As far as improving the world through behavioral changes go, advertising e-cigarettes is probably much more cost effective than advertising vegetarianism. You could even target it to smokers (either through statistics and social information, or just be grabbing low-income people in general and restaurant, fast food, and retail workers in particular).
What hurts smokers isn’t nicotine exactly, it’s all the other stuff that gets into their lungs when they burn tobacco. A big part of why quitting smoking is hard is because nicotine helps form habits—specifically, the habit of getting out a cigarette, lighting it, and inhaling. E-cigarettes push the same habit buttons as tobacco cigarettes, so its much easier for smokers to go tobacco-free and vastly improve their health and quality of life by switching over to inhaling the vapors of mixes of nicotine, propylene glycol, and flavorings.
Ah, misunderstood your question. Its more on the benefit side of things—the effectiveness of ads is within an order of magnitude, but you get human QALYS instead of preventing cruelty to chickens.
What RyanCarey said. I understand the principle behind E-cigarettes and support them, but I’m not yet convinced that advocating for them would produce more net welfare improvement per dollar than advocating for people to eat less meat.
It depends on the relative effectiveness of ads and the coonversion ratio you’re willing to accept between human and animal suffering. So my statement can be reduced more to ‘I don’t think chicken suffering is important’
I don’t think that some animals are capable of suffering, but can’t think of how to make my point without talking about animal suffering. I mean, how many rocks would you be willig to break for a QALY? Thats about how many chickens I would be willing to kill.
I mean… that’s a theoretically coherent statement, but isolating “e-cigarettes” as a thing to talk about instead of just saying “I don’t value chickens” seems odd.
What is it about humans you value? Do you value humans with extreme retardation, or a hypothetical inability to form relationships?
Most people believe that chickens suffer. They seem have all the right parts of the brain and the indicative behaviors and everything. What’s your theory that says that humans do but chickens don’t?
Thrust said he didn’t care about chickens suffering, not that they don’t.
One question that doesn’t seem to get asked in these discussions is, if chickens have this certain mental machinery doing certain things when I hurt them, why should I care, given that I don’t already? Is there a sequence of value comparisons showing that such a non-preference is incoherent? Or a moral argument that I am not considering? If not, I’d rather just follow my actual preferences.
I don’t think that some animals are capable of suffering
From what Thrust has said, I think it’s ambiguous between whether he cares he thinks animals can’t suffer and doesn’t care about them for that reason or he just doesn’t care about animal suffering as you describe. Or , more likely, he is in some middle state.
As to your second point, yes that’s the approach. And it seems largely that is what is happening when it comes up in the discussion here.
It’s kind of both. If a chicken is in pain, that doesn’t bother me that much. Also, I don’t think that chickens have the mental apparatus necessary to suffer like people can suffer.
People tend to read a lot more into behavior than is really there. I mean, ants run away when you slam your fist down on the counter next to them, and it sure looks like they’re scared, but that’s more a statement about your mind than the ants’.
I mean, chickens are largely still functional without a head. Yes, there’s something going on in a chicken’s brain. There isn’t anything worth celebrating going on in there, though.
For the record, the chicken that survived had retained most of the brainstem. He was able to walk (“clumsily’) and attempted some reflexive behaviors, but he was hardly “functional” to anyone who knows enough about chickens to assume that they do more than walk and occasionally lunge at the ground.
The chicken’s ability to survive with only the brain stem isn’t shocking. Anencephalic babies can sometimes breathe, eat, cry, and reflexively “respond” to external stimuli. One survived for two and a half years. This was a rare case, but so was the chicken—there were other attempts to keep decapitated chickens alive, and none have been successful.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have a tendency to anthropomorphize animals or treat reflexive behaviors as meaningful—we do. But pointing that out isn’t where the conversation ends. Chickens are an easy target because common knowledge dictates that they’re stupid animals, because most people haven’t spent any substantial amount of time with them and assume there isn’t anything particularly interesting about their behavior, and because we have a vested interest in believing that there’s nothing of value going on in their brains.
