My least favorite thing about both science and philosophy is when people try to string a bunch of stats together to make a narrative about how theyve objectively proved something inherently...
Exemplary
My least favorite thing about both science and philosophy is when people try to string a bunch of stats together to make a narrative about how theyve objectively proved something inherently subjective.
Its downright silly to me that someone would argue with a straight face that science has objectively determined the conversion rate of shrimp to human suffering. Shrimp suffering is 3.1% as valid as human suffering? Watching your daughter die is morally equivalent to watching roughly 32 shrimp die? A moderately sized cocktail platter?
This seems trivial and lighthearted when the bottom line is something innocuous like "we should be giving more money to humane shrimp harvesting methods" because sure, why not do that. But its very easy to logic yourself into stupid positions by putting objectivity and strict heirarchical rankings on a pedestal.
I have seen the same logic used in scientific articles to argue things like stopping investment into sustainable hydropower in Africa, because they boiled down their analysis to a single value, LCOE, and said look, this one option is objectively the best one according to science, so we should do that one alone and forget all the other options. But boiling down a complex analysis to a single value often involves averaging away relevant information that might not be as cut and dry as the presenter would have you believe.
I wondered immediately how much shrimp suffering was worth the electricity used to make that stupid picture. But I agree. Personally "effective altruism" is a red flag for me, because it's taken...
I wondered immediately how much shrimp suffering was worth the electricity used to make that stupid picture.
But I agree. Personally "effective altruism" is a red flag for me, because it's taken what is reasonable - prioritizing charities that spend their money well and get outcomes - into a realm where it's "more effective" not to give the money to anyone.
The best charity is one that you care about. It should be ethical with its expenditures sure, but if you're more likely to donate your money to the local humane society because you adopted your cat there than you are for mosquito netting, that's fine! Great even! We can all even pick one thing we care about and do that thing, and that's how all the different things get done.
Thats a good point, donating or volunteering your time or resources should ultimately stem from you caring about something, not a logical argument that you are obligated to. Youre never obligated...
Thats a good point, donating or volunteering your time or resources should ultimately stem from you caring about something, not a logical argument that you are obligated to. Youre never obligated to volunteer, thats what makes it voluntary.
A lot of this discussion is trying to work out how much credence we should have in the idea that shrimp have "inner lives" or for there to be "something it is like to be a shrimp". If there is...
A lot of this discussion is trying to work out how much credence we should have in the idea that shrimp have "inner lives" or for there to be "something it is like to be a shrimp".
If there is something it is like to be a shrimp, that they have this kind of phenomenal consciousness or sentience, it seems trivially obvious that preventing 20 minutes of agony is worthwhile. If I only have 50% confidence that this is the case, then it still seems worthwhile preventing what might be a terrible death. If I'm only 3% confident this is the case, and a dollar can spare 1,500 sentient beings 20 minutes of agony, that seems worthwhile to me even if I think it's relatively epistemically unlikely that shrimp have inner lives.
And it being valuable to you makes it make sense. It may not be the most valuable to me, or it may seem important but not something I'm interested in donating to. So now I care and have given...
And it being valuable to you makes it make sense. It may not be the most valuable to me, or it may seem important but not something I'm interested in donating to. So now I care and have given nothing. Or I'll support regulations, but not donate.
I'm not sure I'm as convinced even at 3% that shrimps have significant consciousness, personally. But I'm not vegan either and don't think it's unethical for humans to eat animals. It costs negative amounts to not eat shrimp, so it seems that donating to this cause is actually less effective than that.
I personally still dislike the framing of charity as just a math problem regardless of the underlying point, so it's not that I'm inherently saying one should only donate to human causes but this would be the worst argument to try to make to me to convince me to donate to an actual shrimp saving cause.
Is it? I assign a significantly higher moral weight to humans, and I personally think it's acceptable if other animals die horrible deaths to improve human welfare. I'd rather send malaria nets or...
If there is something it is like to be a shrimp, that they have this kind of phenomenal consciousness or sentience, it seems trivially obvious that preventing 20 minutes of agony is worthwhile.
