Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals • Hacker News Board

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#61

Post by DominikPeters » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #53

DominikPeters wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two estimates you mention are different things: 17B is the population of chickens alive in a single moment, 50B for number slaughtered in a year. (Broiler chickens live much less than a year.) The comparison of farm and wild population sizes is relevant, because humans have control over both the size of the chicken population (through choice of eating habits) and the size of wild animal populations (throu…

How do I have control over wild animal population? Hunting? Is the implication that hunting a wild bird whose individual suffering I have ascertained is somehow a preferable alternative to picking a box from the shelf that says chikn nuggets instead of one which says chicken nuggets? Or am I to believe that all wild animals suffer equivalently because of some hand wavey quantification of an academic in some no name j…

You personally have less control over habitat sizes, perhaps, beyond subtle effects from consumption choices (e.g., using a car will, in expectation, convert some nature to parking spaces; beef consumption converts forests to graze land). Collectively we may have more choices (such as conducting research).

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#62

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #53

DominikPeters wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two estimates you mention are different things: 17B is the population of chickens alive in a single moment, 50B for number slaughtered in a year. (Broiler chickens live much less than a year.) The comparison of farm and wild population sizes is relevant, because humans have control over both the size of the chicken population (through choice of eating habits) and the size of wild animal populations (throu…

How do I have control over wild animal population? Hunting? Is the implication that hunting a wild bird whose individual suffering I have ascertained is somehow a preferable alternative to picking a box from the shelf that says chikn nuggets instead of one which says chicken nuggets? Or am I to believe that all wild animals suffer equivalently because of some hand wavey quantification of an academic in some no name j…

[deleted]

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#63

Post by themaninthedark » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

glibgil wrote: post #32

cjbprime wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people have ethics like yours, but these are not consequentialist ethics, which is what the article is discussing. In consequentialism, an act's rightness is determined by the goodness of what happens, not other factors.

You and the paper miss the mark by not imagining the position that leaving something wild is good

But what is 'wild'? If I as an animal follow my instincts and hunt a deer is that unacceptable in your eyes?

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#64

Post by exodust » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

Nice trolling. Wild animals don't experience 24/7 discomfort from a confined, crowded unnatural space before ultimately marched to a mechanized execution. The last possible confused thought the numb animal has: "well that fucking sucked".

Suffering in the wild is not sustained or imposed to support a cheap-ass burger industry.

Vegetarians want animal welfare taken seriously, and environmental concerns guiding the regulations around animal agriculture.

In response to the point about animal non-existence, the vegetarian could argue that favoring non-existence might motivate the livestock industry to address environmental and animal welfare concerns. Respect is earned and more meat sold to the "mostly vegetarian" crowd as a result, and less young people flocking to vegetarianism after watching the latest meat-bad doco. A means to an end for the vegetarian rather than a fixed philosophical position.

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#65

Post by schoen » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 8:05 PM UTC

pera wrote: post #60

schoen wrote: post #23

I'm a long-term vegetarian animal rights supporter and I support the publication of work like this, even though many people take it as a sort of anti-vegetarian propaganda, because I think this is how we make progress in understanding issues! Very often in academic philosophy people write papers that say "relatively widespread position X seems to have weird consequence Y", which then provides possible evidence agains…

I understand your point, but don't you think that referring to "ethical consequentialist vegetarians" as "consistent vegetarians" or simply "vegetarians" is a bit dishonest? I'm also a long-term vegetarian and animal rights supporter, same my family and many of my friends; I think I have never met an ethical consequentialist vegetarian in my entire life... I believe this article says more about consequentialism than…

This article appeared in an academic philosophy journal, so maybe the background expectations there are a bit different. Consequentialism may be a (much?) more widespread position among academic philosophers than among the general public.

I agree with your observation and other people's observation here that it doesn't really reflect on "vegetarianism" worldwide, or necessarily meant to. For example, in Singapore I met tons of religious vegetarians who didn't necessarily have any commitments one way or another about these academic debates, and of course in the U.S. there are lots of folks who hope it will help with their weight or cardiovascular health or something.

