Ways to Reduce Suffering
First written: summer 2008; last edited: 2012
Summary. I give a list of ideas for things people might do to prevent suffering. These range from highly speculative, high-expected-payoff actions (e.g., opposing the creation of infinitely many new universes in a laboratory) to more immediate, down-to-earth approaches (e.g., promoting use of
humane insecticides). My current recommendation for utilitarian donors is to fund highly efficient online veg ads run by Vegan Outreach, The Humane League, or a similar organization.
Introduction
To some extent, the current page is a summary of ideas that are explained in more detail elsewhere on this site. I'm not currently in a position to work on many of the below proposals, but I hope to tackle some of them in the future, when I'm older, wiser, and have more resources. At the moment, it seems like a safe bet for me to make and invest income that I can later use to fund projects like these (or else that I can live off of while working on them directly). Many readers will likely have suggestions or criticisms, which I welcome: <webmaster ["at"] utilitarian-essays.com>. Please also let me know if you might be interested in helping actually to carry out any of these ideas.
Infinite Suffering
Physics and cosmology
If we live in an infinite universe, there may exist infinitely many suffering organisms. Various levels of multiverses would contain various degrees of infinite suffering. Physicists' theories of quantum mechanics, time travel, inflationary cosmology, string theory, and the rest are thus highly relevant in assessing the amount of suffering in the universe.
Are there ways to exploit the laws of physics to prevent infinite (or even large finite) amounts of suffering? This seems an urgent question for research.
Lab universes
I assign nontrivial probability to humans (or their descendants) creating infinitely many new universes in a laboratory. Apart from causing infinitely many new replications of the Holocaust, this would create infinitely many animals that would suffer in the wild.
Ways to avert this scenario aren't obvious. Even if lab universes are possible, they'll probably require more advanced technology than humans are likely to have in the near future, so that immediate prohibitions wouldn't really help. Moreover, it's unclear whether publicizing the issue is even a good idea, since many people are fascinated by the idea of making new universes and might be inspired to support such efforts once they heard about them.
Infinity in general
Applying the framework of maximizing expected value to the case of infinite outcomes doesn't yet have a widely accepted foundation. Basic research on this problem might shed light on how to prioritize various scenarios involving infinite suffering. (Finally, a practical application of higher-level infinite-set theory!) On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether this type of research will ultimately have much impact. For the most part, any infinity-prioritization scheme tends to boil down mainly to an expression of one's pre-existing intuitions.
An Institute for Research on Infinite Suffering
I mentioned a few concrete ideas of things that might cause infinite suffering. But the space of plausible theories is vast and largely unexplored, and the probabilities that we assign to those theories that have already been developed often change quickly and drastically as new evidence comes in. So regarding questions of infinite suffering, it may sometimes be best to adopt await and seeapproach until knowledge advances far beyond where it is today.
But in the mean time, there remains the task of systematically
investigating ideas related to infinite suffering, evaluating their
plausibility, and suggesting avenues for further study. In addition,
it would be helpful simply to raise the issue of infinite
suffering into people's consciousness as a legitimate topic of concern
and discourse. I would welcome something like an Institute for
Research on Infinite Suffering
that could begin to tackle these
challenges. Plus, there's already lots of great work being done by very smart individuals--in philosophy, physics, mathematics, and other fields. Just a little nudging as far as choice of research topics could produce fruitful results.
Finite Suffering--Animals
Wild animals
There are enormous numbers of animals in the wild enduring terrible pain, distress, hunger, and illness. It seems plausible that there are cost-effective ways of relieving some of this suffering. If so, animal-welfare organizations could help far more animals than they currently do--even just counting the higher-level species like mammals that they tend to focus on most--by shifting resources toward such projects.
It seems that many people are not significantly troubled by the
suffering of wild animals, and those who are often see the problem as
just one of those unhappy facts about the world.
Perhaps there
would be value in publicizing (say, through a film) the seriousness of
the problem and the idea that humans might actually be able to improve
the situation.
Insects
There's some chance that insects can feel pain, and--considering that the world supports 10^18 of them--the expected value of their suffering is enormous.
