Hang on, aren’t you valuing the non-existence of an animal as 0 and the existence of a farm animal as some negative number per unit time?
Yes.
~
Doesn’t that imply that someone who kills farm animals [is an altruist?]
Only if they kill the farm animals painlessly and only if there aren’t any other problems. For example, I don’t think the strategy of bomb factory farms or sneak in and kill all their livestock will be net positive strategies. However, if a factory farm owner were to shut down the farm and order a painless slaughter of all the animals, that would be good.
~
[Doesn’t that imply that someone who] prevents their existence in the first place is an altruist?
Yes. I suspect vegetarians make an impact by doing that.
~
And what about wild animals, which presumably suffer more than farm animals? Should an altruist try to destroy them too?
At this moment, it seems unclear. Wild animals are definitely a problem. I don’t think they suffer more than farm animals, but they might. I’m not sure what the best intervention strategy is, but it’s clear that some kind of strategy is needed, both in the short-run and long-run.
~
Is your ideal final society just humans, plants and pets?
Not necessarily.
~
I’d be quite unhappy in such a world, I imagine, so do I get it in the neck too?
At this moment, it seems unclear. Wild animals are definitely a problem. I don’t think they suffer more than farm animals, but they might. I’m not sure what the best intervention strategy is, but it’s clear that some kind of strategy is needed, both in the short-run and long-run.
I’ve heard a considerable number of people on this site echo the position that wild animals suffer so much their existence must be a net negative. This strikes me as awfully unlikely; they live in the situations they’re adapted to, and have the hedonic treadmill principle going for them as well. You can observe at a zoo how many animals can become neurotic when they’re removed from the sorts of circumstances they’re accustomed to in the wild, but all their physical needs are accounted for.
Animals are adapted to be reproductively successful in their environments, not to be maximally happy, but considering the effects constant stress can have on the fitness of animals as well as humans, it would be quite maladaptive for them to be unhappy nearly all the time.
For animals that are R-selected or, in other words, having many offspring in the hopes that some will survive, the vast majority of the offspring die very quickly. Most species of Fish, Amphibians and many less complex animals do this. 99.9% of them dieing in before reaching adulthood might be a good approximation for some species. A painful death doesn’t seem worth a brief life as a wild animal.
It’s true that most people wouldn’t be functioning optimally if they were not somewhat happy and extrapolating this to other animals who seem to be similar to us in basic emotion, I would agree that an adult wild animal seem like they would live an alright life.
Most species of Fish, Amphibians and many less complex animals do this. 99.9% of them dieing in before reaching adulthood might be a good approximation for some species. A painful death doesn’t seem worth a brief life as a wild animal.
Juvenile r-type species tend to have so little neurological development, I think their capacity for experience is probably pretty minimal in any case.
I tend to agree. But there’s also an awful lot of predation, disease, and starvation in wild habitats. I recommend reading Brian Tomasik’s “The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering”. Whether the sum of all of this adds up to net negative lives is something I’m unsure about.
Crikey, full marks for honesty! I’ve never seen the position put quite so starkly before. It sounds a bit like ‘the crime is life, the sentence is death’.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me dead, since I’d loathe a world without the wild, and would probably be unhappy. Certainly I would die to prevent it if I could see a way to.
In fact I think I’d sacrifice my own life to save a single (likeable) mammal species if I could. But that’s probably too much an emotional response to discuss rationally.
And what about the vegan argument that you could feed four times as many people if we were all vegans? Would you consider a world of 28 billion people living on rice an improvement?
When you say ‘Not necessarily’, should I take that to mean ‘just humans and plants, actually’, or ‘just humans and yeast’, or have I taken that the wrong way?
If we could wirehead the farm animals, would you become an enthusiastic meat-eater?
It sounds a bit like ‘the crime is life, the sentence is death’.
That’s a very misleading way of putting it. The situation is one of dire, unending, inescapable torture for all of life. How would death, or better yet nonexistence, not be preferable?
~
I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me dead, since I’d loathe a world without the wild, and would probably be unhappy. Certainly I would die to prevent it if I could see a way to.
