1. Argue that extraordinary claims, in fact, do not require extraordinary evidence.
2. Make an extraordinary claim with, honestly, weak evidence. Stuff like -- each ant is a 1% human sufferer according to some heuristic some guy made up, and since suffering is aggregable (it clearly isn't), killing 100 ants is as bad as murder.
3. Just sort of parry counterarguments by saying "well yes it's surprising, isn't the world surprising."
There's actually intense circularity here. I actually reject the first step. I think that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Instead what you presented is an absurd conclusion on a lot of evidence that's debatable at best. Which matches my priors, that you can make absurd conclusions if you stop requiring extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. So my mind is changed about nothing.
The real problem is I can't really tell the epistemic status here. Are you REALLY trying to convince me to become a supervillain and destroy the earth to bring reprieve to insect hell? Like at this moment is your evidence that good, that you'd like people to do something like that? Or is this a more hedged "I reached an absurd conclusion! I don't reject it out of hand but I'd like to explore if it's right."
At object level I think there's 2 major flaws just in the insect welfare analysis. I mean, I think the "meta" flaws are worse, but as I see it:
1. the 1% math is witchcraft. I don't believe the heuristic and it's certainly not aggregable as you suggest. In fact in your "shrimp" article you explicitly argue against such aggregability so.
2. there's no model of insect happiness. It just seems we're further along with studying pain and I don't support doomsday devices just because the science is proceeding at an uneven rate.
Good article - I guess I can think of a few “moderate” positions that someone could defend:
1) insects matter but the total welfare of insects is so deeply uncertain that the signs mostly cancel out.
2) insects have barely acceptable levels of welfare but human lives are so much more valuable that it’s still a better thing when humans replace insects. Like maybe insect lives are positive but below the “critical range” whilst humans are above.
3) insect lives are good but you take some sort of person-affecting view of pop ethics where preventing good insects lives isn’t bad.
These seem like they’d lead to status quo indifference to affecting population sizes at least?
The objections in this comment section so far are kinda lame. Here's a more fun one.
If the basic problem is there is an absurdly large amount of bugs suffering which is difficult to get a handle on cuz they are so small, perhaps this implies we could create an absurdly large amount of happy tiny little artificial creatures in the future and that would be better then most other things we could do. Given our potential ability to outlive the extinction of other life on earth, maybe while insects are moderately important their cause is slightly outweighed by a variety of other causes which would promote a long human future which might include creating such swarms of happy man-made critters.
Good article. Now I just want to remind you that believing that a perfect being created a world where (admitted by you) most lives aren't worth living is highly, highly irrational.
You believe in heaven, and that it will be basically infinitely good. You believe animals (incl insects I assume) will go to heaven. The short suffering of a bugs life will be made good by an infinity in close proximity with god, I would say.
This makes bug welfare on this earth still important, but should also make you a “bug-natalist”, no? The more bugs, the more bugs in heaven. Maximizing bugs in heaven might be the most important thing.
This is not meant as a gotcha at all, btw, just try to understand how you combine these 2 positions.
“It’s only because we focus on morally arbitrary characteristics—what they look like—that we find it permissible to wholly ignore their interests.”
Just because you assert something doesn’t make it true.
This is not the only reason.
The fact that their brains and anything remotely akin to consciousness - if it even exists - are almost certainly far less developed is a major portion of the reason.
This does not necessarily negate your bizarro major claim here. But since you seem to dislike falsehoods, perhaps you should retract this one.
P.S. while likely not your intention, I do appreciate your example here of the absurdity of the extremist utilitarian position. I frequently think in utilitarian terms, but have been teaching myself to do so less. This piece helps me further along that path.
I have a couple of questions about your position on insects; if I’ve made any mistakes in my interpretation of it please let me know.
1. Based on the scales of damage caused by insect suffering, it would seem like this suffering outweighs all the good in the world. If not, why? If so, should world leaders work to engineer a nuclear (or some other) apocalypse and end all life on Earth?
