of error and is poorly understood. I'm not even that motivated by infinitely high utility if the problem is poorly understood and the probability is still low.

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Donating to GiveWell / AMF

Even upon more reflection, I still like GiveWell a lot for a donation target, even though I concede the founders disregard the welfare of nonhumans too much and don't take them into account enough for their research. I think humans stand to benefit a lot in the long-term by disease eradication creating upward spirals of growth, that such eradication is very well understood compared to other factors, and that there is moderately high certainty that my $2000 is purchasing at least 30 years of human life worth living.

I tend to not take memetic concerns into account all that much because I don't understand how my influence will work or how effective it will be, but I think it's sufficiently plausible that by continuing to advocate donating to GiveWell that I will convince enough people to also donate who (a) wouldn't have donated to an effective cause otherwise and (b) would not have been persuaded if I was advocating for GiveWell while donating somewhere else, especially since all my other potential targets are even further outside the mainstream.

Also, as far as long-shot memes go, I think that by having a buy-in to GiveWell, I stand a minor chance of convincing them to look into nonhuman welfare / make nonhuman welfare problems and research more prominent. But I don't think this chance is large enough nor the benefits of making this research clear enough for this factor to count.

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Donating to SIAI (Existential Risk)

I'm persuaded by SIAI's argument that AI is the biggest existential risk (except maybe global warming) and am very enamored by the idea that a positive Singularity, if done right, could mean the end of all other problems and the creation of a utilitarian utopia.

However, I'm skeptical that superintelligent AI will be developed within the next century and I'm also skeptical that such superintelligent AI will be unFriendly by default, so. Furthermore, I'm skeptical that SIAI (or any human organization) knows enough about what they are doing to have a moderate chance at increasing the likelihood of Friendliness. Thus, I end up being rather skeptical that anything can be made of the Friendliness problem. I tend to think of donating to the SIAI as being too Pascalian for my taste.

Furthermore, I think the SIAI has done a poor job of explaining what their room for more funding would be, or what they would do with my marginal donation.

Lastly, as for another existential risk that I think may actually be substantial, sufficiently understood, and sufficiently tractable (with regard to actually solving the problem) is global warming. I look forward to GiveWell Labs research in this area. But ultimately, I think donations to existential risk are essentially donations to better understanding problems, which I tackle below.

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Donating to Making Veg*ns

I agree that contra my arguments for GiveWell, the sheer quantity of nonhumans (especially in the wild) and the depth of the problems they find themselves in relative to humans (especially with factory farms and wild predation) makes a compelling case for donating to nonhuman welfare charity.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that with Veg Ads, one could essentially "buy" veg*nism fairly cheaply, and that if this moral habit is maintained, could result in years less factory farming suffering. I also think it will contribute to a vegan critical mass to make it much easier for the next vegan to convert, similar to the critical mass that seems to currently be occurring for vegetarianism.

That being said, I think that behavior conversions such as the adoption of veg*nism are poorly understood (though clearly far better understood than meme propagation, wild animal suffering, or existential risk) and I'm skeptical that current effectiveness analysis by Vegan Outreach, PETA, and the Humane League is substantial enough for them to know what they are doing or how effective they are. I'm also skeptical that people who come in contact with VO/PETA/HL and change their eating habits will stick with it for the long haul, despite Nick Cooney's statistics on how long people "stay veg".

I'm not moved much by Brian's wild animal suffering memetic argument for such a donation much at all, again because of the tenuousness and lack of information involved. I have seen very little indication that vegetarians are much more persuadable to care about nonhumans in the wild than those who aren't, nor would I know that they would more fervently support whatever wild suffering proposal that may come up.

Lastly, I'm skeptical of New Harvest and in-vitro meat. I have very little information about what their room for more funding is, what the marginal impact of my donation would be, what their time tables look like, or how well IV meat would be accepted by the mainstream.

I think I need more analysis here, but I'd definitely consider vegetarian-making (donation to Vegan Outreach or the Humane League for leafleting or online advertisements, though preferably online) a highly competitive donation target compared to GiveWell.

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Donating to the Center for Effective Altruism

I think that a developing world donation is a competitive donation target, and convincing people to donate to them, especially to pledge 10% of their income (GivingWhatWeCan) would go a long way to that. If it turned out that one could easily "buy" life donors in a similar manner to the way one "buys" veg*ns, one might be able to easily move >$500k per person (>250 lives per person) for substantially less.

However, I think no where is there a bigger unknown than here, because CEA hasn't released any kind of data like VO/THL have and haven't made it clear at all what their room for more funding is like or what the marginal donation would fund. Nor have they released data on where the donations actually go -- just focusing 10% of your income on extreme poverty doesn't mean you are doing it well, given the 10000x variance in causes, though GWWC's commitment to effectiveness should make this practically a non-issue.

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Donating to Research

As you may noticed, I've blamed lack of information and poorly understood problems for nearly every suggested donation, except GiveWell. Thus given the potential outcomes for these causes, especially if there are effective solutions to wild animal suffering, the value of information here is extraordinarily high. Thus, I would definitely want to purchase answers to some of the remaining open questions in philanthropy here.

However, I know of no current way to do so. Ironically and unfortunately, the biggest unknowns for me are in the area of how to research away the unknowns. I know of no organization even working in this research area, let alone how effective they would be. And I think with research, one has to be careful to have a decent guess what the marginal value of a given study will be.

I suppose I see SIAI and the Future of Humanity Institute as essentially researching open questions in existential risk. But I don't see them as approaching the question the way I would want them to, trying to get a better grasp on the probabilities and utilities of things. I think I need to look more into what they're doing before I can produce a conclusion here, but I'm pretty skeptical of even donating to SIAI-as-research-institution, even if I see that as better than donating to SIAI-as-the-solution-to-Friendliness.

~

If I were forced to give away my current donation budget right now, I would probably still donate it to GiveWell (The Clear Fund) directly. However, I could easily see changing my philanthropic target to veg ads, and less easily see trying some sort of research donation. I may even, contra some suggestions, attempt to diversify my donations to multiple organizations.

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Practical Restrictions on Donations

As I mentioned, one practical limitation on my donations is that my father gets to see them, if they are made by credit card (but not if they are made by other means).

