This could be your view, but it's definitely not the common sense one. There is nothing like common sense view surrounding animals and the badness of pain for cows is different in Europe and India.
Pigs are quite smarter than dogs, but the "common-sense" view would be that pain of dogs is worse than pain of pigs. Same for cats, parrots, pandas, any other cute animal. Most people are reaching for emotivism when discussing what behavior is wrong towards animals and it's mostly arbitrary/culturally driven. Even if you say, "but dogs are dumber" they would not get stampeded in this view, trust me I tried.
If you want to use the graph to describe your view feel free to do it, it's just not the common-sense view though, which means that your appeal to common sense morality as basis for your correctness is wrong.
"I’m happy to defend my moral intuitions on their merits. But once you realize that sigmoidal functions neatly fit much of the physical and social worlds, why should you be surprised to learn that sigmoidal functions also neatly fit the moral world as well?"
I would not be surprised by welfare being a sigmoidal function of cognitive capacity (although I prefer the square root of the number of neurons). The surprise comes from you placing a random human right after the steep part of the sigmoidal function, and all animals before it. Why does the steep part not start right after, for example, microorganisms, such that all animals are placed in the steep part, or after it? Adult pigs and cows are smarter than baby humans, so these have no moral value by your lights?
"The surprise comes from you placing a random human right after the steep part of the sigmoidal function, and all animals before it."
Can't speak for Bryan, but is this really so surprising? As an average human, being just barely past the steep part of the graph makes a lot of sense. After all, there have been significant portions of my life when I was definitely to the left of the steep part - when I was a fetus, when I was an infant, most of my time as a toddler, when I've been sleepwalking, when I've been black out drunk, etc. Notably, in cases where I blacked out and the badness of my pain dropped to zero, I noticed that the black out happened well before my intellect had been reduced to an animal level - I was still capable of speech and reasoning up until, and sometimes even past the blackout.
"Adult pigs and cows are smarter than baby humans, so these have no moral value by your lights?"
Badness of pain is only one facet of moral value. You shouldn't torture someone's baby to death even if their badness of their pain is zero. Just like you shouldn't dismember someone's favorite stuffed animal.
Like I said, badness of pain is only one facet of moral value. If you can somehow construct a hypothetical that removes every other reason to morally object to baby torture, then congratulations I guess, you've come up with a situation where it's okay to torture a baby. I'm not going to lose sleep over any real-world applications though. We can accept that badness of pain is zero for babies without the world turning into a moral hellscape.
And it's not a far-fetched hypothetical too, in my country we have baby hatches for mothers to abandon unwanted babies. By your logic it would be fine to torture these babies.
1. It's something that could happen. 2. Hypotheticals can illustrate someone's values. You may think there's nothing intrinsically wrong with torturing a baby when you remove the social elements. Most people disagree.
By that logic, even if you accepted Adolf Hitler's actions as morally praiseworthy the world wouldn't turn into a moral hellscape, because you're just one person.
This may be your view but it seems to be an unjustified view. You must present evidence that it is in fact true. For example imagine a new graph with two points one a high iq and moral worth value and another with really low iq and worth. Label the high point me and the low point everything else. Now imagine someone gives your above post but instead talks about correlation and this graph just happens to be their view.
Not very convincing.
Your evidence may be ‘well this is how we in fact treat animals.’ But it seems what should count as evidence is not what in fact is the case but rather reasoned arguments for your case. I think slavery is the clear counter example here. It was in fact the case that black humans were treated worse but reasoned argument leads to the conclusion that they shouldn’t be.
The counter example to iq having moral relevance is the fact that we both hopefully agree that babies, the mentally retarded, and Alzheimer patients shouldn’t be treated worse. A more likely principal for different treatment among these groups is cognitive awareness, or future life, or life quality.
This graph implies it would be fine to torture or factory farm the severely mentally disabled, provided they are dumb enough. It's true we typically restrict the mentally disabled's rights to things like self governance. However, commonsense morality doesn't say we get to torture or kill them for trivial benefits, like this graph would imply. How can Caplan have a principled opposition to factory farming the severely mentally disabled while allowing the factory farming of more intelligent animals?
Basing general rules on exceptions (severely mentally disabled people) is in general a poor form of evidence. Are we really going to ignore the fact that human beings are much much smarter than cows, just because *some* extremely unfortunate people have very low brain capacity?
I don't think you need to do any mental gymnastics to justify farming animals for food but not justify cannibalism of morons.
