Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I think it probably tilts toward more suffering. This is what you see with the history of breeding these chickens to be the kind of mutants they are today. They've achieved a 4x gain in growth rates since the 1950s. That has led to a 2x drop in price, and that has led to a 3x increase in consumption. Because consumption has gone up so dramatically, and the suffering per bird has gone up so dramatically, that has outweighed the benefits of these birds being bigger. But the consumption might have gone up regardless. So actually then it's not clear. To the extent that we hold consumption constant, and maybe we shouldn't, they would have to be suffering 4x as much as a chicken in the 1950s for it not to be a net improvement. I don't know if you disagree with that. There is an in-between ground solution now. The higher welfare breeds that we are advocating for producers to adopt are not 1950s growth levels. They grow almost at 2025 growth levels scaled back slightly in a way that enables much larger welfare improvements. You don't have to go backwards to the level of these incredibly slow-growing animals. Some people will want that. There'll be a market for like heritage chickens and people who are willing to pay for these extremely slow-growing animals. But the more realistic thing at scale is going to be these ones that still grow fast and still get big, but do so in a way that doesn't totally destroy their bodies and cause them to suffer so much.…

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