Is it? I assign a significantly higher moral weight to humans, and I personally think it's acceptable if other animals die horrible deaths to improve human welfare. I'd rather send malaria nets or HIV treatments to poorer regions of the world to prevent human suffering. The direct benefit to me personally is minimal, but I think I indirectly benefit from more living humans contributing to global wellbeing. What do I get out of reduced shrimp suffering?
I don't necessarily think effective altruism is all red flags. One idea from effective altruism that I think is really insightful is that we shouldn't base altruistic efforts solely on "vibes" or...
I don't necessarily think effective altruism is all red flags. One idea from effective altruism that I think is really insightful is that we shouldn't base altruistic efforts solely on "vibes" or feelings. E.g if we can help more people by something that feels less satisfying but actually helps more people/some people better, that should be the way to go. That said, yes, you should absolutely also give to charities you care about. I donate to open source, but that is definitely not the most effective charity.
Sure in theory it's a reasonable stance but in practice I think it's gone way too far into the math and as a bonus, the people advocating it are often people I don't particularly like. My donating...
Sure in theory it's a reasonable stance but in practice I think it's gone way too far into the math and as a bonus, the people advocating it are often people I don't particularly like.
My donating to my local NPR station is certainly not saving lives but it's still important. Local humane societies are important. Helping people who aren't at risk of death but are struggling financially is important.
I don't agree that it's the one true way, and I think the tactics of some EA groups, like not donating any money one year because you could donate it better the next, miss the point entirely.
People are motivated by the various things they care about, and I think are more likely not to give if you reduce things down to math. That's how you get the argument of donating to shrimp instead of literally anything else.
I think we agree in that, but I think resources like Charity Navigator are better at ensuring it's not just vibes, than something like Give well which will "math" the best outcome.
I think this might be a misunderstanding. The goal is to proportion our credences to the available evidence while acknowledging that uncertainty is inherent to the methodology. It's not about...
Its downright silly to me that someone would argue with a straight face that science has objectively determined the conversion rate of shrimp to human suffering. Shrimp suffering is 3.1% as valid as human suffering?
I think this might be a misunderstanding. The goal is to proportion our credences to the available evidence while acknowledging that uncertainty is inherent to the methodology. It's not about making proclamations about what "science has objectively determined" about shrimp suffering.
But its very easy to logic yourself into stupid positions by putting objectivity and strict heirarchical rankings on a pedestal.
I don't think there is anything "strict" about the rankings or figures, and I don't think anyone would say that a particular figure is the "objectively correct" one. This isn't about putting a particular analysis of suffering on pedestal; it's about making a best-effort in understand the suffering of non-human animals.
I recommend reading this to learn more about the methodology. Again, it's a best effort. There's nothing we can say with a precise or even high credence about the inner lives of other sentient beings.
I don’t want to change anyone’s mind about this particular subject, but I think this article is a pretty good example of the limitations of utilitarianism, especially when it comes to things that...
I don’t want to change anyone’s mind about this particular subject, but I think this article is a pretty good example of the limitations of utilitarianism, especially when it comes to things that are subjective or values-based.
The author does a fantastic job of illustrating his point and I don’t have any criticisms of his ideas, but it’s important to realize that their conclusions and research are based on what they personally believe about animal welfare. They believe that shrimp are capable of feeling pain and emotional states like fear. But they limit their investment to their moment of death because of their goal of maximizing value. All of which calls into question how they quantify that value.
Before we even get into that, maybe we should ask, can we quantify those values? The author pulls up a study that says that shrimp feel pain at an intensity of 3.1% of a human’s. Does that mean that their value is only 3.1%? If, for instance, I could send the pain of a dental root canal to spread out into a pool of 20 shrimp, would that justify causing them the pain? If you’re anything like me, you probably did a double-take when you read that figure because you already personally have a model of ethics about how animals are treated and that figure is a completely different paradigm. Using such figures and studies also have their own can of worms. Say in the future the study is repeated and they come to a different number. Now you were wrong; how do you feel about that? Or what if you misunderstood the data, or misapplied it to what you were doing?
