I Will Not Eat The Bugs

An essay on the moral status of insects, prompted by EU approval of mealworms for food. Frames it with the you-can't-get-off-the-train logic (from chickens to insects), a Shylock parody establishing insect nociception, and the android thought-experiment for moral uncertainty (even a 1% chance of moral value argues against factory-farming ten trillion of them). Uses neuron-count as a rough moral-value proxy (a fly < 0.1% of a cow), concedes he can't make himself care much, but finds the case interesting for three reasons: it's convenient that not-eating-bugs is both preferred and possibly-moral; people like Tomasik/Wigglesworth serve as moral over-shooters to average against; and it stress-tests the cows-vs-chickens neuron-scaling calculation at the limit (capped by the Leviathan 'hypothesis confirmed' gag).

Quality 69 · Strong. Strong: an engaging, memorable treatment of insect moral value that makes the neuron-count and moral-uncertainty framings vivid and does real philosophical work; held mid-Strong as a self-aware 'I can't quite care' essay rather than a decisive contribution.

Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. Moderate: applies moral-uncertainty and neuron-count-proxy reasoning to insects freshly, but the underlying ideas (Tomasik, expected-value ethics) are pre-existing.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Minor: touches a real EA cause area (insect welfare; the Insect Welfare Project update) but is a reflective essay without direct material effect.