A Silent Way

Let me defend effective altruists’ concern for shrimp welfare. We don’t know whether shrimp are conscious. But if they are conscious and can feel pain, we should be willing to spend resources to reduce the suffering we inflict on them. We don’t need certainty to justify spending resources to reduce the risk that we’re torturing conscious beings. Yes, reducing this to math can yield absurd conclusions about, say, how many babies we should sacrifice to spare how many shrimp from suffering. But any well-defined moral system can lead to troubling conclusions, and that doesn’t excuse cruelty to beings that may be conscious nor justify not thinking carefully about moral choices.