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Hyena comments on [link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism. - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think the ethics of farming is another place where problems in utilitarianism crop up.
There's a Parfitian argument that, since none of these animals would have existed otherwise, then killing them for food is no problem. But this would also apply to farming people, whether for food or chattel slavery, which we find repugnant. Obviously, though, this world is just as utility maximizing as Hanson's Malthusian em soup universe, neither of which seem particularly "good" (in fact, it is the em soup, just with fleshy people).
I don't have a "solution" to this, I think it just demonstrates one of the edges of utility theory's map.
Only if their lives are worth living.
You're willing to create people who are doomed to die of old age. Does it really matter how you die?
Um, yes?
Why?
Some methods of dying are more drawn out and painful than others. Given that no rancher has ever killed their animals with a method anywhere near as bad as old age, that's not really a point against ranching.
I think you just answered your own question.
My original point was that if creating people who are doomed to die of old age is okay, then creating people who die by whatever method of execution is convenient is okay. If both methods of death are the same, then this works. If old age is worse, the argument works better. As such, my original point still stands.
Also, with the exception of incredibly drawn out methods of dying (such as old age, chronic illness, and virtually nothing else), I don't think the pain of death is comparable to the opportunity cost of not living. As such, it doesn't really matter much which death is worse.
So you're OK with being tortured by matrix lords?
More to the point, I don't think not existing is an opportunity cost. Who would it be a cost to?
There are possible ways to die that are worse than old age. They are not how you are going to die if you're raised as food.
You. It would be good for you if you existed, and it cannot be good for you if you don't exist. It can't be bad for you either, but opportunity costs aren't real costs. They're what you get when you set something else as a baseline.
... point.
Surely dying young has a higher opportunity cost than dying of old age, regardless of other costs?
True, but it's still lower than the opportunity cost of not being born at all.
First, see my thing on irrelevant critiques and context agreement.
Second, your question suggests an answer which we would generally find repugnant. We could likewsie ask whether it matters so much if, for example, they are doomed to die when a small bomb planted in their brain at birth goes off without which their birth would have not occurred.
One problem with this argument is that to eat chicken or pork, you have to be okay not only with killing animals, but with torturing them as well - there's no better word for the conditions in which chickens and pigs are typically kept.
This is perfectly well true, but I'm not interested in addressing this because I have never known this to be anyone's sufficient objection to eating meat.
Would you eat a well-treated chicken? How about a deer instantly killed by a Predator drone equipped to vaporize its brain faster than neurons react?
Those are both moral improvements on typical chicken. Another example is mutton: sheep are commonly kept on rocky hillsides which would otherwise go to waste, and commonly have a life that's about as good as it can get for a sheep, being mostly left alone to live as they would in the wild, except protected from predators and parasites.
Torture (not murder) is my stated objection to eating meat.
A number of people are motivated to be vegan or vegetarian by the conditions under which factory-farm animals live. For example, Julia Galef in this podcast.
Are you talking about objections or disgust? I can, through emotional manipulation, make you "object" to many things, but these don't occupy the same space as considered argument.
I'd guess that the poor treatment of animals is the main reason why people switch to vegetarianism. Most don't make the fine distinctions that would allow them to continue to eat the rare well-treated animals (although some do), but if food animals typically had pleasant lives and painless deaths then I expect that there would be far fewer vegetarians.
I know this comment has already been objected to, but I'll pile on anyway. Torture is my objection to eating dairy and eggs. Stop the torture, and I will switch back to vegetarianism over veganism. I am currently willing to buy dairy, at least, from "humanely raised" farms (though I never see it in stores, it does exist).
I'm a vegetarian who is fine with deer hunting and chickens/cows that are raised humanely, able to live their lives doing more or less what cows and chickens would normally spend their lives doing.
There's a Parfitian argument that, since you would have not existed otherwise unless your parents gave you birth, then your parents should be allowed to kill you for food.
Well, that's my point. There's all these arguments hanging around here and when you take any of the general approaches, like utility theory, you tend to bump into them with nasty consequences. As I said: I don't really have a way to "solve" this.
Why can't we just reject that Parfitian argument?