There’s a lot of uncertainty in this field. I would hope to see a lot of people very quickly shift a lot of effort into researching:
Effective interventions for reducing the number of insects in the environment (without, e.g., crashing the climate)
Comparative effects of different kinds of land use (e.g. farming crops or vegetables, pasture, left wild, whatever) on insect populations
Ability of various other invertebrates to suffer (how about plankton, or nematodes? The same high-confidence evidence showing insects suffer might also show the same for their smaller, more numerous cousins)
Shifting public perceptions of gene drives
Research into which pesticides cause the least suffering
Currently it seems like Brian Tomasik & the Foundational Research Institute, and Sentience Politics, are paying some attention to considerations like this.
Effective interventions for reducing the number of insects in the environment
A partial solution is often better than no solution.
But this seems really dangerous, even assuming some kind of negative utilitarian philosophy (meaning you’re more interested in reducing suffering than producing value). If we kill ourselves, then we can’t help at all. I would be very reluctant to support any such intervention. Ecological collapse is already an existential threat of some concern to EA. Increasing the risk of any existential threats, even for short-term reduction of total suffering strikes me as a massively bad idea.
Given our starting assumption that insects are suffering, they’ve likely been doing so for millions of years. A well-aimed intelligence explosion is our best option to permanently solve the problem. Let’s not be tempted to cut the corner of a few more decades of suffering with a partial solution and lose the option of a total solution.
There’s a lot of uncertainty in this field. I would hope to see a lot of people very quickly shift a lot of effort into researching:
Effective interventions for reducing the number of insects in the environment (without, e.g., crashing the climate)
Comparative effects of different kinds of land use (e.g. farming crops or vegetables, pasture, left wild, whatever) on insect populations
Ability of various other invertebrates to suffer (how about plankton, or nematodes? The same high-confidence evidence showing insects suffer might also show the same for their smaller, more numerous cousins)
Shifting public perceptions of gene drives
Research into which pesticides cause the least suffering
Currently it seems like Brian Tomasik & the Foundational Research Institute, and Sentience Politics, are paying some attention to considerations like this.
A partial solution is often better than no solution.
But this seems really dangerous, even assuming some kind of negative utilitarian philosophy (meaning you’re more interested in reducing suffering than producing value). If we kill ourselves, then we can’t help at all. I would be very reluctant to support any such intervention. Ecological collapse is already an existential threat of some concern to EA. Increasing the risk of any existential threats, even for short-term reduction of total suffering strikes me as a massively bad idea.
Given our starting assumption that insects are suffering, they’ve likely been doing so for millions of years. A well-aimed intelligence explosion is our best option to permanently solve the problem. Let’s not be tempted to cut the corner of a few more decades of suffering with a partial solution and lose the option of a total solution.