Given the huge effect of the meat an dairy industry on the environment, if humanity doesn’t go vegan soon, we will probably go extinct. Can a rational agent behave in ways that advance its own destruction? Isn’t self-preservation a necessary condition for maximizing any other goal?
My utility from eating meat is b(X=1)
My utility from the world not being destroyed is Y
So...
Utility = X + E[Y|X=1]
vs.
Utility = E[Y| X=0]
Obviously you’re able to disagree with my model. But in my self-consistent model of the world the benefit I get from eating meat is greater than the utility I achieve from lowering the likelihood the world is destroyed (in any given timeframe) by not eating meat.
I strongly suspect you will have a hard time convincing me I’m wrong without appealing to moral imperatives. Obviously there isn’t some mathematically elegant and clearly distinct line between rationality and moral imperative, but hey, if there was Less Wrong probably wouldn’t exist.
I accept that meat is more environmentally damaging per calorie (or similar such measures), and with the scale of the meat and dairy industry I’d accept saying it has a huge effect on the environment, but there are several steps between that and “if humanity doesn’t go vegan soon, we will probably go extinct”.
Given the huge effect of the meat an dairy industry on the environment, if humanity doesn’t go vegan soon, we will probably go extinct. Can a rational agent behave in ways that advance its own destruction? Isn’t self-preservation a necessary condition for maximizing any other goal?
That a far-out claim and you provide no argument to back it up. It looks like you don’t estimate the size of the involved effects.
My utility from eating meat is b(X=1) My utility from the world not being destroyed is Y So...
Utility = X + E[Y|X=1] vs. Utility = E[Y| X=0]
Obviously you’re able to disagree with my model. But in my self-consistent model of the world the benefit I get from eating meat is greater than the utility I achieve from lowering the likelihood the world is destroyed (in any given timeframe) by not eating meat.
I strongly suspect you will have a hard time convincing me I’m wrong without appealing to moral imperatives. Obviously there isn’t some mathematically elegant and clearly distinct line between rationality and moral imperative, but hey, if there was Less Wrong probably wouldn’t exist.
I accept that meat is more environmentally damaging per calorie (or similar such measures), and with the scale of the meat and dairy industry I’d accept saying it has a huge effect on the environment, but there are several steps between that and “if humanity doesn’t go vegan soon, we will probably go extinct”.