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kess3r comments on Unspeakable Morality - Less Wrong
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Hey, could someone explain the logic of vegetarianism to me? I get the part where vegeterianism is supposedly healthier. But I don't get the part about not wanting to eat animals because they get killed. I mean, it's not like cows would live happily ever after if nobody ate them. If all humans suddenly stopped eating cows, there would be no reason to raise cows anymore apart from zoos, and cows are not very good at taking care of themselves in the wild. It seems like vegeterianism would lead to cow extinction or very close to it.
I value a lack of cow suffering. I do not value the existence of the cow species, except inasmuch as cows are useful towards ends I care about, and since I don't eat them and don't think they're cute or interesting, they are useful to me only for milk and, in limited quantities, skin. (I'll assume you meant to assume that widespread veganism and leather boycott would lead to the extinction of cows.)
Sounds very pessimistic to value a lack of cow suffering, but completely discount cow enjoyment.
I mean, if we're quantizing stuff, might as well quantize everything, right?
Do you think there is morally wrong to eat meat?
I have the same preferences as you when it comes to meat, but I still eat it. Maybe if it was proven that a lot of animal suffering goes into the meat I eat, I might stop. Otherwise, a cow's non-suffering, short-lived existence is more favorable than not existing at all.
I've rehashed this several times, but I'll repeat it for your benefit: I think it is wrong for many people to eat meat. Some people, through circumstances beyond their control, would find their quality of life unacceptably diminished by a lack of meat consumption. I do not think it is morally wrong for those people to eat meat: their quality of life is more important than the lives of the animals they eat. I, and many other people, can be happy vegetarians. People who can be happy vegetarians (or who won't be significantly less happy as vegetarians than as omnivores) should be vegetarians. For those people, it is wrong to eat meat because it is unnecessarily destructive of animal lives, which have non-negligible value even if they aren't more important than human quality of life.
There is an overwhelming amount of gory detail about the suffering undergone by the majority of domesticated meat animals in developed countries. If you are curious about how much suffering your food underwent to arrive at your plate, PETA et. al. will be happy to supply that information and you can find it without my help.
I disagree. I think many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born.
I'm not particularly curious. I have no doubt that I could find plenty of testimony from partisans. Why should I expect that testimony to present the issue in a fair light? Are there any non-partisans trying to find a middle position and present a balanced view of the issue?
That paragraph responded to pwno's statement:
If you're not curious, that's okay. As for fair presentation, I don't doubt that PETA and its less insane friends heavily skew every piece of evidence that passes through their hands. However, the amount of skewing I can believe went into a mountain of video documentation is necessarily limited by the fact that I don't think PETA et. al. are staging elaborate scenes of animal torture for the greater good of our noble friends the chickens. Take from that as much or as little as you will; it's certainly at least weak evidence that bad things happen to food animals between entering the world and leaving it.
If you find any, let me know. Everybody eats, so everybody has a stake in the issue: there is no way to be sure that an omnivore isn't being defensive or a vegetarian isn't being self-righteous if they come up with the conclusions you'd expect. I would be surprised to find an omnivore who concluded that food animal conditions were bad enough to warrant not eating meat; most people aren't equipped to make that kind of admission. Some vegetarians are, or claim to be, vegetarians for reasons unrelated to animal welfare - but they probably would not be inclined to invest time and care into crafting a nonpartisan analysis of the meat industry.
I'm one.
But admitting you knowingly do wrong is creepy. Faux pas. The normal way out is to rationalize, but sometimes I forget...
I'm fairly sure conditions are easily that bad; what I'm undecided on is the moral weight that I place on the suffering of animals.
I also acknowledge that being an omnivore with a high desire for variety in food discourages me from trying too hard to make up my mind, because I estimate a non-trivial chance that my final decision would be to eliminate at minimum most mammal meat.
For what it's worth, my dietary variety has increased since I became a vegetarian. This could, however, be because the switch coincided with ending my dependence on school cafeteria food and with my literal overnight development of a taste for vegetables. (It was the weirdest thing. I woke up one morning and wanted cauliflower.)
Ok, so there is a cost to eating meat (beyond the price tag) and some people love meat so much, it's worth the cost. You don't think there is a chance that the hidden cost is actually much worse than meat eaters think? That, given the true cost, not even the most meat-loving person would eat meat?
I dont' think the true cost is high enough to warrant all meat-eating bad, but substantially worse than most meat eaters think.
That's because you're adding other details. Assuming a person or animal contributed to society an equal amount to its cost to society, would living a non-suffering, short-lived existence still be worse than no existence at all?
While this may be the case, I think it's a less ambiguous situation when someone has allergies that interfere with eating a healthy vegetarian diet. I have a former professor who used to be a happy vegetarian and then developed allergies to soy, many kinds of legumes, and eggs, plus lactose intolerance. He cannot be a healthy vegetarian, so he should not be a vegetarian (and in fact no longer is).
