“Weighing Animal Welfare” by Bob Fischer

Rethink Priorities’ Moral Weight Project ran from May 2021 to February 2023. During that time, we developed a from-first-principles method for estimating differences in animals’ capacity for welfare. In the year and a half since we finished the project, we turned it into a book for Oxford University Press: Weighing Animal Welfare: Comparing Well-being Across Species. We’re pleased to announce that it's available now and free to access. Why did a project about “moral weight” focus on differences in capacity for welfare? In this context and very roughly, a moral weight is the adjustment that ought to be applied to the estimated impact of an animal-focused intervention to make it comparable to the estimated impact of some human-focused intervention. Given certain (controversial) assumptions, differences in capacity for welfare just are moral weights. But in themselves, they’re something more modest: they’re estimates of how well and badly an animal's [...] The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI. --- First published: October 22nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d3ycWYWAtuHdZAfo6/weighing-animal-welfare --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.