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#66

Post by glibgil » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

themaninthedark wrote: post #63

glibgil wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and the paper miss the mark by not imagining the position that leaving something wild is good

But what is 'wild'? If I as an animal follow my instincts and hunt a deer is that unacceptable in your eyes?

Why would a human hunting deer be a problem at all? As long as the numbers are right you should be able to hunt. Meat, as it is consumed by most people, is probably not sustainable. Hunting exists outside that system

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#67

Post by antisthenes » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

deontologizt wrote: post #34

This is a great reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. However, I find it very worrying that the so-called "effective altruism" movement takes this kind of thing seriously. Look up the EA-affiliated "Foundational Research Institute" -- it's an entire pseudo think tank whose philosophy is based on negative utilitarianism, the idea that all that matters is minimizing suffering, and we should do so by any means necessa…

This can't possibly have anything to do with utilitarianism as it is impossible for us to understand domesticated animal utility preference curves beyond "being fed and warm = good". If one is being pedantic, I'm sure one could find many wild species which fare will in confinement, and make a case that it is cruel to contain wild animals in cases where utility from our entertainment does not outweigh their dis-utility from being imprisoned (such as zoos). I'm not convinced that such an argument could be made for domesticated or feral animals.

Utilitarianism is primarily about maximizing utility of a wide spectrum of the population as it pertains to humans and societies and has nothing to do with animals, wild or domestic except for the utility they provide humanity with.

Negative utilitarianism separated from the general concept of utilitarianism is, of course, a nonsense concept in and of itself, since its end goal is non-existence, which makes utility unable to exist.

I'm not familiar with other pseudo-think tanks, so I'll defer to you on that one.

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#68

Post by anotheryou » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 10:19 AM UTC

Wrong title if you base your argument on something "compared to free range live stock".

I read just a little further and also have to nitpick, that good times can be experienced before reaching adolescence.

it is still an interesting argument.

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#69

Post by marojejian » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

The argument he makes hinges on the empirical suffering of wild animals vs. domestic.

As he admits, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that wild suffering is indeed greater, so the case is not strong.

That said, I do happen to identify with the sort of vegetarian logic here. If there were strong evidence that wild animal suffering were much greater than domestic, that would be very important to me.

So I agree with his conclusion that more research into the lives of wild (and domestic) animals should be a priority.

However, given what I know of the literal sausage factory that is industrialized food production, I fear the suffering of domestic animals is very great, and unlikely to be topped.

Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals

#70

Post by deontologizt » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #67

deontologizt wrote: post #34

This is a great reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. However, I find it very worrying that the so-called "effective altruism" movement takes this kind of thing seriously. Look up the EA-affiliated "Foundational Research Institute" -- it's an entire pseudo think tank whose philosophy is based on negative utilitarianism, the idea that all that matters is minimizing suffering, and we should do so by any means necessa…

This can't possibly have anything to do with utilitarianism as it is impossible for us to understand domesticated animal utility preference curves beyond "being fed and warm = good". If one is being pedantic, I'm sure one could find many wild species which fare will in confinement, and make a case that it is cruel to contain wild animals in cases where utility from our entertainment does not outweigh their dis-utilit…

> Utilitarianism is primarily about maximizing utility of a wide spectrum of the population as it pertains to humans and societies and has nothing to do with animals, wild or domestic except for the utility they provide humanity with.

Actually, utilitarianism is about maximizing the welfare (i.e., happiness minus suffering) of all beings that can be said to have a "welfare". This goes back to the father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, who argued that any being capable of suffering deserves moral consideration. (more extensive discussion can be found in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism) More recently, the most prominent living utilitarian philosopher is Peter Singer, who has argued extensively for the moral consideration of animals. Utilitarianism in the philosophical sense is distinct from the anthropocentric economic interpretation.