Open Thread, January 1-15, 2013

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

Isn't this just a re-statement of the Repugnant Conclusion?

Essentially all domesticated animals are alive because of demand for products made from them (eggs, milk, meat, etc). If everyone kept kosher, there would be far fewer pig-experience-moments than the current world, including much less pig-experience-suffering. Is that good or bad for someone who values pig utility?

Anyway, I've always taken this kind of reasoning as a reason not to adopt that perspective on these types of questions. But I think that means I'm not a consequentialist - which puts me slightly out of consensus in this community.

If everyone kept kosher, there would be far fewer pig-experience-moments than the current world, including much less pig-experience-suffering. Is that good or bad for someone who values pig utility?

I value pig-utility. I'd much rather see a smaller number of comparitively well-kept, well-treated farm pigs and a healthy population of wild boars than the status quo. I'd also rather not see that arrived it by a mass slaughter of all other pigs, though, and pragmatically I'm not going to get that either way, so "a largeish-but-not-contemporary number ... (read more)

0RobertLumley13y

I think it is in a similar vein, certainly, but I think it's different in some ways too. For example, I don't think most people would accept cannibalism even if the people (victims? food?) led very happy lives, perhaps like a system where people were pampered in spas all day before being killed for food. But the logical extension of Hanson's argument is that this would be a great system. Assuming that there was a remote economic demand for human meat, which, thankfully, there isn't. Also, I think cannibalism engages people's sense of moral intuition much moreso than simply having a lot of marginally happy people does.

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Open Thread, January 1-15, 2013

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Open Thread, January 1-15, 2013

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