I agree with the first bullet point in theory, but see the Corrupted Hardware sequence of posts. It’s hard to know the true impact of most interventions, and easy for people to come up with reasons why whatever they want to do happens to have large positive externalities. “Don’t directly inflict pain” is something we can be very confident is actually a good thing, without worrying about second-order effects.
Additionally, there’s no reason why doing bad things should be acceptable just due to also doing unrelated good things. Sure it’s net positive from a consequentialist frame, but ceasing the bad things while continuing to do the good things is even more positive! Giving up meat is not some ultimate hardship like martyrdom, nor is there any strong argument that meat-eating is necessary in order to keep doing the other good things. It’s more akin to quitting a minor drug addition; hard and requires a lot of self-control at first, but after the craving goes away your life is pretty much the same as it was before.
As for the rest of your comment, any line of reasoning that would equally excuse slavery and the holocaust is, I think, pretty suspect.
I agree with the first bullet point in theory, but see the Corrupted Hardware sequence of posts. It’s hard to know the true impact of most interventions, and easy for people to come up with reasons why whatever they want to do happens to have large positive externalities. “Don’t directly inflict pain” is something we can be very confident is actually a good thing, without worrying about second-order effects.
Additionally, there’s no reason why doing bad things should be acceptable just due to also doing unrelated good things. Sure it’s net positive from a consequentialist frame, but ceasing the bad things while continuing to do the good things is even more positive! Giving up meat is not some ultimate hardship like martyrdom, nor is there any strong argument that meat-eating is necessary in order to keep doing the other good things. It’s more akin to quitting a minor drug addition; hard and requires a lot of self-control at first, but after the craving goes away your life is pretty much the same as it was before.
As for the rest of your comment, any line of reasoning that would equally excuse slavery and the holocaust is, I think, pretty suspect.