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Answer by Toby Tremlett🔹Dec 22, 20232

When we worry about human extinction, it isn't that we put a disvalue on extinction itself. Rather, human extinction is bad because there will be no future human-generated value (for example, no future human happiness, no future human flourishing etc...)

When we care about animal extinctions, it generally isn't for this reason. It is quite hard to say exactly why we care (Jeff McMahan [pg 277] points out that if we think extinction in itself is bad, then we should prefer a planet filled with the only first amoebas to one like ours).

If, as is the case for many EAs, the reason to care about any extinction is because it leads to less future value (let's say happiness for simplicity), each individual animal extinction is not obviously bad/ equally bad. For one, we don't know which animal species have happy lives. Also, if one animal goes extinct, in many cases this won't decrease the amount of animals in the ecosystem. In some cases it may increase it.

Not sure if that fully answers your question, or just complicates things. Thanks for asking though!

Lin BL

Dec 22 2023

Thank you for this answer. I am not sure I agree with this, for the reasons outlined below (in case useful information for you, I upvoted and disagree-voted this): Paragraph 1: Somewhat minor point, I think you may be drawing a distinction without a difference, i.e. extinction being bad because of the effects of it (no future human happiness, flourishing etc) is putting a disvalue on extinction, because it inherently causes those effects. In an animal context I would put this as: if an animal species has net positive lives, then extinction is inherently bad, and where there is uncertainty, an animal species should be assumed to have net positive lives. I do not have strong thoughts of how certain animal species trade off against each other (I would have to do further research), but my prior is that this is the direction of the sign even if by a small amount, in part because assuming the opposite by default could be used to justify negative things. I agree factory farmed animals likely have net negative lives, but I cannot see e.g. the species of chickens, i.e. any chicken ever, having a net negative life. Beyond that there is also the biodiversity loss and downstream effects of that (e.g. biodiversity loss being linked with increased risk of natural pandemics), and the fact that human's track record with interfering with nature is not great, but I will leave the argument as equivalent to how you phrased it initially. Paragraph 2: I summarised how I think of extinction of animals in the last paragraph. The quote "if we think extinction in itself is bad, then we should prefer a planet filled with the only first amoebas to one like ours" given the arguments surrounding it in your answer was one that surprised me. Regardless of whether that is true ('amoeba' did not come up when I did ctrl-f of the document linked, so I would have to read it in more detail to try to find the context), it does not seem very actionable. Given the current world we live in (i.e. a world

Toby Tremlett🔹

Dec 28 2023

Thanks for this detailed response! I think there are a few points where a response from me may be useful. 1. "extinction being bad because of the effects of it (no future human happiness, flourishing etc) is putting a disvalue on extinction, because it inherently causes those effects" I think this is just one of our cruxes- I think that extinction, like death, is not disvaluable in itself, but is generally linked to another disvalue. If we want to engage in trade-offs, make informed decisions etc... then we should look for the ultimate value/ dis-value, and not focus on something which almost always correlates. 2. "if an animal species has net positive lives, then extinction is inherently bad, and where there is uncertainty, an animal species should be assumed to have net positive lives" To me, it sounds as though you are treating extinction as contingently bad (in this case, bad because the animals of the species do or may have net positive lives). If you knew for sure that the animals had net negative lives, would you still think their extinction was bad? FWIW I'd agree that, for chesterton's fencey reasons, it is better not to cause animal extinctions. But we were discussing whether we should treat animal extinctions with the weight of an X-risk (i.e. a human extinction). For that, we need a little more than an assumption that the animal's lives are net positive. 3. Amoebas I think this may be a straightforward misunderstanding. In McMahan's paper, in the last paragraph on page 9 in the pdf or 276 in the book, he is making a quick argument against caring about extinction intrinsically. I do not think that people who are concerned with biodiversity and extinction value either intrinsically, and therefore was not suggesting that they should attempt to return us to amoeba-world. (plus, to be pernickety, someone who cared about extinction intrinsically wouldn't want to return us anywhere, they would just want to stop evolution where it was-- assuming avoi

Lin BLDec 29 20231

Hey, thanks also for the detailed response.

I don't think that part is our disagreement. Maybe the way I would phrase the question is whether there should be an additional multiplier put on extinction in addition to the expected future loss of wellbeing. If I was to model it, the answer would be 'no' to avoid double counting (i.e. the effect of extinction is the effect of future loss of wellbeing). The disagreement is how this is not by default assumed to apply to animals as well.
"If you knew for sure that the animals had net negative lives, would you

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[ Question ]

(Where) Does animal x-risk fit?

by Stephen Robcraft

Dec 21 20231 min read1 answer 4