As far as improving the world through behavioral changes go, advertising e-cigarettes is probably much more cost effective than advertising vegetarianism. You could even target it to smokers (either through statistics and social information, or just be grabbing low-income people in general and restaurant, fast food, and retail workers in particular).
Not that I necessarily doubt you, but what makes you think that?
What hurts smokers isn’t nicotine exactly, it’s all the other stuff that gets into their lungs when they burn tobacco. A big part of why quitting smoking is hard is because nicotine helps form habits—specifically, the habit of getting out a cigarette, lighting it, and inhaling. E-cigarettes push the same habit buttons as tobacco cigarettes, so its much easier for smokers to go tobacco-free and vastly improve their health and quality of life by switching over to inhaling the vapors of mixes of nicotine, propylene glycol, and flavorings.
And neither that I doubt you, but what makes you think it’s cost-effective?
Ah, misunderstood your question. Its more on the benefit side of things—the effectiveness of ads is within an order of magnitude, but you get human QALYS instead of preventing cruelty to chickens.
What RyanCarey said. I understand the principle behind E-cigarettes and support them, but I’m not yet convinced that advocating for them would produce more net welfare improvement per dollar than advocating for people to eat less meat.
It depends on the relative effectiveness of ads and the coonversion ratio you’re willing to accept between human and animal suffering. So my statement can be reduced more to ‘I don’t think chicken suffering is important’
I don’t think that some animals are capable of suffering, but can’t think of how to make my point without talking about animal suffering. I mean, how many rocks would you be willig to break for a QALY? Thats about how many chickens I would be willing to kill.
I mean… that’s a theoretically coherent statement, but isolating “e-cigarettes” as a thing to talk about instead of just saying “I don’t value chickens” seems odd.
What is it about humans you value? Do you value humans with extreme retardation, or a hypothetical inability to form relationships?
Most people believe that chickens suffer. They seem have all the right parts of the brain and the indicative behaviors and everything. What’s your theory that says that humans do but chickens don’t?
Thrust said he didn’t care about chickens suffering, not that they don’t.
One question that doesn’t seem to get asked in these discussions is, if chickens have this certain mental machinery doing certain things when I hurt them, why should I care, given that I don’t already? Is there a sequence of value comparisons showing that such a non-preference is incoherent? Or a moral argument that I am not considering? If not, I’d rather just follow my actual preferences.
Thrustvectoring said:
From what Thrust has said, I think it’s ambiguous between whether he cares he thinks animals can’t suffer and doesn’t care about them for that reason or he just doesn’t care about animal suffering as you describe. Or , more likely, he is in some middle state.
As to your second point, yes that’s the approach. And it seems largely that is what is happening when it comes up in the discussion here.
It’s kind of both. If a chicken is in pain, that doesn’t bother me that much. Also, I don’t think that chickens have the mental apparatus necessary to suffer like people can suffer.
People tend to read a lot more into behavior than is really there. I mean, ants run away when you slam your fist down on the counter next to them, and it sure looks like they’re scared, but that’s more a statement about your mind than the ants’.
I mean, chickens are largely still functional without a head. Yes, there’s something going on in a chicken’s brain. There isn’t anything worth celebrating going on in there, though.
For the record, the chicken that survived had retained most of the brainstem. He was able to walk (“clumsily’) and attempted some reflexive behaviors, but he was hardly “functional” to anyone who knows enough about chickens to assume that they do more than walk and occasionally lunge at the ground.
The chicken’s ability to survive with only the brain stem isn’t shocking. Anencephalic babies can sometimes breathe, eat, cry, and reflexively “respond” to external stimuli. One survived for two and a half years. This was a rare case, but so was the chicken—there were other attempts to keep decapitated chickens alive, and none have been successful.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have a tendency to anthropomorphize animals or treat reflexive behaviors as meaningful—we do. But pointing that out isn’t where the conversation ends. Chickens are an easy target because common knowledge dictates that they’re stupid animals, because most people haven’t spent any substantial amount of time with them and assume there isn’t anything particularly interesting about their behavior, and because we have a vested interest in believing that there’s nothing of value going on in their brains.
Why don’t you think chickens suffer? This is against The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and the information gathered here (with citations) on this admittedly biased website.