Brian Tomasik wrote:I guess it's a risk to figure out whether he'll go for "strange" donations. How big is the downside? Maybe it could make your relationship more awkward? Might it also mean less financial support in the future?

It would be a source of awkardness for our relationship, but I couldn't see it leading to reduced financial support any more than my current donations are an indication that I get more financial support than I need. I think if I were more Machiavellian, a strategy I could consider is to stop donating entirely, try to convince my parents that I need more financial support, and save up to make a larger donation when I'm financially independent. I live more frugally than I need to, so my costs are lower than they expect.

The factors that lead me away to this is the decent chance that my current donations will inspire my parents and friends to give more now and the more-than-decent chance that regular donations are key to maintaining my utilitarian altruism.

Brian Tomasik wrote:How much longer will your finances go through him?

2 years (lower bound) to 8 years (upper bound). My best guess would be 3 years.

This is an awesome thread, Peter. You have clearly done a lot of reading of Felicifia, and you really know what you're talking about.

peterhurford wrote:Indeed! Planning out a utilitarian life, especially while a college student, is probably one of the highest utility things I could be doing

And giving advice to other young people about future plans is probably one of the highest-impact things that I do. I sometimes wonder if I should seek out ways to do more of it.

peterhurford wrote:For instance, what caused us folks to join a utilitarian forum devoted to extensively abstract notions of suffering, compared to the other folks who don't?

Cool. I hope there will be applied take-aways from the research, like concrete ways to increase the number of people who think about reducing suffering in a systematic fashion.

peterhurford wrote:My current girlfriend seems on board with donating large portions of money and cares enough about nonhuman animals ("nonhumans") to reduce meat intake considerably, but not eliminate it outright.

Of course, what matters is what you accomplish relative to the counterfactual situation where you hadn't intervened. So having your girlfriend eat less meat on account of you is better along this particular dimension than having a girlfriend who is already veg.

peterhurford wrote:However, now further reflecting on the amount of salmon present in sushi and the capacity of pain for fish, agree that I would do better (with regard to utilitarianism) to avoid eating fish in the future.

A second point about farmed fish is that they're often fed other fish as food, which multiplies the number of instances of slaughter caused by eating them. From "How many animals does a vegetarian save?":

Suppose I eat a small 6-ounce piece (0.375 pounds) of a farmed salmon fillet (a serving size used in an official Weight Watchers' recipe). According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's conversion factors, this is equivalent to 0.75 pounds of live weight of a salmon. According to authors at the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling, the fish-in-fish-out ratio for salmon is as high as 4.9. So, about 3.6 pounds of live weight of wild caught fish would have to be killed and ground up to make the fishmeal used to feed and grow the salmon in my meal. The average weight of these wild-caught fish is conservatively estimated at 0.176 pounds (see discussion above). Now, 3.6 divided by 0.176 is 20.4. So, just eating one serving of a farmed salmon fillet from a Weight Watchers' recipe kills as many as 20 fish.

peterhurford wrote:Indeed. How do you (or others) handle protein?

It depends how much you want. The Internet has no shortage of articles on veg sources of protein -- tofu, beans, lentils, nuts, etc. Humans apparently don't need that much.

For myself, though, I like having a lot of protein, so I specifically buy some protein powders. The store has vegan options -- soy protein, rice protein, hemp protein, pea protein, etc. -- but it turns out that these are more expensive than the cheapest option, whey protein. Because only $11 can create a new vegetarian-year, I think it's better to buy what's cheapest and donate the remainder to veg ads. Therefore, I personally buy mainly whey protein (which isn't so bad given that dairy has less direct animal impact than any other animal product), although I would be glad to mix this up if prices changed.

peterhurford wrote:The toughest obstacles I have with regard to veganism right now are constructing a more vegan diet (cheese, eggs, and dairy seem ubiquitous enough to be nearly unavoidable) and in informing my meat eating family.

I think eggs are way more important than cheese/dairy, so I would focus mainly on them for now.

peterhurford wrote:First, I care nothing for people who do not yet exist, unless they are going to exist.

Very interesting. Most of us on this forum are total utilitarians who don't make a distinction based on prior existence. I guess this is one reason you're right that it's a lot murkier how to increase happiness compared with reducing suffering: You can't just create lots more happy minds.

(I agree with you that reducing suffering is more important, but not for this reason. I take that as more of a basic intuition.)

peterhurford wrote:Second, I value the individual human more than the individual nonhuman.

Interesting. Again, I don't share the intuition, but it's great to know where we differ on these things.

peterhurford wrote:Third, I'm pretty anti-Pascal on expected value.

Heh, one more difference between us.

peterhurford wrote:Also, as far as long-shot memes go, I think that by having a buy-in to GiveWell, I stand a minor chance of convincing them to look into nonhuman welfare / make nonhuman welfare problems and research more prominent. But I don't think this chance is large enough nor the benefits of making this research clear enough for this factor to count.

Yes to both sentences.

Those of us here have had several discussions about trying to convince GiveWell to investigate animal causes, including the question of how much people would donate to their chosen cause if they did investigate it. No serious progress yet, but who knows what the long-term future holds.

More on GiveWell from a past conversation on Facebook:

We have been in touch with GiveWell in several ways. Back in 2010, a few of us filled out a survey for what we wanted GiveWell to work on. Later that year, they mentioned animal charities in a blog post, on which several of us (including Holly and "Alan") commented. Currently, Simon Knutsson and I are writing up a summary of what we know about animal charities with the hopes that GiveWell might one day find the topic interesting enough to look into. In May of this year, GiveWell mentioned that they aren't doing animal stuff at the moment with GiveWell labs. This is partly because the current GiveWell staff members don't care as much about animals as they do about people.

peterhurford wrote:I'm persuaded by SIAI's argument that AI is the biggest existential risk (except maybe global warming) and am very enamored by the idea that a positive Singularity, if done right, could mean the end of all other problems and the creation of a utilitarian utopia.

