Comic Interlude 2

Mary Chapin Carpenter: I Feel Lucky. Hilarious!

Part 2: Where I Part Ways with Most of My Readers + My Doubts

I was in my mid-50s when I fully made the biggest intellectual change in my life. This is spelled out in the chapter “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” of Losing (p. 379 here).  

Any summary will be necessarily incomplete, but in short:

The only thing that is morally relevant is an individual’s conscious experience. 

• A rock (in and of itself) is morally irrelevant.
• A plant is morally irrelevant. 
• A planet is morally irrelevant.
• A nematode is morally irrelevant.
• A four-week blastocyst is morally irrelevant. 
• A severely brain-damaged human in an irreversible coma is morally irrelevant. 

But what is important here is that the “sum of pain and pleasure” is also morally irrelevant. 

There is no “sum of pain and pleasure.” This “sum” simply does not exist; it is a misleading illusion, a harmful fantasy.

(Again, this is the simplest summary; if you find the above absurd or too hard to swallow, please read or re-read “Biting the Philosophical Bullet.” You have my sympathy; it took me decades to finally accept it.)

What does exist is an individual’s suffering. An individual’s suffering is not an abstraction. It is not a term in an expected value competition; each individual’s consciousness is a universe unto itself.   

An individual’s suffering is not a game. It is the most serious thing in existence. 

As discussed in Part 1, the ability to suffer is not binary. The simplest conscious creature does not experience the same maximum suffering as the most complex conscious creature.

The individual experiencing the worst suffering is the most morally important. Their suffering is not superseded by some illusory “sum” of lesser-suffering individuals. There simply is no “sum of suffering.”

This doesn’t mean no one else’s suffering matters, just that an expected value calculation of small probabilities and big numbers is, at best, morally irrelevant compared to an actual suffering individual. (Also, we can’t know who is experiencing the worst suffering – we can’t know what another’s conscious experience is like, and there is no obvious way to “rank” suffering; more on that next week.)

As discussed in “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” (and Losing’s last chapter) this realization has led me to a great deal of doubt. But the doubt isn’t about questions like: Is it morally compelling to help someone suffering a cluster headache over a possibly-suffering sardine? Those questions are easy.

My doubt is whether I can have any real impact at all, and if so, where? 

But what isn’t doubtful is how upsetting it is to me when smart people don’t take suffering seriously. 

We have been programmed to stay alive at all costs by hundreds of millions of years of natural selection. Yet today, thousands of people will be suffering so much that they will kill themselves. Many more will want to kill themselves. And humans have built systems to force other creatures to exist in a state worse than death.  

And yet, to put it bluntly, loads of very smart (and verbose) but non-worldly individuals will ignore actual suffering. Instead, they expend their significant talents trying to impress other smart individuals with their mad math skillz. 

(A preview of Part 3, not by me: “even if there's a very, very, very small likelihood of us decreasing AI risk, that still trumps global poverty, because infinitesimally increasing the odds that 10^52 people in the future exist saves way more lives than poverty reduction ever could.”)

(There is a post here next week about the whole “save a life” scam, an expansion of this.)

I am having an ongoing discussion with the person whose feedback kicked off Part 1 of this series. Perhaps the most important topic we’re discussing is how to internalize the Serenity Mantra (“the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”). But I’ll tell you this: mathletes making a game of suffering is the biggest challenge to my serenity.

More (older): Consciousness, Fish, and Uncertainty over at Substack.

More on that in Part 3 on Friday. Warning: That piece is satirical, sarcastic, and self-indulgent (well, even more so than my average post, which is really saying something).  

Not an existence worse than death; photo c/o my dad.

Comic Interlude 1

Part 2 is tomorrow, but for now, a song (Lost in America) and two comics: 

What Is Consciousness? With Many Links (Part 1)

A reader* responds to “Science, Suffering, and Shrimp”:

>we may just always disagree on the likelihood of invertebrates feeling morally significant suffering

Au contraire! 

There is nothing about a vertebrate that inherently leads to consciousness, and there is no reason to believe that consciousness is limited to vertebrates. 

