I am a Senior Research Manager in the Animal Welfare department at Rethink Priorities. The views I express here do not represent Rethink Priorities unless stated otherwise.
Before working in effective altruism, I completed a Ph.D. in psychology studying the evolution of cooperation in humans, with a concentration in quantitative psychology. After that, I was a postdoctoral fellow studying public health. My main interests now are animal welfare and social science methodology/statistics.
I am not familiar with the authors you cite so I will refrain from commenting on their specific proposals until I have read them. I speculate that my comment below is not particularly sensitive to their views; I am a realist about morality and phenomenal consciousness but nevertheless believe that what you are suggesting is a constructive way forward.
So long as it is transparent, I definitely think it would be reasonable to assign relative numerical weights to Welfare Footprint's categories according to how much you yourself value preventing them. The weights you use might be entirely based on moral commitments, or might partly be based on empirical beliefs about their relative cardinal intensities (if you believe they exist), or even animals' preferences (if you believe the cardinal intensities do not exist or believe that preferences are what really matter). Unless one assigns lexical priority to the most severe categories, we have to make a prioritization decision somehow, and assigning weights at least makes the process legible.
Joel Michell argues that the theory of conjoint measurement provides indirect tests for whether psychological constructs are quantitative. I do not yet understand the approach in much detail or the arguments for alternative approaches.
I like your summary. I feel (slightly) less hopeless because I think...
Strongly agreed. For those who want exposition on this point, see Ashford's article on demandingness in contractualism vs. utilitarianism https://doi.org/10.1086/342853
FiveThirtyEight podcast scrutinizes this poll (segment starts 30 minutes in)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-the-politics-of-ai/
Disappointingly shallow analysis, though.
This survey item may represent a circumstance under which YouGov estimates would be biased upwards. My understanding is that YouGov uses quota samples of respondents who have opted-in to panel membership through non-random means, such as responses to advertisements and referrals. They do not have access to respondents without internet access, and those who do but are not internet-savvy are also less likely to opt in. If internet savviness is correlated with item response, then we should expect a bias in the point estimate. I would speculate that internet savviness is positively correlated with worrying about AI risk because they understand the issue better (though I could imagine arguments in the opposite direction--e.g., people who are afraid of computers don't use them).
To give a concrete example, Sturgis and Kuha (2022) report that YouGov's estimate of problem gambling in the U.K. was far higher than estimates from firms that used probability sampling that can reach people who don't use the internet, especially when the interviews were conducted in person. The presumed reasons are that online gambling is more addictive and that people at higher risk of problem gambling prefer online gambling to in-person gambling.
Thanks for this passionate post. Because of it I also donated to the White Helmets. For other readers I would suggest also considering Doctors Without Borders, but in general I have a lot of uncertainty about how best to help.
Thanks for your work on this, Tessa! I have some similar follow-up questions:
"Thanks for your support and comment. Unfortunately, it appears as though the environmental permitting regarding this specific farm is being allowed to proceed."
To clarify, do you mean that Nueva Pescanova has in fact received its environmental permit?
"How likely do you think it is that the farm will succeed in creating a commercially viable product, apart from public pressure? Sounds like there are significant biological and ecological barriers."
I am also interested in ALI's take on this. Nueva Pescanova claims it will be able to raise 3k tonnes of farmed octopus starting in 2023. Has ALI been able to verify that this scale is actually feasible right now?
Finally, is an outright, blanket ban on octopus legally possible in Spain or the EU (or even narrowly within the Canary Islands)? Or is a "ban" shorthand for "convince legislators that, in practice, octopus farming won't meet existing minimal environmental and animal welfare standards"? And what existing farmed animal welfare standards could be invoked, given that octopuses are invertebrates, not vertebrates?
Interesting idea! I will have to look into whether it has been tried on farmed animals or laboratory animals. I would have a concern similar to the concern I have with the classical conditioning experiments: aversion to the more intense pain might reflect reduced volition rather than welfare maximization. But it does seem plausible that volition is not as much of an issue when the pain is only administered with a low probability.