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Is there more suffering than enjoyment in nature? The question can be confusing, among other things, because it can have several interpretations [1]. Also, are suffering and enjoyment measurable and comparable [2]? Is it correct to consider suffering and enjoyment as negative and positive values of the same variable, dimension, axis or graph? Or would it be more correct to consider suffering and enjoyment as different variables, such as salt and sugar [3] that seem opposite but are not, and certainly do not compensate?

Despite these inconveniences, it is possible to make some thoughtful thoughts about whether there is more or less suffering that enjoyment in nature. In the article “The question of natural evil: evolutionary bases of the prevalence of disvalue” [4], Oscar Horta [5] examines “the problem of evil in nature, that is, the question of the disvalue present in nature and of whether or not it prevails over happiness. [Horta] claims that disvalue actually outweighs happiness in nature. This is a hardly avoidable consequence of the existence of an evolutionary process in a context where resources are scarce. […] because of this, suffering and early death are the norm in nature. The number of individuals who come to existence just to die in pain shortly after vastly outweighs the number of those who survive […] [and] concludes that the good things present in nature are vastly overshadowed by the huge amount of disvalue that exists there.”

For instance, only one in five lion cubs reaches two years [6] of age. And they do not die with palliative care, analgesics and anesthetics, but from hunger, thirst, diseases, or being devoured or attacked by other animals. The mortality rate of lions may seem high, but on the contrary: most species [7] have a reproduction strategy known as “r” (r-selection) in which many descendants are generated, each of which has a very low probability of survival. Many animals just born and then die (with suffering) without even experiencing the pleasure of eating.

In 1995 Yew-Kwang Ng [8] published an article “Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering” [9] in which he claimed that, according to a plausible model, suffering dominates in nature over enjoyment.

However, later, in 2019 Yew-Kwang Ng himself along with Zach Freitas-Groff [10] published a new article “Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology” [11] in which they report having found that the mathematics of the 1995 article was wrong, and that when the error is corrected, an uncertain situation is obtained.

After this new publication, the discussion on this issue was renewed in the summer of 2019 in various debate spaces such as this thread [12] in “Effective Altruism”, this thread [13] in “Reducing Wild-Animal Suffering” and this thread [14] in “Effective Animal Advocacy – Discussion”.

It can be seen that this issue arouses significant interest, and the debate in these threads is intense, sometimes passionate, and with frequent misunderstandings, perhaps because of the possible different meaning of the expressions used, perhaps because of unclear clarifications. I believe that the use of simulation of philosophical hypotheses about sentience [15] could help to better understand this problem by alleviating several of the inconveniences that are manifested in these debates..

For example, for some it is clear that in the populations of individuals belonging to the “r” strategy species, which generate many descendants who die with a high probability shortly after being born, there must be more suffering than in the populations of individuals belonging to the “K” strategy species, in which few descendants are generated. Since the species of strategy “r” abound in nature, it is therefore concluded that in nature, most individuals are simply born and shortly thereafter die with suffering. Therefore, suffering is the norm, suffering is what abounds in nature. And do not enjoyment.

However, Zach Freitas-Groff comments on his blog [16] that “Because the costs (e.g. resource usage) of suffering depend on the probability of experiencing suffering, when the probability of suffering increases, the severity of suffering should decrease. In other words, if the probability of being born and then immediately dying is sufficiently high, then increasing the amount of suffering is less advantageous for genetic reproduction.”

This debate is also shown by Ozy Brennan with the question: “How common is chronic stress in nature?” in its lists of “Crucial considerations” [17]:

“Chronic stress happens when an animal experiences a stressor, such as low social status or hunger, for a long period of time; in humans, it is linked not only to anxiety and depression but to physical health conditions like heart disease. Experts disagree wildly about how common chronic stress is in nature. Some experts, like Oscar Horta [18], argue that predation and other stressors make chronic stress very common. Other experts, like Robert Sapolsky [19], claim that chronic stress is basically unknown in nature. Still other experts, like Rudy Boonstra [20], say that chronic stress appears only in certain species in which it is adaptive. If most wild animals experience a great deal of chronic stress, it’s more likely that their lives aren’t worth living. Conversely, if wild animals experience far less chronic stress than humans, their lives may be more pleasant than ours.”

