I completely agree that individual lifestyle change shouldn’t be a barrier to entry for the movement. We need a broad message so we don't trap people in an "all or nothing" binary where they feel forced to choose "nothing" just because they aren't ready for "all" right away. However, I believe veganism must remain a (not imposed but) actively encouraged goal for several key reasons:
1-) The most overlooked power of the vegan position, in my opinion, is its ability to shift the Overton Window. We expand the boundaries of what society considers acceptable and this normalizes concepts that once seemed radical. When we water down our message to avoid causing discomfort, however, we effectively keep the conversation anchored to the status quo.
2-) I believe, we sometimes underestimate the moral agency of those around us. While this might vary outside our specific circles, my experience facilitating fellowships (where I’ve run small experiments in how I communicate) has led me to think that by being 'too quiet,' I might actually be holding people back. I assume they aren't ready, but in reality, many are waiting for a social nudge. They are looking for someone to show them that this change is necessary, possible, and much easier than it seems. By failing to open that door, we miss an opportunity to help them transition.
3-) Research from the Welfare Footprint Institute reveals that the scale of agony in industrial farming is even worse than we assume. Animals endure thousands of hours of "severe" and "disabling" pain. These are beings that belong in our moral circle. So, when we are in a comfortable setting with a high-quality vegan alternative right in front of us, choosing the option that causes immense suffering suggests we haven't yet fully grasped the moral weight of the issue. I believe we should be communicating the gravity of the situation effectively enough to influence people's behavior in such situations, at least.
TL;DR: I believe we should avoid gatekeeping the movement but we must normalize the idea that an animal’s life is worth more than our discomfort, especially within our communities, where people might be more open to change than we assume.
I believe the reason people find the idea of non-existence so tragic is that they fundamentally confuse it with a vacuum.
In physics, a vacuum is still a "something." It has a metric, a coordinate system, and energy fields. It is a physical state. But non-existence isn’t a "state" you fall into; it is the total deletion of all states. (This conceptual confusion is so deeply rooted that it has persisted throughout the history of physics. Even the greatest thinkers often struggled to distinguish between the presence of 'empty space' and the absolute absence of 'being'.)
We fail to grasp this distinction because we cannot imagine a "total shutdown" without projecting a background stage(like darkness or silence)to hold it. The trick our mind plays on us is the Phantom Observer effect. When we try to imagine non-existence, we are secretly picturing ourselves standing in the void, looking at a blank space and feeling sad. But in the case of non-existence, the observer is deleted too.
Therefore, saying, "But think of all the music, the sunsets, and the joy we’d lose!" is circular reasoning. We only value those things because we are already here and biologically wired to "thirst" for them. In the case of non-existence, that thirst vanishes along with the water. No one is left behind to feel "deprived." You cannot have a loss without a loser to experience it.
Exactly, it follows a very similar logic, but when it comes to population control, an infertility gene is what's generally used.
Gene drives rely on CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which acts as a tool to ensure nearly 100% of offspring inherit the new trait.
In our case;
1- A female infertility gene is inserted into the eggs of the target species.
2- Once these insects are released into the wild, they mate with wild ones, and the CRISPR system cuts the normal gene from the wild parent & replaces it with the infertility gene.
3- This way, the males remain fertile and act as carriers to spread the trait through the population; however, because the females carrying this code become unable to lay eggs, the population quietly and naturally declines over time.
You did not answer this? If it helps, you could imagine that it was a real situation, and that by default ii) all people on Earth would have one hand under water at 53 ºC with certainty for 59.9 s, but that you could prevent this, and instead have i) just one person have their hand under water at 53 ºC with probablity 10^-100 for 60.1 s. It seems obvious to me i) is way better. However, if you think level 5 pain is infinitely worse than level 4 pain, you would pick ii).
Still thinking about it.
I do not know whether literal dust specks would be sufficiently bad to make my welfare negative. However, I would prefer 10 min of extreme unbearable hell over an infinite time with slighly negative welfare.
Okay, let’s change it then. What would be bad enough, a mild headache? Let’s go with that. Would you prefer infinite lifetimes with a mild headache for 10 minutes, or just one lifetime of 10 min extreme unbearable hell? The disutility of the former is infinitely greater than that of the latter. Actually, even if you replace those 10 minutes with 10^10000000000 years of uninterrupted extreme torture, the disutility of the former is still infinitely greater. Which one would you choose in that case?