The analysis of what we know about shrimp can not be extrapolated to all invertebrates. Indeed, one of the meta studies cited in the shrimp review tends to lean toward lobsters being able to experience pain. 

Indeed, if I had to bet Anne’s life (the highest stakes, as that would also be betting my life), I would say that octopuses can have conscious, subjective experiences. I think it is more likely that octopuses can feel morally significant suffering than vertebrate fish.  

I am not sure about any of this. It seems impossible to be 100% certain when it comes to any question regarding consciousness in another. For example, there seems to be no way to know that I’m not just a simulated mind being fed inputs. (I wouldn’t bet on it, but it isn’t impossible. When was the last time you knew a dream wasn’t “real,” no matter how weird it was?) 

As I quote Sam Harris in Losing: “Whatever the explanation for consciousness is, it might always seem like a miracle. And for what it’s worth, I think it always will seem like a miracle.”

I’ve written a lot about consciousness in this blog and in Losing, but here is a very short bullet list of what I currently think:

• Consciousness is not an inherent property of reality; i.e., panpsychism is wrong and logically silly (p. 93). I’m joking about electrons, a reductio ad absurdum of thinking morality can be expected value (more on this in Part 2).
  
  
• But in fairness to the epiphenomena / zombie crowd, consciousness really isn’t required for much of behavior we see in creatures we assume to be conscious. (e.g., “Robots won’t be conscious”)
  
  
• Speaking of robots, I highly doubt that consciousness is substrate-specific. But I agree with Antonio Damasio that it is not enough to just create a silicon-based neural net. See the well-chosen excerpts here.  
  
  
• Consciousness does not arise from the ability to sense (sunflowers sensing the sun, amoeba sensing a chemical gradient, nematodes sensing a “harmful” stimulus.)  
  
  
• Consciousness is not the same as intelligence.  
  
  
• Consciousness isn’t binary; the simplest conscious creature does not have the same level / intensity of subjective experiences as the most complex conscious creature.
  
  
• Consciousness is an evolutionarily-useful emergent property of a certain level and organization of neural complexity. The amount of neural complexity required for consciousness is costly, so it must serve some purpose to make it worthwhile. (The Ed Yong excerpt from here is reproduced below.) 
  
  
• Consciousness can serve a purpose worth its cost under certain circumstances:
  
  
• A creature is long-lived enough such that learning and adapting is beneficial.
  
  
• A creature’s behavior has enough plasticity that suffering and the pursuit of pleasure can significantly alter the creature’s life to improve their genes’ propagation. E.g., they can make difficult trade offs, like forgoing eating or mating in order to survive longer. (Again, see the Yong excerpt below.) 

So no, I don’t think only vertebrate carbon-based animals can be conscious, and I don’t think all vertebrates have morally-relevant subjective experiences. 

But this doesn’t mean we don’t have a disagreement! That’s Part 2.

I know that, with the links, this is all a lot (consciousness has been my intellectual obsession for well over 40 years now – it is the most miraculous thing, IMO). But just two more links, and then Ed Yong’s excerpt (and then the * footnote):

Consciousness, Fish, and Uncertainty

More on Why Not Fish?

from Ed Yong's wonderful An Immense World:

We rarely distinguish between the raw act of sensing and the subjective experiences that ensue. But that’s not because such distinctions don’t exist.

Think about the evolutionary benefits and costs of pain [subjective suffering]. Evolution has pushed the nervous systems of insects toward minimalism and efficiency, cramming as much processing power as possible into small heads and bodies. Any extra mental ability – say, consciousness – requires more neurons, which would sap their already tight energy budget. They should pay that cost only if they reaped an important benefit. And what would they gain from pain?

The evolutionary benefit of nociception [sensing negative stimuli / bodily damage] is abundantly clear. It’s an alarm system that allows animals to detect things that might harm or kill them, and take steps to protect themselves. But the origin of pain [suffering], on top of that, is less obvious. What is the adaptive value of suffering? Why should nociception suck? Animals can learn to avoid dangers perfectly well without needing subjective experiences. After all, look at what robots can do.

