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Xodarap comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - Less Wrong
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You know those Chick-fil-A advertisements with the cows beseeching you to eat more chicken? The ironic thing is, if you eat more chickens, there will actually be more chickens in the world, and if you eat fewer cows, there will be fewer cows in the world. It's just supply and demand. The survival of cows and chickens is controlled by the farmers, who are profit-oriented. If it stops being profitable to raise cows for the slaughter, then cows won't be raised at all.
Or consider this: suppose everyone in the world right now switches to vegetarianism. All the cows and chickens on the farms will die. The farmers will have no incentive to feed them. They'll kill the cows for their leather and the chickens for their...I have no idea, and any animals they don't kill will be left to starve, with all their independent survival ability bred and raised out of them.
I would be willing to become vegetarian were it not for my belief that the only way to keep cows alive is to eat them. How do you speak to that concern?
Is it better never to have been born than to be born, raised in cruel conditions, and then slaughtered? The answer is not obvious to me.
I think this is a great point, but it has the opposite conclusion. Agriculture is the leading cause of habitat loss and meat consumption causes more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector.
If we want to keep animals from going extinct, we have to eat less meat.
Cows, chickens, and other animals whose existence are entirely dependent on humans will go extinct if we stop eating them.
The problem of protecting animals, who are simply in our way and have nothing to offer us or any ability to protect themselves, except the few we can enslave and use as fuel for our hordes, is a very hard problem, and "Let's stop eating meat" is not satisfactory. Nor is it even an obviously necessary start.
I'm not certain I understand. Are you saying that fewer species will go extinct if people eat meat? Or are you agreeing that being veg is the best way to preserve biodiversity, but that you don't care about biodiversity?
I don't particularly care about biodiversity, except if it offers some benefit to people. I suppose it might offer opportunities for increasing knowledge/understanding of biology/chemistry. Why do other people care about it?
The argument as I understand it is that profitable species are safeguarded like any other asset. If butterflies are disappearing for some reason, the response from most of society is a collective shrug. If honeybees are disappearing for some reason, the response from most of society is low-level anxiety, and several expert specialists devote significant time to understanding its cause and stopping it.