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Jonathan_Graehl comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - Less Wrong
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Comments (513)
Your poll does not seem to accept ∞, "infinity", or any variant thereof. (Note: my answer is not motivated by thinking that the chickens have lives worth creating.)
Yeah, if your answer would be infinity, just answer "yes" to the other poll. I noticed this too :)
But wait; my answer to the other poll is not "yes". I mean... what? Either I am confused or you are.
Ok - I didn't see your "Note" at first. I'm not sure what you mean. Presumably your answer would be indifferent or yes, though. Otherwise, could you explain?
It's simple: I am willing to create as many factory-farmed chickens as you like for a QALY. A million? Sure. 3^^^3? Sure. I just don't care about the chickens; they are not a factor in the calculation; I am getting a free QALY. So my answer to the first question is "infinity".
My answer to the second question is "indifferent", although depending on how you construe "suffering", it could also be "No".
I have genuine uncertainty as to the nature of farmed chicken suffering - enough that I'd say it's bad to create your average meat-farmed chicken - otherwise I'd be right there with you at 10^20 or something similarly ridiculous.
The suggestion to genetically engineer suffering-knockout chicken seems a good one (though I'd have some residual uncertainty even then).
Sure, fair enough, I was just saying that the polls don't have any way for me to represent my position.
Are we assuming an average lifespan for a factory farmed chicken? That would be about 1.5 months. And do you perhaps mean numbers 0<x<1 rather than negative numbers?
No, I meant that someone who answers -0.001 would prefer removing 1000 human QALY in order to prevent the creation of a single factory farmed chicken. Though I wouldn't expect any such answers. It's a question about a trade.
But shouldn't such a person answer 0.001, not -0.001?
Yes, I realized this as I as making a sandwich and came back to say so :) I'll leave my mistake unedited as a warning to others. -.0001 means what I said but with "prevent the creation" being "create". The sign changes the sign of one of the items in the exchange.
Sorry about the grammatical ambiguity. "No" means you'd rather the chicken never existed, not that you'd rather the universe never existed. I just mean roughly that you prefer the chicken not exist.
Median answer - of 100 factory chickens (so 150 chicken-suffering-years) : 1 human QALY - impresses me.
Quite a few people take animal suffering pretty seriously. It must feel odd to have society's rules so far removed from that - like serious abortion-is-murder believers.
Like Hedonic_Treader points out, I think you have the longevity wrong, which may make the question somewhat difficult to answer. If 8 chicken lifespans represents one year, then saying "I think factory farming one chicken balances out one human life" represents an answer of 8, not an answer of 1.
I don't think that has a huge impact on the analysis, though, because the breakdown at present looks like this (and I would expect that, at most, this would impact the Less than 1 group):
Less than 1: There are 2 0.4s and a 0.5. Low: Two 2s and a 20. Medium: 2 100s and a 1600. High: 2 millions, one 10 trillion, and one quadrillion.
About half think that chicken lives and human lives are roughly comparable; about a quarter think human lives are more valuable; about a quarter think human lives are much more valuable (of the 13 who have responded to this poll, which is much less than the number which responded to the other poll).
How does 100 factory chickens add up to 150 chicken-suffering-years? Did you mean months?
they live 1.5 years each?
Chickens factory farmed for meat don't live anywhere near that long. 1.5 months per chicken destined for broiler meat is about the right figure.
Yes, I took 1.5yr from another comment, which which I guess might be for egg layers or the natural lifespan. I really should have specified lifespan in the poll.
they go from baby to full grown that fast? I had no idea.
They are often given substances to make them grow fast and big, this often leads to problems like their legs breaking.
They are also bred to mature faster and this can lead to similar problems I think. Manipulating the lighting to affect their circadian rhythm also helps make them mature faster.
One additional QALY for whom? A human stranger? A human friend? Me?
I was thinking of the average human. So 1 part you, 20 parts friend, 10 parts family, 50 parts colleague, 6 billion parts stranger. Of course it shouldn't matter, since I said economic constraints don't apply. Assume everyone gets a QALY and 6 billion times your answer in chickens are farmed.