Engineers have designed robots that can behave as if they're in pain, learn from negative experiences, or avoid artificial discomfort. These behaviors, when performed by animals, have been interpreted as indicators of pain. But robots can perform them without subjective experiences.

Insect nervous systems have evolved to pull off complex behaviors in the simplest possible ways, and robots show us how simple it is possible to be. If we can program them to accomplish all the adaptive actions that pain supposedly enables without also programming them with consciousness, then evolution – a far superior innovator that works over a much longer time frame – would surely have pushed minimalist insect brains in the same direction. For that reason, Adamo thinks it's unlikely that insects feel pain. ...

Insects often do alarming things that seem like they should be excruciating. Rather than limping, they'll carry on putting pressure on a crushed limb. Male praying mantises will continue mating with females that are devouring them. Caterpillars will continue munching on a leaf while parasitic wasp larvae eat them from the inside out. Cockroaches will cannibalize their own guts if given a chance.

*Another reader responded to the Shrimp post by berating me for refusing to spend a penny to save hundreds of shrimp from a “torturous” death. So if you're keeping score, one of the loudest shrimp “advocates” actively misrepresents scientific studies, and the other resorts to bullying via absurd hyperbole.

Misc Sunday

Two of my favorite things. Be sure to watch so you can avoid an eternity in hell.
(More of one of them.) 

B52s' Deadbeat Club.

Steve Martin and Martin Short on Conan O'Brien's podcast. LOL.

If you could even just barely stand The Martian, please check out Project Hail Mary. Movie version is coming in March. I would suggest either reading the book first or just see the movie without watching trailers (so many spoilers). But if you know the story, here is the second trailer.

Vat Brain

Here

Science, Suffering, and Shrimp

Multiple people have insisted to me that “peer-reviewed science” had “proven” that shrimp suffer and thus deserve our focus. 

Below is Rob Velzeboer’s research report (with ChatGPT, reviewed by me and Anne) regarding what actual evidence we have regarding shrimp. Rob focused on the morally-relevant issue of subjective experience, not just the ability to “sense.”  

I will add one thing to the Conclusion: The recent EA charity collection featured multiple organizations focused on shrimp and arthropods. Only one – Legal Impact for Chickens – focuses on factory-farmed chickens. In just a few months, advocacy for shrimp raised more money than chicken advocacy organization One Step for Animals has received in 11+ years; One Step will probably cease to exist in a few years due to a lack of funding.

Over the years, various people have asked me why I harp on suffering versus math / expected value so much. It is because each one of us has the ability to help many individuals who are horribly and unnecessarily suffering (e.g., examples that came in while I was working on this introduction: 1, 2). Yet, the “hip” thing is to focus attention and millions of dollars on “mathy” areas, such as creatures who probably don’t suffer at all; even if they do, their maximum suffering is negligible compared to others we could help.
_______________

Do the Shrimp We Eat Actually Suffer? 

Scientific and public interest in animal sentience has expanded rapidly, especially for animals outside the usual vertebrate focus. Decapod crustaceans – crabs, lobsters, prawns, and shrimp – have become a central case study. This recent attention has been shaped by a handful of major reviews, including a comprehensive PeerJ synthesis and the London School of Economics (LSE) “Decapod Sentience” report. These reviews evaluate the scattered literature and help determine which animals might genuinely have the subjective, conscious experience of suffering.

Across these assessments, a consistent pattern emerges. Some decapods, such as crabs and lobsters, show reasonably strong evidence for pain-like experience. But for the shrimp humans eat most commonly – Litopenaeus vannamei and Penaeus monodon – the evidence is thin, fragmented, contradictory, and highly uncertain. 

Minimal but Plausible Foundations: What We Know About Nociception

Before scientists can talk about suffering and pain, they look for the most basic requirement: nociception, the ability to detect harmful or irritating stimuli. Here the evidence for penaeid shrimp – those we eat – is reasonably solid. Both the PeerJ review and the LSE report give them “High” confidence for nociceptors, meaning they have sensory neurons tuned to potentially damaging events.