Here are my current thoughts on SIAI:

I'm currently less enthusiastic about SIAI because the organization aims to reduce the risk of human extinction, but I don't know if that's good or bad. As I said in one Felicifia discussion: "my current stance is to punt on the question of existential risk and instead to support activities that, if humans do survive, will encourage our descendants to reduce rather than multiply suffering in their light cone. This is why I donate to Vegan Outreach and The Humane League, to spread awareness of how bad suffering is and how much animal suffering matters, with the hope that this will eventually blossom into greater concern for the preponderate amounts of suffering in the wild."

"Safe AI" sounds like a great goal, but what's safe in the eyes of many people may not be safe for wild animals. Most people would prefer an AI with human values over a paperclipper. However, it's quite possible that a paperclipper would be less likely to cause massive suffering than a human-inspired AI. The reason is that humans have motivations to spread life and to simulate minds closer to their own in mind-space; simulations of completely foreign types of minds don't count as "suffering" in my book and so don't pose a direct risk. (The main concern would be if paperclippers simulated human or animal minds for instrumental reasons.) In other words, I might prefer an unsafe AI over a "safe" one. Most unsafe AIs are paperclippers rather than, say, malevolent torturers. Moreover, there are other dystopic future scenarios that might result from a post-human technological civilization.

That said, I think the folks at SIAI are wonderful and brilliant people, and a lot of the topics they research are really valuable. But considering the whole package of what SIAI does, including outreach efforts to increase the odds of a post-human civilization, I don't know whether I support the effort.

peterhurford wrote:Lastly, as for another existential risk that I think may actually be substantial, sufficiently understood, and sufficiently tractable (with regard to actually solving the problem) is global warming.

Would this be a direct risk (runaway greenhouse effect) or indirect (social disruption increasing chance of nuclear war, etc.)?

peterhurford wrote:That being said, I think that behavior conversions such as the adoption of veg*nism are poorly understood (though clearly far better understood than meme propagation, wild animal suffering, or existential risk) and I'm skeptical that current effectiveness analysis by Vegan Outreach, PETA, and the Humane League is substantial enough for them to know what they are doing or how effective they are.

Does that suggest high value of information in doing better research and/or high value of changing the outreach so as to make it more effective?

peterhurford wrote:I think I need more analysis here, but I'd definitely consider vegetarian-making (donation to Vegan Outreach or the Humane League for leafleting or online advertisements, though preferably online) a highly competitive donation target compared to GiveWell.

Cool. Yeah, the important thing is to give it more investigation, rather than to accept/reject it just on evidence that you don't feel is sufficiently solid. You commented more on this in your "Research" section.

What further info would be helpful on veg ads? If you like, I can give you Nick Cooney's contact info, so that you can give him your suggestions.

peterhurford wrote:The factors that lead me away to this is the decent chance that my current donations will inspire my parents and friends to give more now and the more-than-decent chance that regular donations are key to maintaining my utilitarian altruism.

Makes sense. Also the fact that normal people might think less of you because of it. That said, I suppose you wouldn't have to tell anyone (as long as they don't come across this forum!).

EDIT: Maybe it would be worth everyone posting their plans so we can criticize each other

“I'm specializing in learning about political science and psychology, with the hope to specifically focus on how people come to form their opinions on things regarding policy. I eventually want to go to graduate school and get a degree of some sort (either political science or psychology), and then get employed as a professor.

I hope to use my professor position to influence public opinion directly as well as study it indirectly. I hope to specifically explore how people think about utlitarianism and utilitarian issues (moral psychology). For instance, what caused us folks to join a utilitarian forum devoted to extensively abstract notions of suffering, compared to the other folks who don't?”

This is kinda like what I’m considering. Basically I think promoting antispeciesism and R.W.A.S (reducing wild animal suffering) memes seems the best way to go. I wrote a blog post on 80000hours about fundraising (http://80000hours.org/blog/48-fundraisi ... -altruists ) and I think maybe there may be excellent returns in doing something like starting a charity and putting all your resources into fundraising and awareness raising and then re-investing the money you get back and simply doing that again and again. I’m still in high school so I’m wondering what might be good courses to do to learn about how to do this. I’m thinking psychology, sociology, marketing, any thoughts?

(Ps. everyone I just bought this ( http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Fund-Ra ... 0805813217 ) and this ( http://www.amazon.com/Striking-Roots-Pr ... 1846940915 ) if they're good/amazing I'll post about them, the first one looks promising )

“...Veggie rolls in sushi are pretty good. If I can find cream cheese, maybe I could make a pseudo-Philadelphia roll and be set.”

Vegan sushi is lovely

"I agree it's a good opportunity to convince others, but I haven't yet enjoyed success, though admittedly I've been meek in trying. I joined the Utilitarian group -- I'm wary of joining a "Suffering in Nature" group because I'm not yet willing to commit publicly and visibly.
…
The toughest obstacles I have with regard to veganism right now are constructing a more vegan diet (cheese, eggs, and dairy seem ubiquitous enough to be nearly unavoidable) and in informing my meat eating family.”

I don’t know your personal situation and don’t mean to come off unpleasant I just don’t really understand, when you say commit publicly and visibly do you mean you are worried because people might criticize other things you do because you support these unusual things or because of reactions from friends and family? If the latter it seems like your friends and family are very silly!

“Second, I value the individual human more than the individual nonhuman. I think death matters for humans in a way that it doesn't for nonhumans, because humans have a great amount more preferences thwarted upon death than nonhumans would. I also think humans have a far greater capacity for the kind of life I value than nonhumans would. I think these existential concerns also give humans a greater capacity for suffering than nonhumans.”

Hm, but maybe non-human animals have other things similar to these “human only emotions” that we don’t know of? I dunno, just a wild point.

“I'm persuaded by SIAI's argument that AI is the biggest existential risk (except maybe global warming) and am very enamored by the idea that a positive Singularity, if done right, could mean the end of all other problems and the creation of a utilitarian utopia.”

I was going to comment but Brian has replied excellently about whether we don’t know if a future with human civilisation looks better or worse than a future without it, etc.

“However, I think no where is there a bigger unknown than here, because CEA hasn't released any kind of data like VO/THL”

They did email everyone on their mailing list a brief thing a while ago, afaik they didn’t want it published or anything but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us sending it to you.