2. A lot of your theodicies are very human-centric—they talk about the world as being positively good (which insect suffering may make false under your view) and focus on the building of relationships in a world of suffering (which insects cannot do). How would your theodicy take into account insect suffering?
Taking this argument further: insect suffering is bad, and takes place at a scale that dwarfs all other suffering. Humans cause a great deal of insect suffering, but insects cause more, because they’re not evolutionarily designed to avoid suffering, but to maximize potential for survival (with short lives, high egg mortality rates, etc). So the only rational way to minimize insect suffering is to minimize insects (as you propose). But once that problem has been addressed, there will be another candidate for “most suffering creature,” because most life-forms have similarly misaligned incentives that prioritize tenacity over freedom from pain. Eventually, humans will become the most suffering creature. Since existence creates suffering, arguably the most moral choice is non-existence. And now we’re at Buddhism.
True, many do, Insects also have net-positive lives when taken collectively, because they’re achieve the goal of making more insects. Positing pain avoidance as the highest good is potentially a very anthropocentric way to approach things. Of course, saying insects are succeeding at their existence because they exist is kind of a tautology, but the alternative is to posit that insects are failing at existence by existing, based on an external paradigm derived from human experience. Not quite a tautology, but certainly dissonant. Why is it immoral to minimize insect suffering in favor of humans, but not immoral to minimize insects’ interests and apparent success paradigm in favor of a human one?
Insects are not people though. They’re insects. And we normally think it’s fine for insects to come into existence and die after a week. That’s kind of what he means by “anthropocentric”.
He wrote “Why is it immoral to minimize insect suffering in favor of humans, but not immoral to minimize insects’ interests and apparent success paradigm in favor of a human one?” Your response was to say that a human having a bug’s life would have a bad life, which is just reiterating the idea that we should judge insect lives by the same standards of success as human ones.
The argument is broken to begin with. It treats all insects as the same and interchangeable, it ignores the parasitic nature of quite few species that harm humans (should I let the bed bugs bite me, or is me killing them to clean up my place bad? What about mosquitoes carrying malaria? Or flour beetles that spoil cereals? What of woodworm that destroys our houses, or wasps that colonise our attics?), and ignores the positive relationships we have (bees). It also establishes a moral burden and a relationship on a spatial and temporal scale that is impossible to justify, let alone act upon - how is someone squashing a fly in Morocco something I can have any influence over?
This is either a really good ragebait, or a really messed up moral claim.
The idea that extinguish an entire species in order to prevent suffering is the moral thing to do is pretty disturbing to me, much more so that the repugnant conclusion. If that is the logical consequence of utilitarianism I would have to reject it, and I think nearly all people would agree with me.
Sidenote to the actual point you're making, but for universalist Christians, everybody will go to Heaven no matter their religious beliefs. Following God might be good for other reasons, but as such I do think it's possible to make Christianity of moderate importance.
Why assume (it appears) that insects have only negative experiences and not positive ones? The average human being suffers intense pain sometimes, but also generally has enough positive experiences to outweigh the negative ones and make life overall worthwhile. Shouldn't the default assumption be that the same is true for insects?
I think the idea is that: most insects die horrible deaths, and since their lives are very short, dying is a huge portion of their entire lives. Human beings are usually healthy for decades before we die, and we’re almost never eaten alive.
If (let's say) an insect is eaten over the course of several minutes, I don't see how that is different from a person who suffers from cancer for several months.
The flow of this argument is like:
1. Argue that extraordinary claims, in fact, do not require extraordinary evidence.
2. Make an extraordinary claim with, honestly, weak evidence. Stuff like -- each ant is a 1% human sufferer according to some heuristic some guy made up, and since suffering is aggregable (it clearly isn't), killing 100 ants is as bad as murder.
