Actually mostly trying not to think about this as much as possible for the next 2 months so if there was a bet it would be saying sure I bet $100 and I trust you to work out a fair answer without needing me and let me know in 2 months.

I see. 100 $ does not feel enough to set up a bet. @vicky_cox and @Vince Mak 🔸, you are welcome to reach out to me if you know about people at AIM, ACE, or elsewhere using SADs who may be interested in a similar bet, and willing to bet at least 300 $.

weeatquince, best wishes for your future projects.

Similarly words like "torture" have more weight than words like "9.5 out of 10 on the pain scale".

I think surveys assessing WFI's pain intensities should rely on their definitions, and give concrete examples of pain, like Cynthia's "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" for the case of excruciating pain. I would say asking people to compare "2/10 pain" with "9/10 pain" tells us very little about WFI's pain intensities unless there is separate evidence about what people are imagining for each number on the that scale, and that results are comparable across people. Having WFI's definitions, and concrete examples would decrease ambiguity a lot.

I disagree.

Very interesting. You trust your research more than I expected. Would you be willing to bet on something related to our disagreement? I would. Here is a proposal:

• If more than 2/3 of people prefer 10 h of hurtful pain over 12 min of excruciating pain, you give me 10 k$.
• Otherwise, I give you 10 k$.

@David_Moss, do you have a sense of how much RP would need to run a survey about WFI's pain intensities which could shed light on the above? If just a few k$, it may make sense for me and weeatquince to fund it considering the expected value of the bet alone.

I am also open to less rigorous resolution criteria. For example, sharing a survey vetted by WFI on the EA Forum asking about whether people prefer 10 h of hurtful pain over 12 min of excruciating pain.

Hi Matthias. Thanks for linking to the World Inequality Database (WID). I had never checked it out, and it has very interesting data.

Hi Guillaume. I would be curious to know your thoughts on the post The shrimp bet: When big numbers outsprint the evidence.

The updated 2026 ratio based on more extensive research is 50x.

This implies 10 h of "awareness of Pain is likely to be present most of the time" (hurtful pain) is as bad as 12 min (= 10/50*60) of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" (excruciating pain). In contrast, I think practically everyone would prefer 10 h of hurtful pain over 12 min of excruciating pain under WFI's definitions. Do you disagree?

I have adapted the 2026 SAD model to give outputs at the four different pain levels, as well as a single aggregated number. This should help users of the model make their own informed decisions and not just focus on the one number.

Great addition!

Where I disagree is where you say we basically have no idea how to compare different levels of pain, and your suggestion that we should not be doing so

I was not super clear. I said "The takeaway for me is that we have basically no idea about which pain intensities to use when they differ so much". I meant "basically no idea about which results to trust when they differ so much". I feel like I have a better sense about which pain intensities to use based on my own time trade-offs, and the behaviours of others than suggested by the difference of a factor of 8.90 k between the 2 sets of pain intensities aggregated by AIM in 2025.

Being as explicit as we can about our numbers and our thinking helps us make those decisions better (as long as we don't overly rely on a single number).

I very much agree. It is just worth keeping in mind that improving the estimates is often more cost-effective than using them from the point of view of improving future decisions.

We do have some data and we should use it to inform our decisions and our numbers.

I agree with using all the available evidence in principle. However, I personally put so little weight on evidence suggesting the trade-off between hurtful and excruciating pain I mentioned above that I can neglect it in practice.

Less important but: I also disagree on your suggestion not to trust the standard academic approach of asking about / people's responses on "worse pain imaginable". Maybe sometimes people overestimate how bad that is sometimes underestimate it. You seem to be claiming these [37] women (or the whole public) are en mass systematically underestimating. That is a strong claim and not one I would put much weight on without good evidence.

I am not confident the women (or the whole public) are underestimating the "worst pain imaginable". I said "I guess their "10/10 pain" was disabling as defined by WFI", but I can see it being excruciating. At the same time, "I [still] doubt the women in the study would be indifferent between 2 h of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" and 18 h of a "1/10 pain".

