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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: 0.414s | 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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jjcm ◴[18 Nov 24 19:25 UTC] No.42175936[source]▶
No the proposition doesn’t make sense. The 3% number comes from this: https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/welfare-range-es...

The page gives 3% to shrimp because their lifespan is 3% that of humans. It’s a terrible avenue for this estimate. By the same estimate, giant tortoises are less ethical to kill than humans. The heavens alone can judge you for the war crimes you’d be committing by killing a Turritopsis dohrnii.

Number of neurons is the least-bad objective measurement in my eyes. Arthropods famously have very few neurons, <100k compared to 86b in humans. That’s a 1:1000000 neuron ratio, which feels like a more appropriate ratio for suffering than a lifespan-based ratio, though both are terrible.

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1. aziaziazi ◴[18 Nov 24 20:08 UTC] No.42176353[source]▶
Not only lifespan. From the link you quote:

> Capacity for welfare = welfare range × lifespan. An individual’s welfare range is the difference between the best and worst welfare states the individual can realize.

> we rely on indirect measures even in humans: behavior, physiological changes, and verbal reports. We can observe behavior and physiological changes in nonhumans, but most of them aren’t verbal. So, we have to rely on other indirect proxies, piecing together an understanding from animals’ cognitive and affective traits or capabilities.

First time I see this "warfare range" notion and it seems quite clever to me.

Also the original article says 3.1% is the median while the mean is 19%. I guess that may be caused by individuals havûg différents experiences each other’s.

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2. BenthamsBulldog ◴[19 Nov 24 00:40 UTC] No.42178954[source]▶
This is to model uncertainty not difference across species. The 50th percentile guess is that shrimp feel pain 3.1% as intensely as humans while the mean is 19%