So far as I know, the only one who can tell you whether a bug's life is worth living is the bug itself. No other being has access to the bugs mind. End of story.
It does means that no one can say whether a baby thinks its life is worth living either. Moreover, my opinion and you opinion do not matter for either a baby or a bug.
I already commented, but this position really winds me up. There are lots of facts about the world that we can't know for certain. That does not mean we cannot act on evidence, indicators or proxies. Insisting on certainty that a bad thing is definitely happening before being willing to step in to stop it happening is just avoidance of moral responsibility. It's weaselling out of an uncomfortable decision by pretending it might not be really happening. And yes, acting without certainty of the facts means there is a chance that we make things worse. That also isn't a get out of jail free card. It means we use expected values, and our big boy thinking caps to try and evaluate what's the best course of action, given the uncertainty. And spoiler: it's rarely sticking our heads in the sand.
We aren't talking about "lots of facts about the world." We're talking about another human mind. You cannot know the content of another mind. Period. End of story. You can get wound up all you like, but making assumptions about the content of another mind is inappropriate, in my opinion. I say this respectfully, of course.
I'm not saying I can know the content of another mind. I'm saying that making an educated guess, based on the available evidence, is a better course of action than doing nothing and hoping the status quo is OK.
We can probably make educated inferences, though. If a being’s life consists of non-stop 24/7 suffering for no good reason, it’s pretty reasonable to assume that said being would rather not be alive.
If the best available evidence suggests that I am suffering, it is improbabe that I will exit the state of suffering and begin enjoying life (sufficiently improbably that the expected utility of my life is negative), then yes you can make that inference and end my life. That is probably only the case if I am in a coma / vegetative state (otherwise, the best available evidence would be to ask me). So you have no "gotcha" here I'm afraid.
If you want me to end your life when you are in a coma, you are going to need to put that in a living will when you are not in a coma. Otherwise, I will be unwilling to make assumptions about what you want. I do not share your mind. Making assumptions about what someone thinks or feels, regardless of someone's assessment of probabilities, is very thin ice.
The whole "debate" strikes me as less interesting but more amusing than pondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Adelstein seems to arguing that life sucks, therefore all life should be extinguished. He may think he's only arguing that all bug life should be extinguished, but without bugs, all "higher" life forms would also be extinguished.
As for the ethics of vegetarianism and factory farms, nuts. Get back to me when someone has actually polled cows and pigs and chickens for their opinions on whether they'd rather never have been born, or been born in the wild to be eaten alive, or been born to a boring yet tolerable life on a factory farm.
Hard to accept that words like "happiness" apply reasonably to both bugs and humans. Why would we think that concepts like regret, loss, and humiliation have anything but an anthropomorphic role in species as remote from humans as insects?
Exterminating all bugs would be difficult, and if successful would destroy every ecological niche on the planet. So Adelstein's conclusion is not just that all bugs must die, but that everything must die. Although there are a few people who take that position, it seems more like a reductio ad absurdum to me.
I don't care enough about it to read up on Adelstein's work, but from what I've seen, there seems to be a point missing. r-selected species tend to quickly fill up their ecological niche. If you kill a million mosquitoes, a million new mosquitoes will rapidly take their place. So his program could easily end up increasing suffering, even if his premises are correct.
Yeah to be clear I’m not super big on just swatting random flies. I’m basically agnostic about that. What I really favor is reconfiguring environments to sustain lower plant growth!
I believe his point was about infinite offspring given a high TFR. I.e. if you are successful in your mosquito holocaust then the infinite future offsprings that never exist now will be happier as the presumption is an insects individual life in the aggregate is a net negative utility. You know like aborting poor kids.
Unless I missed your point and you meant a million neo-mosquitoes will arise.
Bryan Caplan: “people should be allowed to build houses. This is very important and makes us all better off. When you consider it this is common sense”
Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Boyce VA July 27 Facebook post
"An amazingly thoughtful Good Samaritan witnessed this Common Green Darner collide with a vehicle and stopped to help.
Despite being hit by a car, we were not able to appreciate any traumatic injuries on physical exam, but the dragonfly was quiet and not willing to fly. These insects must eat regularly to survive and they can eat their weight in insects daily!
Like other native dragonflies, green darners are highly skilled aerial predators and they feed primarily on flying insects, however, this patient is eating mealworms and beetles voraciously in care.
Dragonflies are important in providing natural pest control and they are an indicator of a healthy ecosystem. Unfortunately, they are subject to many of the same threats as our vertebrate wildlife including habitat loss and pesticide use. For these species, which breed and feed around wetlands, wetland conservation is particularly important.
We are hopeful that with time and continued appropriate nutritional support, this patient will recover fully and be able to return home soon!"
This post expresses far too much certainty given how sparse the citations are. I agree the issue isn’t resolved, and I’m far from ready to endorse bold proposals like insect extermination. But the reasons you give for skepticism don’t hold up for me:
* Lots of creatures we care about don’t experience loss, dread, humiliation, or disappointment. That’s no reason to ignore their suffering. Conversely, if they experience those feelings but aren’t distressed by them, that would be a reason to care less about that.