While perhaps not the most cost-effective option, one way to
relieve expected insect suffering would be to promote the use of
humane insecticides
(i.e., insecticides that cause death more
quickly and gently than conventional versions). If nothing else, a
project like this would attract media attention while simultaneously
demonstrating that insect suffering is not a completely intractable
issue.
Of course, it's currently unknown whether, or to what extent, insects can feel pain. The topic has been examined by a few studies, but I would guess that the marginal benefit of research on the question remains large.
Animal-welfare research
There is lots of excellent academic research by biologists, veterinarians, and animal-welfare scientists on questions of crucial importance: Which animals can feel pain? What are signs and causes of distress? How can pain be managed and prevented? The benefits of such work are twofold. First, the information itself is important for determining how much different animals suffer in various circumstances so that activists can best target their resources to areas of greatest need. Second, the framework of animal-welfare researchers is highly utilitarian: Where is there lots of suffering, and how can we cost-effectively reduce it? The more people apply this mindset to laboratory and farm animals, perhaps the more they will also apply it to, say, wild animals and humans. Most people have few reservations taking a thoroughly hedonist approach to animal pain and pleasure; the more they do so, perhaps the more they will see that the same applies to Homo sapiens.
How can utilitarians best support such research? Should they fund promising animal-welfare scientists directly? Or lobby for more government and industry funding of research? Or maybe they should focus on putting the findings of the academic world into practice, or popularizing the material to a wider audience?
Indirect Approaches
Promoting cost-effectiveness
Since people are often less concerned with the efficiency of their donations than with simply feeling like they're doing something to help, there's wide room for those who are more conscious of the importance of cost-effectiveness to help others choose better charities.[1]
A related approach is to target one's donations toward the subset
of activities of charitable organizations that have highest expected
returns. In particular, there may be cases in which fundraising
has enormous expected value but charities are reluctant to devote
too many resources toward it out of concern for the impression it will
give donors regarding how their funds are being used. One could ask a
charity to use all of one's donation on the dirty work
jobs
that ordinary donors who are more concerned about feeling good about
what they've accomplished directly would be reluctant to support. (In
going about this, it would be important to ensure that, by your
donating more toward fundraising, you're not just allowing the charity
to spend less of other donations on it. Rather, the point is to
increase the total size of the fundraising budget. In addition, one
should consider whether better fundraising for one charity simply
means people will end up donating less to other charities.)
Of course, even utilitarian wannabes are not immune from the natural temptation to seek warm fuzzies
over cost-effectiveness; we are still humans with tribal psychology, after all. Eliezer Yudkowsky proposes an interesting way to address this: Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately
:
the main lesson is that all three of these things -- warm fuzzies, status, and expected utilons -- can be bought far more efficiently when you buy separately, optimizing for only one thing at a time. Writing a check for $10,000,000 to a breast-cancer charity -- while far more laudable than spending the same $10,000,000 on, I don't know, parties or something -- won't give you the concentrated euphoria of being present in person when you turn a single human's life around, probably not anywhere close. [...] And if you threw away all concern for warm fuzzies and status, there are probably at least a thousand underserved existing charities that could produce orders of magnitude more utilons with ten million dollars. Trying to optimize for all three criteria in one go only ensures that none of them end up optimized very well -- just vague pushes along all three dimensions.I think encouraging others to adopt Eliezer's advice -- rather than expecting them to go cold turkey and give everything to the single most efficient cause -- could be truly effective. (As my footnote points out, I may need to learn this lesson myself.)
Career choice
People tend to feel good about doing things that directly help others and feel bad about things that directly harm others. However, they often ignore the counterfactual question of what would have happened if they personally hadn't done those actions: Would someone else have done them instead? Especially in the area of career choice, it may be quite important to take a big-picture view ofWhat's the total impact of this versus that option?rather than being locally concerned with
What specific impacts do my individual actions have? Am I personally staying 'pure' and 'keeping my own hands clean'?
Eliezer's point about trying to optimize two criteria simultaneously potentially optimizing neither may ring true here as well: Rather than seeking some way to incorporate doing good
into your professional career, or purchasing habits, or investments, you might do better to treat those as business matters, and save your time and money to work on charity separately.