I wouldn't put it quite this strongly. I do think a great many people who should not eat meat do it anyway, and that most of them don't think of it as harshly as they should (failing to think of it at all or casually discounting the cost).
I don't understand the question.
I made that question based on an assumption I thought you made.
So instead, how about you tell me why you think: "many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born."
I think that any given creature should not have been born when there is something about its circumstances of coming to exist that my ethics find objectionable. For instance, I think this about any offspring of rape; about anyone born into slavery; about any animal the creation of which was engineered by people planning to kill it for food (unnecessarily; not for people who cannot be happy vegetarians); and about many people with genetic diseases.
This has the interesting consequence that, because of the way human history has tended to work, it is probably the case that every living human has at least one ancestor who should not have been born. Note that while this means that no living human would be likely to exist if everyone had always been perfectly moral about bringing children into the world, this is probably the case with all kinds of inconsistently followed moral precepts: I expect we'd have a completely different world population if no one ever stole, too.
Random question: Can simply liking meat a lot disqualify yourself from being a "happy vegetarian"?
I think you mean "vegetarian". There are probably lots of happy veterinarians who love meat. But anyway, although I never liked meat nearly that much, it doesn't seem impossible in principle to get so much pleasure out of a bite of steak that removing steak would be an unacceptable infringement on quality of life.
Whoa whoa whoa, call me a cynic, but here's what I got out of that:
A professor, whom you had to agree with or feign agreement with to get course credit, and still have some contact with, told you, a vocal, happy vegetarian, that he was also a vegetarian, then got over six food allergies after telling you this, and today eats meat. This led you to conclude that
"Wow, this noble gentleman tried to reduce animal suffering by being a vegetarian until -- darnedest thing! -- he simultaneously developed over six food allergies, which makes him now a non-bad-guy omnivore."
Now, I don't mean to offend, but what made you reject the shorter hypothesis of "He lied to you, then covered it up"?
He was a vegetarian first. I became a vegetarian partly out of respect for his reasoning. I also didn't mention to him that I had become a vegetarian until I'd been one for, IIRC, almost a year and a half.
It wasn't simultaneous. I think he was lactose intolerant all along, and developed the soy and legume allergies through overusing those foods; I'm not sure when the eggs came in. Eventually a doctor advised him to reintroduce meat to his diet.
I've been to his house and had a meal there and there was no sign of meat in the house. I've been to restaurants with him and he flipped straight to the vegetarian section. I've met his wife, who is Indian and (I believe to this day) also a vegetarian. I've found him generally trustworthy. He had no reason to falsely claim to be a vegetarian the first time I heard him say it, and made no effort to conceal the fact that he ordered a dish with pork in it when we went to lunch after his return to omnivorism.
Oh, okay. That's enough evidence!
Sorry for doubting you, but it sounded fishy.
Elsewhere (http://lesswrong.com/lw/14r/unspeakable_morality/10jc) you said:
I've been reading your vegetarian comments with interest. Can you please explain how you don't think stuff should be destroyed unnecessarily, yet would not care if an entire species vanished?
Is it that it's somehow ok if something is destroyed as long as it's not intentional? I.e., if a famous painting was about to fall into a fire or something accidentally, it seems to me (if I follow your logic) you would catch it if you could do so without undue danger to your person, even if you didn't particularly like the painting. So how can you be ok with cows (or, let's say pigs, since as far as I know they are not used for leather or milk) going extinct?
I distinguish between taking action to destroy something, and ceasing to take measures to preserve it. The domestic cow species, as well as the domestic pig species, requires continual human support to keep it in existence. I would not have any problem with cows or pigs ceasing to exist if the following conditions were met:
I would have problems of greater or lesser degree with the extinction of cows (pigs) if any of the above conditions were not fully met, as in fact they are not at this time.
I'm usually careful to specify that I think an action can be unethical only if it was intentional or negligent.
...Which is why I didn't use the world "ethical" :)
More to the point,
So I gather that it is the act of destruction you find bad, and not the loss of the thing destroyed?
(And my follow-up question if you answer in the affirmative: Why, then, is it bad to destroy things?)
(And don't construe this line of questioning as disagreeing or agreeing with you; I'm just trying to understand your point of view)
In using words like "bad" or "okay", instead of "unethical" or "right" or whatever, you might be latching onto useful concepts, but they're not concepts I have clear definitions for or use when I think about this sort of problem. I'm not a consequentialist and theory of value isn't a component of ethics that I find especially interesting; I'm concerned with right and wrong over good and bad. Since apparently you think I've changed something important by recasting your question in terms relevant to what I thought we were talking about, can you recast it yourself without making it about what's "good"? I usually reserve that word for extremely casual use.