3. Just sort of parry counterarguments by saying "well yes it's surprising, isn't the world surprising."
There's actually intense circularity here. I actually reject the first step. I think that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Instead what you presented is an absurd conclusion on a lot of evidence that's debatable at best. Which matches my priors, that you can make absurd conclusions if you stop requiring extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. So my mind is changed about nothing.
The real problem is I can't really tell the epistemic status here. Are you REALLY trying to convince me to become a supervillain and destroy the earth to bring reprieve to insect hell? Like at this moment is your evidence that good, that you'd like people to do something like that? Or is this a more hedged "I reached an absurd conclusion! I don't reject it out of hand but I'd like to explore if it's right."
At object level I think there's 2 major flaws just in the insect welfare analysis. I mean, I think the "meta" flaws are worse, but as I see it:
1. the 1% math is witchcraft. I don't believe the heuristic and it's certainly not aggregable as you suggest. In fact in your "shrimp" article you explicitly argue against such aggregability so.
2. there's no model of insect happiness. It just seems we're further along with studying pain and I don't support doomsday devices just because the science is proceeding at an uneven rate.
Good article - I guess I can think of a few “moderate” positions that someone could defend:
1) insects matter but the total welfare of insects is so deeply uncertain that the signs mostly cancel out.
2) insects have barely acceptable levels of welfare but human lives are so much more valuable that it’s still a better thing when humans replace insects. Like maybe insect lives are positive but below the “critical range” whilst humans are above.
3) insect lives are good but you take some sort of person-affecting view of pop ethics where preventing good insects lives isn’t bad.
These seem like they’d lead to status quo indifference to affecting population sizes at least?
bro they’re just bugs
The objections in this comment section so far are kinda lame. Here's a more fun one.
If the basic problem is there is an absurdly large amount of bugs suffering which is difficult to get a handle on cuz they are so small, perhaps this implies we could create an absurdly large amount of happy tiny little artificial creatures in the future and that would be better then most other things we could do. Given our potential ability to outlive the extinction of other life on earth, maybe while insects are moderately important their cause is slightly outweighed by a variety of other causes which would promote a long human future which might include creating such swarms of happy man-made critters.
Good article. Now I just want to remind you that believing that a perfect being created a world where (admitted by you) most lives aren't worth living is highly, highly irrational.
Serious question, that I asked before.
You believe in heaven, and that it will be basically infinitely good. You believe animals (incl insects I assume) will go to heaven. The short suffering of a bugs life will be made good by an infinity in close proximity with god, I would say.
This makes bug welfare on this earth still important, but should also make you a “bug-natalist”, no? The more bugs, the more bugs in heaven. Maximizing bugs in heaven might be the most important thing.
This is not meant as a gotcha at all, btw, just try to understand how you combine these 2 positions.
“It’s only because we focus on morally arbitrary characteristics—what they look like—that we find it permissible to wholly ignore their interests.”
Just because you assert something doesn’t make it true.
This is not the only reason.
The fact that their brains and anything remotely akin to consciousness - if it even exists - are almost certainly far less developed is a major portion of the reason.
This does not necessarily negate your bizarro major claim here. But since you seem to dislike falsehoods, perhaps you should retract this one.
P.S. while likely not your intention, I do appreciate your example here of the absurdity of the extremist utilitarian position. I frequently think in utilitarian terms, but have been teaching myself to do so less. This piece helps me further along that path.
I have a couple of questions about your position on insects; if I’ve made any mistakes in my interpretation of it please let me know.
1. Based on the scales of damage caused by insect suffering, it would seem like this suffering outweighs all the good in the world. If not, why? If so, should world leaders work to engineer a nuclear (or some other) apocalypse and end all life on Earth?
2. A lot of your theodicies are very human-centric—they talk about the world as being positively good (which insect suffering may make false under your view) and focus on the building of relationships in a world of suffering (which insects cannot do). How would your theodicy take into account insect suffering?