The thing I’m circling around is that if the author cares about animal welfare - and they seem to, certainly - it seems strange to me that they find it more noble to end their last moments of pain where in the meanwhile they are largely disregarding the rest of their lifespan. They do seem to care at least a little. They mention some of the terrible practices that are happening in shrimp farms. But something they didn’t mention was how pervasive shrimp farms are and how many shrimp are raised specifically for eating. It would appear that at least half of all shrimp purchased is farmed and due to opacities in the markets it could be as high as 90%. But the reason why we farm shrimp is because there is a huge demand to eat them. We eat so many animals that there are more creatures destined for human food than there are other creatures on earth. Or at least that is true for mammals. What I am trying to get at is that if we were to instead focus on getting people to stop eating shrimp altogether, we would see massive drops in overall suffering because a lot of those shrimp would not be born into a life of suffering. If you could just convince one person to stop eating shrimp, you’ve potentially prevented tens of thousands of shrimp from being cast into a destiny of suffering. And of course, this can be expanded upon; if you convince a person to become vegetarian, that will stop the same thing from happening to a lot of livestock. If you convince them to become vegan, you stop all animal suffering from livestock raising.
Of course these things are not something I would expect to hear from a strict utilitarianism such as seen in the effective altruism crowd. For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to measure the suffering of animals in captivity in any meaningful way. It’s just too abstract and there’s too much variety in terms of how farming operations work, for one - though if I were to be uncharitable I could say that there are some people who will not be stopped by these limitation regardless of the wisdom of doing so. But regardless, this would require them to have the necessary values to begin with in order to make such an evaluation. I don’t know enough about the author to say if they8 are vegan or vegetarian, but if they were I would assume they would have made more effort to add that to their data matrix when coming to this conclusion.
I hope this didn’t come across too rambling. I just started writing this sitting in my bathtub after waking up from a night where I only got 4 hours of sleep, so some of this might not actually make sense.
I don't think you have to have certainty or near certainty in the figure, just increased credence in the view. If they felt 0.31%, it'd still be doing tremendous good (from the article, 3.1% is...
Say in the future the study is repeated and they come to a different number. Now you were wrong; how do you feel about that? Or what if you misunderstood the data, or misapplied it to what you were doing?
I don't think you have to have certainty or near certainty in the figure, just increased credence in the view. If they felt 0.31%, it'd still be doing tremendous good (from the article, 3.1% is conservative, other estimates are as high as 19%.
it seems strange to me that they find it more noble to end their last moments of pain where in the meanwhile they are largely disregarding the rest of their lifespan
Well, the focus is here because these moments are presumably immensely painful, and we are in a position to relatively easily and cheaply do something about them.
What I am trying to get at is that if we were to instead focus on getting people to stop eating shrimp altogether, we would see massive drops in overall suffering because a lot of those shrimp would not be born into a life of suffering. If you could just convince one person to stop eating shrimp, you’ve potentially prevented tens of thousands of shrimp from being cast into a destiny of suffering.
There's no reason why promoting veganism precludes us from supporting SWP. Of course it'd be better to stop eating shrimp! But in a world where shrimp harvesting happens, it seems better to eliminate suffering where we can. Spending $10 to save 15,000 shrimp from a painful death is more likely to result in good outcomes compared to attempting any one person to give up eating shrimp, and nothing about the former prevents me from trying the latter.
For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to measure the suffering of animals in captivity in any meaningful way. It’s just too abstract and there’s too much variety in terms of how farming operations work, for one - though if I were to be uncharitable I could say that there are some people who will not be stopped by these limitation regardless of the wisdom of doing so.
Really all we need to do is make the best inferences we can with the information we have. It seems obvious that there is a fact of the matter about how much animals suffer, and we should try to proportion our beliefs to the evidence while acknowledging that whatever estimates we come up with won't be known with a high degree of certainty.
I don’t know enough about the author to say if they are vegan or vegetarian, but if they were I would assume they would have made more effort to add that to their data matrix when coming to this conclusion.
They are. It's just easier to convince people to spend $10 to stop suffering than make radical lifestyle changes, even if the latter would result in better outcomes. And again, there's no reason you can't do both.
You seem to be under the impression that I am trying to disprove something the author is asserting. But I started off my comment saying that I wasn’t trying to do that. I think that their goal is...
You seem to be under the impression that I am trying to disprove something the author is asserting. But I started off my comment saying that I wasn’t trying to do that. I think that their goal is admirable, even. I’m just pointing out the limitations of their analysis, and really only doing that to point out the limitations of utilitarianism in general.