In this post [21] published in the discussion group “Reducing Insect Suffering”, Manu Herrán [22] shares the news [23] of a “fungus that is sexually transmitted from cicada to cicada [which] drugs them with amphetamine or psilocybin to have sex without stopping. Even after losing part of their abdomen they are still looking for a partner. […] if insects can be drugged to avoid feeling pain, then they are able to feel pain […] and when this pain is an inconvenience for reproductive success, evolution seems to have found a way to alleviate that pain, and allow them to continue maximizing reproduction, but except in rare cases like this one […] I do not think we can expect the death of many descendants (r-strategy) to be with less suffering [than the K strategy] unless we find a credible mechanism under which death without suffering has more evolutionary advantages than death with suffering, as is the case with these insects. In the rest of the cases, unfortunately, more or less suffering while dying will be evolutionarily indifferent.”

The debate continues in the forum of “Effective Altruism” from a an initial comment [24] to which Michael St. Jules [25] argues that “If they are most likely going to die either way, then the suffering might not serve as a useful signal to avoid death, and the energy that would be spent on causing suffering (or developing the capacity to suffer) might be better spent on continued development (or something else), on the off-chance that they do survive.”

Herrán also suggests another possible way in which less suffering in the death of r-type species can occur: “be turtles lay about 110 eggs in each nest. Most of those turtles are going to die very soon, or else there would be turtles right now walking around my table. Suppose it is true to die with suffering costs an effort that could be used for something else […] For example, if the turtles, while they die, when they are not going to reproduce , once past that point of evolutionary non-return, they could have a switch (that appears through mutations) that extinishes the sentience (under certain paradigms this simply would not be possible) and allowed them to do something that would help propagate their genes, this would be selected. […] For example, it could be (invented) that the turtle just before dying uses that extra energy to get closer to another sister turtle to be devoured by her, increasing the likelihood of expanding her genes through her sister.”

As I said, I believe that the use of simulation of philosophical hypotheses about sentience [15] could help to better understand this problem by alleviating several of the inconveniences manifested in these debates.

In this article [26], Herrán shows another problem similar to this, related to the hypotheses about the nature of the ability to feel, which can also be understood and solved by using simulations.

What kind of misunderstandings have been generated in this debate and how can simulations help prevent them?

An important feature of these simulations is that they are able to represent the range of all possible hypotheses and theories about sentience. For example, some of the participants in the debate might consider that p-zombies [27] may exist, while others may implicitly assume that p-zombies cannot exist. These different hypotheses would be included in the system in one way or another, so that simulations in which p-zombies can exist and simulations in which p-zombies cannot exist will be explicitly shown. If doing so —or trying to do it— proves that it is impossible, or that some aspect of the theory is not coherent, that’s ok, because that was exactly what we intended to do. The objective is to try to represent different models, theories and hypotheses to be able to verify their coherence, assess them, refute them or provoke their redefinition.

Study hypotheses about the nature of sentience, represent them in the form of models and test the coherence of these models. This could even allow us to refute some hypotheses or cause their redefinition.

Similarly, for some it may be obvious that sentience (pleasure and pain) causes motivation which in turn has an influence on behavior, while for others the experiences have no effect. Or closer to the subject of the original debate, it is possible to simulate that experiences have a greater or lesser impact, or cost, so that avoiding very intense experiences of suffering (if such a thing were possible) may or may not be useful to save energy that can be used in another thing.

In the debate several participants mention in one way or another the idea that Trent Erikson expresses as follows: “if an animal is irrecoverably dying, then whatever happens then has no evolutionary impact. Therefore pain / suffering response to irrecoverably dying can’t be selected against.”

Herrán also takes this position as a general case, and yet shows two ways in which the opposite could happen. Simulations could help find these other ways, if they exist.