But nociception is not pain, let alone suffering. A reaction to a harmful stimulus does not, by itself, imply any subjective experience. For there to be evidence of possible conscious experience of pain, signs of deeper processing, such as learning from harm or weighing avoidance against competing needs are required. [This is necessary but not sufficient, though, given our lack of understanding of consciousness. It is easy to imagine robots able to react to harmful stimuli and learn from “pain” without any subjective suffering. -ed]

Only one line of evidence in the shrimp species we farm the most, L. vannamei, indicates even the start of this process. During eyestalk ablation, L. vannamei show escape behaviours: erratic swimming, tail flicks, and attempts to withdraw. Applying lidocaine has been shown to reduce these reactions.

On the surface, this might suggest that something is being suppressed. But lidocaine introduces a major interpretive problem: anaesthetics can reduce movement simply because they sedate the animal, not because they relieve any subjective experience of pain. A sedated shrimp might move less regardless of how it “feels.”

More importantly, blocking the signalling of neurons with lidocaine would reduce even reflexive, non-conscious harm-avoidance, like disabling a sensor on a robot. With no follow-up, the finding remains highly ambiguous.

Behavioural Ambiguities: Rubbing, Grooming, and Failed Replications

Researchers have also looked to behaviours that seem more complex than reflex withdrawal – particularly targeted grooming or rubbing of a body part after irritation. One early study on Palaemon elegans, a shrimp-like crustacean, found that applying acetic acid or sodium hydroxide to a single antenna led to sustained, location-specific grooming, and that these behaviours were reduced by local anaesthetic.

This initially appeared to be a potential indicator of pain-like reaction. But a later replication attempt by Puri and Faulkes (2010) tested the same idea in three species:

• Litopenaeus setiferus (a close relative of L. vannamei),

• Procambarus clarkii (red swamp crayfish), and

• Macrobrachium rosenbergii (giant freshwater prawn).

All three are decapods, but importantly: two are actual shrimps/prawns, and one is a crayfish, so these were not distant comparisons.

Across all species tested, the authors found:

• No directed grooming or rubbing in response to the same kinds of chemical irritants.

• No behavioural reaction even when stronger stimuli were used.

• No evidence of pH-sensitive nociceptors in the antennae.

These results directly contradict the earlier claims regarding P. elegans. They also illustrate how fragile the evidence base is: one shrimp-like species is reported to have shown a behaviour interpreted as pain-like, while closely related species – including one nearly identical to the shrimp we farm – show nothing. Sceptical reviewers (e.g., Key et al. 2022) point to these failures of replication as major reasons to doubt strong claims of pain in shrimp.

Evaluating the Criteria: Where Penaeid Shrimp Score Low

Modern sentience frameworks assess evidence across multiple dimensions:

1. Possession of nociceptors (i.e., receptors tuned to noxious stimuli)  

2. Possession of integrative brain regions (brain structures capable of integrating sensory and other information)  

3. Connections between nociceptors and integrative brain regions (i.e., plausible neural pathways from detection to central processing)  

4. Modulation of responses by analgesics, anaesthetics, or opioids (i.e., evidence that application of such substances reduces reactions to noxious stimuli)  

5. Motivational trade-offs (behaviour indicating that the animal trades off potential harm against reward or other needs)  

6. Flexible self-protection behaviours (for example, wound-directed grooming, guarding, protective postures)  

7. Associative learning (especially avoidance learning) – learning to avoid stimuli previously associated with harm.  

8. Behavioural indicators of negative affective states (broadly: behaviour plausibly consistent with distress, rather than mere reflex withdrawal)  

Penaeid shrimp score:

• High for nociceptors

• Medium (at best) for modulation of responses (based on one non-replicated lidocaine study)

• Low or Very Low for all other criteria

Importantly, these low ratings are not “proof of absence.” They reflect how little research has been done and how few studies test for complex behaviours. The PeerJ review notes that “negative affective states remain undetermined,” meaning that we simply lack the kind of evidence that would allow a remotely confident inclination either way.