I'm sorry, I don't buy this. Even as someone who's somewhat interested in effective altruism and adjacent concepts. I don't care about shrimps. I'd watch a million shrimps die a painful death if...
I'm sorry, I don't buy this. Even as someone who's somewhat interested in effective altruism and adjacent concepts. I don't care about shrimps. I'd watch a million shrimps die a painful death if it meant saving a single human life.
No one is claiming we ought to prioritize the life of shrimp over humans. The idea is that if we can cheaply reduce the suffering shrimp experience then it would be good to do so.
I'd watch a million shrimps die a painful death if it meant saving a single human life.
No one is claiming we ought to prioritize the life of shrimp over humans. The idea is that if we can cheaply reduce the suffering shrimp experience then it would be good to do so.
There’s an opportunity cost to things. $10 can have 15,000 shrimp from a painful death, but it can also buy 5 mosquito nets, saving 5 or more humans from malaria.
There’s an opportunity cost to things. $10 can have 15,000 shrimp from a painful death, but it can also buy 5 mosquito nets, saving 5 or more humans from malaria.
Malaria isn't a death sentence, especially for areas prone to it, where humans have adaptations against it. But it's not comfortable either. Just being bit by mosquitos in general is...
Malaria isn't a death sentence, especially for areas prone to it, where humans have adaptations against it. But it's not comfortable either. Just being bit by mosquitos in general is uncomfortable.
In the end, I'd prefer saving those humans that pain of being bit by mosquitos at night and the high risk of contracting malaria over the 15,000 shrimp.
I've been thinking about how to articulate my thinking here. There seems to be something that happens in discussions of any form of moral or environmental responsibility where a counter argument...
I've been thinking about how to articulate my thinking here. There seems to be something that happens in discussions of any form of moral or environmental responsibility where a counter argument goes like this:
Why care about X when Y is more important?
"Why care about US vehicle emissions when developing countries contribute far more CO2 per capita?"
"Why care about Ukraine when we have so many more costly issues at home?"
"Why fund the arts when that money can go to something more economically productive?"
It strikes me as not actually being interested in diverting resources from "X" to "Y" to promote the greater good, rather to make a throwaway point against doing something about X.
My response to all of these objections seems to take on the same form: first, to point out that the objector likely hasn't done (and doesn't actually care to do) anything about Y. And second, to point out that you can care about more than one issue at the same time. Nothing about wanting to recycle precludes me from supporting alternatives to singe-use plastics, as an example.
Finally, I just want to say I'm not making any claims about what you, personally, have done about mosquitos; it's not like I can fact-check you if you tell me that you spend your summers traveling to Africa to personally hand out nets lol. I'm just making an observation about this category of objection.
To be honest, the "shrimp" argument started it. You can hardly complain when people continue it. The article takes a very utilitarian argument, and makes the assertion that charities which support...
Exemplary
To be honest, the "shrimp" argument started it. You can hardly complain when people continue it. The article takes a very utilitarian argument, and makes the assertion that charities which support shrimp stunning are "the best charity".
That already implies a zero-sum way to think about it. Why are we talking about the "best charity" otherwise? Why are we making mathematical comparisons multiplying the suffering of shrimp as a proportion of human suffering over the number of shrimp?
It's only natural to challenge the heart of the thesis: if you say that shrimp stunning is the best charity because of the magnitude of its benefits, that implies that I should value shrimp suffering on at least some order of magnitude similarity to humans. But why should I? I, and most people, value humans more than shrimp, far far more. Sorry, just how it is.
Local empathy is human, in the end. I care about my friends more than strangers; I care about people who are like me, more than people that aren't; I care more about humans, than animals; I care more about animals that are similar to humans, than animals that aren't.
Actually, the nice thing is that it reminded me there are more important things than shrimp - and it's my neighbors who may need food. If shrimp suffering is quantifiable, then that's an...
It strikes me as not actually being interested in diverting resources from "X" to "Y" to promote the greater good, rather to make a throwaway point against doing something about X.