“I suppose I see SIAI and the Future of Humanity Institute as essentially researching open questions in existential risk. “

Fredrik Bränström ( http://www.facebook.com/branstrom ) of the GHO ( http://www.globalhappiness.com/en/about-gho/management ) said they might consider researching if a future with human civilisation is likely to be better or worse than one without it so maybe they could be open to other things?

“giving advice to other young people about future plans is probably one of the highest-impact things that I do. I sometimes wonder if I should seek out ways to do more of it.”

Career advise for 80k? you’d be class at it!

“Of course, what matters is what you accomplish relative to the counterfactual situation where you hadn't intervened. So having your girlfriend eat less meat on account of you is better along this particular dimension than having a girlfriend who is already veg.”

Haha! I dunno if choosing girlfriends based on the potential to convince them to be more ethical is a great idea tho lol 

“I think eggs are way more important than cheese/dairy, so I would focus mainly on them for now.”

Oh, what if they’re free range (like, properly free range) (I actually happen to have my own chickens, but supposing I didn’t, I remember reading under EU law free range ones get 1m squared each)

Ruairi wrote:EDIT: Maybe it would be worth everyone posting their plans so we can criticize each other

In a friendly way, definitely! People sometimes ask me if I mind when they give advice. I respond by saying that people pay consultants huge amounts of money to give them advice, so why would I refuse it for free? I guess sometimes criticism can feel corrosive, but hopefully in the context of unconditional friendships this is not the case.

Ruairi wrote:Basically I think promoting antispeciesism and R.W.A.S (reducing wild animal suffering) memes seems the best way to go.

Me too.

Ruairi wrote:if they're good/amazing I'll post about them, the first one looks promising )

Sounds great! If they're good, you might write a summary here and/or for the 80K blog.

Ruairi wrote:Fredrik Bränström ( http://www.facebook.com/branstrom ) of the GHO ( http://www.globalhappiness.com/en/about-gho/management ) said they might consider researching if a future with human civilisation is likely to be better or worse than one without it

Cool! Let us know how how that goes if it happens.

Ruairi wrote:Career advise for 80k? you’d be class at it!

Haha. I meant also looking for other forums like this one into which our social networks haven't yet penetrated their tentacles.

Ruairi wrote:Haha! I dunno if choosing girlfriends based on the potential to convince them to be more ethical is a great idea tho lol

Yeah, that's right, which is why the statement was qualified with "along this particular dimension." That said, religious folks sometimes make use of tactics like this.

Ruairi wrote:Oh, what if they’re free range (like, properly free range) (I actually happen to have my own chickens, but supposing I didn’t, I remember reading under EU law free range ones get 1m squared each)

True, I guess things are different in the EU now that battery cages have been nominally banned (and phased out in practice except in a few countries AFAIK). Alas, things in the US aren't so cheerful.

BTW, my family used to have free-range chickens for eggs also.

This is a great thread and it's nice to see how much thought you're giving these issues while still an undergrad.

I'm specializing in learning about political science and psychology, with the hope to specifically focus on how people come to form their opinions on things regarding policy.

Social psychology would probably be the best field for you. I'm a psychology professor and I'm happy to talk through PM if you want to.

Indeed. How do you (or others) handle protein?

I handle protein by making sure I eat food. I think there's a lot of bad ideas out there about protein needs. I've never heard of someone eating enough total calories but still having a protein deficit. This site has good info. about protein needs and sources: http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html

Second, I value the individual human more than the individual nonhuman. I think death matters for humans in a way that it doesn't for nonhumans, because humans have a great amount more preferences thwarted upon death than nonhumans would. I also think humans have a far greater capacity for the kind of life I value than nonhumans would. I think these existential concerns also give humans a greater capacity for suffering than nonhumans.

This view may change as you read more about speciesism if you haven't read a lot about it already. A few questions, though. Do humans also have a far greater capacity for the kind of life you disvalue than nonhumans? How would that figure into the calculation of comparative value? For the record, I'm highly skeptical of claims that we have a greater capacity to suffer or have more valuable lives than other sentient species. At least, we have to assume the null hypothesis until there is compelling scientific evidence to the contrary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis.

Hi Peter! I think this is a great idea.

peterhurford wrote:Thoughts on Social Pressure

Brian Tomasik wrote:

peterhurford wrote:I face a fair amount of social pressure -- some of my college friends are vegetarian, but I only know one vegan. None of my family is vegetarian. None of my friends or family are willing to donate any more than 2% of their income.

That's tough. OTOH, it means there's more upside if you can persuade others to get interested in these topics.

In addition, you can make more friends who can pressure you in the right direction. For example, you can find some of us on Facebook here or here or here.

I agree it's a good opportunity to convince others, but I haven't yet enjoyed success, though admittedly I've been meek in trying. I joined the Utilitarian group -- I'm wary of joining a "Suffering in Nature" group because I'm not yet willing to commit publicly and visibly.

I also agree with the need for utilitarian friends to push me in the right direction. Luckily, a fair amount (~3-4) of my vegetarian friends are vegetarian for strictly utilitarian reasons.

The toughest obstacles I have with regard to veganism right now are constructing a more vegan diet (cheese, eggs, and dairy seem ubiquitous enough to be nearly unavoidable) and in informing my meat eating family.

This is definitely the biggest obstacle for many people, but interestingly it's also one of the most ephemeral: in some sense the only thing it takes to overcome peer pressure is deciding to go for it, and that's something no one can stop you from doing.

peterhurford wrote:
Utilitarian Philosophy Background

My kind of utilitarian philosophy is to morally value nonhumans to the degree that they suffer, and aim to reduce as much suffering as I can. Thus I would want a donation with maximum suffering reduction per dollar. I don't consider myself a negative utilitarian though, so I would be just as fine with increasing happiness per dollar, though I see suffering as far more salient for the person and far better understood with regard to elimination relative to increasing happiness.

