Hi Stijn,

What makes you think the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails is practically 0? What is your best guess for the welfare range of soil nematodes and silkworms? My estimate for the welfare range of soil nematodes of 6.68*10^-6 is 0.334 % of RP's mainline welfare range of silkworms of 0.002.

I think people who completed ARP (like me) will do better in Rethink Priorities's (RP's), and maybe Wild Animal Initiative's (WAI's) selection processes than random applicants. However, I believe RP's and WAI's research is sufficiently different^[1] for the very best candidates to differ. Candidates who completed ARP could skip the initial stages, but this would not decrease the overall assessment cost much considering they would be a small fraction of the initial applicants, and the usefulness of having everyone complete the initial stages for greater comparability of the performance of candidates.

1. ^{^}

   In particular, significantly deeper. AIM's research team only has 3 people, Filip, Morgan, and Vicky. WAI's research is also academic, unlike AIM's, and the majority of RP's research.

Thanks, Laura.

I encourage you to disclaim in the post with RP's mainline welfare ranges that Bob does not think the methodology used to produce them is applicable to silkworms. In practice, what does this mean? Would it be reasonable to neglect beings to which your methodology is not supposed to apply? Why is the methodology applicable to black soldier flies (BSFs), but not silkworms? I understand a methodology can be more or less applicable, but I still do not understand which concrete criteria you are using. I also think the applicability of the methodology should ideally be taken into account in the estimates such that these are more comparable.

I suggest people account for the lower applicability of your methodology to less complex organisms by using welfare ranges equal to the geometric mean between RP's mainline welfare ranges, and the number of neurons as a fraction of that of humans. Does this seem reasonable?

I am not certain that neurons are required for an organism to have a non-constant welfare, so I think organisms without neurons have welfare ranges above 0. I guess you mean that organisms without neurons have a welfare range of roughly 0, but exactly how close to 0 matters. As I say in the post, "Rounding to 0 a probability of sentience, or welfare per animal-year close to 0 introduces an infinite amount of scope insensitivity. Regardless of the number of beings affected, the change in their welfare will be estimated to be exactly 0".

Could you elaborate on why you seem to believe the probability of sentience of nematodes is Pascalianly low, and therefore arguably much lower than RP's mainline estimate of 6.8 %? I feel like one can reasonably argue from this that the probability of sentience of silkworms is also Pascalianly low, and therefore not worry about improving the conditions of BSFs and mealworms, which RP estimates will be 417 billion in 2033.

Feel free to follow up later if you are finding this discussion draining, and not productive. I think it would be good for RP to write a post clarifying the extent to which the methodology used to produce RP's mainline welfare ranges apply to the animals covered and not covered, and why.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Laura!

Could you clarify why your methodology is supposed to apply to silkworms, but not nematodes? I agree nematodes have a less complex brain and nervous system, but silkworms are also less complex than other animals, so I do not understand how you are deciding when your methodology is supposed to be applicable. Did you preregister the animals to which you thought your methods should apply to?

My understanding is that estimating RP's mainline welfare ranges involved tens of judgement calls similar to the one you made to get the probability of sentience of nematodes. My broader point is that I do not know what majorly distinguishes nematodes from silkworms for you to think only the latter are reasonably covered by your methodology.

I had understood the estimates in the sheet which is no longer public were preliminary. However, it is still the case that the welfare range conditional on sentience under the pleasure-and-pain-centric model is proportional to the sum of the probabilities of the respective proxies being present? If so, for RP's probability of sentience of nematodes of 6.8 %, a single behavioural proxy likely to be absent results in a welfare range of nematodes conditional on the rate of subjective experience of humans of at least 2.31*10^-4 (= 0.068*0.00339), which both me and Nick consider high.

The conversion from qualitative probabilistic descriptions to probabilities adds uncertainty, but I do not think it the driver of disagreement. In my mind, and I guess Nick's, the major issue is that the effect of the presence of behaviours on the welfare range is not moderated by neural complexity. RP's mainline welfare ranges consider "one-ninth weight to the possibility that an organism’s welfare range [conditional on sentience, and the rate of subjective experience of humans] is equal to the number of neurons it possesses relative to humans". So an organism having 0 neurons only decreases its welfare range conditional on sentience, and the rate of subjective experience of humans by 1/9. I understand having no neurons at all would also lead to a lower probability of sentience, but I think it should directly imply a much larger decrease in the welfare range conditional on sentience.

What is your best guess for the probability of sentience of nematodes? It could be lower than 6.8 %, but still very far from Pascalianly low. I think reasonable approaches to deal with meta-normative uncertainty (about how to aggregate the recommendations of different moral theories) should not dismiss a 6.8 % or slightly lower chance of causing huge amounts of suffering.