Taking this argument further: insect suffering is bad, and takes place at a scale that dwarfs all other suffering. Humans cause a great deal of insect suffering, but insects cause more, because they’re not evolutionarily designed to avoid suffering, but to maximize potential for survival (with short lives, high egg mortality rates, etc). So the only rational way to minimize insect suffering is to minimize insects (as you propose). But once that problem has been addressed, there will be another candidate for “most suffering creature,” because most life-forms have similarly misaligned incentives that prioritize tenacity over freedom from pain. Eventually, humans will become the most suffering creature. Since existence creates suffering, arguably the most moral choice is non-existence. And now we’re at Buddhism.
I don't think that's right. Humans have net positive lives.
True, many do, Insects also have net-positive lives when taken collectively, because they’re achieve the goal of making more insects. Positing pain avoidance as the highest good is potentially a very anthropocentric way to approach things. Of course, saying insects are succeeding at their existence because they exist is kind of a tautology, but the alternative is to posit that insects are failing at existence by existing, based on an external paradigm derived from human experience. Not quite a tautology, but certainly dissonant. Why is it immoral to minimize insect suffering in favor of humans, but not immoral to minimize insects’ interests and apparent success paradigm in favor of a human one?
We normally think it's bad if people come into existence, only to die painfully after a week
Insects are not people though. They’re insects. And we normally think it’s fine for insects to come into existence and die after a week. That’s kind of what he means by “anthropocentric”.
We think that but for bad reasons, as I argue
He wrote “Why is it immoral to minimize insect suffering in favor of humans, but not immoral to minimize insects’ interests and apparent success paradigm in favor of a human one?” Your response was to say that a human having a bug’s life would have a bad life, which is just reiterating the idea that we should judge insect lives by the same standards of success as human ones.
The argument is broken to begin with. It treats all insects as the same and interchangeable, it ignores the parasitic nature of quite few species that harm humans (should I let the bed bugs bite me, or is me killing them to clean up my place bad? What about mosquitoes carrying malaria? Or flour beetles that spoil cereals? What of woodworm that destroys our houses, or wasps that colonise our attics?), and ignores the positive relationships we have (bees). It also establishes a moral burden and a relationship on a spatial and temporal scale that is impossible to justify, let alone act upon - how is someone squashing a fly in Morocco something I can have any influence over?
This is either a really good ragebait, or a really messed up moral claim.
Awareness exists on a sliding scale. Awareness of pain exists on a sliding scale.
No mention in this article about C-fibers, a relevant topic to philosophy of ethics.
Fish have something like 10% of the capacity we do for pain based on their concentration of C fibers in the body.
An insect would have much less. Having a leg torn off for them could very well just register as a stubbed toe for us.
The assumption of fungibility of pain scale here between animals is a huge weak point in this entire line of reasoning.
Keep letting Pascal mug you like this and you’ll have nothing left.
The idea that extinguish an entire species in order to prevent suffering is the moral thing to do is pretty disturbing to me, much more so that the repugnant conclusion. If that is the logical consequence of utilitarianism I would have to reject it, and I think nearly all people would agree with me.
Sidenote to the actual point you're making, but for universalist Christians, everybody will go to Heaven no matter their religious beliefs. Following God might be good for other reasons, but as such I do think it's possible to make Christianity of moderate importance.
Why assume (it appears) that insects have only negative experiences and not positive ones? The average human being suffers intense pain sometimes, but also generally has enough positive experiences to outweigh the negative ones and make life overall worthwhile. Shouldn't the default assumption be that the same is true for insects?
I think the idea is that: most insects die horrible deaths, and since their lives are very short, dying is a huge portion of their entire lives. Human beings are usually healthy for decades before we die, and we’re almost never eaten alive.
If (let's say) an insect is eaten over the course of several minutes, I don't see how that is different from a person who suffers from cancer for several months.
This is why utilitarianism sucks.