I think you present here some false dichotomy, some impartial utilitarian -ish view VS hardcore moral relativism.
Pets are sometimes called companions. It’s as if they provide some service and receive some service in return, all of this with trust and positive mutual expectations, and that demands some moral considerations / obligations, just like friendship or family relationship. I think mutualist / contractualist framework accounts for that better. It makes the prediction that such relationships will receive additional moral considerations, and they actually do in practice. And it predicts that wild animals wouldn’t, and they don’t, in practice. Success?
So, people just have the attitude about animals just like any other person, exacerbated with how little status and power they have. Especially shrimp. Who the fuck cares about shrimp? You can only care about shrimp if you galaxy brain yourself on some weird ethics system.
I agree that they have no consistent moral framework that backs up that attitude, but it’s not that fair to force them into your own with trickery or frame control
>Extremely few people actually take the position that torturing animals is fine
Wrong. Most humans would be fine answering that torturing 1 million chickens is an acceptable tradeoff to save 1 human. You just don’t torture them for no reason, as it’s unvirtuous and icky
Do you also find it acceptable to torture humans you don’t personally know, or a pet that someone purchased only for the joy of torturing it and not for any other service? If not, the companionship explanation is invalid and likely a rationalization.
How many randomly sampled humans would I rather condemn to torture to save my mother? Idk, more than one, tbh.
pet that someone purchased only for the joy of torturing it and not for any other service?
Unvirtuous. This human is disgusting as they consider it fun to deal a lot of harm to the persons in their direct relationships.
Also I really don’t like how you jump into “it’s all rationalization” with respect to values!
Like, the thing about utilitarian -ish value systems is that they deal poorly with preferences of other people (they mostly ignore them). Preference based views deal poorly with creation and not creation of new persons.
I can redteam them and find real murderous decision recommendations.
Maybe like, instead of anchoring to the first proposed value system maybe it’s better to understand what are the values of real life people? Maybe there is no simple formulation of them, maybe it’s a complex thing.
Also, disclaimer, I’m totally for making animals better off! (Including wild animals) Just I don’t think it’s an inference from some larger moral principle, it’s just my aesthetic preference, and it’s not that strong. And I’m kinda annoyed at EAs who by “animal welfare” mean dealing band aids to farm chickens. Like, why? You can just help to make that lab grown meat a thing faster, it’s literally the only thing that going change it.
I think you present here some false dichotomy, some impartial utilitarian -ish view VS hardcore moral relativism.
Pets are sometimes called companions. It’s as if they provide some service and receive some service in return, all of this with trust and positive mutual expectations, and that demands some moral considerations / obligations, just like friendship or family relationship. I think mutualist / contractualist framework accounts for that better. It makes the prediction that such relationships will receive additional moral considerations, and they actually do in practice. And it predicts that wild animals wouldn’t, and they don’t, in practice. Success?
So, people just have the attitude about animals just like any other person, exacerbated with how little status and power they have. Especially shrimp. Who the fuck cares about shrimp? You can only care about shrimp if you galaxy brain yourself on some weird ethics system.
I agree that they have no consistent moral framework that backs up that attitude, but it’s not that fair to force them into your own with trickery or frame control
>Extremely few people actually take the position that torturing animals is fine
Wrong. Most humans would be fine answering that torturing 1 million chickens is an acceptable tradeoff to save 1 human. You just don’t torture them for no reason, as it’s unvirtuous and icky
Do you also find it acceptable to torture humans you don’t personally know, or a pet that someone purchased only for the joy of torturing it and not for any other service? If not, the companionship explanation is invalid and likely a rationalization.
How many randomly sampled humans would I rather condemn to torture to save my mother? Idk, more than one, tbh.
Unvirtuous. This human is disgusting as they consider it fun to deal a lot of harm to the persons in their direct relationships.
Also I really don’t like how you jump into “it’s all rationalization” with respect to values!
Like, the thing about utilitarian -ish value systems is that they deal poorly with preferences of other people (they mostly ignore them). Preference based views deal poorly with creation and not creation of new persons.
I can redteam them and find real murderous decision recommendations.
Maybe like, instead of anchoring to the first proposed value system maybe it’s better to understand what are the values of real life people? Maybe there is no simple formulation of them, maybe it’s a complex thing.
Also, disclaimer, I’m totally for making animals better off! (Including wild animals) Just I don’t think it’s an inference from some larger moral principle, it’s just my aesthetic preference, and it’s not that strong. And I’m kinda annoyed at EAs who by “animal welfare” mean dealing band aids to farm chickens. Like, why? You can just help to make that lab grown meat a thing faster, it’s literally the only thing that going change it.