I’d speculate you wouldn’t actually be suicidal in a world without the wild. Furthermore, I certainly wouldn’t want you killed just because you’re unhappy, because that’s reversible. And even if it weren’t, I think a policy of killing people for being unhappy would have tremendously bad short-run and long-run consequences.
Also, I don’t think elimination of the wild is the only option. Mass welfare plans are potentially feasible. We could eliminate the wild and replicate it with holograms or robots that don’t feel pain. Forcing animals to suffer just so you can have a beautiful wild doesn’t sound moral to me. And it’s possible that a number of species actually live net positive lives already.
Lastly, none of my outside-the-mainstream positions on wildlife need distract from the very real problem of factory farming. I think that case should be dealt with first.
~
In fact I think I’d sacrifice my own life to save a single (likeable) mammal species if I could.
Why? If you care about their existence, why don’t you also care about their welfare?
~
And what about the vegan argument that you could feed four times as many people if we were all vegans?
I’m unsure (no position one way or the other yet) on the accuracy of that argument.
~
Would you consider a world of 28 billion people living on rice an improvement?
It depends on a lot of other factors. More people living good lives seems like an improvement to me, all else being equal. I think it would be worth giving up richness and variety in food in order to facilitate this, though obviously that one aspect would be regrettable.
Why do you ask? What are you getting at?
~
When you say ‘Not necessarily’, should I take that to mean ‘just humans and plants, actually’, or ‘just humans and yeast’, or have I taken that the wrong way?
You’ve taken it the wrong way. You asked if my “ideal final society” includes “just humans, plants and pets”. I think there’s a strong possibility it can include more than that (i.e. wild animals, robots, etc.).
My ideal final society would be some sort of transhumanist utopia, I think.
~
If we could wirehead the farm animals, would you become an enthusiastic meat-eater?
I’m currently unsure because I don’t understand accurately the nature of wireheading. But if one could hypothetically remove all suffering from the factory farming process, I would then morally permit eating meat.
The situation is one of dire, unending, inescapable torture for all of life. How would death, or better yet nonexistence, not be preferable?
Are you sure about this? The lives of our medieval ancestors seem unedurably horrifying to me, and yet many of those people exhibited strong desires to live.
All wild animals exhibit strong desires to live. Why not take them at their word?
Why? If you care about their existence, why don’t you also care about their welfare?
I think I care about both, but don’t ask me where my desires come from. Some weird evolution-thing combined with all the experiences of my life and some randomness, most prob’ly.
Lastly, none of my outside-the-mainstream positions on wildlife need distract from the very real problem of factory farming. I think that case should be dealt with first.
I could not agree more! But it does sound like we have very different ideas about what ‘dealing with it’ means.
I’d like all farms to be like the farm I grew up next to. I was much more of an animal lover as a child than I am now, but even then I thought that the animals next door seemed happy.
Ironically I used to worry about the morality of killing them for food, but it never occurred to me that their lives were so bad that they should be killed and then not eaten.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me dead, since I’d loathe a world without the wild, and would probably be unhappy. Certainly I would die to prevent it if I could see a way to.
I’d speculate you wouldn’t actually be suicidal in a world without the wild. Furthermore, I certainly wouldn’t want you killed just because you’re unhappy, because that’s reversible. And even if it weren’t, I think a policy of killing people for being unhappy would have tremendously bad short-run and long-run consequences.
If a non-human animal is unhappy, you would prefer it to be painlessly killed. If a human is unhappy, you would prefer it not to be painlessly killed.
Am I mis-stating something here? If not, could you please explain the difference?
If we could wirehead the farm animals, would you become an enthusiastic meat-eater?
I’m currently unsure because I don’t understand accurately the nature of wireheading. But if one could hypothetically remove all suffering from the factory farming process, I would then morally permit eating meat.
As I understand the concept, it involves connecting a wire to the animal’s brain in such a way that it always experiences euphoric pleasure (and presumably disconnecting the parts of the brain that experience suffering).
If a non-human animal is unhappy, you would prefer it to be painlessly killed. If a human is unhappy, you would prefer it not to be painlessly killed. Am I mis-stating something here? If not, could you please explain the difference?
Humans (and potentially some nonhumans like dolphins and apes) are special in that they have forward-looking desires, including an enduring desire to not die. I don’t want to trample on these desires, so I’d only want the human killed with their consent (though some exceptions might apply).
