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AdShea comments on The Sword of Good - Less Wrong
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I think being non-vegetarian is less evil than being a morally inconsistent non-vegetarian. If you would have moral trouble being introduced to your food (or raising it) then you shouldn't be eating it.
I've never understood this argument. I have a visceral reaction against surgery (even the sight of blood can set me off); I certainly couldn't stand to be in the same room in which surgery was being performed. Does this mean that for consistency I'm required to morally oppose surgery?
I don't see why. For clarity, since we probably agree it's wrong, imagine you're making the same argument for cannibalism instead. One person says, "I'm fine with eating and farming humans but if I get to know one first, doing it would make me feel bad." Another says, "Screw that, I'll eat anyone, even if I know them and their children!"
The second person is more morally consistent and also more callous. Even if there's no difference in the way they live their lives, trying to end the holocaust of humans for food would be easier in a world full of the first type than the second.
Just as I would prefer the opposite of rule of law when the law is uniformly terrible, I prefer the opposite of moral consistency when a morality is terrible.
The consistency difference seems minimal. The most obvious moral rule in play is "Don't do harmful things to those people who are socially near" combined with a moral indifference to cannibalistic farming but acknowledgement that it is undesirable to be so farmed and eaten. This isn't a complex or unusual morality system (where arbitrary complexity seems to be what we mean when we say 'inconsistent').