I think Will is assuming that animal suffering has a fairly low moral weight compared to human suffering.
I don’t think Will is making any such assumption. His argument does not rely on any moral claim about the relative importance of human versus non-human forms of suffering, but instead rests on an empirical claim about the indirect effects that saving a human life has on present non-human animals, on the one hand, and on future sentient beings, on the other hand. He acknowledges that the benefit to the person whom we save might be outweighed by the harm done to the animals this person will consume. But he adds that saving this life will also speed up technological progress, and as a consequence increase the number of future posthuman life-years to a much greater degree than it increases the expected number of future animal life-years. As he writes, “whereas the benefits of saving a life continue until the humanity race (or its descendants) dies out, the harm of increasing meat consumption ends only after a few centuries (when we move beyond farming).”
Of course, someone like Brian Tomasik might counter that, by increasing present meat consumption, we are contributing to the spread of “speciesist” memes. Such memes, by influencing future decision-makers with the power to do astronomical amounts of evil, might actually have negative effects that last indefinitely.
I was only addressing the point I directly quoted, where MTGandP was questioning the multiplicative factor that Will suggested. I was merely pointing out why that might look low!
I agree that the argument is still pretty much in force even if you put animals pretty much on parity.
I don’t think Will is making any such assumption. His argument does not rely on any moral claim about the relative importance of human versus non-human forms of suffering, but instead rests on an empirical claim about the indirect effects that saving a human life has on present non-human animals, on the one hand, and on future sentient beings, on the other hand. He acknowledges that the benefit to the person whom we save might be outweighed by the harm done to the animals this person will consume. But he adds that saving this life will also speed up technological progress, and as a consequence increase the number of future posthuman life-years to a much greater degree than it increases the expected number of future animal life-years. As he writes, “whereas the benefits of saving a life continue until the humanity race (or its descendants) dies out, the harm of increasing meat consumption ends only after a few centuries (when we move beyond farming).”
Of course, someone like Brian Tomasik might counter that, by increasing present meat consumption, we are contributing to the spread of “speciesist” memes. Such memes, by influencing future decision-makers with the power to do astronomical amounts of evil, might actually have negative effects that last indefinitely.
Thanks benthamite, I think everything you said above was accurate.
I was only addressing the point I directly quoted, where MTGandP was questioning the multiplicative factor that Will suggested. I was merely pointing out why that might look low!
I agree that the argument is still pretty much in force even if you put animals pretty much on parity.