Or lets'say you have to choose between these two worlds:
World A: a Rayo's number of people experience extreme suffering but also an infinite number of people live barely above neutral (defined as 1/Rayo's number above neutral) World B: a world where a Rayo's number of people experience extreme hedonia without any suffering whatsoever.
The utility of the former is infinitely greater than that of the latter. Which one would you go for?
People would not distinguish between 53 ºC for 60.1 s (maximum pain level of 5), and 53 ºC for 59.9 s (maximum pain level of 4).
If the pain is imperceptible, how can we call it 'MORE' pain? Pain is a subjective experience; if the subject cannot feel the difference, then in what sense is it more?
What do you mean by "qualitative leap"? A large, but finite increase in pain intensity for a small increase in temperature or duration?
If there is a qualitative leap, it means there is a fundamental difference in the experience. Different brain circuits are fired; the brain classifies the situation with a different prioritization.
With a little annoyance, you might be so tired that you don't even bother to scratch your nose to get rid of it. With manageable pain, you can still enjoy other things, like enjoying music even with a headache. If the pain is dominant, you are truly occupied by it, but you wouldn't want to kill yourself. But with invasive pain, you would give everything, even your life, just to make it stop.
This isn't just a higher magnitude of the 'I'm too tired to scratch my nose' response. It is completely something else. In none of these examples is it a case of the same neurons simply firing more; completely different circuits are fired in entirely different ways.
If so, it would still be the case that a sufficiently long time in pain of level i would be worse than any given time in pain of level i + 1, as argued in Bentham's Bulldog's post.
In that case, it becomes a qualitatively different experience.
Would you prever averting i) 53 ºC for 60.1 s (maximum pain level of 5) for 1 person with probability 10^-100 over ii) 53 ºC for 59.9 s (maximum pain level of 4) for the 8 billion people on Earth with certainty?
Pain perception doesn’t work like a slider. We are not thermometers :)) Think about your experiences, do you experience pain like, "Yeah it became 2 iotas higher, yeah now it became 6 iotas higher"? No… It is distinct different codes to inform different responses.
You feel it like: "Hmm it’s a bit annoying, but anyway." "Hmm it's bad, it would be good to get rid of this." "Oh it is serious, I REALLY WANT TO stop this." "Oh it’s absolute hell, I can’t think of anything else than stopping this exactly this moment."
I would prefer infinite people to experience the "Hmm it’s a bit annoying" response rather than one person to feel "Oh it’s absolute hell." There are different considerations when making real-world decisions, but in a vacuum, I would even prefer the "Oh it’s serious" response infinite times than the "Oh it’s absolute hell, I can’t think of anything else" response. (As I would choose infinite reincarnations with a broken leg for 3 months rather than one reincarnation of 30 min of being eaten alive).
Between 10x absolute hell and 11x absolute hell, I would choose the second because it’s comparing apples to apples, but otherwise, it’s comparing oranges to apples. If the difference is imperceptible, it is still an apple or an orange. Actually, in my model, level 5 is unnecessary as it is evolutionarily the same response as level 4, so I’ll probably remove it from my updated model.
If reincarnation were real, would you prefer infinite lifetimes with dust specks irritating you for 10 minutes, or just one lifetime of 10 min extreme unbearable hell? The former is infinity times larger than the second.
Speaking of insects, to save the inconceivable number of them that will exist in the future, we know that insect farming is a crucial area to address right now. Though I also believe we currently aren't treating this with the urgency it deserves.
What makes it so difficult to escape industrial animal farming today is its deeply established system, with billion-dollar lobbying power and a massive level of optimization. Therefore, it is vital to act before this industry scales and becomes entrenched. (I also suspect that securing welfare gains in this sector will be even more challenging, 1.) as insects naturally evoke less empathy, 2.) we still know very little about their specific needs, 3.) and the sheer cost-effectiveness of rearing them provides little economic incentive for welfare improvements.)
In this context, what do you think about the potential of insect cell culture? Have you come across any discussion on this? From a technical standpoint, insect cell culture is significantly easier to develop than that of other animals (as insect cells can thrive at lower temperatures without CO2 regulation, possess a much higher resilience to mechanical shear stress, and are more adaptable to low-cost, serum-free media). Furthermore, since the final 'product' is often used in powder form, there is no need for the complicated tissue engineering processes required to create complex textures. I’m curious whether you think working on this could be a cost-effective intervention.
