Hedonic_Treader comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: peter_hurford 23 July 2013 09:30PM

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Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:10:38AM *  0 points [-]

Ignoring economic/environmental cost, how many chickens would you create and breed into factory-farming suffering, in exchange for one additional QALY? That is, you wouldn't make the trade unless it took fewer than this number of farmed chickens.

(answers may be very small (less than 1) if you value avoiding chicken suffering more than healthy human life-years) or even negative if you'd give up human lives to create more suffering chickens.

(If you think factory-farmed chickens have lives worth creating, please don't answer the poll, as your answer of infinity will throw off the average - you can vote "yes" or "indifferent" to the poll below this instead; this poll is mostly for people who answer "no" to it)

(I don't claim that chickens can actually be traded for human QALY - I still haven't gotten the ritual exactly working yet).

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Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2013 04:26:06AM 0 points [-]

One additional QALY for whom? A human stranger? A human friend? Me?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 26 July 2013 04:57:14AM *  3 points [-]

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.