Insects and fish are representative of the “r” strategy, while in the “K” strategy we can count elephants, lions and humans. In the matter of whether there is more or less suffering in nature, we should take into account the different hypotheses about the different intensity of the experiences depending on the size of the brain, the number of neurons, the number of connectors between these neurons or others. considerations. It may well be that in the populations of “r” strategy animals there are many deaths, but whose aggregate suffering was less due to their lower brain.

Whoever who thinks so should consistently consider that the suffering of the long-finned pilot whale or the African elephant may be two or three times greater than that of the human, due to the greater number of neurons in the cerebral cortex or in the entire nervous system [28]. Models and simulations can help a lot to understand these different positions. Simulations in general have great didactic and predictive power and this is not new. The novel aspect proposed in this project is to include sentience in the simulations, that is, to represent the experiences, both positive and negative, and to do so taking into account all possible theories and hypotheses about sentience, for which we must previously create maps on theories about sentience [29] so that simulations are able to also take into account the empty gaps that exist between the theories that have been proposed.

Returning to the debate between species K and r, the human is undoubtedly a species “K”: we have few descendants. However, in each ejaculation, human males release 250 million sperm cells, producing 525 billion sperm throughout their lives, while human females are born with hundreds of thousands of primary follicles, each of which will become an egg In a way, all species are “r”. Should the possible sentience of ovules and sperm be taken into account? For many people, no; but for a panpsychist [30], possibly yes. A simulation that admits both possibilities will be an invaluable tool to improve the debate between panpsychists and non-panpsychists.

References

[1] https://manuherran.com/what-does-more-suffering-than-happiness-means/

[2] https://foundational-research.org/measuring-happiness-and-suffering/

[3] https://manuherran.com/asymmetries-and-compensations-between-pleasure-and-pain/

[4] https://www.academia.edu/10177677/La_cuesti%C3%B3n_del_mal_natural_bases_evolutivas_de_la_prevalencia_del_desvalor

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Horta

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

[7] https://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yew-Kwang_Ng

[9] Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering. Biology and Philosophy. July 1995, Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 255–285. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00852469

[10] http://www.zachgroff.com/

[11] Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology. https://philpapers.org/rec/GRODSD-8. Zach Groff & Yew-Kwang Ng. Biology and Philosophy 34 (4):40 (2019). Received: 24 July 2018 / Accepted: 7 June 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019. See also: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10539-019-9692-0 and the blog post of Zach Freitas-Groff: “How Much Do Wild Animals Suffer? A Foundational Result on the Question is Wrong”. http://www.zachgroff.com/2019/06/how-much-do-wild-animals-suffer.html

[12] https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/2341934342529576/

[12] https://www.facebook.com/groups/suffering.in.nature/permalink/2727855270577587/

[14] https://www.facebook.com/groups/EffectiveAnimalAdvocacy/permalink/1226384277532441/

[15] https://manuherran.com/simulation-of-philosophical-hypotheses-about-sentience-a-system-for-understanding-and-assesment-of-metaphysical-theories-of-sentience/

[16] http://www.zachgroff.com/2019/06/how-much-do-wild-animals-suffer.html

[17] https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/some-crucial-considerations-for-was/. See also: https://was-research.org/blog/some-crucial-considerations-for-was/

[18] http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=bts

[19] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0037NX018/

[20] https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2435.12008

[21] https://www.facebook.com/groups/reducing.insect.suffering/permalink/1933180620115925/

[22] https://manuherran.com/

[23] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/massospora-fungi-cicadas-psilocybin-amphetamine-nonstop-mating

[24] https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/?multi_permalinks=2341934342529576&comment_id=2345183058871371

[25] https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstjules/

[26] https://manuherran.com/why-i-think-we-should-seriously-consider-the-possibility-that-sentience-and-motivation-play-no-role-in-evolution/

[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons

[29] https://manuherran.com/a-map-of-metaphysical-theories-of-sentience/

[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

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