* Some bugs (butterflies, ants, crickets) live fairly long lives even after being wounded or infected with painful parasites. And even for short-lived species you can imagine being born, freezing, starving, and getting eaten all in one brutal hour. It might be short, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t bad.
* Evolution makes organisms adapted to survive, not necessarily thrive. It’s entirely indifferent to whether a creature’s life is tolerable, as long as it reproduces. Even if you disagree with that, habitat degradation creates environments aren't adapted for, potentially make their lives far worse. If so, that might be one of the most morally urgent aspects of climate change.
To be clear, I’m only pushing back because I worry this post gives too much confidence to the idea of an absence of insect sentience. I’m not convinced one way or the other and I don’t think anyone has the evidence to be. But scoffing at insect sentience seems like a huge gamble, because if you’re wrong, you risk overlooking an enormous amount of moral value.
Unlike humans, probably have no sense of humiliation. They don’t think about their low status in bug society, fret about losing their high status, or worry about their children’s downward mobility.
Isn't it inconsistent with your writing about how people don't care about incone inequality?
I'm not sure if I can entirely agree with Caplan's fourth statement, "Unlike humans, probably have no sense of humiliation. They don’t think about their low status in bug society, fret about losing their high status..."
Among some eusocial insects, colonies are established by multiple foundresses, which engage in dominance competitions to determine who gets to reproduce; after this initial state, dominance behaviors continue, to maintain the dominance hierarchy. If we saw similar behavior taking place in, say, packs of canids, most of us would be inclined to agree that the creatures were concerned about their status. Can we confidently assert that insects, on the other hand, are mere organic automata, and don't experience humiliation when losing a dominance contest, or fear losing their dominant status to another?
Bugs living great lives doesn’t necessarily imply our Summum bonum is making them the lords of the Earth - it’s closer to something like ‘turn all matter high moral worth matter’ via something like artificial minds that feel immense, deep, complicated, enjoyable qualia
Why is it that those advocating horrible crimes always say they're morally required?
How about we leave the bugs alone?
But we can't leave the bugs alone! We step on them, swat them, poison them, bulldoze their environment.
The humanity, the humanity! We are evil, evil, evil.
So far as I know, the only one who can tell you whether a bug's life is worth living is the bug itself. No other being has access to the bugs mind. End of story.
Babies can’t tell you either. What’s that supposed to mean?
It does means that no one can say whether a baby thinks its life is worth living either. Moreover, my opinion and you opinion do not matter for either a baby or a bug.
I already commented, but this position really winds me up. There are lots of facts about the world that we can't know for certain. That does not mean we cannot act on evidence, indicators or proxies. Insisting on certainty that a bad thing is definitely happening before being willing to step in to stop it happening is just avoidance of moral responsibility. It's weaselling out of an uncomfortable decision by pretending it might not be really happening. And yes, acting without certainty of the facts means there is a chance that we make things worse. That also isn't a get out of jail free card. It means we use expected values, and our big boy thinking caps to try and evaluate what's the best course of action, given the uncertainty. And spoiler: it's rarely sticking our heads in the sand.
We aren't talking about "lots of facts about the world." We're talking about another human mind. You cannot know the content of another mind. Period. End of story. You can get wound up all you like, but making assumptions about the content of another mind is inappropriate, in my opinion. I say this respectfully, of course.
I'm not saying I can know the content of another mind. I'm saying that making an educated guess, based on the available evidence, is a better course of action than doing nothing and hoping the status quo is OK.
I know that's what you are saying. I have a different opinion. Not a problem. People have differences of opinion frequently. 😊
Fair enough.
We can probably make educated inferences, though. If a being’s life consists of non-stop 24/7 suffering for no good reason, it’s pretty reasonable to assume that said being would rather not be alive.
What if I made the inference about your life? I'm quite educated, as it happens.
If the best available evidence suggests that I am suffering, it is improbabe that I will exit the state of suffering and begin enjoying life (sufficiently improbably that the expected utility of my life is negative), then yes you can make that inference and end my life. That is probably only the case if I am in a coma / vegetative state (otherwise, the best available evidence would be to ask me). So you have no "gotcha" here I'm afraid.
If you want me to end your life when you are in a coma, you are going to need to put that in a living will when you are not in a coma. Otherwise, I will be unwilling to make assumptions about what you want. I do not share your mind. Making assumptions about what someone thinks or feels, regardless of someone's assessment of probabilities, is very thin ice.
Maybe we should ask Gregor Samsa.
The whole "debate" strikes me as less interesting but more amusing than pondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Adelstein seems to arguing that life sucks, therefore all life should be extinguished. He may think he's only arguing that all bug life should be extinguished, but without bugs, all "higher" life forms would also be extinguished.
As for the ethics of vegetarianism and factory farms, nuts. Get back to me when someone has actually polled cows and pigs and chickens for their opinions on whether they'd rather never have been born, or been born in the wild to be eaten alive, or been born to a boring yet tolerable life on a factory farm.