I am not ignoring the fact that most humans are much smarter than cows. I am arguing against the moral claim that it is permissible to cause massive amounts of suffering to something for trivial benefits so long as the sufferer is very dumb.
You don't need to do any mental gymnastics to justify not doing cannibalism. You do need some gymnastics to justify widespread cruelty to farmed animals.
You're arguing that drawing an IQ-Morality comparison is illogical because in special cases humans can be as dumb as a cow. I'm saying that using special cases like severe mental disability is a pretty dumb way to argue.
You are free to argue that eating meat is still wrong. I object to the idea that the existence of a human as dumb as a cow means we can't eat the cow unless we also eat the human. You can still reason about the average or typical state of a species without being required to supply an appendix of special cases.
One more point, while I have you: where did this phrasing of "trivial benefit" of eating meat come from? Eating is one the principle pleasures of life, and giving up eating meat would not be at all trivial.
For the first point, I think edge cases can be useful for testing broad moral claims. For example, saying that it's wrong for a doctor to kill an innocent patient and harvest their organs seems like a good objection to utilitarianism. The counter-objection of "Well it's so rare that a doctor would have 5 patients who all need a compatible organ from the innocent guy, so that scenario doesn't help us find the truth of utilitarianism"
Second, there are non-special cases in which humans are as dumb as a cow: babies. I didn't bring it up before because I've seen Caplan's response. But the fact remains that babies are both very dumb and very common, so if one's intelligence/general mental ability is a really important part of the badness of suffering, then we should conclude that the suffering of babies is very morally unimportant.
The reason why I don't think it's correct to base these moral judgements on the average intelligence of one's species is because we don't do that for any other moral consideration. In common sense morality, it seems like the suffering of a human is intrinsically bad. It would be very strange to say that the badness of my suffering comes from the fact that there are lots of other people of my species, and those other people can do lots of smart things. The intelligence of the sufferer already seems at least a little arbitrary, so saying that the badness of suffering depends on extrinsic characteristics like your species' average intelligence seems extremely arbitrary.
On your last point: I agree that eating is one of the principle pleasures in life, but our gain in mealtime enjoyment is extremely small compared to the total amount of suffering caused by factory farming. We kill about 80 billion land animals per year for food, and the overwhelming majority of those animals endure objectively cruel treatment on factory farms. There have only ever been about 110 billion humans, so every few years we probably cause more suffering to animals than all the suffering in human history combined. It seems that the very real, additional pleasure we get from eating meat is trivial compared to that quantity of suffering.
Babies are incredibly intelligent. Sure they don't know many facts, but their capacity to learn is astounding. But that's beside the point really.
Don't get me wrong, I like cows fine. I've seen them up close on small dairy farms, and in the field, and they seem like nice creatures. I'm totally fine if some people think cows are too conscious or intelligent or (whatever other criterion) to morally farm and eat - I disagree, but it's a defensible position.
I suppose my main point of contention with you is that it's coherent to make broad statements like "Some animals are low in intelligence and this can be justification for farming them" without having a pedantic discussion about whatever fraction of humanity might be "as dumb as a cow". I don't necessarily *endorse* the IQ=moral equivalence idea, but I do think that applying different levels of moral weight to different species based on their cognition is a broadly *coherent* idea, even if there are some members of the human species who might not clear the bar of intelligence as well as most.
My objection to the phrase "trivial enjoyment" is more practical than mathematical. I agree that from your perspective, the relative enjoyability of a carnivorous diet is much smaller than the suffering of those animals in a factory farm. But from the perspective of a person's own life experience, switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet is far from trivial and I think that phraseology comes across as condescending.
Saying something is a dumb way to argue means nothing. We are talking about morality, if somebody claims that IQ is the differentiator and then when shown the implication refuses to engage it means that IQ is probably not the differentiator and it's a more complex set of traits.
You actually need to do mental gymnastics if you are basing the moral relevancy on IQ. It's called cognitive disonance. Not doing mental gymnastics would mean you would just accept that farming disabled people would be fine.
I just think it's basically coherent to say "Humans are higher cognition than cows, meaning it's fine to eat cows but not fine to eat humans" and not get bogged down by pedantry.
That's not pedantry, that's moral philosophy. To quote Bryan
> Adelstein’s right, there is a difference. I’m doing normal moral philosophy, where you can challenge grand moral theories with pointed counterexamples.
