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The shrimp welfare project

(benthams.substack.com)
81 points 0xDEAFBEAD | 2 comments | 18 Nov 24 14:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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n4r9 ◴[18 Nov 24 15:11 UTC] No.42173011[source]▶
Apologies for focusing on just one sentence of this article, but I feel like it's crucial to the overall argument:

> ... if [shrimp] suffer only 3% as intensely as we do ...

Does this proposition make sense? It's not obvious to me that we can assign percentage values to suffering, or compare it to human suffering, or treat the values in a linear fashion.

It reminds me of that vaguely absurd thought experiment where you compare one person undergoing a lifetime of intense torture vs billions upon billions of humans getting a fleck of dust in their eyes. I just cannot square choosing the former with my conscience. Maybe I'm too unimaginative to comprehend so many billions of bits of dust.

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1. BenthamsBulldog ◴[18 Nov 24 18:48 UTC] No.42175565[source]▶
Seems possible in principle. Experiences can cause one to feel more or less pain--what's wrong with quantifying it? Sure it will be a bit handwavy and vague, but the alternative of doing no comparisons and just going based on vibes is worse https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/refusing-to-quantify-is-refu.... But as I argue, given high uncertainty, you don't need any fine grained estimates to think giving to shrimp welfare is valuable. Like, if there was a dollar in front of you and you could use it to save 16,000 shrimp, seems like that's a good use of it.
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2. kaashif ◴[18 Nov 24 18:56 UTC] No.42175658[source]▶
> Like, if there was a dollar in front of you and you could use it to save 16,000 shrimp, seems like that's a good use of it.

Uhh, that's totally unintuitive and surely almost all people would disagree, right?

If not in words, people disagree in actions. Even within effective altruism there are a lot of people only giving to human centred causes.