I totally agree with this; negative utilitarianism is often just double counting the fact that suffering is more salient than pleasure.

peterhurford wrote:I think three interesting things need to be clear here:

First, I care nothing for people who do not yet exist, unless they are going to exist. What I mean by this is that I think nothing is lost if someone ends up not existing, and I have no desire to intentionally bring people into existence for their sake. However, I still care about future generations in so far as its inevitable they will exist, and I want them to have lives worth living (indeed the best possible lives) once brought into existence. This is an authentic intuition of mine, and the fact that it avoids the Repugnant Conclusion is just a plus. I don't think I'm an average utilitarian either, however, as I don't endorse killing people even if it would bring the average up. My goal is to take the population as it is, and make it happier.

First, I wouldn't worry too much about the Repugnant conclusion; my reasoning here.

Second, what exactly do you mean by saying you don't care about people who don't exist yet, unless they are going to exist? What if their existence depends on your actions? Also, why don't you care about people not yet existent? In addition to creating the messy question of exactly when someone starts existing and creating weird discontinuities of correct behavior then, you're going to get into weird situations where even if everything goes according to plan you will later decide your past decision was wrong because later you'll be counting different sets of people than before. I'll write up something more about this later.

peterhurford wrote:
Second, I value the individual human more than the individual nonhuman. I think death matters for humans in a way that it doesn't for nonhumans, because humans have a great amount more preferences thwarted upon death than nonhumans would. I also think humans have a far greater capacity for the kind of life I value than nonhumans would. I think these existential concerns also give humans a greater capacity for suffering than nonhumans.

Do you mean that you think humans suffer more and feel more pleasure and so are generally more important, or that humans suffer more but even independently of that you think they're more important? Make sure not to double count that effect; this is similar to the intuition behind negative utilitarianism.

peterhurford wrote:
Third, I'm pretty anti-Pascal on expected value. You could call this risk-averse if you like, but as I've said before, I'm not willing to take long-shots on "really high utility / really low probability" calculations, especially and specifically the numerator and/or denominator has a high margin of error and is poorly understood. I'm not even that motivated by infinitely high utility if the problem is poorly understood and the probability is still low.

Are you saying that you're anti-Pascal because you think people are really bad at estimating denominators, or that even if people were really good at it you'd still be anti-Pascal? Once again, make sure not to double count your intuition (probably correct) that humans aren't that great at estimating probabilities of unlikely events.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone!


Replies to Brian Tomasik

Brian Tomasik wrote:And giving advice to other young people about future plans is probably one of the highest-impact things that I do. I sometimes wonder if I should seek out ways to do more of it.

Indeed, you really should! So should we all, actually. Any way we can meta-encourage more of this encouragement here and elsewhere?

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Cool. I hope there will be applied take-aways from the research, like concrete ways to increase the number of people who think about reducing suffering in a systematic fashion.

That would be the ultimate goal of my endeavors in moral psychology. I hope to soon write up what I've learned studying the issue. (I haven't made personal headway into it yet.)

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Brian Tomasik wrote:So having your girlfriend eat less meat on account of you is better along this particular dimension than having a girlfriend who is already veg.

Definitely, but I think it's most important that I just find a girl I really like, veg or not, and then make do. This is not only true from a self-interested POV, but I think also from a motivating me to be utilitarian POV. I have a specific girl in mind, right now, as I mentioned. I'm not really interested in "missionary dating" as you mentioned later.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:I think eggs are way more important than cheese/dairy, so I would focus mainly on them for now.

I'm taking concrete steps to reduce my egg and fish consumption now, though at the relatively negligible cost of slightly increased dairy. Hopefully I can transition to veganism within at least a few more years, if not much earlier.

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Brian Tomasik wrote: Most of us on this forum are total utilitarians who don't make a distinction based on prior existence. I guess this is one reason you're right that it's a lot murkier how to increase happiness compared with reducing suffering: You can't just create lots more happy minds.

I just want to make it very clear that I have now reversed my opinion on this, see my (semi-detailed) conversion to total utilitarianism here.

So I no longer have this prior existence restriction, though on my analysis it's not as rare among utilitarians as this board might make it to be. ...And it still strikes me as somewhat of a cheat to ignore existing suffering and devote all resources to just creating tons of happy people.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Those of us here have had several discussions about trying to convince GiveWell to investigate animal causes, including the question of how much people would donate to their chosen cause if they did investigate it. No serious progress yet, but who knows what the long-term future holds.

Are the contents of these conversations available?

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Would this be a direct risk (runaway greenhouse effect) or indirect (social disruption increasing chance of nuclear war, etc.)?

Mostly direct risk, ie imminent issues resulting from flooding, droughts, etc.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Does that suggest high value of information in doing better research and/or high value of changing the outreach so as to make it more effective?

Yes to both. I'd be happy to attempt to fund better research, though I don't know how I'd go about doing that.

Replies to Ruairi

Ruairi wrote:Maybe it would be worth everyone posting their plans so we can criticize each other

Indeed! I'd like that!

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Ruairi wrote:Basically I think promoting antispeciesism and R.W.A.S (reducing wild animal suffering) memes seems the best way to go. [...] I’m still in high school so I’m wondering what might be good courses to do to learn about how to do this. I’m thinking psychology, sociology, marketing, any thoughts?

I'm operating on a bit more of the meta-level once-removed, not direct advocacy, but rather research into how advocacy works and how to make it better.

I'd suggest looking into psychology, especially marketing psychology and moral psychology, here. I don't think any other field offers this, though political science would touch on it. (And I'd guess sociology may touch on it too, though I don't have any experience with that.)

BTW you being still in high school and working hard and well on these issues is very inspiring!

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Ruairi wrote:I don’t know your personal situation and don’t mean to come off unpleasant I just don’t really understand, when you say commit publicly and visibly do you mean you are worried because people might criticize other things you do because you support these unusual things or because of reactions from friends and family? If the latter it seems like your friends and family are very silly!

I'm worried about both direct reactions and spillover reputation effects on my other projects. I can see it being likely this being an overestimation bias on my part. I'm exploring this further.

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Ruairi wrote:Hm, but maybe non-human animals have other things similar to these “human only emotions” that we don’t know of? I dunno, just a wild point.

Maybe they do. I currently suspect they don't, but would be very open to concrete evaluations of nonhuman animal emotions/intelligence/capacity. I hope to sum up information to this effect eventually.