Hard to accept that words like "happiness" apply reasonably to both bugs and humans. Why would we think that concepts like regret, loss, and humiliation have anything but an anthropomorphic role in species as remote from humans as insects?
Should implies can, so can't implies needn't.
Exterminating all bugs would be difficult, and if successful would destroy every ecological niche on the planet. So Adelstein's conclusion is not just that all bugs must die, but that everything must die. Although there are a few people who take that position, it seems more like a reductio ad absurdum to me.
I don't care enough about it to read up on Adelstein's work, but from what I've seen, there seems to be a point missing. r-selected species tend to quickly fill up their ecological niche. If you kill a million mosquitoes, a million new mosquitoes will rapidly take their place. So his program could easily end up increasing suffering, even if his premises are correct.
Yeah to be clear I’m not super big on just swatting random flies. I’m basically agnostic about that. What I really favor is reconfiguring environments to sustain lower plant growth!
I believe his point was about infinite offspring given a high TFR. I.e. if you are successful in your mosquito holocaust then the infinite future offsprings that never exist now will be happier as the presumption is an insects individual life in the aggregate is a net negative utility. You know like aborting poor kids.
Unless I missed your point and you meant a million neo-mosquitoes will arise.
Bryan Caplan: “people should be allowed to build houses. This is very important and makes us all better off. When you consider it this is common sense”
Also Bryan: “bugs are happier than people”
Bravo on the wide ranging takes
Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Boyce VA July 27 Facebook post
"An amazingly thoughtful Good Samaritan witnessed this Common Green Darner collide with a vehicle and stopped to help.
Despite being hit by a car, we were not able to appreciate any traumatic injuries on physical exam, but the dragonfly was quiet and not willing to fly. These insects must eat regularly to survive and they can eat their weight in insects daily!
Like other native dragonflies, green darners are highly skilled aerial predators and they feed primarily on flying insects, however, this patient is eating mealworms and beetles voraciously in care.
Dragonflies are important in providing natural pest control and they are an indicator of a healthy ecosystem. Unfortunately, they are subject to many of the same threats as our vertebrate wildlife including habitat loss and pesticide use. For these species, which breed and feed around wetlands, wetland conservation is particularly important.
We are hopeful that with time and continued appropriate nutritional support, this patient will recover fully and be able to return home soon!"
#CommonGreenDarner #Dragonfly #WildlifeRehab #Invertebrates
You can find the pictures on FB.
This post expresses far too much certainty given how sparse the citations are. I agree the issue isn’t resolved, and I’m far from ready to endorse bold proposals like insect extermination. But the reasons you give for skepticism don’t hold up for me:
* Lots of creatures we care about don’t experience loss, dread, humiliation, or disappointment. That’s no reason to ignore their suffering. Conversely, if they experience those feelings but aren’t distressed by them, that would be a reason to care less about that.
* Some bugs (butterflies, ants, crickets) live fairly long lives even after being wounded or infected with painful parasites. And even for short-lived species you can imagine being born, freezing, starving, and getting eaten all in one brutal hour. It might be short, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t bad.
* Evolution makes organisms adapted to survive, not necessarily thrive. It’s entirely indifferent to whether a creature’s life is tolerable, as long as it reproduces. Even if you disagree with that, habitat degradation creates environments aren't adapted for, potentially make their lives far worse. If so, that might be one of the most morally urgent aspects of climate change.
To be clear, I’m only pushing back because I worry this post gives too much confidence to the idea of an absence of insect sentience. I’m not convinced one way or the other and I don’t think anyone has the evidence to be. But scoffing at insect sentience seems like a huge gamble, because if you’re wrong, you risk overlooking an enormous amount of moral value.
Fair enough
Unlike humans, probably have no sense of humiliation. They don’t think about their low status in bug society, fret about losing their high status, or worry about their children’s downward mobility.
Isn't it inconsistent with your writing about how people don't care about incone inequality?
I'm not sure if I can entirely agree with Caplan's fourth statement, "Unlike humans, probably have no sense of humiliation. They don’t think about their low status in bug society, fret about losing their high status..."
Among some eusocial insects, colonies are established by multiple foundresses, which engage in dominance competitions to determine who gets to reproduce; after this initial state, dominance behaviors continue, to maintain the dominance hierarchy. If we saw similar behavior taking place in, say, packs of canids, most of us would be inclined to agree that the creatures were concerned about their status. Can we confidently assert that insects, on the other hand, are mere organic automata, and don't experience humiliation when losing a dominance contest, or fear losing their dominant status to another?
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2020.0437
“Re-bugnant” conclusion is brilliant, A+ bon mot
the pun was stolen from philosopher Jeff Sebo
4) Seems an unwarranted assumption. Lots of bugs have status hierarchies,some even benefit from anti depressants.
Bugs living great lives doesn’t necessarily imply our Summum bonum is making them the lords of the Earth - it’s closer to something like ‘turn all matter high moral worth matter’ via something like artificial minds that feel immense, deep, complicated, enjoyable qualia