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shminux comments on Link: Rob Bensinger on Less Wrong and vegetarianism - Less Wrong
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I think RobbBB does not understand a typical omnivore's (me!) point of view. He also makes irrational conclusions about the ways to reduce the amount of suffering of (potentially somewhat sentient) animals.
Yes, cattle suffer, so do chickens, to a lesser degree. They likely do not suffer in the same way people do. Certainly eggs are not likely to suffer at all. Actually, even different people suffer differently, the blanket moral prohibition against cannibalism is just an obvious Schelling point.
So it would be preferable to not create, raise, slaughter and eat animals if there was an alternative source of meat with the same nutritional and taste properties omnivores are used to. Maybe some day. Until then we should strive to minimize needless suffering, at a marginal cost to the consumers.
So, if you are an effective altruist who includes cows and chickens in the potential list of the entities who should be protected from suffering what do you do? Write blogs aimed at an extremely limited audience who do not appear to be overly receptive, anyway? That's not very "effective", is it? How about working to develop and make feasible new alternatives to "torturing animals"? For example:
support/participate in the research to produce vat-grown meat
expose existing cattle/chicken abuse in farms and slaughterhouses
support/participate in the research to develop a species of farm animals who are physically unable to suffer.
Certainly if a headless chicken can survive for a while, it should be feasible to breed/genetically modify them to not have the brain structures responsible for suffering. Or maybe it's as easy as injecting eggs with some substance which stifles the formation of pain centers.
As SSC notes,
Yet I know of no effective animal altruists who spend majority of their efforts figuring out and working on the task which is likely to provide the greatest payoff. Pity.
It's typically the chickens laying the eggs that people are concerned about. And maybe to a lesser extent the male chickens of the chicken breed used for egg production. (Maybe you're already clear on that, but I have spoken to people who were confused by veganism's prohibition on eating animal products in addition to animals.)
It doesn't seem safe to assume that their suffering is subjectively less bad than our suffering. Maybe it's worse - maybe the experience of pain and fear is worse when you can only feel it and can't think about it. Either way, I don't see why you'd err on the side of 'It's an uncertain thing so lets keep doing what we're doing and diminish the potential harms when we can' rather than 'It's not that unlikely that we're torturing these things, we should stop in all ways that don't cost us much.'
But yes, creating vat-grown meat and/or pain-free animals should be a priority.
So, there's a heuristic that I think is a decent one, which is that less-conscious things have less potential suffering. I feel that if you had a suffer-o-meter and strapped it to the heads of paramecia, ants, centipedes, birds, mice, and people, they'd probably rank in approximately that order. I have some uncertainty in there, and I could be swayed to a different belief with evidence or an angle I had failed to consider, but I have a hard time imagining what those might be.
I think I buy into the notion that most-conscious doesn't strictly mean most-suffering, though - if there were a slightly less conscious, but much more anxious branch of humanoids out there, I think they'd almost certainly be capable of more suffering than humans.
Note that one of Animal Charity Evaluators' two top charities is Mercy for Animals, which has a track record of exposing abuse.
Yeah, I agree, abuse exposure is actually happening, which is good. At least it reduces the unnecessary torture, if not the amount of slaughter for food.
LW folk generally are proponents of Vat-Meat.
On one hand, I agree with you that it's probably not that effective to specifically court the LW demographic. That said, EA-Animal-Rights people are usually in favor of vat-grown meat (there are companies working on it. To my knowledge they are not seeking donations (although Modern Meadow is hiring, if you happen to have relevant skills)
"expose existing cattle/chicken abuse in farms and slaughterhouses" is a mainstay vegan tactic. Robbie's article was prompted by Brienne's article which was specifically arguing against videos that did that (especially if they use additional emotional manipulation tactics)
Just as a data point: the emotional manipulation tactics (i.e graphic videos) were effective against me. (Mostly because I was unfamiliar with the process before. I didn't know what happened) They tend to be effective in people especially sensitive to graphic images, I think, but I realize that in general it's not a tremendously effective way across the population spectrum. If it was, everyone (or at least everyone who has watched those videos) would probably be vegetarian at this point. This is not the case.
As another data point, emotional manipulations tactics are HIGHLY counterproductive against me. I dislike being emotionally manipulated and when I see attempts to do so my attitude towards the cause worsens considerably.
Can you name three cases when you changed your mind on something important as a result of someone convincing you, by any means.
Are videos intended to produce a visceral reaction against gay sex or abortion also effective against you?
Those are very different contexts (but the answer is no, they are not effective against me). I don't make decisions based on purely visceral reactions, nor do I advise it. I think there may have been some miscommunication... I was saying that those tactics don't generally work, that I do not recommend them, even if I happened to be an exception.
"generally proponents" doesn't sound nearly like "putting lots of efforts into". As I said, an effective animal altruist would dedicate some serious time to figuring out better ways to reduce animal suffering. Being boxed in the propaganda-only mode certainly doesn't seem like an effective approach. If you are serious about the issue, go into an Eliezer mode and try to do the impossible. Especially since it's a lot less impossible than what he aspires to achieve.
You seem to be saying that people can't talk, think about, or discuss topics unless they're currently devoting their life towards that topic with maximum effectiveness. That seems... incredibly silly.
Your statements seem especially odd considering that there are people currently doing all of the things you mentioned (which is why you knew to mention them).
I don't think this gives due respect to the premise. Imagine yourself in a world where attitudes towards meat eating were similar to ours, but the principal form of livestock were human. You'd like to reduce the number of people being raised as meat. Would arguing your ethical position on a site called LessWrong be worth your time, even if most people there weren't very receptive?
No, what would be worth my time is to figure out how to make less sentient animals taste like humans. Maybe popularize pork, or something.
There is textured vegetable protein. Ok, it's not molecule-equivalent to meat, but it's supposed to imitate the physical sensation of eating meat. It was invented fifty years ago. For anyone who wants to eat meat without eating meat, there's an answer. So is there any reason to chase after vat-meat?
How close the imitation is, I don't know. I'm not sure I've ever eaten TVP. But it has to be easier and cheaper to improve on the current product than to develop a way of growing bulk tissue in industrial quantities.
It is a LOT worse in both taste and texture.