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Ruairi wrote:I was going to comment [about SIAI] but Brian has replied excellently about whether we don’t know if a future with human civilisation looks better or worse than a future without it, etc.

While I don't think we can be sufficiently confident about any conclusion reaching this far into the future, I do currently suspect that a future with human civilization does look better. Right now, it seems only humanity can steer the world to a utopia, and leaving it alone would just be a world of rather mediocre utility.

Where my x-risk suspicions and skepticisms instead lie is that I can't be even close to confident that SIAI or FHI are actually reducing x-risk, or what the state of x-risk actually is. Though SIAI has come a much longer way in addressing these suspicions of mine in the past months, they haven't got there yet!

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Ruairi wrote:They [CfEA] did email everyone on their mailing list a brief thing [presumably about effectiveness] a while ago, afaik they didn’t want it published or anything but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us sending it to you.

How would I get in contact with them with regard to this? I could see this kind of donation being pretty promising.

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Ruairi wrote:Fredrik Bränström ( http://www.facebook.com/branstrom ) of the GHO ( http://www.globalhappiness.com/en/about-gho/management ) said they might consider researching if a future with human civilisation is likely to be better or worse than one without it so maybe they could be open to other things?

I'd be interested in following up with that. Though GHO doesn't seem to have publicly published any of their existing research (or what they have published is their research and they don't have research that is methodologically rigorous enough, or I just missed it).

Replies to LJM1979

LJM1979 wrote:Social psychology would probably be the best field for you. I'm a psychology professor and I'm happy to talk through PM if you want to.

I agree, and changed from political science / economics double major to political science / psychology double major as of April. I'd be happy to get additional assistance if you have any advice, but I don't currently have any questions.

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LJM1979 wrote:This view may change as you read more about speciesism if you haven't read a lot about it already.

I've read a fair amount. Right now, I'm looking for more concrete research about the cognitive/emotional/suffering capabilities of nonhuman animals. Have any suggestions?

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LJM1979 wrote:Do humans also have a far greater capacity for the kind of life you disvalue than nonhumans?

Yes, on my current view, I suppose they would.

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LJM1979 wrote:How would that figure into the calculation of comparative value?

No different than total utilitarianism would require -- if you're in a position to alleviate human suffering or nonhuman suffering, do so impartially. But if humans have a greater capacity for flourishing/suffering, this might mean it's much better to save the human in a situation where you must choose whether you're saving a human or a dog (from, say, a burning building, and all else being equal).

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LJM1979 wrote:For the record, I'm highly skeptical of claims that we have a greater capacity to suffer or have more valuable lives than other sentient species. At least, we have to assume the null hypothesis until there is compelling scientific evidence to the contrary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis.

I'd do Bayesian analysis, so my null hypothesis is my prior, which is currently that humans have a greater capacity to suffer/flourish, ~70% confident.

This prior is based on it being plausible that existential concerns are unique to humanity and a source of great suffering, and that greater awareness of humans can create a greater awareness of their own suffering. I take this to scale more or less linear with intelligence.

And I'd think you'd have to give me scientific evidence to sway me away from this prior. What do you think? What is your prior based on?

Relies to Hutch

Hutch wrote:This [social/peer pressure; fear of rejection for having ostensibly outlandish ideas] is definitely the biggest obstacle for many people, but interestingly it's also one of the most ephemeral: in some sense the only thing it takes to overcome peer pressure is deciding to go for it, and that's something no one can stop you from doing.

Indeed, that's fairly inspiring. I'm working on it.

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Hutch wrote:Second, what exactly do you mean by saying you don't care about people who don't exist yet, unless they are going to exist?

Nevermind this, I've revised my position -- see here. But keep writing on these issues. I like what you had to say about the repugnant conclusion (it matches what I came up with, especially with critical-level utilitarianism). I'd love to see some more work on what a "life worth living" is/means, locating 0 utility, and what we should do with lives that aren't worth living.

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Hutch wrote:Do you mean that you think humans suffer more and feel more pleasure and so are generally more important, or that humans suffer more but even independently of that you think they're more important?

I mean that humans suffer/flourish more and have a much higher capacity for both directions (relative to nonhuman animals), and thus are more important in this respect. Though I shy away in actually saying they're more important, because I don't think moral importance exists at all in utilitarianism, given that we should be completely impartial with regard to interests.

I would deny that humans are more important in any other way. I think that's just bad biology / metaphysics.

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Hutch wrote:Are you saying that you're anti-Pascal because you think people are really bad at estimating denominators, or that even if people were really good at it you'd still be anti-Pascal? Once again, make sure not to double count your intuition (probably correct) that humans aren't that great at estimating probabilities of unlikely events.

I'm saying that I'm definitely anti-Pascal because people are really bad at estimating numerators and denominators.

But even given that, I think that I'm also risk-averse, though I'm much less sure about this, especially when infinite or arbitrarily large utilities are thrown around. I need to work out the risk-aversion among myself, so right now I'm only going with the "bad estimation" thing.

Thanks for the comments, Hutch. I agree with most of what you said.

peterhurford wrote:Indeed, you really should! So should we all, actually. Any way we can meta-encourage more of this encouragement here and elsewhere?

peterhurford wrote:I have a specific girl in mind, right now, as I mentioned.

Would she be interested in joining us on Felicifia too?

peterhurford wrote:I'm taking concrete steps to reduce my egg and fish consumption now, though at the relatively negligible cost of slightly increased dairy. Hopefully I can transition to veganism within at least a few more years, if not much earlier.

Great!

peterhurford wrote:Are the contents of these conversations available?

Mmm, I'm not sure if they're online, except for the half-dozen links I gave in my previous reply (see the sentence "More on GiveWell from a past conversation on Facebook"). Beyond that I think it has mainly been emails and personal conversations that I don't have offhand.

peterhurford wrote:Mostly direct risk, ie imminent issues resulting from flooding, droughts, etc.

Almost certainly that wouldn't kill off all humans, though? It probably wouldn't even destroy much knowledge. At worst it seems like it would hamper economies and slow things down by a few decades, unless it led to nuclear war, etc.

peterhurford wrote:I'd be happy to attempt to fund better research, though I don't know how I'd go about doing that.

