Nature's nature
3 min read
Is nature full of Suffering and scarce in happiness? WE DON'T KNOW!
The Argument For Suffering Dominance
- Most animals die as babies: One of the main arguments for the view that suffering dominates the wild life is that most of the individuals don't survive to adulthood and die as young babies or children. This is due to a reproductive strategy that gives birth to a very large number of offspring, with minimal to no parental care, only a tiny fraction of whom survive. Most animals in nature, and also most vertebrates (fish, amphibian, reptiles, mammals and birds), belong to species with such a reproductive strategy. Therefore, most of those who do not survive die in great suffering from disease, lack of food, predation, etc. This suffering from dying and other negative experiences such as hunger and cold are far greater than the pleasant experiences.
- When you think about wild animals, think small: Don't think about zebras and lions, think about finger length fish like Bristlemouths (it's a genus, not a species), living in the twilight zone, which is considered the most abundant vertebrate on Earth. Estimates run from hundreds of trillions up to roughly a quadrillion (10^15) individuals. There are more than 100,000 bristlemouths for every single human (and roughly six per human for wild birds, estimated at about 50 billion). If even a tiny moral weight is attached to those small fishes, then 10^15 of them quietly dominates almost any welfare calculation built around charismatic land animals.
- If you think about mammals, there are very roughly 100 billion individuals or more. Rodents and bats make up the large majority.
- Convincing? imo, not really.
The Argument For Agnosticism
- The simple truth is we just don't really know, as detailed in this post. The main arguments:
- Animals who die very young could experience many different states which outweigh death and other painful experiences, such as social contact, eating, mating, resting comfortably, playing, exploring, perceiving vistas or sounds or smells that they like.
- One of the main symptoms in cases of human depression is a lack of motivation and an unwillingness to move. For an animal needing to acquire food and other things necessary to live, this could mean death. So for evolutionary reasons it would be logical for the baseline experience of animals to be "at least slightly positive" (and I would argue, at least not horrible). It is plausible that just being alive, perceiving, exploring, and experiencing the world, could itself bring happiness to animals.
- Some studies on animals suggest that extreme fear can trigger opioid mediated analgesia in animals, temporarily reducing pain sensitivity during predation.
- Most researchers and people working on wild animal suffering reduction, which I have spoken to, tend to agree we just don't know if suffering dominates nature.
- I think the question of "nature's nature" is in many ways the deepest questions of all. Is the world, as we know it, full of negative experiences or positive experiences? we are not even close to an answer. Nevertheless, the imperative to help wild animals, even if their average life is not hell, is still huge, one of the biggest moral challenges humanity faces.
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