Nonhuman animals without these forward-looking desires aren’t harmed by death, and thus I’m fine with them being killed, provided it realizes a net benefit. (And making a meal more delicious is not a net benefit.)
Humans (and potentially some nonhumans like dolphins and apes) are special in that they have forward-looking desires, including an enduring desire to not die. I don’t want to trample on these desires, so I’d only want the human killed with their consent (though some exceptions might apply).
This is interesting. Even though I usually love life minute to minute, and think I am one of the happiest people I know, I don’t have a strong desire to be alive in a year’s time, or even tomorrow morning. And yet I constantly act to prevent my death and I fully intend to be frozen, ‘just in case’. This seems completely incoherent to me, and I notice that I am confused.
Wild animals go to some lengths to prolong their lives. Whether they are mistaken about the value of their lives or not, what is the difference between them and me?
P.S. I’m not winding you up here. In the context of a discussion about cryonics, ciphergoth found the above literally unbelievable and recommend I seek medical help! After that I introspected a lot. After a year or so of reflection, I’m as sure as I can be that it’s true.
Very similarly to my actual behaviour of course. As I say, I notice that I am confused.
But if you’re saying that my behaviour implies that I feel the desire that I don’t perceive feeling, then surely we can apply the same reasoning to animals. They clearly want to continue their own lives.
Okay, well, what would such a strong desire feel like, do you think? I take it you say you have an absence of such a desire because something is lacking where you expect it should be if you had the desire. What is that?
Yes, I feel I know what it is to want something. I’m very good at wanting e.g. alcohol, cigarettes, food, intellectual satisfaction, and glory on the cricket field. And I don’t feel that sort of desire towards ‘future existence’.
I mean, I think that if I was told that I had a terminal cancer tomorrow, that I’d just calmly start making preparations for a cryonics-friendly suicide, and not worry about it too much. Even though I think that the chances of cryonics actually working are minute.
Whereas I’m pretty sure that if I get out for a duck in tomorrow’s cricket match, that I’ll feel utterly wretched for at least half an hour, even though it won’t matter in the slightest in the grander scheme of things.
And yet, were someone to offer me the choice of ‘duck or death’, of course I’d take the duck.
It’s really weird. I feel like I somehow fail to identify with my possible future selves over more than about a week or so. I’ve tried most vices and not worried about the consequences much. And yet I never did do myself serious harm, and a few years ago I stopped riding motorcycles because I got scared.
It’s as though someone who is not me is taking a lot of my decisions for me, and he’s more cautious and more long-termist than me.
I don’t feel that sort of desire towards ‘future existence’.
It sounds as if you use the words “desire” in two different senses—concrete, gut-level craving on the one hand, vs abstract, making-plans recognition of long-term value on the other hand.
That doesn’t sound so unusual—I don’t, for instance, feel a burning desire to be alive tomorrow—most of the time. I’m pretty sure that if someone had a gun on me and demanded I hand over my last jar of fig jam, that desire would suddenly develop. But in general, I’m confident anyway that I’ll still be here tomorrow.
Hypothesis: desire is usually abstract, in particular when the object of desire is a given, but becomes a feeling when that object is denied or about to be denied.
(I’m rather doubtful that most animals experience “desires” that conform to this dynamic.)
Well, it makes sense to me that future time can’t really be an object of desire all on its lonesome. People have spent time trying to work out what is being feared when we fear death, or what is being desired when we desire to live longer. A very common strategy is to say that what we fear is the loss of future goods, or the cancelation of present projects, and what we desire are future goods or the completion of present projects.
So in a sense, I think I’m right there with you in wanting (in some kind of preference ordering way) to live longer, but without having any real phenomenal desire to live longer.
I imagine that, ideally, there would be some sort of behavioural test for such forward-looking desires that could be administered; otherwise, I’m not sure that they could be reasonably claimed to be absent.
Would you consider a world of 28 billion people living on rice an improvement?
It depends on a lot of other factors. More people living good lives seems like an improvement to me, all else being equal. I think it would be worth giving up richness and variety in food in order to facilitate this, though obviously that one aspect would be regrettable.
Why do you ask? What are you getting at?