Stay tuned for an email coming to an inbox near you within a week or two.

peterhurford wrote:BTW you being still in high school and working hard and well on these issues is very inspiring!

Yes, indeed!

peterhurford wrote:I'm worried about both direct reactions and spillover reputation effects on my other projects

I see where you're coming from. After all, I used a pseudonym for 5-6 years. I think it mainly matters if you want to go into a very mainstream career or public forum.

peterhurford wrote:Nevermind this, I've revised my position

That's awesome. It's great when people change their minds and are willing to say so publicly. I wish there were a stronger social norm to encourage people to revise their opinions when the arguments or evidence warrant it. Often it seems mainstream society belittles those who switch positions as "flip floppers" who "don't know what they stand for."

peterhurford wrote:Right now, I'm looking for more concrete research about the cognitive/emotional/suffering capabilities of nonhuman animals. Have any suggestions?

Here's an assortment of potentially interesting writings. I haven't read all of them myself.

• Emotion in animals on Wikipedia
• New evidence of animal consciousness
• Marc Bekoff and his assorted books
• Animals can tell right from wrong
• The Exultant Ark: The Secret Emotional Lives of Animals
• When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals
• Elephant cognition
• Chickens are capable of feeling empathy, scientists believe
• Do fish feel pain
• Animal psychopathology -- one of my favorite articles

peterhurford wrote:This prior is based on it being plausible that existential concerns are unique to humanity and a source of great suffering, and that greater awareness of humans can create a greater awareness of their own suffering.

Do you think that's true? Very interesting. Existential concerns cause me basically no suffering at all. If they do, most likely they're just projections of an underlying biochemical mental state onto intellectual ideas rather than being a significant cause of the mental state.

It's also not clear to me if greater awareness leads to more or less suffering. Probably both are true in different cases. As Singer notes, if an animal doesn't know what is happening to it and doesn't have reassurances from friends/parents/doctors that things will be okay, then suffering it experiences will be more distressing because it doesn't know what caused it or whether/when it will end.

Replies to Peter:

I think social psychology would be a good choice but you likely will be frustrated by the fields' speciesism. 99.9999% of what the field examines likely has a negligible impact on total well-being but would still be highly relevant to your career aspirations. You'd just have to make the connections to total, nonspeciesist utility in mind at all times. If you go onto grad school, you probably will want to look for researchers in the area of human-animal relations and to try to join their research teams. The Animals and Society institute has a list here.

I think Brian gave a good list of sources on animal cognition and sentience. It's worth being familiar with Irene Pepperberg's research on ALEX (an African Gray parrot). You can get an entertaining audio book to listen to the story on Amazon or can buy the print version. This website also has a good list of papers.

I think Brian's right that you could make just as many arguments that humans' cognitive awareness would lead to less than to more suffering as you could arguments the other way. Often when we're in pain, for example, we can understand that it's temporary ("I sprained my ankle but in a few days it will be better") but it's not clear that other animals can. I think there's enough uncertainty and the costs to being wrong are steep enough that you have to stick with a tradition null hypothesis regarding the ability to feel pain or suffer across animal species and have to place a high burden of proof on those arguing otherwise.

LJM1979 wrote:I think there's enough uncertainty and the costs to being wrong are steep enough that you have to stick with a tradition null hypothesis regarding the ability to feel pain or suffer across animal species and have to place a high burden of proof on those arguing otherwise.

I'm with Peter on being fully Bayesian, but LJM's point is that even if you are Bayesian, because there's such a high cost of assuming that animal suffering is lower than it really is, we should act as though it's pretty high. This is the same reason I act as though insects can suffer, even though I think it's more likely than not that they don't. (~45% chance that they are conscious.)

““Ruairi wrote : Basically I think promoting antispeciesism and R.W.A.S (reducing wild animal suffering) memes seems the best way to go. [...] I’m still in high school so I’m wondering what might be good courses to do to learn about how to do this. I’m thinking psychology, sociology, marketing, any thoughts?”

I'm operating on a bit more of the meta-level once-removed, not direct advocacy, but rather research into how advocacy works and how to make it better.
I'd suggest looking into psychology, especially marketing psychology and moral psychology, here. I don't think any other field offers this, though political science would touch on it. (And I'd guess sociology may touch on it too, though I don't have any experience with that.)
BTW you being still in high school and working hard and well on these issues is very inspiring!”

That’s basically precisely what I want to do, but to do the advocacy too thanks!!:)! You guys are all so inspiring

Sorry this has probably been mentioned but have you seen the util careers thread(s)?

"“Ruairi wrote: They [CfEA] did email everyone on their mailing list a brief thing [presumably about effectiveness] a while ago, afaik they didn’t want it published or anything but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us sending it to you."

How would I get in contact with them with regard to this? I could see this kind of donation being pretty promising.”


I guess just contact them, if you pm me your email I’ll send you the thing they sent me


“”Ruairi wrote: Fredrik Bränström ( http://www.facebook.com/branstrom ) of the GHO ( http://www.globalhappiness.com/en/about-gho/management ) said they might consider researching if a future with human civilisation is likely to be better or worse than one without it so maybe they could be open to other things?”

I'd be interested in following up with that.”


Please do!


“LJM1979 wrote:Social psychology would probably be the best field for you. I'm a psychology professor and I'm happy to talk through PM if you want to."

“I agree, and changed from political science / economics double major to political science / psychology double major as of April. I'd be happy to get additional assistance if you have any advice, but I don't currently have any questions.””

Richard Batty was saying to me he thinks psychology and economics sounds like a good idea, what do you guys think?

“haven't yet penetrated their tentacles.”

Sounds like something else ;D

Econ sounds good too. I think many fields could be combined with psychology would work. I'd pick philosophy because I think our society is so poorly grounded ethically and you could make major contributions as a philosopher. There aren't really any careers directly in philosophy with a BA but you're just talking about a double major.

I would discourage philosophy (having done it myself). As a general rule, this XKCD is actually a pretty good guide in that you can often move from the study of something from the right to the study or practice of something further left, but rarely the other way around. Psychology wouldn’t be a high recommendation for similar reasons.

