“it at least somewhat increases the risk of animal life being propagated on more planets. This seems extremely bad, since we have no idea how to ensure that those animals will live good lives.”

Do you assume that wild animal life is net negative?

If given a magic button that instantaneously wiped out all wild animals, ignoring the consequences for humans of doing this, would you press it?

“It’s clear that at least some insects, such as fruit flies and bees, have valenced states. Entomologists test for the presence of these states using cognitive bias tests, which involve training animals to associate one stimulus (like the color red) with a reward and another stimulus (like the color blue) with something aversive. Then, the animals are presented with an ambiguous stimulus (like the color purple). Relative to baseline, bees rewarded before encountering the ambiguous stimulus are more likely to approach it, whereas bees given something aversive are more wary.”

How is it “clear” from this that insect have “sentience” or “valenced states”?

Several similarly long stretches made here

• Maggots and fruit flies reacting to or avoiding painful stimuli = ?evidence for sentience
• Ants using tools = ?evidence for sentience

• Bees showing “play behaviour” (rolling wooden balls around for some reason) = ?evidence for sentience

  
  These results attest that reward/punishment pathways exists. Do they tell us anything else? 

Based on what?

There’s no clear definition of consciousness or suffering so how do you draw a clear line between insects and mites?

This post could just as well be:

"Demodex mites are not moderately important"

or

"Nematodes are not moderately important"

"There are only two options. You can think that the cause of most of the world’s suffering is not very important or you can think that nematode suffering is the biggest issue."

Nah

I think this is a bad idea for the same reason that starting a cigarette company that donates its profits to charity is a bad idea.

This assumes population contraction is more bad than good which isn't definitely true. I can imagine several positive effects:

• Concentration of accumulated family wealth in a few decendants making people wealthier in general, with several benefits:
  • people better educated, more able to innovate
  • less reason for conflict over resources
  • people have the space to think beyond their own survival and more about things like "should I be keeping this chicken in such a small cage" or "should I be doing something about malaria deaths"
• Parents divide their ability to provide care and opportunities between fewer children, resulting in more well-adjusted, better educated kids
• Reduced environmental impact

The right messaging strategy long-term is to be transparent, honest and rational. Shortcutting this is risky, through the three mechanisms I mentioned in last comment.

SWP doesn't primarily focus on ablation. Where they do, they should keep in mind and make it clear that they're talking about <0.1% of farmed shrimp.

Two benefits of giving now rather than in your will in 80 years:

1. It's one small step in normalising giving. People are more likely to consider donating their money if they have people around them that do. You will nudge people.

2. Doing good accumulates compound interest. Empower someone to live a better life today rather than 80 years from now and they have and extra 80 years to be a productive member of society and help themselves, their family, their community.