I mean, while I think Galef is weird, this is the podcast/blog
originally ran by Massimo Pugliucci. The “Rationally” in “Rationally
Speaking” isn’t supposed to refer specifically to The Sequences or
anything like that. Yes, thank you, I am extremely online, as it
happens.
I used to listen to it all the time when Pigliucci was on it. I stayed on a bit after he left and the guest list, predictably, started to tilt heavily toward Big Yud-brand rationalism and NRx-adjacent types. I can only imagine how bad it is now.
I haven't paid any attention to him in a while, but the most recent eyerolly thing I remember from him is when he wrote [an article](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.405.8571&rep=rep1&type=pdf) with a half-assed, hand-wavy appeal to using fuzzy logic to settle the demarcation problem. I also remember my boyfriend having other, presumably more substantive, complaints about that essay which I am currently too alcohol'd to recall.
I also recall his Scientia Salon blog being host to some really dumb shit, but fuck if I'm gonna dig through those archives.
I remember reading his articles in the school paper back when I was an undergraduate at Tennessee and he was getting a PhD. It's always interesting to see his name pop up elsewhere.
Oh my god, one of the links is to one of those weirdos who believes
in reducing “wild animal suffering.” JFC.
For anyone who thinks reducing WAS is a great idea, consider how
badly we fuck up every time we intervene in an ecosystem. The presence
of predators is usually necessary to maintain a healthy equilibrium:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-when-predators-disappear-32079553/
Money quote from actual ecologists in case you’re too lazy to click
through: > We propose that many of the ecological surprises that have
confronted society over the past centuries—pandemics, population
collapses of species we value and eruptions of those we do not, major
shifts in ecosystem states, and losses of diverse ecosystem
services—were caused or facilitated by altered top-down forcing regimes
associated with the loss of native apex consumers or the introduction of
exotics. Our repeated failure to predict and moderate these events
result not only from the complexity of nature but from fundamental
misunderstandings of their root causes. Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-when-predators-disappear-32079553/#YRczHdeskUyupSAr.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only 2!
http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Caring about WAS is the same mindset that gives us gifts like Juicero
and Soylent–narrow-minded, superficially glib reasoning that ignores
context and lacks the humility that being in touch with reality ought to
endow.
Finally, taking WAS seriously in the way these guys do, which is all
about harm minimization, opens you up to the critique, “why not
eliminate suffering by eliminating life altogether?”
Yes, that kind of dumbass utilitarianism is absolutely
sneer-worthy.
Prioritizing WAS is weird, but to my mind, weirdness on its own is not a sufficient condition for sneerworthiness. LW-style rationalism is a lightning rod for 1) delusions of personal grandeur and 2) propounding old, discredited, malevolent ideas under an unconvincing banner of disintrested inquiry, and I think sneering is an appropriate response to both. In a sense neither of these are really weird - they're pretty common - but I think if there's anything positive to be said for the community it's that it occassionally produces actually weird (i.e., novel) ideas. I would hate to live in a world where wild animals were suffering horribly on net, and in which we could do something about it in the long term, but didn't because it would just be too goofy.
> I would hate to live in a world where wild animals were suffering horribly on net, and in which we could do something about it in the long term,
I think that a lot of people, possibly including you here, fail to grasp just how alien natural systems are to our understanding. The idea that one species could impose its values on all others is kind of shocking.
I'd hate to live in a world where Venutians were suffering horribly on net, and in which we could do something about it in the long term, but didn't because it would just be too goofy.
My thought on seeing people's responses to WAS is roughly: wow, people's opinions aren't just influenced by their life experiences--sometimes, they're fucking determined by them.
Like, a response to "is life more suffering than not on net" pretty much has to be determined by how you've handled what you've been through. It's just standpoint theory, but in a new context.
(insert rant about how this makes lots of ea research moot because they'd have reached the opposite conclusion if they had the same evidence and different life experiences, like especially wrt animal advocacy and corporate cage free campaigns etc, but also more generally in EA)
Is reducing predation really at the top of people's lists when they talk about reducing wild animal suffering?
As opposed to, for example, banning catch-and-release fishing or dip shits riding around in craft with outboard motors in shallow water or restricting human access to areas of the wilderness inhabited by stress prone species, or more proactive approaches involving treating diseases and injuries among wild animals and reducing the impact of some catastrophes.
In my experience, the main people who want to kill predators are shit head cattle ranchers, shit head snake murderers, shit head hunting boosters, and just general shit heads who drive wolves extinct for their own convenience.
People who are interested in reducing wild animal suffering from an effective altruism perspective are indeed this loony: https://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-animal-suffering-the-most-ethical-choice-is-to-kill-all-predators-especially-cecil-the-lion/
William MacAskill (only Amanda is credited for the byline of that article, but from googling around, they wrote together) is supposedly one of the original founders of EA.
What you're talking about sounds more like regular conservation, which is of course reasonable. You're not trying to figure out whether one herd of gazelles' suffering means we should shoot one lion. You're not ranking species by their sentience-level and determining which one's suffering matters more as a result.
I mean, while I think Galef is weird, this is the podcast/blog originally ran by Massimo Pugliucci. The “Rationally” in “Rationally Speaking” isn’t supposed to refer specifically to The Sequences or anything like that. Yes, thank you, I am extremely online, as it happens.
Oh my god, one of the links is to one of those weirdos who believes in reducing “wild animal suffering.” JFC.
For anyone who thinks reducing WAS is a great idea, consider how badly we fuck up every time we intervene in an ecosystem. The presence of predators is usually necessary to maintain a healthy equilibrium: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-when-predators-disappear-32079553/
Money quote from actual ecologists in case you’re too lazy to click through: > We propose that many of the ecological surprises that have confronted society over the past centuries—pandemics, population collapses of species we value and eruptions of those we do not, major shifts in ecosystem states, and losses of diverse ecosystem services—were caused or facilitated by altered top-down forcing regimes associated with the loss of native apex consumers or the introduction of exotics. Our repeated failure to predict and moderate these events result not only from the complexity of nature but from fundamental misunderstandings of their root causes. Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-when-predators-disappear-32079553/#YRczHdeskUyupSAr.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only 2! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Caring about WAS is the same mindset that gives us gifts like Juicero and Soylent–narrow-minded, superficially glib reasoning that ignores context and lacks the humility that being in touch with reality ought to endow.
Finally, taking WAS seriously in the way these guys do, which is all about harm minimization, opens you up to the critique, “why not eliminate suffering by eliminating life altogether?”
Yes, that kind of dumbass utilitarianism is absolutely sneer-worthy.
Julian Huxley truly unleashed some bastard ubermenschen on this world.