I haven’t researched this extensively, but wouldn’t methods like gene drives be a better option for insects than humane insecticides? If insects lead net-negative lives, gene drives would protect them from harms beyond just the moment of death by reducing population sizes at the source. Furthermore, we don't currently know how "humane" even the best humane insecticides truly are, and their development process could be costly and difficult. In contrast, gene drive technology already exists; it primarily needs to be adapted for broader industrial use.
Also, this shift could lead to a powerful intersection of interests and provide more incentives for scaling. The public would likely opt for pesticide-free food for health reasons, producers would be eager to eliminate the recurring costs of purchasing and applying chemical agents. (I’m speculating here though, as I don’t know exactly how costly the gene drive method would be, but its self-sustaining nature makes me think that, at some point, it could become more preferable than the perpetual expense of chemicals.) and environmentalists would likely be interested to prevent the pollution of soil and water. So, we could frame this method in a way that would garner large-scale support even from groups that do not prioritize insect welfare.
It is honestly striking that caring about such a massive scale of suffering is often seen as 'weird.' As I began researching the topic, I was particularly surprised to discover that even within the EA community, this remains a largely overlooked area.
It at least doesn’t seem obvious to me that when insects are writhing around in agony, behaving like you or I would if we were in intense pain, they’re experiencing something on the level of a stubbed toe.
Actually, I also previously found myself leaning toward the idea that certain species might not have 'invested' in deep subjective experiences, primarily due to their shorter lifespans and r-selection reproductive strategies. Because of this, I also didn't prioritize them as much (despite their staggering numbers) assuming their experiences lacked the depth of more biologically complex animals.
However, after more thought and research, I’ve realized that lifespan or reproductive speed isn't a solid foundation for judging the intensity of an experience. A pivotal argument in the post Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species resonates strongly here: “…subjective experiences that were so faint as to be almost imperceptible would appear to do a poor job motivating behavior."
This perspective is far more compelling. If the stimulus is vital, the experience must be intense enough to drive action, regardless of how long that organism is expected to live. The intensity of pain is fundamentally linked to its ability to hijack an organism's attention in life-threatening situations and the 'decibel level' of the signal must be sufficiently high to ensure survival. This makes me think that their 'now' can be as urgent and undeniable as our own in similar situations.
Furthermore, as you mentioned in the post, the mounting empirical evidence regarding states like behavioral despair or pessimistic decision-making after stress also suggests a profoundly valenced internal world.
This realization has significantly shifted how I view the urgency and priority of their welfare. Also, I feel a heightened sense of moral responsibility toward the species that face the most prejudice. When our empathy fails to reach a certain group due to bias, it becomes an even greater ethical duty to advocate for them and ensure their suffering is not ignored.
I completely agree that individual lifestyle change shouldn’t be a barrier to entry for the movement. We need a broad message so we don't trap people in an "all or nothing" binary where they feel forced to choose "nothing" just because they aren't ready for "all" right away. However, I believe veganism must remain a (not imposed but) actively encouraged goal for several key reasons:
1-) The most overlooked power of the vegan position, in my opinion, is its ability to shift the Overton Window. We expand the boundaries of what society considers acceptable and this normalizes concepts that once seemed radical. When we water down our message to avoid causing discomfort, however, we effectively keep the conversation anchored to the status quo.
2-) I believe, we sometimes underestimate the moral agency of those around us. While this might vary outside our specific circles, my experience facilitating fellowships (where I’ve run small experiments in how I communicate) has led me to think that by being 'too quiet,' I might actually be holding people back. I assume they aren't ready, but in reality, many are waiting for a social nudge. They are looking for someone to show them that this change is necessary, possible, and much easier than it seems. By failing to open that door, we miss an opportunity to help them transition.
3-) Research from the Welfare Footprint Institute reveals that the scale of agony in industrial farming is even worse than we assume. Animals endure thousands of hours of "severe" and "disabling" pain. These are beings that belong in our moral circle. So, when we are in a comfortable setting with a high-quality vegan alternative right in front of us, choosing the option that causes immense suffering suggests we haven't yet fully grasped the moral weight of the issue. I believe we should be communicating the gravity of the situation effectively enough to influence people's behavior in such situations, at least.
TL;DR: I believe we should avoid gatekeeping the movement but we must normalize the idea that an animal’s life is worth more than our discomfort, especially within our communities, where people might be more open to change than we assume.
