shminux comments on The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals - Less Wrong

9 Post author: syllogism 09 January 2012 12:07PM

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Comment author: syllogism 10 January 2012 12:44:46AM *  2 points [-]

Why are animals food, though -- just because that's how we currently treat them? I think the status quo bias is obvious here. After all, you'd never want people to start farming humans, right? So why agree that it's okay once it starts?

Could your argument have been used to justify slavery?

In my ethical system black people are slaves. One should provide them with proper care and minimize their suffering, but that's as far as it goes. (Also, a happy well-treated black person picks more cotton than a beaten malnourished one.) Hopefully some day we will be able to develop automatic cotton pickers, just like we automate other tasks, and the whole issue of slavery will be moot.

Comment author: shminux 10 January 2012 02:51:27AM *  -1 points [-]

After all, you'd never want people to start farming humans, right? So why agree that it's okay once it starts?

There are perfectly good circumstances to start farming animals, like when your survival depends on it. I suspect that there could be a similar situation with farming humans (or at least process them into Soylent Green). Other that that, I agree on the status quo bias.

Re slavery:

Yes, this obvious analogy occurred to me. I would feel more urgency to reevaluate my ethical system if I considered farm animals my equals. Your reasons for doing so may differ. Presumably the emancipation was in part based on that reason, in part on compassion or other reasons, I am not an expert in the subject matter.

Comment author: Solitaire 06 January 2014 04:12:43PM 0 points [-]

Ethical/moral objections aside, initiating the practice of human farming wouldn't be a logical or practical choice, as presumably farm-rearing humans would be just as energy-inefficient as farm-rearing livestock:

Animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein while yielding animal protein that is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans than the comparable amount of plant protein, according to the Cornell ecologist's analysis.

Killing and eating excess humans in the process of reducing the world's population to a sustainable level, on the other hand, might qualify as a logical use of resources.

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