Given how many well-informed people disagree on the origin and intensity of suffering and consciousness, your conclusions feel extremely confident.
You say a shrimp stunner, which prevents in the order of a billion shrimp a year from suffocating to death, reduces suffering as much as making the carts in a single Walmart less squeaky for 20 minutes a year.
I am pretty sure that the vast majority of and animal welfare scientists would disagree strongly with that.
For instance, someone who worked on the moral weight project said that:
“As a philosophy of consciousness PhD, it’s not just that I, personally, from an inside point of view, think weighting by neuron count is bad idea, it’s that I can’t think of any philosopher or scientist who maintains that “more neurons make for more intense experiences”, or any philosophical or scientific theory of consciousness that clearly supports this. ”
Moreover, it’s worth remembering that if your advice is wrong, this would have terrible consequences. If you manage to convince one donor to switch their donations, you would cause millions of additional shrimps suffocating to death. Of course, maybe you are right, and I think it’s worth discussing the topic and questioning the assumptions.
But you are doing a public post with clear cut confident advice, and I think doing that before at least having a large number of competent people to agree with you is irresponsible.
Citing a single philosopher’s opinion doesn’t really convince me of the science. I also didn’t use the neuron count as my whole argument, it was one of them and I’m happy to admit that it isn’t all inclusive, which is why I made other arguments too.
There is an almost unquantifiable number of living organisms on earth, and the definition of life isn’t even that clear. If you believe shrimp suffer, then the 20 minutes of their life when they are harvested being a little more unpleasant (not clear that this is even the case with stunners), doesn’t represent a “terrible consequence” in my view. It makes no different at all. As I mentioned in my piece, farmed shrimp represent 0.00000002% of the Malacostran family.
These views are not controversial, they are evidence backed (unlike philosophy of consciousness), which I wrote another piece criticizing, you may find that interesting too.
I think funding projects based on vibes isn’t good, and this project demonstrates vibes with percentages stacked on top of them.
“If you believe shrimp suffer, the 20 minutes of their life when they are harvested being a little more unpleasant [...]”
What a wild way to describe suffocating to death. From an evolutionary standpoint, it would make sense that dying would feel like something horrible you’d want to avoid. If I try to hold my breath for too long, I feel horrible, and I don’t think it would be that different even if I were just able to feel “raw sensation without context, meaning, or emotional depth”.
Regarding the other point, I don’t see why the fact that shrimp suffering is a small percentage of the Malacostran family’s suffering is relevant. Yes, there are tons of wild animals. And their suffering is likely to be pretty large. This is why the field of wild animal welfare exists.
But just because there are quintillions of wild animals, this doesn’t mean that helping billions of shrimps isn’t good. That’s still a large number of individuals that we can help, so it’s good to do so. It even means we should devote more effort to the topic than just having a single charity.
As an analogy, I don’t ignore a friend who is hurt because they represent less than 0.000001% of human suffering.
From my standpoint, it feels like you’re saying that the implications of having to care about wild animal suffering would be so big that we have to reject the premise. It feels like when people often fail to acknowledge that cows are likely sentient when they eat them, because it would mean confronting a significant moral issue. But maybe I’m entirely wrong, please feel free to correct me.
I would appreciate it you read what I wrote in my piece more carefully because youre arguing against me using points I disagree with: “And their suffering is likely to be pretty large.”. I dont think that.
Also, please stop comparing yourself to a shrimp!
If I empathize with the water boiling in my kettle, and the billions of bacteria being killed in the process, should be stop boiling water? It is the source of all the energy we use. Water might suffer for all we know. There is the exact same amount of evidence for water suffering as there is for shrimp suffering. None.
Given how many well-informed people disagree on the origin and intensity of suffering and consciousness, your conclusions feel extremely confident.
You say a shrimp stunner, which prevents in the order of a billion shrimp a year from suffocating to death, reduces suffering as much as making the carts in a single Walmart less squeaky for 20 minutes a year.
I am pretty sure that the vast majority of and animal welfare scientists would disagree strongly with that.
For instance, someone who worked on the moral weight project said that:
“As a philosophy of consciousness PhD, it’s not just that I, personally, from an inside point of view, think weighting by neuron count is bad idea, it’s that I can’t think of any philosopher or scientist who maintains that “more neurons make for more intense experiences”, or any philosophical or scientific theory of consciousness that clearly supports this. ”
Source : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E9NnR9cJMM7m5G2r4/is-rp-s-moral-weights-project-too-animal-friendly-four?commentId=T2TsnfPFy6jgs3j4p
Moreover, it’s worth remembering that if your advice is wrong, this would have terrible consequences. If you manage to convince one donor to switch their donations, you would cause millions of additional shrimps suffocating to death. Of course, maybe you are right, and I think it’s worth discussing the topic and questioning the assumptions.
But you are doing a public post with clear cut confident advice, and I think doing that before at least having a large number of competent people to agree with you is irresponsible.
The Shrimp Welfare Project is widely criticized.
Citing a single philosopher’s opinion doesn’t really convince me of the science. I also didn’t use the neuron count as my whole argument, it was one of them and I’m happy to admit that it isn’t all inclusive, which is why I made other arguments too.
There is an almost unquantifiable number of living organisms on earth, and the definition of life isn’t even that clear. If you believe shrimp suffer, then the 20 minutes of their life when they are harvested being a little more unpleasant (not clear that this is even the case with stunners), doesn’t represent a “terrible consequence” in my view. It makes no different at all. As I mentioned in my piece, farmed shrimp represent 0.00000002% of the Malacostran family.
These views are not controversial, they are evidence backed (unlike philosophy of consciousness), which I wrote another piece criticizing, you may find that interesting too.
I think funding projects based on vibes isn’t good, and this project demonstrates vibes with percentages stacked on top of them.
“If you believe shrimp suffer, the 20 minutes of their life when they are harvested being a little more unpleasant [...]”
What a wild way to describe suffocating to death. From an evolutionary standpoint, it would make sense that dying would feel like something horrible you’d want to avoid. If I try to hold my breath for too long, I feel horrible, and I don’t think it would be that different even if I were just able to feel “raw sensation without context, meaning, or emotional depth”.
Regarding the other point, I don’t see why the fact that shrimp suffering is a small percentage of the Malacostran family’s suffering is relevant. Yes, there are tons of wild animals. And their suffering is likely to be pretty large. This is why the field of wild animal welfare exists.
But just because there are quintillions of wild animals, this doesn’t mean that helping billions of shrimps isn’t good. That’s still a large number of individuals that we can help, so it’s good to do so. It even means we should devote more effort to the topic than just having a single charity.
As an analogy, I don’t ignore a friend who is hurt because they represent less than 0.000001% of human suffering.
From my standpoint, it feels like you’re saying that the implications of having to care about wild animal suffering would be so big that we have to reject the premise. It feels like when people often fail to acknowledge that cows are likely sentient when they eat them, because it would mean confronting a significant moral issue. But maybe I’m entirely wrong, please feel free to correct me.
I would appreciate it you read what I wrote in my piece more carefully because youre arguing against me using points I disagree with: “And their suffering is likely to be pretty large.”. I dont think that.
Also, please stop comparing yourself to a shrimp!
If I empathize with the water boiling in my kettle, and the billions of bacteria being killed in the process, should be stop boiling water? It is the source of all the energy we use. Water might suffer for all we know. There is the exact same amount of evidence for water suffering as there is for shrimp suffering. None.