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Jiro comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong
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Sure. Do we disagree over something?
Yes. It's easy to take a controversial issue and say "The other side's position is one which hurts others. Lots of people are on the other side. This shows that lots of people are willing to hurt others." You can do that for any controversial issue.
The flaw is that this only shows that lots of people are willing to hurt others assuming that your side is correct. But you don't just get to assume that your side of a controversial issue is correct and use that to make unconditional conclusions about the other side.
People's failure to embrace vegetarianism shows that people are willing to hurt others in exactly the same way that people's failure to oppose abortion, or oppose gay marriage, or support gay marriage, or support any policy of the week, shows that people are willing to hurt others.
Fair point.
OTOH, Eliezer held a poll on his Facebook wall on "meat-eaters, do you believe that animals are capable of suffering" and the results were something along the lines of a 4:1 ratio in favor of "yes", so that would suggest that many (though not all) meat-eaters do at least believe in animals being capable of suffering.
That only means that "can animals suffer" isn't very controversial. To actually show what you want it to show, animals have to be able to suffer significantly, not just by some non-zero amount. That's a lot more controversial.
And even then, not only does someone have to believe that animals can suffer significantly, they have to believe in utilitarianism and a couple of other things that cumulatively, are pretty controversial.
What? Why?
Even if they believe that animals can suffer, they also have to believe in utilitarianism in order for that belief to be reasonably described as "willingness to hurt others", because "willingness to hurt others" also has an implied "significantly", and that means making comparisons that say that the gain from harming animals is smaller than the loss to the animals.
Technically, there are beliefs other than utilitarianism which can lead to that but I suggest that they would be rare among meat eaters. For instance, "you should never eat things that suffer no matter what" is a deontological rule which would also lead to the conclusion that meat eaters are willing to hurt others significantly (since the rule implies that all suffering significantly hurts others). However, I doubt many meat-eaters have such rules.
I feel like we're talking past each other somehow, but getting to the center of that and sorting it out doesn't seem like a particularly high-value time investment. Tapping out.