Actually, the nice thing is that it reminded me there are more important things than shrimp - and it's my neighbors who may need food. If shrimp suffering is quantifiable, then that's an impressive use of money. But literally any dollar I spend on my local food bank is probably just as or more important than this set of statistics. It's not diverting shrimp funds to human funds that should be the worry here, but getting people to divert nothing funds to anything funds. That's always something.
So... Thank you for posting the article, because it just prompted me to donate to my local food bank. And I was wondering if that was going to be the point of the article. But no, I do not think I will be donating to shrimp.
A month of malaria treatment for a person is $1.37, is a month of human suffering worth more than 15 minutes of shrimp suffering? We don't even have to save lives, we just have to reduce the...
A month of malaria treatment for a person is $1.37, is a month of human suffering worth more than 15 minutes of shrimp suffering? We don't even have to save lives, we just have to reduce the suffering. Nets preventing infection are also preventing suffering.
While I accept your perspective, that last sentience comes across as disingenuous. What scenario does killing a million shrimp save a human life? And even so, why simply accept the pain of the...
While I accept your perspective, that last sentience comes across as disingenuous. What scenario does killing a million shrimp save a human life? And even so, why simply accept the pain of the shrimp when it’s so trivial to prevent it? It sounds more like you’re willing to see a million shrimp suffer than to spend a trivial amount of money.
@stu2b50 answered it. An $X donation can save a human life, or the same amount could save a bunch of shrimp from pain before they die anyway. You can donate to the first one, or the second one. I...
@stu2b50 answered it. An $X donation can save a human life, or the same amount could save a bunch of shrimp from pain before they die anyway. You can donate to the first one, or the second one.
I understand that you don't have to always be super utilitarian about your donation. Donating to a local charity or some less popular cause is still nice, even though it's less "effective" than other options. But shrimp pain prevention is nowhere on that list for me.
It sounds more like you’re willing to see a million shrimp suffer than to spend a trivial amount of money.
But also, you know what? Yeah. I am. I'd rather spend $5 on a coffee than on helping a bunch of shrimp die a less painful death. I find it really hard to care about them.
One of the best charities you can give to is called the shrimp welfare project (if you want to donate monthly, you can do so here). For every dollar it gets, it saves about 1,500 shrimp from a painful death every year.
The way it works is simple and common sense: it gives stunners to companies that kill shrimp so long as they agree to use them to stun at least 120 million shrimp. They also secure welfare commitments from corporations to stop crushing the eyes of live shrimp in order to increase their fertility and to use humane slaughter
In total, they’ve helped around 2.6 billion shrimp per year, despite operating on a shoestring budget.
This makes them around 30 times better at reducing suffering and promoting well-being than the highly effective animal charities focused on chicken welfare which themselves are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the best charities helping humans. It costs thousands of dollars to save a human, but the best animal charities help hundreds of animals per dollar.
My least favorite thing about both science and philosophy is when people try to string a bunch of stats together to make a narrative about how theyve objectively proved something inherently subjective.
Its downright silly to me that someone would argue with a straight face that science has objectively determined the conversion rate of shrimp to human suffering. Shrimp suffering is 3.1% as valid as human suffering? Watching your daughter die is morally equivalent to watching roughly 32 shrimp die? A moderately sized cocktail platter?
This seems trivial and lighthearted when the bottom line is something innocuous like "we should be giving more money to humane shrimp harvesting methods" because sure, why not do that. But its very easy to logic yourself into stupid positions by putting objectivity and strict heirarchical rankings on a pedestal.
I have seen the same logic used in scientific articles to argue things like stopping investment into sustainable hydropower in Africa, because they boiled down their analysis to a single value, LCOE, and said look, this one option is objectively the best one according to science, so we should do that one alone and forget all the other options. But boiling down a complex analysis to a single value often involves averaging away relevant information that might not be as cut and dry as the presenter would have you believe.
I wondered immediately how much shrimp suffering was worth the electricity used to make that stupid picture.
But I agree. Personally "effective altruism" is a red flag for me, because it's taken what is reasonable - prioritizing charities that spend their money well and get outcomes - into a realm where it's "more effective" not to give the money to anyone.
The best charity is one that you care about. It should be ethical with its expenditures sure, but if you're more likely to donate your money to the local humane society because you adopted your cat there than you are for mosquito netting, that's fine! Great even! We can all even pick one thing we care about and do that thing, and that's how all the different things get done.
