Ah, I was lazily wondering where to find these expressions of the idea that the lives of wild animals are a net hedonic negative. Very helpful! And the article is nice, too, although personally I have difficulty giving any credit to the idea that animals are better off never born.
Schopenhauer thought we should prevent humans from having sex for similar reasons:
“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood.”
Excerpt from: "Studies in Pessimism, On Human Nature, and Religion: a Dialogue, etc." by Arthur Schopenhauer. Scribd.
Schopenhauer overestimates the extent to which humans in general are weighed down by "the burden of existence". Among people I know, the only ones who seem crushed by "the burden of existence" are pessimists and philosophers. So perhaps pessimists and philosophers specifically should be prevented from having sex. Fortunately for them (and their hypothetical net hedonic negative offspring), they're already not having sex.
The Hudson used to be thoroughly polluted. Swimming in it was seen as insane, and it was very difficult to catch anything for lack of fish.
Now I look out the window and cringe. The water has been cleared, pollution reduced and the fish have returned. These poor creatures, with their net-negative existence, have another environment to reproduce and flourish in. It must have been far more moral when elevated pollutant levels and CO2 kept the river sterile of most animal life.
There's the Logan's Run idea which is manifest in the modern medical industry: The most suffering happens in the oldest years. I say Logan's Run because the logical conclusion is to kill anyone instantly and painlessly when they reach a specific age.
"For survivors to age 85, more than one-third of their lifetime expenditures will accrue in their remaining years."
If you use medical spending as a proxy for suffering, which I just made up but sounds pretty persuasive, a third of life's suffering happens in those few years after 85.
With fish it means if you Logan's Run them at age, I dunno, 3 and eat them you cut off the major years of suffering for them.
> Does suffering dominate happiness for mature fishes? Typical arguments that nature contains more suffering than happiness point to the lives of immature animals, but they don’t delve a lot into the lives of mature animals. It’s possible that mature fish welfare is negative, but the question is unsettled—and at this point, probably not something we should be willing to bet trillions of fish lives on.
Why? We're betting fish lives either way. This seems like straightforward status quo bias to me.
If you give non-zero credence to the idea that actively killing happy fish is worse than passively allowing unhappy fish to continue to exist, then not killing fish is the better option here. I think there's a fair chance of that view being correct, so as a precaution I say we ought not to kill fish when the expected value of mature fish happiness is zero or barely negative.
> If you give non-zero credence to the idea that actively killing happy fish is worse than passively allowing unhappy fish to continue to exist, then not killing fish is the better option here.
Do you mean because of an act-omission distinction? I would give very little credence to that idea, if the utilon equation is equal. Why should that be? If anything, I have more of a prioritarian intuition, that relieving the suffering of unhappy fish would be more important than allowing the continued existence of happy ones. I have only recently starting reading your writing, but from what I've gathered so far I'd have expected you to agree.
I also think the negative utility of the hypothetical suffering fish is likely to be much greater than the positive utility of the hypothetical happy one. How happy can a fish be, given what we know about their lives, and how natural selection generally drives behaviour with the subjective responses it selects for?
Whereas on the other hand, you have recently noted the distinct possibility that smaller/simpler creatures might actually suffer *more* intensely, or at least not as much less so as we tend to think. Isn't it very possible, then, that basically all living fish suffer enormously? Isn't, on balance, the risk of that astronomical scale and degree of suffering enough to give the bet on fish lives very negative expected value? I would argue that the precautionary approach would be to kill the fish, and eliminate that risk of extreme negative utility- a risk which your proposed approach takes, for a chance at positive utility that hardly seems likely to be extreme in degree, given what we know about fish and their lives.
> as a precaution I say we ought not to kill fish when the expected value of mature fish happiness is zero or barely negative
If we could establish with any confidence what the expected value is, then that would be a different story. I think we should have a very, very low confidence level in such estimates given the evidence we have today, though (as far as I can tell as a layman).
As you said, it's a very open question:
> It’s possible that mature fish welfare is negative, but the question is unsettled—and at this point, probably not something we should be willing to bet trillions of fish lives on.
And in summation, I suppose my central point is that we're both making bets here. Inaction isn't inherently precautionary, and it can be the opposite, in cases such as this where inaction risks choosing a world filled with astronomically more suffering than is possible in the alternative.
