Uhhh, another thing for my reading list (LW is an amazing knowledge retrieval system). Thank you!
I remember encountering that argument/definition of suffering before. It certainly has a bit of explanatory power (you mention meditation) and it somehow feels right. But I don’t understand self-referentiality deep enough to have a mechanistic model of how that should work in my mind. And I’m a bit wary that this perspective conveniently allows us to continue animal eating and (some form of) mass farming. That penalizes the argument for me a bit, motivated cognition etc.
I agree that there is a risk of motivated cognition.
Concerning eating meat, I have committed to the following position: I will vote for reasonable policies to reduce animal suffering and will follow the policies once enacted. I ask everybody to Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness.
I’m kind of a moral relativist, but I think there are better and worse morals with respect to sentient flourishing. It is no easy field with counterintuitive dynamics and pitfalls like engineered beings consenting to die for consumption. In the very long term, humanity needs to get much more cooperative also with non-humans, and I don’t think that is consistent with eating non-consenting food.
Uhhh, another thing for my reading list (LW is an amazing knowledge retrieval system). Thank you!
I remember encountering that argument/definition of suffering before. It certainly has a bit of explanatory power (you mention meditation) and it somehow feels right. But I don’t understand self-referentiality deep enough to have a mechanistic model of how that should work in my mind. And I’m a bit wary that this perspective conveniently allows us to continue animal eating and (some form of) mass farming. That penalizes the argument for me a bit, motivated cognition etc.
I agree that there is a risk of motivated cognition.
Concerning eating meat, I have committed to the following position: I will vote for reasonable policies to reduce animal suffering and will follow the policies once enacted. I ask everybody to Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness.
I’m kind of a moral relativist, but I think there are better and worse morals with respect to sentient flourishing. It is no easy field with counterintuitive dynamics and pitfalls like engineered beings consenting to die for consumption. In the very long term, humanity needs to get much more cooperative also with non-humans, and I don’t think that is consistent with eating non-consenting food.