(as far as I’m aware, farmed animals do not attempt to commit suicide at every available opportunity)
I object to this as the general metric for “should a life be brought into existence?” (I’m something approximating an average utilitarian. To the extent that I’m a total utilitarian, I think Eliezer’s post about Lives Worth Celebrating is relevant)
Also, less controversial, I’d like to note that factory-farmed animals really don’t have much opportunity to end their own lives even if they wanted to.
For that matter, even if they did have the opportunity, livestock species may not have the abstract reasoning abilities to recognize that suicide is even a possible thing.
Pigs might have the intelligence for that, but for cows and chickens, I doubt it. It’s not like suicide is an evolutionarily favorable adaptation, it’s a product of abstract reasoning about death that most animals are not likely to be be capable of.
I object to this as the general metric for “should a life be brought into existence?” (I’m something approximating an average utilitarian. To the extent that I’m a total utilitarian, I think Eliezer’s post about Lives Worth Celebrating is relevant)
Also, less controversial, I’d like to note that factory-farmed animals really don’t have much opportunity to end their own lives even if they wanted to.
For that matter, even if they did have the opportunity, livestock species may not have the abstract reasoning abilities to recognize that suicide is even a possible thing.
Pigs might have the intelligence for that, but for cows and chickens, I doubt it. It’s not like suicide is an evolutionarily favorable adaptation, it’s a product of abstract reasoning about death that most animals are not likely to be be capable of.