I see, I think.
I guess I ascribe positive/negative value to states of the world. I.e., art exists, I think that is good (even the pieces I don't get), cows exist, that is good, chinchillas exist, that is good (even though I don't have a use for them, don't find them cute, don't use their leather or milk, etc), HIV exists, that is probably not good. Actions that make the world into a better state are good, those that make it worse are bad. An action that makes the world into a worse state before it makes it into a better one is generally not good. If there is a name for this position I'd love to hear it. :) And yes, I realize that what I've termed "good" is probably somewhat arbitrary.
I am thinking out loud here-- maybe this will explain the disconnect.
I have to take serious issue with not finding chinchillas cute. What is wrong with you?
What is the qualitative difference in goodness between hypothetical useless, unloved, resource-draining, methane-farting future cows, and a species I assume it was fine and dandy to destroy: smallpox?
OK, I take back the bit about chinchillas. Google says they're cuter than I remember them being. Substitute, uhhh, boa constrictors.
Smallpox was known to actively cause severe harm to those it infected, and there wasn't really anything those people could have done to prevent infection. I think that outweighs any potential beneficial uses we might find for it in the future.
Smallpox harmed the people it infected; hypothetical useless unloved resource-draining methane-farting future cows (HUURDMFFC) harm the people who could benefit from the resources they divert and who want to live in a world with less methane. This seems like a quantitative difference to me, not a qualitative one.
I don't know about you, but I like snakes and I would be sad if boa constrictors went extinct.
It would, but that's an entirely separate issue from animal cruelty.
So does that mean vegetarians are ok with eating animals that were treated very humanly or that died of natural causes? Could a vegetarian here explain?
In case there are no vegetarians on this site, how are we driving away or failing to attract vegetarians?
I'm a pescetarian, but let's assume I count. I wouldn't eat those animals because non-fish meat no longer resembles food to me; because if I resumed eating meat of any kind, it would be more difficult to resist meat of inappropriate provenance; and because humanely-treated meat is hard to come by (and still has to be slaughtered) and naturally-dead meat is of suspect quality.
For an idea of how many vegetarians we have, check out this poll.
Do you think it is unethical for humans to eat other animals? If so, what do you suggest?
I think it is unethical for humans who can enjoy an excellent quality of life as vegetarians to eat other animals. I have a friend who becomes seriously ill if she tries to do without eating a mammal or a bird for more than, at best, one meal. She should not be a vegetarian. People with serious allergies to many vegetarian protein sources, people who are living in economically marginal situations and have to take whatever they can get, and maybe even the people who seem to worship bacon as nigh unto a god should not be vegetarians. I think more people should be vegetarians than are. I think all people should consider the possibility with some serious thought, because there are more ways to be a vegetarian all the time.
I suggest legumes, soy products, seitan, mycoprotein, dairy, eggs, the least formerly-intelligent meat you can find if any, and lots and lots of plant-based dietary variety.
But if people ate less bacon it would diminish the population of cows. It would hurt cows.
Bacon is not made from cows.
Even if bacon were made from cows, it is not clear that a reduced cow population would hurt any existing cows.
Ok, you got me on the topic of where bacon comes from. For the sake of argument, substitute bacon with beef jerky.
As for your second point, are you saying it's ok to drive a species to extinction or near extinction as long as the individuals of the present generation get to live a bit longer?
What do you think of the following idea? Would you go to a wild life park and erect electric fences to keep lions away from antelopes and instead feed fish to the lions? This would stop the unethical violence lions commit against antelopes.
No. I'm saying that except for the part where I really like dairy and make some use of leather, I don't care if cows continue to exist. The individual, living cows that already exist, I would prefer not to unnecessarily harm. There are some species that I like and want to keep around. For instance, pandas are cute. I'd miss them. Honeybees are important to all kinds of things very important to me. I would miss them too.
Lions are not persons, and are therefore not morally responsible for anything they do, so there is nothing unethical about lion-on-antelope violence. I think there are things I could do with the fence construction money and the fish (or the grocery budget) that would be better uses of resources than keeping lions on a pescetarian diet.
I'm a vegetarian, and if I weren't a bit repulsed by meat, I would have no ethical qualms about eating the flesh of a wild animal (or person) that died of natural causes, assuming my eating it didn't have other negative consequences.
I was, actually, fine with eating free range meat at first. After all, even their deaths might be less horrible than my own. But then I thought that if everyone did that, having so many animals living like people might be more than the Earth can take. It's having trouble with people living like people.
Basically, free-range meat is a move in the right direction, but suboptimal.
There are many different logics. See this thread http://lesswrong.com/lw/ei/essayquestion_poll_dietary_choices/ for some of them, including my own.