EA - Net global welfare may be negative and declining by kyle fish

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Net global welfare may be negative and declining, published by kyle fish on September 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.OverviewThe total moral value of the world includes humans as well as all other beings of moral significance. As such, a picture of the overall trajectory of net global welfare that accounts for both human and non-human populations is important context for thinking about the future on any timescale, and about the potential impacts of transformative technologies.There's compelling evidence that life has gotten better for humans recently, but the same can't be said for other animals, especially given the rise of industrial animal agriculture. How do these trends cash out, and what's the overall trajectory?I've used human and farmed animal population data, estimates of welfare ranges across different species, and estimates of the average wellbeing of different species to get a rough sense of recent trends in total global welfare. Importantly, this initial analysis is limited to humans and some of the most abundant farmed animals - it does not consider effects on insects or wild animals, the inclusion of which could plausibly change the top-line conclusions (see e.g. here). I focus on the years from 1961-2021, as this is the period for which the most reliable data exists, and the period most relevant to understanding the current trajectory.My tentative conclusion is that net global welfare may be both negative and declining. That is, the entire good of humanity may be outweighed by the cumulative suffering of farmed animals, with total animal suffering growing faster than human wellbeing is increasing, especially in recent decades. Below I lay out some of the many assumptions upon which this work depends, the core of my analysis, and some tentative reflections on how these findings shape my thinking about the future.Notes and AssumptionsThis analysis was performed as a quick/rough estimate, and should not be mistaken for a comprehensive treatment of the topic. I am highly uncertain about both the quantitative findings and my interpretations.I opted for using point estimates rather than confidence intervals for the sake of simplicity. My confidence intervals would be wide if they were included. That said, I've aimed to make my estimates such that they fall at or below the median of my best-guess distributions (i.e. for the parts of the analysis that relied on my own judgment calls, I think it's more likely than not that I've underestimated animal suffering relative to humans, rather than overestimated).I've limited the scope of this analysis to humans and farmed animals, in part due to data availability, in part for simplicity, and in part to focus on humanity's most direct impacts on other beings. Inclusion of wild animals in this analysis could plausibly change the signs of my conclusions.This work draws heavily on the Moral Weight Project from Rethink Priorities and relies on the same assumptions: utilitarianism, hedonism, valence symmetry, unitarianism, use of proxies for hedonic potential, and more. Although I think the Rethink Priorities welfare range estimates are currently the best tool available for interspecies welfare comparisons, I do not necessarily endorse these assumptions in full, nor do I think the Rethink Priorities welfare ranges are the "correct" weights - only the best available. I consider the following entries in the Moral Weight Project Sequence to be particularly useful background reading:An Introduction to the Moral Weight ProjectRethink Priorities' Welfare Range EstimatesDon't Balk at Animal-friendly ResultsAnalysisBackground and DefinitionsThe central concept of my analysis is that the total welfare of a given species in a given year can be calculated as follows:Welfare Capacity = Population Welfare Ran...