The comment you linked by teageegeepea explicitly says that infanticide is morally tolerable because they can't engage in social contracts. You're correct that biting that bullet gets around the mental gymnastics. However, the conclusion that it's ok to kill babies seems to be a decisive reason to reject that moral theory.
Right, I think he's using IQ to mean something like general mental ability, but there is no reason given for why there is a moral double standard for animals and mentally disabled humans of comparable general mental ability.
Agree hence my euphemism point. Still I don't think he was looking to reargue this here, he already has that post. I think it was just a throwaway example because he wanted to talk about S curves and shill a book.
> Devanney explains the underlying biology at length: Animals on Earth have evolved a cellular repair mechanism well-suited to counteract the mild radiation damage that animals on Earth continuously face.
What is the explanation for other sigmoidal curves? We haven't actually encountered any superintelligent aliens, so how do we know such explanations would apply to them?
Keeping in mind that I have no problem using cows for food, the idea that cows essentially feel the same amount of pain as a bug goes very much against the common sense of anyone who has spent anytime around them. For days I’ve listened to the pitiful lowing of a cow whose calf had been taken away. I doubt if bugs even know they reproduced.
It's all in the dosage, isn't it? Would it be the same curve for water consumption, for example - a drop or a teaspoon or even a cup is insufficient (for a day, let's say), four liters are ideal, forty liters - or infinitely more - will kill you. Same for so many medicines - low dose, no action, correct dose, right action, overdose - death. Or am I thinking about it incorrectly?
I'm not sure IQ is the proper x-axis metric. Assume you are a person responsible for inflicting a single dose of pain and Einstein and Mr Average are sent to you to receive that one dose. Are you okay with assuming its badness is less for Mr Average (or for society) because he's not as smart? The consequences of your action are multi-factoral and go belong those related to intelligence.
If so, why don't we test all cows and only send the dumbest ones into the slaughterhouse ?
There probably is a distinction between species based on intelligence but intra-species, no.
And maybe there are aliens who are much smarter than we are and also much less conscious of pain. Where do they fit?
I would argue it is the ability to participate in a moral community that requires the reciprocation of taking into account the desires of others. Intelligence provides some minimal bar for moral agency, but is only an enabling factor. We include someone sleeping as moral agents because they will wake up. Ants cannot make moral decisions. A severely disabled mentally ill individual probably doesn't have moral rights ... but because this exists on a continuum, we cannot know that with certainty. We need to distinguish granting status to group due to rule-utilitarianism, or practical applications of the law, which will need to generalize and should err on the side of over-granting status, than a statement around very specific dividing lines. The best example I like to give is with the death penalty. My take is that is acceptable on retribution, deterrence and incapacitation grounds to have a death penalty for extreme cases ... yet the punishment is so severe, that thus burden a proof needs to be so high, in practical terms I don't think we should allow the government to administer it. I see our extension of moral community similarly - we should be expansive in practice - but also be clear on the basis for the line. Neither intelligence or suffering provide sufficient basis for me - I think you need the capability of reciprocation.
1) The curve is probably more complex due to hormesis at the low end. That is, small doses may actually be beneficial. "It is the dose that makes the poison." There is some evidence for that with radiation, for example, or botulin.
2) You are too unkind to cows. I have met several while hiking in the UK and they should definitely be further on the right, on the ascending part of the curve. Cows are curious animals that have friends among their contemporaries. Not as smart as pigs, but smarter than chickens, which appear to be smarter than sheep, which are really stupid. Interesting work by Temple Grandin, an extremely high-functioning autistic, with a PhD, who has designed cattle chutes for slaughterhouses to minimize the stress the cows undergo prior to being slaughtered. Grandin believes that animals are visually oriented, as she is.
This could be your view, but it's definitely not the common sense one. There is nothing like common sense view surrounding animals and the badness of pain for cows is different in Europe and India.
Pigs are quite smarter than dogs, but the "common-sense" view would be that pain of dogs is worse than pain of pigs. Same for cats, parrots, pandas, any other cute animal. Most people are reaching for emotivism when discussing what behavior is wrong towards animals and it's mostly arbitrary/culturally driven. Even if you say, "but dogs are dumber" they would not get stampeded in this view, trust me I tried.
If you want to use the graph to describe your view feel free to do it, it's just not the common-sense view though, which means that your appeal to common sense morality as basis for your correctness is wrong.
Thanks for the post, Bryan!
"I’m happy to defend my moral intuitions on their merits. But once you realize that sigmoidal functions neatly fit much of the physical and social worlds, why should you be surprised to learn that sigmoidal functions also neatly fit the moral world as well?"
