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DanielLC comments on What legal ways do people make a profit that produce the largest net loss in utility? - Less Wrong
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Factory farms have a large net loss in utility due to the suffering they cause animals. If you do not value animals, then it's not surprising that they wouldn't cause a large loss in your utility function. However, from the perspective of wanting to prevent harm in all sentient beings, they cause a large negative utility.
Let's take two ecosystems. One is rich and diverse, full of creatures mostly eating each other. Another is poor and sparse, hardly any creatures live there.
Can you gain utility by converting the first ecosystem into the second one?
Yes. If the lives in the first ecosystem involve more suffering than pleasure, then the second almost certainly has more utility.
Considering that dying is a once-in-a-lifetime event, I think it's a bigger issue how they live than how they die.
So, desertification is a good thing then, I guess? Actually, is there anything in that line of reasoning that doesn't argue for converting all wild nature into sterile empty spaces?
If wild animals suffer more than they feel pleasure, I don't see why it would be better for them to live. I don't actually know whether or not their lives are worth living, but it doesn't seem all that unlikely that they're not.
Do you think all life is worth living regardless of how terrible it is? Do you predict some long-term benefit of the wild that will make the horrendous amounts of suffering involved all worthwhile?
Do you feel the same way about humans, too?
Yes. I am in favor of euthanasia.
From what I understand, involuntary euthanasia, right?
If consent is possible, you shouldn't act without consent for several reasons that I won't get into. In the case of animals and people in comas, consent is impossible. I do not believe that never acting is appropriate in this case.
It's like why I'm okay with humanely raising animals, but I'm not okay with slavery. If you need humans to help you, and you will treat them humanely, you can get their consent. If someone isn't willing to get their consent, that's highly suspicious, and they are almost certainly not treating them humanely. You cannot get an animal's consent, so it's not suspicious, and so long as you have a somewhat reliable method to tell if they're being raised humanely, it's okay.
What's your definition of "consent"? For example, if you own a dog, you generally have no problems seeing what your dog agrees to do (="consents") and what it doesn't.
True, but it seems to me the intervention bar is much higher in this case. What makes you think you can clear it?
Any ecosystems which do not involve more suffering than pleasure shouldn't be exterminated, by that line of reasoning.
That's a question with an answer. Do wild animals suffer so much their lives aren't worth living? Then yes. My gut feeling is that it isn't the case, however, or it varies a lot from specie to specie - some might inherently suffer more than others by being kept in a naturally high state of stress, etc.
To assert that animals experience qualia is hardly an uncontroversial claim.