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Raemon comments on Vegetarianism - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think it is fair to draw a distinction between murder and whatever-you-call-it-when-you-eat-things-that-can-suffer. I think murder has a specific connotation of killing something intelligent enough that you could have made a contract with it. Whether that's worse or not, I'm not sure. (Probably won't get universal consensus here, since the word "murder" predates any widespread concern for anything other than humans, but I think that's what I'd go with).
I don't think there's anything wrong with formulating a moral system that can survive the realization that certain animals are intelligent or that aliens exist. I think there's a good reason to make murder distinct from killing, but "because they are human" is a bad reason to draw moral distinctions. So unless I'm actually talking to "normal people" (instead of a blog of people dedicated to rationality) I don't see a reason to oversimplify my definitions.
I agree. I think killing a non-human animal is a lot less than murder, but still probably / possibly bad.
I see no reason to make animals suffer, either from poor living conditions or from the method of their execution. If we raised animals in pleasant conditions and killed them painlessly, I would be hard pressed to object on the grounds of suffering to their death, except for possibly the most intelligent / seemingly self-aware animals. Of course, since we don't raise animals like that, I have earlier objections.
As far as suffering goes, I rate the suffering of pigs > sheep > cows > chickens >> fish >> arthropods. The very miserable living conditions of pigs upsets me, but I don't plan to dedicate my life to effecting change in that area. Many primates and cetaceans are far enough up the list that I would actively try to stop someone who was killing them. I realize that both are killed for food, and it upsets me, but human suffering is more important to me, and I think I can be more effective at stopping it.