I would not be surprised by welfare being a sigmoidal function of cognitive capacity (although I prefer the square root of the number of neurons). The surprise comes from you placing a random human right after the steep part of the sigmoidal function, and all animals before it. Why does the steep part not start right after, for example, microorganisms, such that all animals are placed in the steep part, or after it? Adult pigs and cows are smarter than baby humans, so these have no moral value by your lights?
"The surprise comes from you placing a random human right after the steep part of the sigmoidal function, and all animals before it."
Can't speak for Bryan, but is this really so surprising? As an average human, being just barely past the steep part of the graph makes a lot of sense. After all, there have been significant portions of my life when I was definitely to the left of the steep part - when I was a fetus, when I was an infant, most of my time as a toddler, when I've been sleepwalking, when I've been black out drunk, etc. Notably, in cases where I blacked out and the badness of my pain dropped to zero, I noticed that the black out happened well before my intellect had been reduced to an animal level - I was still capable of speech and reasoning up until, and sometimes even past the blackout.
"Adult pigs and cows are smarter than baby humans, so these have no moral value by your lights?"
Badness of pain is only one facet of moral value. You shouldn't torture someone's baby to death even if their badness of their pain is zero. Just like you shouldn't dismember someone's favorite stuffed animal.
Would it be morally fine to torture an abandoned baby them?
Like I said, badness of pain is only one facet of moral value. If you can somehow construct a hypothetical that removes every other reason to morally object to baby torture, then congratulations I guess, you've come up with a situation where it's okay to torture a baby. I'm not going to lose sleep over any real-world applications though. We can accept that badness of pain is zero for babies without the world turning into a moral hellscape.
And it's not a far-fetched hypothetical too, in my country we have baby hatches for mothers to abandon unwanted babies. By your logic it would be fine to torture these babies.
1. It's something that could happen. 2. Hypotheticals can illustrate someone's values. You may think there's nothing intrinsically wrong with torturing a baby when you remove the social elements. Most people disagree.
By that logic, even if you accepted Adolf Hitler's actions as morally praiseworthy the world wouldn't turn into a moral hellscape, because you're just one person.
This may be your view but it seems to be an unjustified view. You must present evidence that it is in fact true. For example imagine a new graph with two points one a high iq and moral worth value and another with really low iq and worth. Label the high point me and the low point everything else. Now imagine someone gives your above post but instead talks about correlation and this graph just happens to be their view.
Not very convincing.
Your evidence may be ‘well this is how we in fact treat animals.’ But it seems what should count as evidence is not what in fact is the case but rather reasoned arguments for your case. I think slavery is the clear counter example here. It was in fact the case that black humans were treated worse but reasoned argument leads to the conclusion that they shouldn’t be.
The counter example to iq having moral relevance is the fact that we both hopefully agree that babies, the mentally retarded, and Alzheimer patients shouldn’t be treated worse. A more likely principal for different treatment among these groups is cognitive awareness, or future life, or life quality.
where do human babies fit on that chart?
This graph implies it would be fine to torture or factory farm the severely mentally disabled, provided they are dumb enough. It's true we typically restrict the mentally disabled's rights to things like self governance. However, commonsense morality doesn't say we get to torture or kill them for trivial benefits, like this graph would imply. How can Caplan have a principled opposition to factory farming the severely mentally disabled while allowing the factory farming of more intelligent animals?
Basing general rules on exceptions (severely mentally disabled people) is in general a poor form of evidence. Are we really going to ignore the fact that human beings are much much smarter than cows, just because *some* extremely unfortunate people have very low brain capacity?
I don't think you need to do any mental gymnastics to justify farming animals for food but not justify cannibalism of morons.
I am not ignoring the fact that most humans are much smarter than cows. I am arguing against the moral claim that it is permissible to cause massive amounts of suffering to something for trivial benefits so long as the sufferer is very dumb.
You don't need to do any mental gymnastics to justify not doing cannibalism. You do need some gymnastics to justify widespread cruelty to farmed animals.
You're arguing that drawing an IQ-Morality comparison is illogical because in special cases humans can be as dumb as a cow. I'm saying that using special cases like severe mental disability is a pretty dumb way to argue.
You are free to argue that eating meat is still wrong. I object to the idea that the existence of a human as dumb as a cow means we can't eat the cow unless we also eat the human. You can still reason about the average or typical state of a species without being required to supply an appendix of special cases.
