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Dagon comments on Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong
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In-vitro meat reduces suffering, but also reduces joy and brain-experienced life in general. I don't know how to evaluate if a current cow or chicken's life is negative value (to the animal) or not.
If I'm exclusively limiting myself to animals that are raised in an organised fashion for eventual slaughter, I don't think I need too much data to assign broadly negative values to lives that are unusually brutish, nasty and short compared to either non-existence or a hypothetical natural existence.
In my consideration, simple things like the registering of a pain stimulus and the complexity of behaviour to display distress are good enough indicators.
The comparison at hand is only to non-existence; you're not proposing any mechanism to improve such lives or to make them similar to a hypothetical nature, only to eliminate any experience of the life while still providing the meat.
As such, you don't need too much data, but you currently have none, nor even a theory about what data you'd want. Trying to determine a preference for non-existince in animals (or vegetables, for that matter, or lumps of vat-meat) when such units don't seem to have the concepts (or at least the communication ability) to make choices for themselves doesn't seem obvious at all to me.
When animals are created and destroyed solely for a purpose attributed to them by their human overlords, that reduces their utilisable preferences to zero or near zero. Unless a meat producer had reason to believe that inflicting pain on an animal improved the resulting meat product, that pain would almost certainly be a by-product of whatever the farmer chose rather than an exclusive intent. I personally know no farmers that inflict 'pointless' injury on their livestock.
Given any amount of suffering in the animal stock needed to feed, say the US compared to a zero amount of suffering of the in-vitro meat needed to feed the US, if we were basing decisions solely on the ethics of the situation the choice would be clear-cut. As it stands it is simply one amongst many trade-offs, the numbers and data of which I agree would be laborious to define.
The inability to communicate or even experience a preference for the concept of non-existence compared to an experienced or ongoing pain does not invalidate the experience of the pain. In this field of thought I am happy to start from a non-rigorous framework and then become more so if needs be. At a simple level, my model says [for SolvePorkHunger: 'no pig' > 'happy pig + surprise axe' > 'sad pig + surprise axe'].
The practical ways to improve such lives as already exist are, broadly speaking, answered by practitioners of veganism, vegetarianism, cooperative existence with animals (raising chooks, goats for milk, etc etc).
Although I can understand the intuitiveness of this ordering, I think it should be pondered more deeply.
It's safe to say that no pig experiences no joy and no suffering, and that sad pig experiences lots of suffering. Also it would seem intuitive that a happy pig dying of natural causes experiences lots of joy. From the point of view of the animal:
long lived sad pig < short lived sad pig < no pig < long lived happy pig
It is weird not to put short lived happy pig were it seems to belong, and I think it has to do with the fact that killing a happy pig carries a lot of negative moral weight.
Would you say the same about a pig genetically engineered to die of natural causes when it's most delicious?
Ooh! I love the point about it being morally heavier to kill and eat a happy animal than a sad one.
I tend to think even relatively sad lives are not absolutely negative - very nearly any life is better than none, and a good life better than a bad one, but it's going to give some of my fuzzy-vegetarian friends a good question to ponder.
Does this argument apply to humans created or destroyed solely for purposes of evolutionary pressure or environmental accident? I'd argue that nothing happens solely for any purpose.
Measured how?
This seems to be the crux of your position. I don't buy it. Let's leave aside (unless you want to try to define terms) the difference between happy, sad, and more common mixed cases.
Let's focus on the main inequality of nonexistence vs some temporary happiness. Would you say 'no human' > 'happy human + surprise cancer'? I assert that neither human nor pig really frames things in terms of the farmer's or universe's motivations.
Would this also mean
'no pig' > 'happy pig + surprise predator' > 'sad pig + surprise predator' I don't think nature is generally any better than (some kinds of) farming for prey animals. Should vegans be benefitting from lowering the birth rates among natural animals?
Or for that matter, does it also mean 'no human' > 'happy human + eventual death' > 'sad human + eventual death' Even in nature, all life is alive, and then it dies, almost always in a way it would not choose or enjoy. Does life just suck? Are we bad actors for having children?
The term to search for is 'wild animal suffering.'
The term to search for is 'anti-natalism.'
People who worry that life sucks that much should make sure they correctly priced in the possibility that we can figure out how to arrange it so that life is super great in the future.
(But everyone here realizes this).