To me, this comment seems very overconfident. We have no idea what it is like to be anything other than humans. I think it makes sense to use things like e.g. number of neurons as an extremely rough estimate of capacity for suffering, but that’s just because we have no good metrics to go off, and something that you can plausibly argue is maybe correlated with capacity for suffering is better than just saying “well, I guess we don’t know”.
Perhaps certain animals in certain niches experience pain much more intensely than humans, because it was adaptive in their environment. Is this true? Probably not! I have no idea! But we have no idea what other animals experience, so for all we know, it could be true, and then all of our rough estimates and approximations are completely worthless!
I just don’t think that saying things like “extremely unlikely” or implying someone hasn’t “thought about [x] reasonably at all” is either productive or particularly accurate when we’re talking about something for which we have very little well-grounded knowledge.
And just to be clear, I do think we should be prioritising based on the little information we do have. I’m not for throwing our hands up and giving in to ignorance. I just think a lot more epistemic humility is warranted around subjects like this where we really know very very little and the stakes are extremely high.
(if I’ve misunderstood you or if something I’ve said is inaccurate, please correct me!)
I just don’t think that saying things like “extremely unlikely” or implying someone hasn’t “thought about [x] reasonably at all” is either productive or particularly accurate when we’re talking about something for which we have very little well-grounded knowledge.
I agree that some amount of extreme uncertainty is appropriate, but this doesn’t mean that no conclusions are therefore insane. If someone was doing estimates that take into account extreme uncertainty, I would be much less upset! Instead the post says things like this:
If we assume very very very conservatively that a day of honey bee life is as unpleasant as a day spent attending a boring lecture, and then multiply by .15 to take into account the fact bees are probably less sentient than people
That is not a position of extreme uncertainty! And I really don’t think there exist any arguments that would collapse this uncertainty in a reasonable way for the OP here, that I just haven’t encountered.
I think a reasonable position on ethical values is extreme uncertainty. This post is not holding that position. It seems to think that it’s a conservative estimate that a day of honey bee life is 15% as bad as a bad human day.
To me, this comment seems very overconfident. We have no idea what it is like to be anything other than humans. I think it makes sense to use things like e.g. number of neurons as an extremely rough estimate of capacity for suffering, but that’s just because we have no good metrics to go off, and something that you can plausibly argue is maybe correlated with capacity for suffering is better than just saying “well, I guess we don’t know”.
Perhaps certain animals in certain niches experience pain much more intensely than humans, because it was adaptive in their environment. Is this true? Probably not! I have no idea! But we have no idea what other animals experience, so for all we know, it could be true, and then all of our rough estimates and approximations are completely worthless!
I just don’t think that saying things like “extremely unlikely” or implying someone hasn’t “thought about [x] reasonably at all” is either productive or particularly accurate when we’re talking about something for which we have very little well-grounded knowledge.
And just to be clear, I do think we should be prioritising based on the little information we do have. I’m not for throwing our hands up and giving in to ignorance. I just think a lot more epistemic humility is warranted around subjects like this where we really know very very little and the stakes are extremely high.
(if I’ve misunderstood you or if something I’ve said is inaccurate, please correct me!)
I agree that some amount of extreme uncertainty is appropriate, but this doesn’t mean that no conclusions are therefore insane. If someone was doing estimates that take into account extreme uncertainty, I would be much less upset! Instead the post says things like this:
That is not a position of extreme uncertainty! And I really don’t think there exist any arguments that would collapse this uncertainty in a reasonable way for the OP here, that I just haven’t encountered.
I think a reasonable position on ethical values is extreme uncertainty. This post is not holding that position. It seems to think that it’s a conservative estimate that a day of honey bee life is 15% as bad as a bad human day.