Together with Vallinder, I’m working on a paper on wild animal suffering. We decided to poll some experts on animal perception about their views on the likelihood that various types of animals can suffer. It now occurs to me that it might be interesting to compare their responses with those of the LW community. So, if you’d like to participate, click on one of the links below. The survey consists of only five questions and completing it shouldn’t take more than a minute.
Click here if your year of birth is an even number
Click here if your year of birth is an odd number
(The two surveys are identical, except for the order in which the questions are presented. Please only take one of the surveys. Thanks!)
Thanks. In the cover email we sent to the researchers, we did make it clear that the survey was about suffering in non-human animals, so the statement about mammals should be read as excluding members of our species (but not other primates). As for the alternative interpretations of ‘x can suffer’, we thought the natural interpretation was ‘At least some species in this group can suffer’, but I agree that we could have phrased the sentence less ambiguously.
Thanks to everyone who participated. The survey is now closed, and the results are here. There is one tab for LessWrong respondents and one tab for expert respondents.
(For the purposes of this survey, ‘suffering’ is defined as a negative subjective experience—a conscious episode that is disliked because of how it feels like.)
Can you clarify this a bit with examples of what you had in mind?
Together with Vallinder, I’m working on a paper on wild animal suffering. We decided to poll some experts on animal perception about their views on the likelihood that various types of animals can suffer. It now occurs to me that it might be interesting to compare their responses with those of the LW community. So, if you’d like to participate, click on one of the links below. The survey consists of only five questions and completing it shouldn’t take more than a minute.
Click here if your year of birth is an even number
Click here if your year of birth is an odd number
(The two surveys are identical, except for the order in which the questions are presented. Please only take one of the surveys. Thanks!)
“Foos can suffer” could mean “all foos can suffer”, “the prototypical foo can suffer”, or “there exists a foo that can suffer”.
You might clarify whether “mammals” is meant to include humans and other primates.
Thanks. In the cover email we sent to the researchers, we did make it clear that the survey was about suffering in non-human animals, so the statement about mammals should be read as excluding members of our species (but not other primates). As for the alternative interpretations of ‘x can suffer’, we thought the natural interpretation was ‘At least some species in this group can suffer’, but I agree that we could have phrased the sentence less ambiguously.
Thanks to everyone who participated. The survey is now closed, and the results are here. There is one tab for LessWrong respondents and one tab for expert respondents.
Nitpicking: The set of mammals includes humans.
Can you clarify this a bit with examples of what you had in mind?