The Big Missing Piece: Decision-Making and Motivation

The strongest evidence for pain in crabs and lobsters comes from studies showing:

• learned avoidance of harmful stimuli,

• balancing avoidance against food, shelter, or mating opportunities,

• persistent protective behaviour long after injury,

• and flexible responses that change with context.

These are not immediate reflexes – they indicate some further evaluation, which could be suggestive of (but not proof of) subjective experience.

For penaeid shrimp, none of these behaviours have been demonstrated. There is currently no evidence that they learn from injury, make trade-offs, or alter behaviour in a long-term, sustained, adaptive way. Without decision-level evidence, claims of pain (let alone suffering) remain speculative at best.

Policy, Precaution, and Divergent Interpretations

The UK government now classifies all decapods, including shrimp, as sentient animals. But the LSE authors explicitly state that the inclusion of shrimp rests on precaution and on evidence from better-studied decapods – not on strong data specific to L. vannamei or P. monodon.

Sceptics argue that, without robust evidence, interpreting shrimp reactions as the subjective experience of pain risks mistaking simple reflex arcs or sedation effects for conscious, morally-relevant experience, especially given conflicting evidence on self-protective behaviours (wound grooming).

Bottom Line: Real Uncertainty, Minimal Evidence, and a Broader Ethical Context

At present, the scientific record provides some weak (and contradicting) evidence that the shrimp we eat might have some minimal capacity for sensing adverse stimuli. They have nociceptors. One study that failed replication indicated one shrimp-like species reacts to injury. 

But the deeper hallmarks of subjective, experienced pain – learning, motivation, decision-making, context-sensitivity – have not been shown. The most widely farmed species, L. vannamei, has only one indirect study on a highly artificial procedure. P. monodon has no direct evidence at all.

Thus the most honest assessment is this:

Shrimp may or may not feel pain, and we do not yet know whether any such experience would be meaningful or morally weighty. The actual evidence does not meet the criteria for or support any claim of suffering. The question is profoundly understudied.

Conclusion: the broader, more important point

While shrimp remain an open scientific question, other forms of industrial animal production – particularly broiler chicken farming and the intensive confinement of pigs – are not uncertain in the slightest. For chickens, the evidence of severe and prolonged suffering is overwhelming. Lameness, bone deformities, chronic pain, rapid-growth pathologies, heat stress, and overcrowding are documented across thousands of studies. Their long-term behavior meets all the criteria that scientists have associated with suffering. The suffering is intense and the scale is immense. Unlike shrimp, the existence of deep, meaningful, subjective pain in chickens is not a scientific mystery.

So while shrimp deserve better research, they should not distract from the places where we already know, with absolute clarity, that animals experience intense suffering at industrial scale – especially those individuals, such as chickens, who receive relatively minimal attention.

excerpts from "Secrets of the ancient memelords"

I first heard Adam Mastroianni on the podcast EconTalk. Here are a few bits from his Nov. 25 Substack, Secrets of the ancient memelords:

[O]nly a sicko would delight in the White House’s Studio Ghibli-fied picture of a weeping woman being deported, and only an insufferable scold would try to outlaw words like “crazy”, “stupid”, and “grandfather” in the name of political correctness. It’s not hard to see why most people don’t feel like they fit in well with either party. But as long as the folksy and brainy contingents stay on opposite sides of the dance floor, we can look forward to a lot more of this.

Bifurcation by education is always bad, but it’s worse for the educated group, because they’ll always be outnumbered. You simply cannot build a political coalition on the expectation that everybody’s going to do the reading.

[T]here’s a certain kind of galaxy-brained doomer who thinks that the only acceptable way to fight climate change is to tighten our belts. If we can invent our way out of this crisis with, say, hydrogen fuel cells or super-safe nuclear reactors, they think that’s somehow cheating. We’re supposed to scrimp, sweat, and suffer, because the greenhouse effect is not just a fact of chemistry and physics—it’s our moral comeuppance. In the same way that evangelical pastors used to say that every tornado was God’s punishment for homosexuality, these folks believe that rising sea levels are God’s punishment for, I guess, air conditioning.

