Published.

This kind of sounds like you're thinking of pain as a sort of physical magnitude, like weight or charge.

I liked this chat I had with Gemini 3.1 Pro about the relationship between the intensity of subjective experiences, and the size of neuronal avalanches. You and @Bob Fischer may also find it interesting.

Hi Clara.

I don't care if TechnoBro 3000 celebrates his birthday in the asteroid belt with his 10^30 gold plated robot friends, but I do care if he can buy the elections of Democratistan.

You care about whether he can buy the elections intrinsically or instrumentally (in particular, because of its impact on the welfare of the people in Democratistan)? The latter is still very much compatible with rejecting egalitarianism and prioritarianism. Buying elections may decrease total welfare.

Hi Itsi. Thanks for the post.

I think it is difficult to assess AI x animals as a whole given its very broad scope. Likewise, it would have been difficult to evaluate "AI x steam engines", "AI x electricity", or "AI x internet".

I believe there are large differences in the cost-effectiveness of projects covered by AI x animals. So I find it more useful to discuss particular interventions. 

Hi Noah. The engagement time on the EA Forum has not presented a clear upwards or downwards trend over the past 2 years or so.

• If your private doc doesn't need to be private, don't make it private

I agree.

Thanks for the quick thoughts, Guillaume.

I would not base my estimates on their number of neurons (although it might be a good enough proxy for larger animals).

The graph below illustrates that "individual number of neurons"^0.188 explains pretty well the estimates for the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges presented in Bob's book. I also do not think the specific proxy matters that much. In allometry, "the study of the relationship of body size to shape,^[1] anatomy, physiology and behaviour", "The relationship between the two measured quantities is often expressed as a power law equation (allometric equation)". If the sentience-adjusted welfare range is proportional to "proxy 1"^"exponent 1", and "proxy 1" is proportional to "proxy 2"^"exponent 2", the sentience-adjusted welfare range is proportional to "proxy 1"^("exponent 1"*"exponent 2"). So the results for "proxy 1" and exponent "exponent 1"*"exponent 2" are the same as those for "proxy 2" and "exponent 2".

whatever our current "place-holder" estimates are for sentience or welfare in shrimps, more research will most likely answer both

I very much agree. On the other hand, I think research on sentience criteria mostly decreases the uncertainty about anatomy and behaviour, and I believe there is way more uncertainty in how to go from those to quantitative comparisons of welfare across species.

RE welfare comparisons: I could imagine a difference between us being relative confidence that empirical research will improve our understanding?

I am not confident (empirical or philosophical) research on welfare comparisons across species will significantly decrease their uncertainty. However, the alternative for me is never finding out interventions that robustly increase welfare in expectation.

Would you expect the most useful work for reducing your own uncertainty to be philosophical or empirical?

I do not have a strong view either way. I think it is much easier to decrease i) the empirical uncertainty about anatomy and behaviour than ii) the philosophical uncertainty about how to go from those to quantitative comparisons of welfare across species. On the other hand, I believe ii) is much larger than i).

RE nematodes: I agree that this isn't clear cut in some sense, but I feel fairly confident that they should be bracketed out unless we significantly advance in our understanding of animal consciousness

Would medium confidence that nematodes engage in motivational trade-offs be enough for you to consider effects on them?

This report was entirely and carefully crafted by Guillaume Reho, with recurrent reviews and discussions with Aaron Boddy [co-founder of and chief strategy officer at the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP)], whom I deeply thank for his time and help on this project.

I am glad @Aaron Boddy🔸 is interested in this. I think funders have been assuming that all species of shrimps have a similar sentience-adjusted welfare range. So bringing attention to the weaker evidence for the sentience of Penaeidae shrimps may decrease funding for helping them, and they are the ones SWP has been targeting.

Thanks for this great research, Guillaume.

in his Welfare Range Estimates, (Fischer, 2023) argues that all invertebrates probably have welfare ranges “within two orders of magnitude of the vertebrates nonhuman animals [presented in his report]”

Do you have any thoughts on this? I read the whole book about welfare comparisons across species from @Bob Fischer, and I really liked it. However, I think the above vastly underestimates uncertainty. Here are my estimates for sentience-adjusted welfare ranges proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable.

Here are a few other grantmakers that might be interested in funding such research or welfare interventions: Animal Charity Evaluators, Animal Welfare Fund from EA Funds, Animal Welfare Fund from Founders Pledge, and Farm Animal Welfare fund from Coefficient Giving. Also feel free to comment or tag other grantmakers or funds that would be interested in shrimp sentience research.

There is also the Strategic Animal Funding Circle (SAFC), and maybe Falcon Fund ("We also expect to place some bets on non-AI opportunities that are unusually strong"). 

Hi titotal. Thanks for the post. I have also looked into the spread in the extinction risk predictions made in the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT). Here are all these predictions in a single graph.