One more point, while I have you: where did this phrasing of "trivial benefit" of eating meat come from? Eating is one the principle pleasures of life, and giving up eating meat would not be at all trivial.
Yeah, good points! I'll respond one-by-one:
For the first point, I think edge cases can be useful for testing broad moral claims. For example, saying that it's wrong for a doctor to kill an innocent patient and harvest their organs seems like a good objection to utilitarianism. The counter-objection of "Well it's so rare that a doctor would have 5 patients who all need a compatible organ from the innocent guy, so that scenario doesn't help us find the truth of utilitarianism"
Second, there are non-special cases in which humans are as dumb as a cow: babies. I didn't bring it up before because I've seen Caplan's response. But the fact remains that babies are both very dumb and very common, so if one's intelligence/general mental ability is a really important part of the badness of suffering, then we should conclude that the suffering of babies is very morally unimportant.
The reason why I don't think it's correct to base these moral judgements on the average intelligence of one's species is because we don't do that for any other moral consideration. In common sense morality, it seems like the suffering of a human is intrinsically bad. It would be very strange to say that the badness of my suffering comes from the fact that there are lots of other people of my species, and those other people can do lots of smart things. The intelligence of the sufferer already seems at least a little arbitrary, so saying that the badness of suffering depends on extrinsic characteristics like your species' average intelligence seems extremely arbitrary.
On your last point: I agree that eating is one of the principle pleasures in life, but our gain in mealtime enjoyment is extremely small compared to the total amount of suffering caused by factory farming. We kill about 80 billion land animals per year for food, and the overwhelming majority of those animals endure objectively cruel treatment on factory farms. There have only ever been about 110 billion humans, so every few years we probably cause more suffering to animals than all the suffering in human history combined. It seems that the very real, additional pleasure we get from eating meat is trivial compared to that quantity of suffering.
Babies are incredibly intelligent. Sure they don't know many facts, but their capacity to learn is astounding. But that's beside the point really.
Don't get me wrong, I like cows fine. I've seen them up close on small dairy farms, and in the field, and they seem like nice creatures. I'm totally fine if some people think cows are too conscious or intelligent or (whatever other criterion) to morally farm and eat - I disagree, but it's a defensible position.
I suppose my main point of contention with you is that it's coherent to make broad statements like "Some animals are low in intelligence and this can be justification for farming them" without having a pedantic discussion about whatever fraction of humanity might be "as dumb as a cow". I don't necessarily *endorse* the IQ=moral equivalence idea, but I do think that applying different levels of moral weight to different species based on their cognition is a broadly *coherent* idea, even if there are some members of the human species who might not clear the bar of intelligence as well as most.
My objection to the phrase "trivial enjoyment" is more practical than mathematical. I agree that from your perspective, the relative enjoyability of a carnivorous diet is much smaller than the suffering of those animals in a factory farm. But from the perspective of a person's own life experience, switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet is far from trivial and I think that phraseology comes across as condescending.
Saying something is a dumb way to argue means nothing. We are talking about morality, if somebody claims that IQ is the differentiator and then when shown the implication refuses to engage it means that IQ is probably not the differentiator and it's a more complex set of traits.
You actually need to do mental gymnastics if you are basing the moral relevancy on IQ. It's called cognitive disonance. Not doing mental gymnastics would mean you would just accept that farming disabled people would be fine.
I just think it's basically coherent to say "Humans are higher cognition than cows, meaning it's fine to eat cows but not fine to eat humans" and not get bogged down by pedantry.
That's not pedantry, that's moral philosophy. To quote Bryan
> Adelstein’s right, there is a difference. I’m doing normal moral philosophy, where you can challenge grand moral theories with pointed counterexamples.
He is talking about utilitarianism to be exact here, but it applies here as well.
https://www.betonit.ai/p/reflections-on-ethical-vegetarianism-8db
> You do need some gymnastics to justify widespread cruelty to farmed animals.
I didn't think this was much of a mentally athletic feat https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Dvc7zrqsdCYy6dCFR/suffering?commentId=pjPbCamDYMNsPf9HB
The comment you linked by teageegeepea explicitly says that infanticide is morally tolerable because they can't engage in social contracts. You're correct that biting that bullet gets around the mental gymnastics. However, the conclusion that it's ok to kill babies seems to be a decisive reason to reject that moral theory.
Because we all know it's not an IQ metric, that's just the politically correct generic metric label to use as a euphemism for something else.