Thats a good point, donating or volunteering your time or resources should ultimately stem from you caring about something, not a logical argument that you are obligated to. Youre never obligated to volunteer, thats what makes it voluntary.
Probably not a whole lot. Like the amount you’d use to play a modern video game for 30s.
But we're talking about small numbers, I know it's not much, but it's not zero!
A lot of this discussion is trying to work out how much credence we should have in the idea that shrimp have "inner lives" or for there to be "something it is like to be a shrimp".
If there is something it is like to be a shrimp, that they have this kind of phenomenal consciousness or sentience, it seems trivially obvious that preventing 20 minutes of agony is worthwhile. If I only have 50% confidence that this is the case, then it still seems worthwhile preventing what might be a terrible death. If I'm only 3% confident this is the case, and a dollar can spare 1,500 sentient beings 20 minutes of agony, that seems worthwhile to me even if I think it's relatively epistemically unlikely that shrimp have inner lives.
And it being valuable to you makes it make sense. It may not be the most valuable to me, or it may seem important but not something I'm interested in donating to. So now I care and have given nothing. Or I'll support regulations, but not donate.
I'm not sure I'm as convinced even at 3% that shrimps have significant consciousness, personally. But I'm not vegan either and don't think it's unethical for humans to eat animals. It costs negative amounts to not eat shrimp, so it seems that donating to this cause is actually less effective than that.
I personally still dislike the framing of charity as just a math problem regardless of the underlying point, so it's not that I'm inherently saying one should only donate to human causes but this would be the worst argument to try to make to me to convince me to donate to an actual shrimp saving cause.
Is it? I assign a significantly higher moral weight to humans, and I personally think it's acceptable if other animals die horrible deaths to improve human welfare. I'd rather send malaria nets or HIV treatments to poorer regions of the world to prevent human suffering. The direct benefit to me personally is minimal, but I think I indirectly benefit from more living humans contributing to global wellbeing. What do I get out of reduced shrimp suffering?
Humans aren't getting any value out of the agonizing deaths being discussed, their agony doesn't "improve human welfare."
Sure, but it doesn't harm me either. I don't understand why I should prioritize shrimp over people. There's only so much time and money in the world.
I think the idea is that, for the cost, it plausibly is one of the cheaper ways to reduce vast amounts of suffering.
I don't necessarily think effective altruism is all red flags. One idea from effective altruism that I think is really insightful is that we shouldn't base altruistic efforts solely on "vibes" or feelings. E.g if we can help more people by something that feels less satisfying but actually helps more people/some people better, that should be the way to go. That said, yes, you should absolutely also give to charities you care about. I donate to open source, but that is definitely not the most effective charity.
Sure in theory it's a reasonable stance but in practice I think it's gone way too far into the math and as a bonus, the people advocating it are often people I don't particularly like.
My donating to my local NPR station is certainly not saving lives but it's still important. Local humane societies are important. Helping people who aren't at risk of death but are struggling financially is important.
I don't agree that it's the one true way, and I think the tactics of some EA groups, like not donating any money one year because you could donate it better the next, miss the point entirely.
People are motivated by the various things they care about, and I think are more likely not to give if you reduce things down to math. That's how you get the argument of donating to shrimp instead of literally anything else.
I think we agree in that, but I think resources like Charity Navigator are better at ensuring it's not just vibes, than something like Give well which will "math" the best outcome.
I think this might be a misunderstanding. The goal is to proportion our credences to the available evidence while acknowledging that uncertainty is inherent to the methodology. It's not about making proclamations about what "science has objectively determined" about shrimp suffering.
I don't think there is anything "strict" about the rankings or figures, and I don't think anyone would say that a particular figure is the "objectively correct" one. This isn't about putting a particular analysis of suffering on pedestal; it's about making a best-effort in understand the suffering of non-human animals.
I recommend reading this to learn more about the methodology. Again, it's a best effort. There's nothing we can say with a precise or even high credence about the inner lives of other sentient beings.
I don’t want to change anyone’s mind about this particular subject, but I think this article is a pretty good example of the limitations of utilitarianism, especially when it comes to things that are subjective or values-based.
