Well this also raises the question of animals eating other animals. If a predator eating another animal is considered wrong, then they best course is to prevent more predatory animals from reproducing or to modify them to make them vegetarian.
This would of course result in previously “prey” species no longer having their numbers reduced by predetation, so you’ll have to restrain them to reduce their ability to overgraze their environment or reproduce.
So, the best course for a mad vegetarian to take would be to promote massive deforestation and convert the wood into factory farms solely built to house animals in cages so their feeding and reproduction can be regulated. Of course, harvesting the dead for their meat would be wrong, so instead their flesh will be composted into a fertilizer and used to grow plant matter to feed to other animals.
Ideally, the entire universe would consist of cages and food production nanobots used to restrain and feed the living creatures in it. Better yet, do not allow any non-human life forms to reproduce so that in the end there will only be humans and food-producing nanobots to feed them. Having animals of any kind would be immoral since those animals would either inevitably die or just consume resources while producing less utility than an equivalent mass of human or nanomachines.
In a more serious note on vegetarianism/omnivorism, if we do attain some kind of singularity, what purpose would we have in keeping animals? Personally, I kind of value the idea of having a diversity of animal and plant life. While one could have a universe with nothing but humans, cows, and wheat (presumably so humans can hamburgers), I figure a universe with countless trilliions of species would be better (so humans could eat ice cream, turtle soup, zebra steaks, tofu, carrots, etc).
I mean, if we were to preserve various terrestrial species (presumably by terraforming planets or building massive space stations) then we’d have a bunch of animals and plants around which will inevitably die. If we eat said animals and plants (before or after they die of natural causes) then it presumably increases the global utility that results from their existence. So a human a million years from now might make it a point to make food out of everything from aardvarks to zebras just to justify the resources used to preserve these species.
Hmm… of course that depends on there being something he would have to justify it to. Maybe huge Post-Singularity AI who makes a universe ideal for humans? The AI only preserves other species if said species are of value to humans, and one of the best way to make something “of value” to humans would be to make food out of it.
What are the odds of encountering a post-singularity culture who routinely find other species and device ways to cook them just to justify the “resources” used to keep those species alive? As in “Sure, we could exterminate those species and convert their mass into Computonium, or we could keep them alive and harvest them one at a time and cook them into sandwiches. Sure we don’t feel like making sandwiches out of them right now, but we might in 100 years or so and we’d look pretty silly if they didn’t exist anymore. So… we’ll delay the genocide for now.”
Well this also raises the question of animals eating other animals. If a predator eating another animal is considered wrong, then they best course is to prevent more predatory animals from reproducing or to modify them to make them vegetarian.
This would of course result in previously “prey” species no longer having their numbers reduced by predetation, so you’ll have to restrain them to reduce their ability to overgraze their environment or reproduce.
So, the best course for a mad vegetarian to take would be to promote massive deforestation and convert the wood into factory farms solely built to house animals in cages so their feeding and reproduction can be regulated. Of course, harvesting the dead for their meat would be wrong, so instead their flesh will be composted into a fertilizer and used to grow plant matter to feed to other animals.
Ideally, the entire universe would consist of cages and food production nanobots used to restrain and feed the living creatures in it. Better yet, do not allow any non-human life forms to reproduce so that in the end there will only be humans and food-producing nanobots to feed them. Having animals of any kind would be immoral since those animals would either inevitably die or just consume resources while producing less utility than an equivalent mass of human or nanomachines.
In a more serious note on vegetarianism/omnivorism, if we do attain some kind of singularity, what purpose would we have in keeping animals? Personally, I kind of value the idea of having a diversity of animal and plant life. While one could have a universe with nothing but humans, cows, and wheat (presumably so humans can hamburgers), I figure a universe with countless trilliions of species would be better (so humans could eat ice cream, turtle soup, zebra steaks, tofu, carrots, etc).
I mean, if we were to preserve various terrestrial species (presumably by terraforming planets or building massive space stations) then we’d have a bunch of animals and plants around which will inevitably die. If we eat said animals and plants (before or after they die of natural causes) then it presumably increases the global utility that results from their existence. So a human a million years from now might make it a point to make food out of everything from aardvarks to zebras just to justify the resources used to preserve these species.
Hmm… of course that depends on there being something he would have to justify it to. Maybe huge Post-Singularity AI who makes a universe ideal for humans? The AI only preserves other species if said species are of value to humans, and one of the best way to make something “of value” to humans would be to make food out of it.
What are the odds of encountering a post-singularity culture who routinely find other species and device ways to cook them just to justify the “resources” used to keep those species alive? As in “Sure, we could exterminate those species and convert their mass into Computonium, or we could keep them alive and harvest them one at a time and cook them into sandwiches. Sure we don’t feel like making sandwiches out of them right now, but we might in 100 years or so and we’d look pretty silly if they didn’t exist anymore. So… we’ll delay the genocide for now.”