I’m trying to see where your morality is coming from. It looks like ‘assign a real value to every (multicellular) living creature according to how much fun it’s having, add all the values up, and bigger is better’.
Whereas I greatly prefer ‘A few people living in luxury in a beautiful vast wilderness’ to ‘Countless millions living on rice in a world where everything you see is a human creation’. I don’t have a theory to explain why. I just do.
I’m sure that that’s my evolved animal nature speaking about ‘where is the best place to set up home’. And probably I’m dutchbookable, and maybe by your lights I’m evil.
But it seems odd to try to come up with new desires according to a theory. I’d rather go with the desires I’ve already got.
I’m trying to see where your morality is coming from. It looks like ‘assign a real value to every (multicellular) living creature according to how much fun it’s having, add all the values up, and bigger is better’.
That sounds about right.
Obviously, so long as we have different terminal values, our conclusions will be different.
I’m currently unsure because I don’t understand accurately the nature of wireheading. But if one could hypothetically remove all suffering from the factory farming process, I would then morally permit eating meat.
All suffering? Even, say, the chance of the farmer getting a torn nail? Why such high standards in this case?
The more suffering that could be removed, the better, but eventually you’ll hit a point where removing more suffering is no longer feasible or worth focusing on, because there will be suffering easier to remove elsewhere.
Really, what I’m looking for, is the point where the net suffering to produce the food is equal to or less than the net benefit the production of the food provides.
Hang on, aren’t you valuing the non-existence of an animal as 0 and the existence of a farm animal as some negative number per unit time?
Doesn’t that imply that someone who kills farm animals, or prevents their existence in the first place is an altruist?
And what about wild animals, which presumably suffer more than farm animals? Should an altruist try to destroy them too?
Is your ideal final society just humans, plants and pets? I’d be quite unhappy in such a world, I imagine, so do I get it in the neck too?
Yes.
~
Only if they kill the farm animals painlessly and only if there aren’t any other problems. For example, I don’t think the strategy of bomb factory farms or sneak in and kill all their livestock will be net positive strategies. However, if a factory farm owner were to shut down the farm and order a painless slaughter of all the animals, that would be good.
~
Yes. I suspect vegetarians make an impact by doing that.
~
At this moment, it seems unclear. Wild animals are definitely a problem. I don’t think they suffer more than farm animals, but they might. I’m not sure what the best intervention strategy is, but it’s clear that some kind of strategy is needed, both in the short-run and long-run.
~
Not necessarily.
~
Of course not.
I’ve heard a considerable number of people on this site echo the position that wild animals suffer so much their existence must be a net negative. This strikes me as awfully unlikely; they live in the situations they’re adapted to, and have the hedonic treadmill principle going for them as well. You can observe at a zoo how many animals can become neurotic when they’re removed from the sorts of circumstances they’re accustomed to in the wild, but all their physical needs are accounted for.
Animals are adapted to be reproductively successful in their environments, not to be maximally happy, but considering the effects constant stress can have on the fitness of animals as well as humans, it would be quite maladaptive for them to be unhappy nearly all the time.
For animals that are R-selected or, in other words, having many offspring in the hopes that some will survive, the vast majority of the offspring die very quickly. Most species of Fish, Amphibians and many less complex animals do this. 99.9% of them dieing in before reaching adulthood might be a good approximation for some species. A painful death doesn’t seem worth a brief life as a wild animal.
It’s true that most people wouldn’t be functioning optimally if they were not somewhat happy and extrapolating this to other animals who seem to be similar to us in basic emotion, I would agree that an adult wild animal seem like they would live an alright life.
Juvenile r-type species tend to have so little neurological development, I think their capacity for experience is probably pretty minimal in any case.
I tend to agree. But there’s also an awful lot of predation, disease, and starvation in wild habitats. I recommend reading Brian Tomasik’s “The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering”. Whether the sum of all of this adds up to net negative lives is something I’m unsure about.
Crikey, full marks for honesty! I’ve never seen the position put quite so starkly before. It sounds a bit like ‘the crime is life, the sentence is death’.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me dead, since I’d loathe a world without the wild, and would probably be unhappy. Certainly I would die to prevent it if I could see a way to.
In fact I think I’d sacrifice my own life to save a single (likeable) mammal species if I could. But that’s probably too much an emotional response to discuss rationally.