The author does a fantastic job of illustrating his point and I don’t have any criticisms of his ideas, but it’s important to realize that their conclusions and research are based on what they personally believe about animal welfare. They believe that shrimp are capable of feeling pain and emotional states like fear. But they limit their investment to their moment of death because of their goal of maximizing value. All of which calls into question how they quantify that value.
Before we even get into that, maybe we should ask, can we quantify those values? The author pulls up a study that says that shrimp feel pain at an intensity of 3.1% of a human’s. Does that mean that their value is only 3.1%? If, for instance, I could send the pain of a dental root canal to spread out into a pool of 20 shrimp, would that justify causing them the pain? If you’re anything like me, you probably did a double-take when you read that figure because you already personally have a model of ethics about how animals are treated and that figure is a completely different paradigm. Using such figures and studies also have their own can of worms. Say in the future the study is repeated and they come to a different number. Now you were wrong; how do you feel about that? Or what if you misunderstood the data, or misapplied it to what you were doing?
The thing I’m circling around is that if the author cares about animal welfare - and they seem to, certainly - it seems strange to me that they find it more noble to end their last moments of pain where in the meanwhile they are largely disregarding the rest of their lifespan. They do seem to care at least a little. They mention some of the terrible practices that are happening in shrimp farms. But something they didn’t mention was how pervasive shrimp farms are and how many shrimp are raised specifically for eating. It would appear that at least half of all shrimp purchased is farmed and due to opacities in the markets it could be as high as 90%. But the reason why we farm shrimp is because there is a huge demand to eat them. We eat so many animals that there are more creatures destined for human food than there are other creatures on earth. Or at least that is true for mammals. What I am trying to get at is that if we were to instead focus on getting people to stop eating shrimp altogether, we would see massive drops in overall suffering because a lot of those shrimp would not be born into a life of suffering. If you could just convince one person to stop eating shrimp, you’ve potentially prevented tens of thousands of shrimp from being cast into a destiny of suffering. And of course, this can be expanded upon; if you convince a person to become vegetarian, that will stop the same thing from happening to a lot of livestock. If you convince them to become vegan, you stop all animal suffering from livestock raising.
Of course these things are not something I would expect to hear from a strict utilitarianism such as seen in the effective altruism crowd. For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to measure the suffering of animals in captivity in any meaningful way. It’s just too abstract and there’s too much variety in terms of how farming operations work, for one - though if I were to be uncharitable I could say that there are some people who will not be stopped by these limitation regardless of the wisdom of doing so. But regardless, this would require them to have the necessary values to begin with in order to make such an evaluation. I don’t know enough about the author to say if they8 are vegan or vegetarian, but if they were I would assume they would have made more effort to add that to their data matrix when coming to this conclusion.
I hope this didn’t come across too rambling. I just started writing this sitting in my bathtub after waking up from a night where I only got 4 hours of sleep, so some of this might not actually make sense.
I don't think you have to have certainty or near certainty in the figure, just increased credence in the view. If they felt 0.31%, it'd still be doing tremendous good (from the article, 3.1% is conservative, other estimates are as high as 19%.
Well, the focus is here because these moments are presumably immensely painful, and we are in a position to relatively easily and cheaply do something about them.
There's no reason why promoting veganism precludes us from supporting SWP. Of course it'd be better to stop eating shrimp! But in a world where shrimp harvesting happens, it seems better to eliminate suffering where we can. Spending $10 to save 15,000 shrimp from a painful death is more likely to result in good outcomes compared to attempting any one person to give up eating shrimp, and nothing about the former prevents me from trying the latter.
Really all we need to do is make the best inferences we can with the information we have. It seems obvious that there is a fact of the matter about how much animals suffer, and we should try to proportion our beliefs to the evidence while acknowledging that whatever estimates we come up with won't be known with a high degree of certainty.
They are. It's just easier to convince people to spend $10 to stop suffering than make radical lifestyle changes, even if the latter would result in better outcomes. And again, there's no reason you can't do both.
You seem to be under the impression that I am trying to disprove something the author is asserting. But I started off my comment saying that I wasn’t trying to do that. I think that their goal is admirable, even. I’m just pointing out the limitations of their analysis, and really only doing that to point out the limitations of utilitarianism in general.
