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shminux comments on Decision Theory FAQ - Less Wrong
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Maybe you need to talk to someone about it.
I don't burn ants anymore. My psychological health now is far superior to my psychological health back when I burned ants.
Have you considered immproving your psychological health so far you don't kill spiders, too?
Not sure if that was meant to be sarcastic, but I think it is fairly common for people to kill bugs that they find crawling around in their own home. Torturing them is a different matter.
I usually just ignore them, or if they bother me too much I try to get them out of the window alive.
Well, I don't, and I complain when I see people do it. But I'm atypical.
... how about not torturing and killing animals for food? Sure, most people do it, but most people are crazy.
I have much less of a problem with that (I eat meat myself, once in a while) than with torturing and killing animals for fun.
Is it because you think people derive much less fun from it than they do from eating meat? Or because you see some qualitative distinction between the two?
I was actually thinking of “fun” in a narrower sense (I was going to say “the hell of it” instead, and I'm not sure why I changed my mind); so I guess that
is kind-of right, even though, as someone said, a qualitative difference is just a sufficiently large quantitative difference (which translates to LWese as “SPECKS is worse than TORTURE”). By using “Fun” is a more general sense (note the capital F)... [thinks about it] yes, they derive much less Fun from the former than from the latter per animal killed, but I don't think that one bug should count for as much as one cow, so... [thinks a little more about it] I dunno whether people derive that much less Fun from the former than from the latter per unit ‘moral value’.
(Another difference beside levels of Fun is that, as Robin Hanson points out (though I disagree with pretty much everything else in that essay), is that the livestock killed for food are usually animals that if you hadn't been going to kill them for food would have never existed in the first place. This doesn't apply to game, and indeed I consider hunting to be more similar to killing animals for the hell of it than to killing animals for food, even if you do eat them.)
Hmm. Have you by any chance considered becoming a vegetarian yourself? Because someone eating traditional vegetarian fare (or synthetic meat-substitutes like Quorn, for that matter) definitely derives more Fun per unit moral value.
For some value of “considered”, I have. But I'm still not sure that of switching from flexitarianism to full vegetarianism would be worth the hassle.
Yes, I know. That would be me calling you crazy.
EDIT: In fact, since most people value mammalian (and bird, and fish, to a somewhat lower extent) pain/life higher than bug pain/life ... vegetarianism should be more important than not torturing bugs. Unless you meant from a psychological health perspective? Since people aren't taking pleasure in the torture/death itself?
Yes, the fact that most people don't usually kill the animals with their hands but pay someone else to do so does affect my gut reactions (cf “Near vs Far”) -- but I think that's a bug, not a feature.
It's easier to ignore/rationalize it if you can't see it, I think - I've heard stories of children growing up on farms who turned to vegetarianism when they learned where Fluffy went - so I suppose from a Virtue Ethics point of view it suggests they're less likely to be a Bad Person.
In other words, yes, that's a known bug.
I actually went vegetarian last summer for a couple months. I survived, but I did not enjoy it. I definitely could not stand going vegan; I enjoy milk too much. When I went vegetarian, I did not feel nourished enough and I was unable to keep up my physique. At some meals, I couldn't eat with the rest of my family.
I would go vegetarian again if I had the finances to hire a personal trainer (who could guide me on how to properly nourish myself) and if I had the motivation to prepare many more meals for myself than I do right now. However, I don't, on both counts.
On the other hand, I did recently find out about something called Soylent, which I hope I will eventually be able to try out. Does that mesh better with your moral sensibilities? (honest question, not meant to sound edgy)
I actually grew up vegetarian, so I've never had any trouble with which foods to eat. Most people are already eating far more meat than they need to, but by the sounds of it you need the protein - it might be worth eating nuts, beans, eggs and so on whenever you would usually eat meat?
I've heard of Soylent, and assuming you sourced the various ingredients from vegetarian sources (no fish oils, basically) it sounds awesome. Assuming you didn't run into long-term side-effects, which I think is unlikely, it would be a great path to vegetarianism as well.
I emailed the creator of Soylent, Rob Rhinehart. Soylent is both vegetarian and kosher (though not vegan).
ETA: Apparently Soylent will be vegan by default now. But, who knows, that could change again.
Well that's great. I might try Soylent myself, in that case.