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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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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?
It has to have some idea of what's going on. A dog is operating entirely on instinct. Humans still use a lot of instinct, but that's hardly a reason for one human to make a decision for another.
Why?
If you have some a priori reason to believe that a life is worth living, then it would take a lot of evidence to prove otherwise. If the opportunity cost of not living a life worth living is substantially higher than the direct cost of a life not worth living, caution would be appropriate. But these don't seem to apply.
If you're not certain, it's easier to reverse a choice of life than a choice of death. That applies to the wild, but I don't think it's likely we'll find reason to believe that factory farmed animals' lives really are worth living any time soon.
If you just consider action generally more dangerous than inaction, that would apply for destroying wildlife, but factory farming is action. Avoiding it is inaction. It's a point against factory farming.
Any ecosystems which do not involve more suffering than pleasure shouldn't be exterminated, by that line of reasoning.