Thank you for the reply, Toby. I agree that humanity have instrumental values to all sentient beings. And I am glad that you want to include animals when you say shaping the future.

This might work, though does have some surprising effects, such as that even after our extinction, the trajectory might not stay at zero

I wonder why you think this would be surprising? If humans are not the only beings who have intrinsic values, why is it surprising that there will be values left after humans go extinct?

Thank you for the post! I have a question: I wonder whether you think the trajectory to be shaped should be that of all sentient beings, instead of just humanity? It seems to me that you think that we ought to care about the wellbeing of all sentient beings. Why isn't this prinicple extraopolated when it comes to longtermism? 

For instance, from the quote below from the essay, it seems to me that your proposal's scope doesn't neccessarily include nonhuman animals. "For example, a permanent improvement to the wellbeing of animals on earth would behave like a gain (though it would require an adjustment to what v(⋅) is supposed to be representing)." 

The work is appearing as a chapter for the forthcoming book, Essays on Longtermism, but as of today, you can also read it online here.

Thank you for providing this reading for free, and sharing this post! Inside this online PDF, under the section "Gains", there's a sentence now looking like this:

"We can all such a change a gain"

I suppose you meant to say "call" instead of "all".

I'm curious what evidence convinced you about fish. So far I haven't seen much on the subject of consciousness specifically, though I have seen some arguments around pain nerves and aversive stimuli. 

There are a number of studies on fish that provides evidence of consciousness beyond just nociception and pain avoidance behavior (which is already a level higher than just nociception). I will just name a few. Most recently and shockingly, a species of fish passed the "mirror test" by passing the "mark test". Other older studies include finding that fish engaging in trade-off thinking between rewards and pain, finding that fish engage in cooperative behavior, and finding that zebrafish can have "emotional fever" (which scientists used to think can only happen to birds, mammals, and reptiles)

Victoria Braithwaite, who wrote the book Do Fish Feel Pain, said "Given all of this (the evidence she and other researchers gathered), I see no logical reason why we should not extend to fish the same welfare considerations that we currently extend to birds and mammals."

Edamame is soy. Just immature one still in pods.

Edamame - Wikipedia

Being allergic to fish really hurts, because I think fish probably suffer less than birds or mammals, if at all. If I could eat more fish instead of meat, I would. 

First, I think the evidence for fish sentience seems to be almost as strong as birds' now. Yes, probably less evidence than most mammals, but not significantly. Certainly not significant enough to compensate the effect coming from the fact that commonly eaten mammals are way heavier than most fish humans eat, which means the number of sentient beings eaten per weight of meat is much higher for fish.

Not suggesting people should learn from me, just saying what I did. 

I got similar reactions from my family and what I did was keep reducing the number of animals I abstain from (originally I thought crustaceans can't suffer, so I kept eating them but eventually I told my family that I won't eat them either, and then I later cut even bivalves to become full vegan). Besides sticking with my dietary choice, I kept engaging in debates with them. I even have to distance myself a bit from them. It was a few painful years, but they have eventually accepted my change and even got influenced by me. Two of my family members reduced thei consumption of animal products (one became vegetarian), my mother agrees to slaughter fish in more humane ways.

I think the calculus doesn't only involve the suffering induced vs hassle caused by the conflicts. The value one signals might be significant, or maybe the dominant effect in some cases.

Many of the philosophical ideas that underpin EA are also very close to those found in some “Eastern/Asian” traditions, including Mohism, Buddhism and Jainism.

Just want to point out that all of these schools of thought are minorities (maybe even unpopular) in their original countries. It seems to me that the stories of these schools of thoughts with similarities to EA ideas having a hard time in their original countries might be evidence supporting, rather than against, the notion that "the East" (I do have troubles with the use of the "East/West divide after discussing with some) doesn't take EA ideas well.

There's a nuance though, Buddhism, despite being not very successful in India, is a huge success in China. But my understanding is that, very naively speaking and oversimplifying, Buddhism had to lose a lot of ideas that we recognize as "EA-similar" in order to become successful in China. One of the ideas is "caring about actually doing good rather than just wanting to do good". And maybe it isn't only lost, but flipped. In China and Taiwan, from my observation, Buddhists' most common attitude to altruism is "if your intention is good then it's good, the consequence doesn't matter".

why should countries that have banned cages in their countries be able to export these cages to less developed countries? Is this not a transfer of animal cruelty to Africa? 

I wonder if there is a problem of racism here, both rhetorically and genuinely. 

Also, Holden Karnofsky (not so confidently) think that humans matter astronomically more than nonhuman animals. At the same time he thinks that digital people is possible.