As far as I can see that's just functionalism / physicalism plus moral anti-realism which are both well-respected. But as philosophy of mind and moral philosophy are separate fields you won't see much discussion of the intersection of these views. Completely agreed if you do assume the position is wrong.

Is it just something like "preventing suffering is the most important thing to work on (and the disjunction of assumptions that can lead to this conclusion)"?

I also don't want to speak for FRI as a whole, but yeah, I think it's safe to say that a main thing that makes FRI unique is its suffering focus.

My high confidence in suffering-focused values results from moral anti-realism generally (or, if moral realism is true, then my unconcern for the moral truth). I don't think consciousness anti-realism plays a big role because I would still be suffering-focused even if qualia were "real". My suffering focus is ultimately driven by the visceral feeling that extreme suffering is so severe that nothing else compares in importance. Theoretical arguments take a back seat to this conviction.

Regrettably, we were not able to choose shortlisted organisations as planned. My original intention was that we would choose organisations in a systematic, principled way, shortlisting those which had highest expected impact given our evidence by the time of the shortlist deadline. This proved too difficult, however, so we resorted to choosing the shortlist based on a mixture of our hunches about expected impact and the intellectual value of finding out more about an organisation and comparing it to the others.

[...]

Later, we realised that understanding the impact of the Good Food Institute was too difficult, so we replaced it with Animal Charity Evaluators on our shortlist. Animal Charity Evaluators finds advocates for highly effective opportunities to improve the lives of animals.

If quantitative models were used for these decisions I'd be interested in seeing them.

Thanks for this! Even within EA I think there's a need for more brainstorming of different cause areas, and you've presented a well-researched case for this one. I am tentatively convinced!

What do you think is the best counterargument? That is, what's the best reason to think that maybe this isn't as tractable/neglected/important as you think?

I think the biggest concern (for me) is whether or not the research on the matter is solid. Does physical punishment cause worse outcomes, or does it merely correlate? Etc. This is important both for determining how serious the problem is, and for determining how tractable it is (because without research to back up our claims, it will be hard to convince anyone to change.) I haven't looked into it myself of course, but I'm glad you have.

Can you elaborate on this?

"Bob: agree, to make lots of suffering, it needs pretty human-like utility functions that lead to simulations or making many sentient beings."

I'm pretty sure this is false. Superintelligent singletons that don't specifically disvalue suffering will make lots of it (relative to the current amount, i.e. one planetful) in pursuit of other ends. (They'll make ancestor simulations, for example, for a variety of reasons.) The amount of suffering they'll make will be far less than the theoretical maximum, but far more than what e.g. classical utilitarians would do.

If you disagree, I'd love to hear that you do--because I'm thinking about writing a paper on this anyway, it will help to know that people are interested in the topic.

"Bob: agree, to make lots of suffering, it needs pretty human-like utility functions that lead to simulations or making many sentient beings."

I'm pretty sure this is false. Superintelligent singletons that don't specifically disvalue suffering will make lots of it (relative to the current amount, i.e. one planetful) in pursuit of other ends. (They'll make ancestor simulations, for example, for a variety of reasons.) The amount of suffering they'll make will be far less than the theoretical maximum, but far more than what e.g. classical utilitarians would do.

If you disagree, I'd love to hear that you do--because I'm thinking about writing a paper on this anyway, it will help to know that people are interested in the topic.

This is great. Please do it again next year.

I agree with Owen. I don't have anything to add to what's been said, other than a response to the strongest reason against having that norm: It only conflicts with the norm of "do what's most effective" if it truly is more effective to donate to one's own employer. But because of the signaling/weirdness reasons (and, yes, the bias) that doesn't seem to be true. We're sophisticated enough that we can have a hierarchy of norms, with "do what's most effective" at the top and "don't donate to your employer unless there's a special circumstance" as a lower norm--as a helpful heuristic/guideline.

How much money is saved from taxes by foregoing salary? If it's at least 20% of the donation then I might change my mind.