I'm currently unconvinced either way on this matter. However, enough arguments have been raised that I think this is worth the time of every reader to think a good deal about.
http://nothingismere.com/2014/11/12/inhuman-altruism-inferential-gap-or-motivational-gap/
I am sorry, where is this coming from?
At this level of argument there isn't much intellectual component to speak of. If your value system already says "hurting creatures X is bad", the jump to "don't eat creatures X" doesn't require great intellectual acumen. It's just a direct, first-order consequence.
I didn't say it requires great intellectual acumen. In the blog post we're talking about, I called the argument "air-tight", "very simple", and "almost too clear-cut". I wouldn't have felt the need to explicitly state it at all, were it not for the fact that Eliezer and several other LessWrong people have been having arguments about whether veganism is rational (for a person worried about suffering), and about how confident we can be that non-humans are capable of suffering. Some people were getting the false impression from t... (read more)