That said if you already know what sort of thing you want to do, you can prob expect to do better at it by starting there and actually doing it than by doing something to the right and moving into it – and many of those fields probably pay higher/have more benefit than, say, pure maths.

Econ is a subject that would be superb if anyone did it well, and if there were a way to determine when they'd done so. Unfortunately, I'm confident not both of those things (and quite possibly neither of them ) are true.

Arepo wrote:I would discourage philosophy (having done it myself). As a general rule, this XKCD is actually a pretty good guide in that you can often move from the study of something from the right to the study or practice of something further left, but rarely the other way around. Psychology wouldn’t be a high recommendation for similar reasons.

That said if you already know what sort of thing you want to do, you can prob expect to do better at it by starting there and actually doing it than by doing something to the right and moving into it – and many of those fields probably pay higher/have more benefit than, say, pure maths.

Econ is a subject that would be superb if anyone did it well, and if there were a way to determine when they'd done so. Unfortunately, I'm confident not both of those things (and quite possibly neither of them ) are true.

Eh, I would disagree with that cartoon. I think nearly all fields can be re-interpreted as merely applications of or alterations on another field. Study what interests you most. If you go far in your studies, you'll certainly have the ability to learn more broadly. I know plenty of people who are not limited in their knowledge to only disciplines to the left of theirs in that cartoon.

Just a general point I was thinking of; if you're unsure if the wild seems good or bad on balance and want this figured out (perhaps because of the role it plays in questions about the future) it seems like maybe it would be a good idea to promote reducing wild animal suffering (RWAS) memes because (hopefully) more research will be done once people are interested in this area

Brian Tomasik wrote:Would she [your girlfriend] be interested in joining us on Felicifia too?

Probably not yet.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Almost certainly that wouldn't kill off all humans, though? It probably wouldn't even destroy much knowledge. At worst it seems like it would hamper economies and slow things down by a few decades, unless it led to nuclear war, etc.

Yeah, you're right that global warming doesn't count as an existential risk in the normal sense. I was using the term wrong.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:I think it [reputation pressures from publicly affiliating with weird utilitarian causes] mainly matters if you want to go into a very mainstream career or public forum.

I do hope to get tenure as a professor.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Yes, but only human survival can allow the universe to become a living hell. (Unless aliens come along and do it in our absence, etc.)

Right. Good point.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:Here's an assortment of potentially interesting writings. I haven't read all of them myself.

Thanks! I look forward to eventually reading through them and assessing them. I don't think I have anything more to say on human-nonhuman pain capacity comparisons until then. My assumption always was that nonhumans weren't able to understand things like reassurances or "my pain will end soon", with few exceptions (chimps, dolphins, etc.).

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LJM1979 wrote:I think social psychology would be a good choice but you likely will be frustrated by the fields' speciesism.

Is this with regard to nonhuman animal experimentation, or something else? I'm not sure I want to go into specific research regarding human-animal relations, but Animals and Society looks interesting.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:[E]ven if you are Bayesian, because there's such a high cost of assuming that animal suffering is lower than it really is, we should act as though it's pretty high.

I get what you're saying, but I have conceptual problems weighing all those probabilities, so I'm never sure what to make of it. I'm not sure you can just take your 45% estimation probability that insects are sufficiently conscious and just plug that into an expected utility calculation, because even that 45% estimation has wide error bars, I think.

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Brian Tomasik wrote:This is the same reason I act as though insects can suffer, even though I think it's more likely than not that they don't.

What changes to your behavior occur (or ideally would occur) if one took insect consciousness as seriously as you do?

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Ruairi wrote:I guess just contact them [CEA], if you pm me your email I’ll send you the thing they sent me

My email is publicly available; it's peter@greatplay.net.

Is this with regard to nonhuman animal experimentation, or something else? I'm not sure I want to go into specific research regarding human-animal relations, but Animals and Society looks interesting.

Not just experimentation. Almost everything else you read in psychology also is geared toward understanding and improving the lives of humans too - without any regard for other animal species. Melanie Joy wrote about speciesism in psychology in this article.

peterhurford wrote:I'm not sure you can just take your 45% estimation probability that insects are sufficiently conscious and just plug that into an expected utility calculation, because even that 45% estimation has wide error bars, I think.

You can (and should) just plug in 45%, but you're right to be uneasy about this. Basically, if you have to make a decision right now, then you should use the probabilities that you have and hope for the best. But when thinking about longer-range plans, because 45% has such high error bars, there's high expected value of information from finding out more. This is true as a general principle: High error bars don't mean you shouldn't use the estimate for now, but they do mean that you should try to reduce those error bars by further study.

It can't be that error bars prevent us from using estimates. If that were the case, where would be the cutoff between what we can and can't use? Everything has some amount of error bars.

peterhurford wrote:What changes to your behavior occur (or ideally would occur) if one took insect consciousness as seriously as you do?

For one thing, we would have greater confidence that suffering predominates over happiness in the wild, because most insects die shortly after birth, and even those that survive to maturity live only a few months or years at best. This means that even if insect lives were happy (which itself sounds dubious), the painfulness of their deaths could easily outweigh that happiness. I wouldn't agree to experience the painfulness of dying for just ~3 days of life.

If insects are sentient, we might also be able to prevent a lot of suffering through research and promotion of more humane insecticides. Maybe we could try to reduce their numbers through sterile insect technique or similar strategies. We might also worry that climate change will significantly increase suffering by expanding insect populations, although the full climate-change calculation is more complicated, and in some cases, climate change would reduce wild-animal populations.

Ruairi wrote:if you're unsure if the wild seems good or bad on balance and want this figured out (perhaps because of the role it plays in questions about the future) it seems like maybe it would be a good idea to promote reducing wild animal suffering (RWAS) memes because (hopefully) more research will be done once people are interested in this area

Yes indeed. Speaking of expected value of information (EVI), these questions are one area where EVI is very high.

Ruairi wrote:“haven't yet penetrated their tentacles.”
Sounds like something else ;D

Unrelated: I had a friend in college who, when studying a new topic, would say, "I need to wrap my brain tentacles around it," while curling his fingers. I think this is a perfect way to express what it feels like for your brain to slowly and steadily grasp something.