And what about the vegan argument that you could feed four times as many people if we were all vegans? Would you consider a world of 28 billion people living on rice an improvement?
When you say ‘Not necessarily’, should I take that to mean ‘just humans and plants, actually’, or ‘just humans and yeast’, or have I taken that the wrong way?
If we could wirehead the farm animals, would you become an enthusiastic meat-eater?
That’s a very misleading way of putting it. The situation is one of dire, unending, inescapable torture for all of life. How would death, or better yet nonexistence, not be preferable?
~
I’d speculate you wouldn’t actually be suicidal in a world without the wild. Furthermore, I certainly wouldn’t want you killed just because you’re unhappy, because that’s reversible. And even if it weren’t, I think a policy of killing people for being unhappy would have tremendously bad short-run and long-run consequences.
Also, I don’t think elimination of the wild is the only option. Mass welfare plans are potentially feasible. We could eliminate the wild and replicate it with holograms or robots that don’t feel pain. Forcing animals to suffer just so you can have a beautiful wild doesn’t sound moral to me. And it’s possible that a number of species actually live net positive lives already.
Lastly, none of my outside-the-mainstream positions on wildlife need distract from the very real problem of factory farming. I think that case should be dealt with first.
~
Why? If you care about their existence, why don’t you also care about their welfare?
~
I’m unsure (no position one way or the other yet) on the accuracy of that argument.
~
It depends on a lot of other factors. More people living good lives seems like an improvement to me, all else being equal. I think it would be worth giving up richness and variety in food in order to facilitate this, though obviously that one aspect would be regrettable.
Why do you ask? What are you getting at?
~
You’ve taken it the wrong way. You asked if my “ideal final society” includes “just humans, plants and pets”. I think there’s a strong possibility it can include more than that (i.e. wild animals, robots, etc.).
My ideal final society would be some sort of transhumanist utopia, I think.
~
I’m currently unsure because I don’t understand accurately the nature of wireheading. But if one could hypothetically remove all suffering from the factory farming process, I would then morally permit eating meat.
Are you sure about this? The lives of our medieval ancestors seem unedurably horrifying to me, and yet many of those people exhibited strong desires to live.
All wild animals exhibit strong desires to live. Why not take them at their word?
I think I care about both, but don’t ask me where my desires come from. Some weird evolution-thing combined with all the experiences of my life and some randomness, most prob’ly.
I could not agree more! But it does sound like we have very different ideas about what ‘dealing with it’ means.
I’d like all farms to be like the farm I grew up next to. I was much more of an animal lover as a child than I am now, but even then I thought that the animals next door seemed happy.
Ironically I used to worry about the morality of killing them for food, but it never occurred to me that their lives were so bad that they should be killed and then not eaten.
I mean, I’d be fine with that.
Rather, instead of not being killed for food, they shouldn’t be tortured for food either.
If a non-human animal is unhappy, you would prefer it to be painlessly killed. If a human is unhappy, you would prefer it not to be painlessly killed.
Am I mis-stating something here? If not, could you please explain the difference?
As I understand the concept, it involves connecting a wire to the animal’s brain in such a way that it always experiences euphoric pleasure (and presumably disconnecting the parts of the brain that experience suffering).
Humans (and potentially some nonhumans like dolphins and apes) are special in that they have forward-looking desires, including an enduring desire to not die. I don’t want to trample on these desires, so I’d only want the human killed with their consent (though some exceptions might apply).
Nonhuman animals without these forward-looking desires aren’t harmed by death, and thus I’m fine with them being killed, provided it realizes a net benefit. (And making a meal more delicious is not a net benefit.)
why not? (blah,blah, googolplex of spectacular meals vs death of tb bacillus, blah)
This is interesting. Even though I usually love life minute to minute, and think I am one of the happiest people I know, I don’t have a strong desire to be alive in a year’s time, or even tomorrow morning. And yet I constantly act to prevent my death and I fully intend to be frozen, ‘just in case’. This seems completely incoherent to me, and I notice that I am confused.
Wild animals go to some lengths to prolong their lives. Whether they are mistaken about the value of their lives or not, what is the difference between them and me?