Thanks for sharing, Elijah! It was a fun and interesting chat.

I have added tags to the post.

Thanks for the reply.

Firstly, it should be noted that the overall ratio used for the 2025 SADs was 1000x not 7x.

Right. There was a weight of 45 % on a ratio of 7.06, and of 55 % on one of 62.8 k (= 3.44*10^6/54.8), 8.90 k (= 62.8*10^3/7.06) times as much. My explanation for the large difference is that very little can be inferred about the intensity of excruciating pain, as defined by the Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI), from the academic studies AIM analysed to derive the pain intensities linked to the lower ratio.

Just as an example this study on 37 women who have just gone through labour, roughly one third of them would prefer a 9/10 pain for 2 hours than a 1/10 pain for 18 hours!

The study is not relevant for assessing excruciating pain? Excruciating pain is "not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds". Here is the clarification of what this means from Cynthia Schuck, WFI's scientific director.

By not tolerated we mean that Excruciating pain can't be sustained for long (e.g., hours, as opposed to minutes) without neurological shutdown. It will tend to overrides an organism's ability to function or respond coherently, with even powerful opioids providing minimal relief, or desperate attempts to escape pain even at the risk of death . Examples would include severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture.

I doubt the women in the study would be indifferent between 2 h of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" and 18 h of a "1/10 pain". I believe excruciating pain is way more intense than their "9/10 pain" assuming they are indifferent between 2 h of "9/10 pain" and 18 h of "1/10 pain".

From the study, "In the questionnaire, the intensity of pain was evaluated using an NRS 0–10, with 0=no pain and 10=worst pain imaginable". However, this does not imply the women's "10/10 pain" was excruciating. I guess their "10/10 pain" was disabling as defined by WFI.

Finally, I defend putting at least some weight on counter-intuitive results of academic research. I especially defend this in the case where you are analysing and pooling the results of many papers and expect some results to be bias upwards and some results to be bias downwards. The new SAD spreadsheet links to 15 different studies / pieces of evidence on this topic. Of those 15 some of which show counterintuitively low and some counterintuitively high relative preferences for different levels of pain.

I think point estimates like AIM's SADs derived from aggregating such different results have very little robustness. The takeaway for me is that we have basically no idea about which results to trust when they differ so much. I believe this calls for a more robust estimation method and input research, not for aggregating more widely different results, although I still expect large uncertainty will remain (just not so large).

@vicky_cox, has AIM has considered commissioning surveys asking random people, people who regularly experience disabling pain, and people who have experienced excruciating pain about how they trade-off WFI's pain and pleasure categories. I believe Rethink Priorities' (RP's) surveys and data analysis team would be a good fit to run such surveys. @Vince Mak 🔸, has ACE considered commissioning such surveys?

Thanks, Wladimir. That makes sense. I look forward to your future work on this. Let me know if funding ever becomes bottleneck, in which case I may want to help with a few k$.

Here is the crosspost on the EA Forum. Rob preferred I shared it myself.

The critical question is whether shrimp or insects can support the kinds of negative states that make suffering severe, rather than merely possible.

I think suffering matters proportionally to its intensity. So I would not neglect mild suffering in principle, although it may not matter much in practice due to contributing little to total expected suffering.

In any case, I would agree the total expected welfare of farmed invertebrates may be tiny compared with that of humans due invertebrates' experiences having a very low intensity. For expected individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" from 0.5 to 1.5, which I believe covers reasonable best guesses, I estimate that the expected total welfare of farmed shrimps ranges from -0.282 to -2.82*10^-7 times that of humans, and that of farmed black soldier fly (BSF) larvae and mealworms from -4.80*10^-4 to -6.23*10^-11 times that of humans. In addition, I calculate the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) has increased the welfare of shrimps 0.00167 (= 2.06*10^5/0.0123) to 1.67 k (= 20.6/0.0123) times as cost-effectively as GiveWell's top charities increase the welfare of humans.