I believe the reason people find the idea of non-existence so tragic is that they fundamentally confuse it with a vacuum.
In physics, a vacuum is still a "something." It has a metric, a coordinate system, and energy fields. It is a physical state. But non-existence isn’t a "state" you fall into; it is the total deletion of all states. (This conceptual confusion is so deeply rooted that it has persisted throughout the history of physics. Even the greatest thinkers often struggled to distinguish between the presence of 'empty space' and the absolute absence of 'being'.)
We fail to grasp this distinction because we cannot imagine a "total shutdown" without projecting a background stage(like darkness or silence)to hold it. The trick our mind plays on us is the Phantom Observer effect. When we try to imagine non-existence, we are secretly picturing ourselves standing in the void, looking at a blank space and feeling sad. But in the case of non-existence, the observer is deleted too.
Therefore, saying, "But think of all the music, the sunsets, and the joy we’d lose!" is circular reasoning. We only value those things because we are already here and biologically wired to "thirst" for them. In the case of non-existence, that thirst vanishes along with the water. No one is left behind to feel "deprived." You cannot have a loss without a loser to experience it.
You can also check out 48:38 for more on this: Quantifying animal suffering and the impact of welfare interventions | Cynthia Schuck| EAG Boston 23
Exactly, it follows a very similar logic, but when it comes to population control, an infertility gene is what's generally used.
Gene drives rely on CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which acts as a tool to ensure nearly 100% of offspring inherit the new trait.
In our case;
1- A female infertility gene is inserted into the eggs of the target species.
2- Once these insects are released into the wild, they mate with wild ones, and the CRISPR system cuts the normal gene from the wild parent & replaces it with the infertility gene.
3- This way, the males remain fertile and act as carriers to spread the trait through the population; however, because the females carrying this code become unable to lay eggs, the population quietly and naturally declines over time.
I feel so seen by this post... I needed this. Thanks.
Still thinking about it.
Okay, let’s change it then. What would be bad enough, a mild headache? Let’s go with that. Would you prefer infinite lifetimes with a mild headache for 10 minutes, or just one lifetime of 10 min extreme unbearable hell? The disutility of the former is infinitely greater than that of the latter. Actually, even if you replace those 10 minutes with 10^10000000000 years of uninterrupted extreme torture, the disutility of the former is still infinitely greater. Which one would you choose in that case?
Or lets'say you have to choose between these two worlds:
World A: a Rayo's number of people experience extreme suffering but also an infinite number of people live barely above neutral (defined as 1/Rayo's number above neutral)
World B: a world where a Rayo's number of people experience extreme hedonia without any suffering whatsoever.
The utility of the former is infinitely greater than that of the latter. Which one would you go for?
If the pain is imperceptible, how can we call it 'MORE' pain? Pain is a subjective experience; if the subject cannot feel the difference, then in what sense is it more?
If there is a qualitative leap, it means there is a fundamental difference in the experience. Different brain circuits are fired; the brain classifies the situation with a different prioritization.
With a little annoyance, you might be so tired that you don't even bother to scratch your nose to get rid of it. With manageable pain, you can still enjoy other things, like enjoying music even with a headache. If the pain is dominant, you are truly occupied by it, but you wouldn't want to kill yourself. But with invasive pain, you would give everything, even your life, just to make it stop.
This isn't just a higher magnitude of the 'I'm too tired to scratch my nose' response. It is completely something else. In none of these examples is it a case of the same neurons simply firing more; completely different circuits are fired in entirely different ways.
In that case, it becomes a qualitatively different experience.
Pain perception doesn’t work like a slider. We are not thermometers :)) Think about your experiences, do you experience pain like, "Yeah it became 2 iotas higher, yeah now it became 6 iotas higher"? No… It is distinct different codes to inform different responses.
You feel it like: "Hmm it’s a bit annoying, but anyway." "Hmm it's bad, it would be good to get rid of this." "Oh it is serious, I REALLY WANT TO stop this." "Oh it’s absolute hell, I can’t think of anything else than stopping this exactly this moment."
I would prefer infinite people to experience the "Hmm it’s a bit annoying" response rather than one person to feel "Oh it’s absolute hell." There are different considerations when making real-world decisions, but in a vacuum, I would even prefer the "Oh it’s serious" response infinite times than the "Oh it’s absolute hell, I can’t think of anything else" response. (As I would choose infinite reincarnations with a broken leg for 3 months rather than one reincarnation of 30 min of being eaten alive).