P.S. I’m not winding you up here. In the context of a discussion about cryonics, ciphergoth found the above literally unbelievable and recommend I seek medical help! After that I introspected a lot. After a year or so of reflection, I’m as sure as I can be that it’s true.
If you did have such a desire, how do you suppose it might manifest?
Very similarly to my actual behaviour of course. As I say, I notice that I am confused.
But if you’re saying that my behaviour implies that I feel the desire that I don’t perceive feeling, then surely we can apply the same reasoning to animals. They clearly want to continue their own lives.
Okay, well, what would such a strong desire feel like, do you think? I take it you say you have an absence of such a desire because something is lacking where you expect it should be if you had the desire. What is that?
Yes, I feel I know what it is to want something. I’m very good at wanting e.g. alcohol, cigarettes, food, intellectual satisfaction, and glory on the cricket field. And I don’t feel that sort of desire towards ‘future existence’.
I mean, I think that if I was told that I had a terminal cancer tomorrow, that I’d just calmly start making preparations for a cryonics-friendly suicide, and not worry about it too much. Even though I think that the chances of cryonics actually working are minute.
Whereas I’m pretty sure that if I get out for a duck in tomorrow’s cricket match, that I’ll feel utterly wretched for at least half an hour, even though it won’t matter in the slightest in the grander scheme of things.
And yet, were someone to offer me the choice of ‘duck or death’, of course I’d take the duck.
It’s really weird. I feel like I somehow fail to identify with my possible future selves over more than about a week or so. I’ve tried most vices and not worried about the consequences much. And yet I never did do myself serious harm, and a few years ago I stopped riding motorcycles because I got scared.
It’s as though someone who is not me is taking a lot of my decisions for me, and he’s more cautious and more long-termist than me.
It sounds as if you use the words “desire” in two different senses—concrete, gut-level craving on the one hand, vs abstract, making-plans recognition of long-term value on the other hand.
That doesn’t sound so unusual—I don’t, for instance, feel a burning desire to be alive tomorrow—most of the time. I’m pretty sure that if someone had a gun on me and demanded I hand over my last jar of fig jam, that desire would suddenly develop. But in general, I’m confident anyway that I’ll still be here tomorrow.
Hypothesis: desire is usually abstract, in particular when the object of desire is a given, but becomes a feeling when that object is denied or about to be denied.
(I’m rather doubtful that most animals experience “desires” that conform to this dynamic.)
Well, it makes sense to me that future time can’t really be an object of desire all on its lonesome. People have spent time trying to work out what is being feared when we fear death, or what is being desired when we desire to live longer. A very common strategy is to say that what we fear is the loss of future goods, or the cancelation of present projects, and what we desire are future goods or the completion of present projects.
So in a sense, I think I’m right there with you in wanting (in some kind of preference ordering way) to live longer, but without having any real phenomenal desire to live longer.
Ah, thank you. That explains it quite neatly.
I imagine that, ideally, there would be some sort of behavioural test for such forward-looking desires that could be administered; otherwise, I’m not sure that they could be reasonably claimed to be absent.
I’m trying to see where your morality is coming from. It looks like ‘assign a real value to every (multicellular) living creature according to how much fun it’s having, add all the values up, and bigger is better’.
Whereas I greatly prefer ‘A few people living in luxury in a beautiful vast wilderness’ to ‘Countless millions living on rice in a world where everything you see is a human creation’. I don’t have a theory to explain why. I just do.
I’m sure that that’s my evolved animal nature speaking about ‘where is the best place to set up home’. And probably I’m dutchbookable, and maybe by your lights I’m evil.
But it seems odd to try to come up with new desires according to a theory. I’d rather go with the desires I’ve already got.
That sounds about right.
Obviously, so long as we have different terminal values, our conclusions will be different.
All suffering? Even, say, the chance of the farmer getting a torn nail? Why such high standards in this case?
The more suffering that could be removed, the better, but eventually you’ll hit a point where removing more suffering is no longer feasible or worth focusing on, because there will be suffering easier to remove elsewhere.
Really, what I’m looking for, is the point where the net suffering to produce the food is equal to or less than the net benefit the production of the food provides.
Voting up, by the way. very thought-provoking. I have clever vegan friends I must discuss this with.