Would eating meat somehow become more moral if we were to genetically engineer beef into an almost unrecognizable form with zero neurons to kill?
Yes. Killing something that has no mental faculties whatsoever is definitely better than killing something that can feel pain and may be dimly self-aware.
While this may be true on an individual basis, it seems abhorrent on a species level. I'll let JenniferRM to put it much better than I could:
...Supposing that there was something (vampires?) that preyed on humans and that we had absolutely no pragmatic recourse against these new apex predators (imagine saying "don't eat me!" to a nano-wielding fusion-powered super-intelligence that likes eating humans for some reason) what policy for the consumption of humans would we hope that they adopted? Do we want them to start eating human shaped tofu and r
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