Right, I think he's using IQ to mean something like general mental ability, but there is no reason given for why there is a moral double standard for animals and mentally disabled humans of comparable general mental ability.
Agree hence my euphemism point. Still I don't think he was looking to reargue this here, he already has that post. I think it was just a throwaway example because he wanted to talk about S curves and shill a book.
> Devanney explains the underlying biology at length: Animals on Earth have evolved a cellular repair mechanism well-suited to counteract the mild radiation damage that animals on Earth continuously face.
What is the explanation for other sigmoidal curves? We haven't actually encountered any superintelligent aliens, so how do we know such explanations would apply to them?
This is likely your worst take sorry :/
For a fair skinned person 100 minutes in the sun will give you a sunburn, 1000 minutes *will* hospitalize you
Keeping in mind that I have no problem using cows for food, the idea that cows essentially feel the same amount of pain as a bug goes very much against the common sense of anyone who has spent anytime around them. For days I’ve listened to the pitiful lowing of a cow whose calf had been taken away. I doubt if bugs even know they reproduced.
It's all in the dosage, isn't it? Would it be the same curve for water consumption, for example - a drop or a teaspoon or even a cup is insufficient (for a day, let's say), four liters are ideal, forty liters - or infinitely more - will kill you. Same for so many medicines - low dose, no action, correct dose, right action, overdose - death. Or am I thinking about it incorrectly?
Should it be log(dose) or dose? I favor dose. I hate graphs that put something into logs, ruining intuitive interpretations.
If it's Dose,then note that in the middle, lots of action, range, the graph is close to linear.
I thought that too until I read Signature in a Cell by Stephen Meyer and Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe.
I'm not sure IQ is the proper x-axis metric. Assume you are a person responsible for inflicting a single dose of pain and Einstein and Mr Average are sent to you to receive that one dose. Are you okay with assuming its badness is less for Mr Average (or for society) because he's not as smart? The consequences of your action are multi-factoral and go belong those related to intelligence.
If so, why don't we test all cows and only send the dumbest ones into the slaughterhouse ?
There probably is a distinction between species based on intelligence but intra-species, no.
And maybe there are aliens who are much smarter than we are and also much less conscious of pain. Where do they fit?
I would argue it is the ability to participate in a moral community that requires the reciprocation of taking into account the desires of others. Intelligence provides some minimal bar for moral agency, but is only an enabling factor. We include someone sleeping as moral agents because they will wake up. Ants cannot make moral decisions. A severely disabled mentally ill individual probably doesn't have moral rights ... but because this exists on a continuum, we cannot know that with certainty. We need to distinguish granting status to group due to rule-utilitarianism, or practical applications of the law, which will need to generalize and should err on the side of over-granting status, than a statement around very specific dividing lines. The best example I like to give is with the death penalty. My take is that is acceptable on retribution, deterrence and incapacitation grounds to have a death penalty for extreme cases ... yet the punishment is so severe, that thus burden a proof needs to be so high, in practical terms I don't think we should allow the government to administer it. I see our extension of moral community similarly - we should be expansive in practice - but also be clear on the basis for the line. Neither intelligence or suffering provide sufficient basis for me - I think you need the capability of reciprocation.
You should check out Vaclav Smil’s book Growth for an unbelievably long list of natural growth phenomena that are best fit by sigmoidal curves.
1) The curve is probably more complex due to hormesis at the low end. That is, small doses may actually be beneficial. "It is the dose that makes the poison." There is some evidence for that with radiation, for example, or botulin.
2) You are too unkind to cows. I have met several while hiking in the UK and they should definitely be further on the right, on the ascending part of the curve. Cows are curious animals that have friends among their contemporaries. Not as smart as pigs, but smarter than chickens, which appear to be smarter than sheep, which are really stupid. Interesting work by Temple Grandin, an extremely high-functioning autistic, with a PhD, who has designed cattle chutes for slaughterhouses to minimize the stress the cows undergo prior to being slaughtered. Grandin believes that animals are visually oriented, as she is.
What Adrian said, especially on #1
Lower than average radiation exposure appears to have higher all cause mortality than average.
Generally, there is human-optimal level or range, with outcomes falling off hard far enough from center.
Water consumption of 0 is bad. Also, drinking 5gal in 24h can kill you.
In the middle is better
"without noticeably altering the health of exposed populations are all"
Read this with full attention. What gibberish.
Or typo?
OF COURSE typo. And NOT seen and corrected. Through at least TWO publications.
And just as confusing to readers as any other type of error. Even if not noticed.