I'm sorry, I don't buy this. Even as someone who's somewhat interested in effective altruism and adjacent concepts. I don't care about shrimps. I'd watch a million shrimps die a painful death if it meant saving a single human life.
No one is claiming we ought to prioritize the life of shrimp over humans. The idea is that if we can cheaply reduce the suffering shrimp experience then it would be good to do so.
There’s an opportunity cost to things. $10 can have 15,000 shrimp from a painful death, but it can also buy 5 mosquito nets, saving 5 or more humans from malaria.
I'm quite skeptical that $10 can save 5 human lives. Most estimates put the cost of saving a human life via charity in the thousands.
Malaria isn't a death sentence, especially for areas prone to it, where humans have adaptations against it. But it's not comfortable either. Just being bit by mosquitos in general is uncomfortable.
In the end, I'd prefer saving those humans that pain of being bit by mosquitos at night and the high risk of contracting malaria over the 15,000 shrimp.
Sorry shrimp, but is what it is.
I've been thinking about how to articulate my thinking here. There seems to be something that happens in discussions of any form of moral or environmental responsibility where a counter argument goes like this:
Why care about X when Y is more important?
It strikes me as not actually being interested in diverting resources from "X" to "Y" to promote the greater good, rather to make a throwaway point against doing something about X.
My response to all of these objections seems to take on the same form: first, to point out that the objector likely hasn't done (and doesn't actually care to do) anything about Y. And second, to point out that you can care about more than one issue at the same time. Nothing about wanting to recycle precludes me from supporting alternatives to singe-use plastics, as an example.
Finally, I just want to say I'm not making any claims about what you, personally, have done about mosquitos; it's not like I can fact-check you if you tell me that you spend your summers traveling to Africa to personally hand out nets lol. I'm just making an observation about this category of objection.
To be honest, the "shrimp" argument started it. You can hardly complain when people continue it. The article takes a very utilitarian argument, and makes the assertion that charities which support shrimp stunning are "the best charity".
That already implies a zero-sum way to think about it. Why are we talking about the "best charity" otherwise? Why are we making mathematical comparisons multiplying the suffering of shrimp as a proportion of human suffering over the number of shrimp?
It's only natural to challenge the heart of the thesis: if you say that shrimp stunning is the best charity because of the magnitude of its benefits, that implies that I should value shrimp suffering on at least some order of magnitude similarity to humans. But why should I? I, and most people, value humans more than shrimp, far far more. Sorry, just how it is.
Local empathy is human, in the end. I care about my friends more than strangers; I care about people who are like me, more than people that aren't; I care more about humans, than animals; I care more about animals that are similar to humans, than animals that aren't.
It is, what it is.
Actually, the nice thing is that it reminded me there are more important things than shrimp - and it's my neighbors who may need food. If shrimp suffering is quantifiable, then that's an impressive use of money. But literally any dollar I spend on my local food bank is probably just as or more important than this set of statistics. It's not diverting shrimp funds to human funds that should be the worry here, but getting people to divert nothing funds to anything funds. That's always something.
So... Thank you for posting the article, because it just prompted me to donate to my local food bank. And I was wondering if that was going to be the point of the article. But no, I do not think I will be donating to shrimp.
A month of malaria treatment for a person is $1.37, is a month of human suffering worth more than 15 minutes of shrimp suffering? We don't even have to save lives, we just have to reduce the suffering. Nets preventing infection are also preventing suffering.
While I accept your perspective, that last sentience comes across as disingenuous. What scenario does killing a million shrimp save a human life? And even so, why simply accept the pain of the shrimp when it’s so trivial to prevent it? It sounds more like you’re willing to see a million shrimp suffer than to spend a trivial amount of money.
@stu2b50 answered it. An $X donation can save a human life, or the same amount could save a bunch of shrimp from pain before they die anyway. You can donate to the first one, or the second one.
I understand that you don't have to always be super utilitarian about your donation. Donating to a local charity or some less popular cause is still nice, even though it's less "effective" than other options. But shrimp pain prevention is nowhere on that list for me.
But also, you know what? Yeah. I am. I'd rather spend $5 on a coffee than on helping a bunch of shrimp die a less painful death. I find it really hard to care about them.