On (a). The argument for this is based on the first half of Bostrom’s Astronomical Waste. In saving someone’s life (or some other good economic investment), you move technological progress forward by a tiny amount. The benefit you produce is the difference you make at the end of civilisation, when there’s much more at stake than there is now.
It’s almost certainly more like −10,000N
I’d be cautious about making claims like this. We’re dealing with tricky issues, so I wouldn’t claim to be almost certain about anything in this area. The numbers I used in the above post were intended to be purely illustrative, and I apologise if they came across as being more definite than that.
Why might I worry about the −10,000N figure? Well, first, the number you reference is the number of animals eaten in a lifetime by an American—the greatest per capita meat consumers in the world. I presume that the number is considerably smaller for those in developing countries, and there is considerably less reliance on factory farming.
Even assuming we were talking about American lives, is the suffering that an American causes 10,000 times as great as the happiness of their lives? Let’s try a back of the envelope calculation. Let’s accept that 21000 figure. I can’t access the original source, but some other digging suggests that this breaks down into: 17,000 shellfish, 1700 other fish, 2147 chickens, with the rest constituting a much smaller number. I’m really not sure how to factor in shellfish and other fish: I don’t know if they have lives worth living or not, and I presume that most of these are farmed, so wouldn’t have existed were it not for farming practices. At any rate, from what I know I suspect that factory farmed chickens are likely to dominate the calculation (but I’m not certain). So let’s focus on the chickens. The average factory farmed chicken lives for 6 weeks, so that’s 252 factory farmed chicken-years per American lifetime. Assuming the average American lives for 70 years, one American life-year produces 3.6 factory farmed chicken years. What should our tradeoff be between producing factory farmed chicken-years and American human-years? Perhaps the life of the chicken is 10x as bad as the American life is good (that seems a high estimate to me, but I really don’t know): in which case we should be willing to shorten an American’s life by 10 years in order to prevent one factory-farmed chicken-year. That would mean that, if we call one American life a good of unit 1, the American’s meat consumption produces −36 units of value.
In order to get this estimate up to −10 000 units of value, we’d need to multiply that trade-off of 277: we should be indifferent between producing 2770 years of American life and preventing the existence of 1 factory farmed chicken-year (that is, we should be happy letting 4 vegan American children die in order to prevent 1 factory farmed chicken-year). That number seems too high too me; if you agree, perhaps you think that fish or shellfish suffering is the dominant consideration. Or you might bring in non-consequentialist considerations; as I said above, I think that the meat eater problem is likely more troubling for non-consequentialists.
At any rate, this is somewhat of a digression. If one thought that meat eater worries were strong enough that donating to GWWC or 80k was a net harm, I would think that a reasonable view (and one could give further arguments in favour of it, that we haven’t discussed), though not my own one for the reasons I’ve outlined. We knew that something animal welfare focused had been missing from CEA for too long and for that reason set up Effective Animal Activism—currently a sub-project of 80k, but able to accept restricted donations and, as it grows, likely to become an organisation in its own right. So if one thinks that animal welfare charities are likely to be the most cost-effective charities, and one finds the meta-charity argument plausible, then one might consider giving to EAA.
I think that calculation makes sense and the −36 number looks about right. I had actually done a similar calculation a while ago and came up with a similar number. I suppose my guess of −10,000 was too hasty.
It may actually be a good deal higher than 36 depending on how much suffering fish and shellfish go through. This is harder to say because I don’t understand the conditions in fish farms nearly as well as chicken farms.
On (a). The argument for this is based on the first half of Bostrom’s Astronomical Waste. In saving someone’s life (or some other good economic investment), you move technological progress forward by a tiny amount. The benefit you produce is the difference you make at the end of civilisation, when there’s much more at stake than there is now.
Why might I worry about the −10,000N figure? Well, first, the number you reference is the number of animals eaten in a lifetime by an American—the greatest per capita meat consumers in the world. I presume that the number is considerably smaller for those in developing countries, and there is considerably less reliance on factory farming.
Even assuming we were talking about American lives, is the suffering that an American causes 10,000 times as great as the happiness of their lives? Let’s try a back of the envelope calculation. Let’s accept that 21000 figure. I can’t access the original source, but some other digging suggests that this breaks down into: 17,000 shellfish, 1700 other fish, 2147 chickens, with the rest constituting a much smaller number. I’m really not sure how to factor in shellfish and other fish: I don’t know if they have lives worth living or not, and I presume that most of these are farmed, so wouldn’t have existed were it not for farming practices. At any rate, from what I know I suspect that factory farmed chickens are likely to dominate the calculation (but I’m not certain). So let’s focus on the chickens. The average factory farmed chicken lives for 6 weeks, so that’s 252 factory farmed chicken-years per American lifetime. Assuming the average American lives for 70 years, one American life-year produces 3.6 factory farmed chicken years. What should our tradeoff be between producing factory farmed chicken-years and American human-years? Perhaps the life of the chicken is 10x as bad as the American life is good (that seems a high estimate to me, but I really don’t know): in which case we should be willing to shorten an American’s life by 10 years in order to prevent one factory-farmed chicken-year. That would mean that, if we call one American life a good of unit 1, the American’s meat consumption produces −36 units of value.
In order to get this estimate up to −10 000 units of value, we’d need to multiply that trade-off of 277: we should be indifferent between producing 2770 years of American life and preventing the existence of 1 factory farmed chicken-year (that is, we should be happy letting 4 vegan American children die in order to prevent 1 factory farmed chicken-year). That number seems too high too me; if you agree, perhaps you think that fish or shellfish suffering is the dominant consideration. Or you might bring in non-consequentialist considerations; as I said above, I think that the meat eater problem is likely more troubling for non-consequentialists.
At any rate, this is somewhat of a digression. If one thought that meat eater worries were strong enough that donating to GWWC or 80k was a net harm, I would think that a reasonable view (and one could give further arguments in favour of it, that we haven’t discussed), though not my own one for the reasons I’ve outlined. We knew that something animal welfare focused had been missing from CEA for too long and for that reason set up Effective Animal Activism—currently a sub-project of 80k, but able to accept restricted donations and, as it grows, likely to become an organisation in its own right. So if one thinks that animal welfare charities are likely to be the most cost-effective charities, and one finds the meta-charity argument plausible, then one might consider giving to EAA.
I think that calculation makes sense and the −36 number looks about right. I had actually done a similar calculation a while ago and came up with a similar number. I suppose my guess of −10,000 was too hasty.
It may actually be a good deal higher than 36 depending on how much suffering fish and shellfish go through. This is harder to say because I don’t understand the conditions in fish farms nearly as well as chicken farms.