This kind of small-tent, memetically inflexible thinking is a great way to make your political movement go extinct. But if you’re willing to be a little open-minded about how, exactly, we prevent the Earth from turning into a sun-dried tomato [<sigh> -ed], you might actually succeed. Imagine if we could suck the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into charcoal for your Fourth of July barbecue. Imagine if electricity was so cheap and clean that you could drive your Hummer from sea to shining sea while causing net zero emissions. ... That’s a future far more people can get behind, both literally and figuratively.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

“Despite all our confident and precise claims over the course of decades, the world has never been worse for non-human animals.”

Every time I think the crushing absurdity of (many) "effective altruists" can't get any worse (example) it gets worse. 

Yes, I know I should be constructive and understanding. They are just following their programming ... or cashing their paychecks to make sure industrial animal agriculture isn't threatened.

The above screenshot takes "let's lose the thread" to new heights, on so many levels (please see the rerun below). Adding the fetisization of "species" to the standard farcical fantasies about the impact of donations ... well, I'll give them that -- that's new. Ridiculous on the order of "save the earth."  

(And really, you can't think of anything at all better to do with $6.8 million dollars than allegedly "saving" one type of nematode or fungus? Really?)

Infiltrators or self-sabotage, indeed. I would in no way be shocked to discover that these EAs are actually sock puppets of big ag, big oil, etc.

I don't want anyone to suffer, but I can't help but wonder if the world wouldn't be far, far better off if the expected value crew actually knew what suffering really is. Maybe then they'd be more concerned with actually helping than with "keeping EA weird."

From last year: 

For your consideration: An exchange re: advocacy & animals

A message to One Step:

I am currently doing a research fellowship ....

We are currently evaluating the promise of a new organization running Veganuary campaigns. However, I suspect one explicitly focused on decreasing the consumption of poultry birds may be more cost-effective. Do you know the cost-effectiveness of One Step for Animals in terms of kg of chicken consumption reduced per $?

From our reply:

Tl;dr: One Step’s “About” page is the most important information we have to offer.

I’ve worked for and with quite a few animal advocacy organizations in the past 35 years. (I’ve also been on the evaluative side at VegFund.) I have seen (and written) answers to questions like yours (e.g., “Our surveys show 5 animals saved for every $1!”). Given these organizations' budgets, everyone should now be vegan and factory farming should have ended. (I’m not casting aspersions; as mentioned here, I did (and believed) these projections back in the 90s.) 

Yet as you know, the average person in the US, and globally, is eating as many factory-farmed animals as ever before. There are vastly more individuals suffering on factory farms today than 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Despite all our confident and precise claims over the course of decades, the world has never been worse for non-human animals.

Also over the past 35 years, I have read arguments why “Our advocacy is different. We have the math!” But the facts should leave us more than skeptical about any claims of any “reduction per $.” 

For details on why there is more suffering despite decades of advocacy, please see Meat Reduction Hurts Animals and Good-Faith Advocacy Can Cause More Suffering. ...

When starting One Step for Animals, our number one priority was to avoid advocacy that causes more suffering. 

Based on our experience and the lessons we have learned over the past 35 years, not causing net harm is the only honest claim demand-side advocacy can hope to make. (Work on the supply-side – i.e., plant-based and cultivated animal products – has also not come anywhere close to fulfilling the projections and promises they have made.) 

One Step won’t make any claims other than “try to do no harm.” Claims of efficacy simply do not match with reality. There is no reason to believe “this time is different.“

Even if not consciously or intentionally dishonest, these claims are misleading to the point of being actively harmful to animals.

The person I trust most regarding animal suffering is Lewis Bollard at Open Philanthropy Project. He and I don’t agree on everything, but he is not trying to sell a certain story, promote his group or philosophy, or solicit support. He takes suffering very seriously. In addition to being extremely scrupulous and rigorous, he constantly monitors himself for self-delusion.

Follow-up

How you can try to help animals without causing more harm

If you would like to support work driven by facts rather than games or trying to make donors feel good, please click here.