= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Alicorn comments on [link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism. - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (69)
This picture is just mistaken - because plant cultivation destroys a lot of small animals. Even if you were for some reason only interested in the lives of mice etc. and assigned literally zero value to cow lives, it takes more plants to sustain a cow until it can be turned into food than to get an equivalent amount of food directly from soybeans or something. It may be that, say, turning a herd of goats loose on uncultivated land and then eating the goats is very cheap in mouse lives, but this isn't how meat is normally procured in the developed world. Cows are fed things like soybeans and corn that humans could be eating directly, or that are produced in place of and using the resources that could have been directed towards producing other plants humans could be eating directly.
Only in the last stage, the "feeding up" process in feedlots. During most of their lives they eat grass, and if over-wintered in colder areas hay with maybe some grain.
The critical part of the quote you made is:
That is, the comma which is followed by an 'or' clause which totally invalidates your refutation.
All the more reason to eat wild animals like pandas and overweight koalas right?
I actually have a fair amount of respect for people who go out hunting and shoot their food themselves. Pandas and koalas in particular I have separate reasons to wince over the notion of shooting for supper, but hunting wild animals in general does not have the plant cultivation problem (or the mistreatment associated with factory farming, or what seems to me a slightly perverse willful ignorance of the causal history of meat that one purchases at the grocery store).
"I actually have a fair amount of respect for people who go out hunting and shoot their food themselves. "
I hear this a lot and agree in a vague sense that felt a lot like a cached thought. So I started thinking about it: Should we really respect people who go out to hunt and kill animals themselves?
My initial reaction was that I'm wary, not respectful, of someone comfortable/enthusiastic about ending a life! As a display of character, it's worrying.
But on second examination, I changed my mind. Even from a virtue ethics perspective, I admire a person who's willing to face the consequences of their actions rather than letting the factory farming go on out of sight. You're right, willful ignorance is not something to respect.
And from a consequentialist standpoint, hunters almost certainly cause less suffering to the animals than factory farmers do.
Having grown up in a city on the East Coast, I didn't exactly grow up with an appreciation for hunters. But I think I respect them a bit more now.
Your mileage may vary, I suppose.
I find a willingness to let other people do all the squicky, dirty, ethically-questionable and unpleasant tasks, sorted by low socioeconomic status, and then reap the benefits feeling one's own hands are clean and all is right with the world pretty darn worrying myself. And that trait seems ubiquitous in my society.
I'm not sure how valid your point is in practice. Being enthusiastic about hunting does not necessarily indicate a willingness to face the consequences of one's actions, nor does it indicate any particular attitude toward factory farming. It may just indicate a lack of visceral discomfort when encountering animal suffering.
It is plausible that some/many/most hunters simply enjoy pursuing and eating prey, and that the comparative advantages to overall utility make little or no difference to them. In this case, I wouldn't say that the utility advantage says anything positive about the individual's character, but I certainly do think it's fortunate that self-serving behaviors can occasionally lead to greater overall utility.
(Note: I'm sure there are hunters who subsist on hunted meats because they find mainstream meat production ethically appalling. I just doubt that they're representative of all hunters.)