Ah, I was lazily wondering where to find these expressions of the idea that the lives of wild animals are a net hedonic negative. Very helpful! And the article is nice, too, although personally I have difficulty giving any credit to the idea that animals are better off never born.
Schopenhauer thought we should prevent humans from having sex for similar reasons:
“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood.”
Excerpt from: "Studies in Pessimism, On Human Nature, and Religion: a Dialogue, etc." by Arthur Schopenhauer. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Everand: https://www.everand.com/book/351496597
Schopenhauer overestimates the extent to which humans in general are weighed down by "the burden of existence". Among people I know, the only ones who seem crushed by "the burden of existence" are pessimists and philosophers. So perhaps pessimists and philosophers specifically should be prevented from having sex. Fortunately for them (and their hypothetical net hedonic negative offspring), they're already not having sex.
The Hudson used to be thoroughly polluted. Swimming in it was seen as insane, and it was very difficult to catch anything for lack of fish.
Now I look out the window and cringe. The water has been cleared, pollution reduced and the fish have returned. These poor creatures, with their net-negative existence, have another environment to reproduce and flourish in. It must have been far more moral when elevated pollutant levels and CO2 kept the river sterile of most animal life.
There's the Logan's Run idea which is manifest in the modern medical industry: The most suffering happens in the oldest years. I say Logan's Run because the logical conclusion is to kill anyone instantly and painlessly when they reach a specific age.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/
"For survivors to age 85, more than one-third of their lifetime expenditures will accrue in their remaining years."
If you use medical spending as a proxy for suffering, which I just made up but sounds pretty persuasive, a third of life's suffering happens in those few years after 85.
With fish it means if you Logan's Run them at age, I dunno, 3 and eat them you cut off the major years of suffering for them.
“Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
> Does suffering dominate happiness for mature fishes? Typical arguments that nature contains more suffering than happiness point to the lives of immature animals, but they don’t delve a lot into the lives of mature animals. It’s possible that mature fish welfare is negative, but the question is unsettled—and at this point, probably not something we should be willing to bet trillions of fish lives on.
Why? We're betting fish lives either way. This seems like straightforward status quo bias to me.
If you give non-zero credence to the idea that actively killing happy fish is worse than passively allowing unhappy fish to continue to exist, then not killing fish is the better option here. I think there's a fair chance of that view being correct, so as a precaution I say we ought not to kill fish when the expected value of mature fish happiness is zero or barely negative.
> If you give non-zero credence to the idea that actively killing happy fish is worse than passively allowing unhappy fish to continue to exist, then not killing fish is the better option here.
Do you mean because of an act-omission distinction? I would give very little credence to that idea, if the utilon equation is equal. Why should that be? If anything, I have more of a prioritarian intuition, that relieving the suffering of unhappy fish would be more important than allowing the continued existence of happy ones. I have only recently starting reading your writing, but from what I've gathered so far I'd have expected you to agree.
I also think the negative utility of the hypothetical suffering fish is likely to be much greater than the positive utility of the hypothetical happy one. How happy can a fish be, given what we know about their lives, and how natural selection generally drives behaviour with the subjective responses it selects for?
Whereas on the other hand, you have recently noted the distinct possibility that smaller/simpler creatures might actually suffer *more* intensely, or at least not as much less so as we tend to think. Isn't it very possible, then, that basically all living fish suffer enormously? Isn't, on balance, the risk of that astronomical scale and degree of suffering enough to give the bet on fish lives very negative expected value? I would argue that the precautionary approach would be to kill the fish, and eliminate that risk of extreme negative utility- a risk which your proposed approach takes, for a chance at positive utility that hardly seems likely to be extreme in degree, given what we know about fish and their lives.
> as a precaution I say we ought not to kill fish when the expected value of mature fish happiness is zero or barely negative
If we could establish with any confidence what the expected value is, then that would be a different story. I think we should have a very, very low confidence level in such estimates given the evidence we have today, though (as far as I can tell as a layman).
As you said, it's a very open question:
> It’s possible that mature fish welfare is negative, but the question is unsettled—and at this point, probably not something we should be willing to bet trillions of fish lives on.
And in summation, I suppose my central point is that we're both making bets here. Inaction isn't inherently precautionary, and it can be the opposite, in cases such as this where inaction risks choosing a world filled with astronomically more suffering than is possible in the alternative.