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It may be better to replace "via" with "on the left menu of". It was not immediately obvious to me where I should sign up.

Hi Guy and Ian. To clarify, I have in mind bets which involve winning or losing amounts of money of at least 1 % of the net annual income, and ideally at least 10 %. For example, for some earning 30 k$ of net income per year, at least 300 $ (= 0.01*30*10^3), and ideally at least 3 k$ (= 0.1*30*10^3). For a sufficiently large amount of money at stake, people would either not accept the bet, or accept it after significant investigation.

Yes, exactly the one you linked to. Since you linked it, I assumed it was clear from the context.

I asked to confirm because the page is not technically a paper.

This is why empirical data from those accustomed to suffering would be so valuable.

I very much agree.

The natural equivalent would be contraception for wild animal. A practice that holds significant promise.

I think controlling the fertility of rodents can easily increase or decrease welfare. I believe it may impact soil animals way more than rodents, and I have very little idea about whether it increases or decreases the welfare of soil animals.

While many people try to help birds by using bird-safe glass, providing nesting boxes, or feeding them during winter, the downside is that an artificially inflated population can negatively impact the birds themselves and the insects they hunt.

I agree.

Do you have any specific species in mind?

No. I think I would guess random animals of many species to have negative lives with a probability of around 50 %, including species of nematodes. In addition, I do not expect the uncertainty about whether animals have positive or negative lives to be super correlated across species. So random animals of some species having positive lives would still leave me believing that random animals of some other species could easily have negative lives.

Thanks for clarifying, Marcus.

I am very open to funding research on the sentience of nematodes.

Great.

Regarding intensities of pain, I'm open to it, but would be surprised.

Why would you be surprised? I think the uncertainty of the intensity of excruciating pain is a major driver of the uncertainty of the cost-effectiveness of humane slaughter interventions, like advocating for electrically stunning farmed shrimps as done by the Shrimp Welfare Project's (SWP's) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI).

Welfare comparisons across species are also in scope. I consider Bob Fischer to be one of our best people who has a strong hunch for making his research useful, and as much as is practicable/possible, he should have free rein to do the work he finds most valauble.

I would agree Bob is among the best people to lead research on welfare comparisons across species.

This talk in 2023 is responsible for a lot of my thinking around smaller animals and very much cemented the idea that helping non-human animals was going to be far more cost-effective.

I really liked that talk from Bob. However, I have very little idea about whether interventions targeting invertebrates increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries more or less cost-effectively than ones targeting humans. For individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable, I estimate that HSI has increased the welfare of shrimps 1.68*10^-6 to 1.68 M times as cost-effectively as GiveWell's top charities increase the welfare of humans.

That's what I meant by interest-indexed, unless that isn't capturing your concern?

Got it. I would give you 1 k$, and, if I won, you would give me 2 k$ times the ratio between the unit value of global stocks at the end of 2034 and time of my initial transfer.

What is your P(existentially bad outcomes) in the next 10 years? As maybe a starting point for finding a bet that sounds good to you.

The bet above sounds good to me. The unit value of global stocks can be that of Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS - (USD) Accumulating, which is the one I invest in. I would want to make a post to formalise the bet. Let me know if you want to move forward.

So when assessing if an animal lives a good life we should not only consider the circumstances but how they experience it.

What ultimately matters for me is just the subjetive experience of the animals. I only care about the circumstances because they inform the subjective experiences.

So I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most insects are happier than most humans.

Me neither. However, there are good arguments for wild invertebrates having not only positive, but also negative lives.

They didn't mention torture in the welfare paper, probably because it is a combination of humiliation/pain/helplessness. For the way they described it, yes I would.

Which paper are you referring to? Are you referring to WFI's page about pain intensities? Here is how they describe excruciating pain.

Excruciating. All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of Pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of Pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the Pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of Pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of Pain is not possible.

Torture is not mentioned above, but my quote above ("severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture") is from Cynthia Schuck-Paim, WFI's research director. In any case, if many prefer ending their lives over excruciating pain, it makes sense to assume they would prefer avoiding 10 min of excruciating pain over losing 24 h of fully healthy life?

I don't think that euthanasia would always go against her preferences. (I'm imagining my mum's dog here.) Humans definitely use euthanasia when it is available to them, and I certainly would. Also, in the wild she would hardly find herself in a situation where she is slowly decaying. 

Imagine a pet is born with some disease that allows them to live a long live, but one which has way more suffering than happiness. Do you think such pet should be euthanised? If yes, do you think its birth should ideally have been avoided in the 1st place? If yes, would you apply the same reasoning to wild animals which experience way more suffering than happiness (I guess some do)?

Hi Marcus.

(We also expect to place some bets on non-AI opportunities that are unusually strong.)

Are you open to funding research on the sentience of nematodes? This is one of the “Four Investigation Priorities” mentioned in section 13.4 of chapter 13 of the book The Edge of Sentience by Jonathan Birch.

How about funding research on the time trade-offs between the pains defined by the Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI) by surveying people who have recently experienced excruciating pain? I think people suffering from cluster headaches would be good candidates. Ambitious Impact (AIM) currently estimates suffering-adjusted days (SADs) assuming that excruciating pain is 48.0 (= 11.7/0.244) times as intense as hurtful pain (you can ask Vicky Cox for the sheet), which I believe is very off. It implies 16 h of "awareness of Pain is likely to be present most of the time" (hurtful pain) is as bad as 20.0 min (= 16/48.0*60) of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" (excruciating pain). Here is a thread where I discussed AIM's pain intensities with the person responsible for their last iteration.

How about funding research on welfare comparisons across species? In Bob Fischer’s book about comparing welfare across species, the tentative sentience-adjusted welfare range of shrimps is 8.0 % of that of humans. However, if the sentience-adjusted welfare range is proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" can range from 0 to 2, which I consider reasonable, the sentience-adjusted welfare range of shrimp can range from 10^-12 (= (10^-6)^2) to 1 times that of humans.

The prospects of winning or losing money usually leads to people investigating their views more.

This is widely believed to be true outside effective altruism too.

I would easily be ok with 10 minutes of excruciating pain for 24 hours of fully healthy life

Would you prefer 10 min of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" (excruciating pain) over losing 24 h of fully healthy life (ignoring the indirect effects if the excruciating pain; it would probably lead to death, and therefore result in a loss of life which is worse than losing 24 h of fully healthy life)?

If we take the conservative 10 minutes per 24 hours that I would accept, that would make me 600 times less pain sensitive than you are. So if I take the very same line of thinking that led you to believe there is a 50% chance of them having a net positive life, I would probably conclude there is a 99% chance of them having net positive lives.

If I were 600 times as sensitive to pain as you, I guess I would also be 600 times as sensitive to pleasure. So my guess for the probability that wild invertebrates have positive/negative would arguably not change.

I am again advocating for other ethical frameworks like preference utilitarianism: They clearly show a preference to live so giving them a home by habitat preservation or rewilding is good while killing them is bad.

Could euthanising pets be good for them, even if it goes against their preferences?