In the book, "10 percent [weight is assined] to the equality model", under which the welfare range conditional on sentience is 1. So the final welfare ranges conditional on sentience are at least 0.1 (= 0.1*1). Do you endorse the estimates presented in Table 8.6 of the book over RP's mainline welfare ranges?

No worries! I read it as a neutral transition.

Thinking more about it, I would say open hiring rounds are the best option for over 90 % of roles. Closed rounds make the most sense when the hiring managers can reach to many candidates who have already succeeded in a very similar role. For example, people who did well in Ambitious Impact's (AIM) research program (ARP) would be a good fit for reseach roles at AIM, and a rigorous selection process for these roles would be very similar to ARP's selection process.

Sorry. I have removed " as you suggest" from my past comment. In any case, I think a greater feasibility of killing all life means there are more options available to increase welfare, such that is it increasingly unlikely that killing all life is the best one.

I think my position is super robust to future developments. Feel free to suggest bets. Given my empirical beliefs, I just do not see how the most cost-effective interventions can include "supervillain type stuff". For example, conditional on me having a 50 % chance of killing all life, I would be super powerful, and therefore have way better options available to increase welfare (even if I thought life was negative).

I would recommend killing everyone if this was implied by ETHU. I am less confident about killing everyone being bad than that negative conscious experiences are bad, and that positive conscious experiences are good.

You are welcome!

People who currently do not have a job can still use the framework I described with a lower value of their time, which results in a lower cost of applying, and therefore makes applying more often worth it.

I think it is possible to get a sense of the probabilities. If one expects a hiring round to have 100 applicants, and has no more information, a good best guess is that there is a 1 % chance of getting an offer. If one has applied 10 times to similar jobs, but only progressed to the last stage once, and there were 5 people in the last stage, a good best guess is that there is a 10 % chance (= 1/10) of progressing until the last stage, and 20 % (= 1/5) chance of getting an offer conditional on completing the last stage, such that the probability of getting an offer conditiponal on completing the 1st stage is 2 % (= 0.1*0.2).

I think closed hiring rounds make sense in some cases, but that open hiring rounds are the best option for most cases. I do not have formed views about which organisations should be running closed hiring rounds more often. I personally like open hiring rounds because they give me the chance to decide whether applying is worth it or not based on my sense of the expected benefit and cost.

Thanks for the comment, Rick. I care about the effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails, but I simply recommend decreasing the uncertainty about the welfare of these, and donating to GiveWell's funds.

Thanks for the comment, Bob!

I agree transparency is not the only good. However, I think there is a high bar for not commenting on effects which in expectation seem way larger than the effects being covered.

I am not sure what you mean by "naive expected utility maximisation". I agree my analyses of the effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails have lots of room for improvement, but at least I am trying to consider these effects instead of assuming they do not change prioritisation even if they look much larger in expectation than the effects on the target beneficiaries.

I fully endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU), but I think this is far from required for effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails to matter a lot. These are much larger than the effects on the target beneficiaries under RP's mainline welfare ranges, so they would still be driver of the overall effect even putting just 10 % weight on ETHU.

What is so different between RP's probabilities of sentience of nematodes and silkworms of 6.8 % and 8.2 %? RP seems quite worried about farming black soldier fly larvae and mealworms, which I guess are roughly as likely to be sentient as silkworms, and therefore only 1.20 (= 0.082/0.068) times as likely to be sentient as nematodes by RP's own lights. Why is the methodoly used to obtain RP's mainline welfare ranges supposed to apply to many invertebrates, but not necessarily to nematodes, mites, and springtails?

I think the following point from @NickLaing is spot on. With the methodology used to obtain RP's mainline welfare ranges, "if a creature have any pain averse behavior (like just withdrawing from anything), it is guaranteed a highish welfare range". A single behavioural proxy likely to be absent, meaning 12.5 % (= (0 + 0.25)/2) likely to be present, implies a welfare range conditional on sentience, and the rate of subjective experience of humans under the pleasure-and-pain-centric model of at least 0.00339 (= 0.125/37) regardless of the simplicity of the organism (including bacteria).

I noted the sheet I just linked above is no longer public. I encourage you to make it public again such that people can examine the assumptions underlying RP's mainline welfare ranges.

You say "0.00027 isn’t a particularly high welfare range [of nematodes]", but it is 41.7 (= 2.7*10^-4/(6.47*10^-6)) times my estimate, and this already implies the expected effects on soil nematodes are way larger in expectation that those on the target beneficiaries.

Thanks for all your work on comparing welfare across species. I have found it super valuable!