Between 10x absolute hell and 11x absolute hell, I would choose the second because it’s comparing apples to apples, but otherwise, it’s comparing oranges to apples. If the difference is imperceptible, it is still an apple or an orange. Actually, in my model, level 5 is unnecessary as it is evolutionarily the same response as level 4, so I’ll probably remove it from my updated model.
If reincarnation were real, would you prefer infinite lifetimes with dust specks irritating you for 10 minutes, or just one lifetime of 10 min extreme unbearable hell? The former is infinity times larger than the second.
Speaking of insects, to save the inconceivable number of them that will exist in the future, we know that insect farming is a crucial area to address right now. Though I also believe we currently aren't treating this with the urgency it deserves.
What makes it so difficult to escape industrial animal farming today is its deeply established system, with billion-dollar lobbying power and a massive level of optimization. Therefore, it is vital to act before this industry scales and becomes entrenched. (I also suspect that securing welfare gains in this sector will be even more challenging, 1.) as insects naturally evoke less empathy, 2.) we still know very little about their specific needs, 3.) and the sheer cost-effectiveness of rearing them provides little economic incentive for welfare improvements.)
In this context, what do you think about the potential of insect cell culture? Have you come across any discussion on this? From a technical standpoint, insect cell culture is significantly easier to develop than that of other animals (as insect cells can thrive at lower temperatures without CO2 regulation, possess a much higher resilience to mechanical shear stress, and are more adaptable to low-cost, serum-free media). Furthermore, since the final 'product' is often used in powder form, there is no need for the complicated tissue engineering processes required to create complex textures. I’m curious whether you think working on this could be a cost-effective intervention.
I haven’t researched this extensively, but wouldn’t methods like gene drives be a better option for insects than humane insecticides? If insects lead net-negative lives, gene drives would protect them from harms beyond just the moment of death by reducing population sizes at the source. Furthermore, we don't currently know how "humane" even the best humane insecticides truly are, and their development process could be costly and difficult. In contrast, gene drive technology already exists; it primarily needs to be adapted for broader industrial use.
Also, this shift could lead to a powerful intersection of interests and provide more incentives for scaling. The public would likely opt for pesticide-free food for health reasons, producers would be eager to eliminate the recurring costs of purchasing and applying chemical agents. (I’m speculating here though, as I don’t know exactly how costly the gene drive method would be, but its self-sustaining nature makes me think that, at some point, it could become more preferable than the perpetual expense of chemicals.) and environmentalists would likely be interested to prevent the pollution of soil and water. So, we could frame this method in a way that would garner large-scale support even from groups that do not prioritize insect welfare.
It is honestly striking that caring about such a massive scale of suffering is often seen as 'weird.' As I began researching the topic, I was particularly surprised to discover that even within the EA community, this remains a largely overlooked area.
Actually, I also previously found myself leaning toward the idea that certain species might not have 'invested' in deep subjective experiences, primarily due to their shorter lifespans and r-selection reproductive strategies. Because of this, I also didn't prioritize them as much (despite their staggering numbers) assuming their experiences lacked the depth of more biologically complex animals.
However, after more thought and research, I’ve realized that lifespan or reproductive speed isn't a solid foundation for judging the intensity of an experience. A pivotal argument in the post Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species resonates strongly here: “…subjective experiences that were so faint as to be almost imperceptible would appear to do a poor job motivating behavior."
This perspective is far more compelling. If the stimulus is vital, the experience must be intense enough to drive action, regardless of how long that organism is expected to live. The intensity of pain is fundamentally linked to its ability to hijack an organism's attention in life-threatening situations and the 'decibel level' of the signal must be sufficiently high to ensure survival. This makes me think that their 'now' can be as urgent and undeniable as our own in similar situations.
Furthermore, as you mentioned in the post, the mounting empirical evidence regarding states like behavioral despair or pessimistic decision-making after stress also suggests a profoundly valenced internal world.
This realization has significantly shifted how I view the urgency and priority of their welfare. Also, I feel a heightened sense of moral responsibility toward the species that face the most prejudice. When our empathy fails to reach a certain group due to bias, it becomes an even greater ethical duty to advocate for them and ensure their suffering is not ignored.