Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016

MrMind

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

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

If I'm exclusively limiting myself to animals that are raised in an organised fashion for eventual slaughter, I don't think I need too much data to assign broadly negative values to lives that are unusually brutish, nasty and short compared to either non-existence or a hypothetical natural existence.

In my consideration, simple things like the registering of a pain stimulus and the complexity of behaviour to display distress are good enough indicators.

I don't think I need too much data to assign broadly negative values to lives that are unusually brutish, nasty and short compared to either non-existence or a hypothetical natural existence.

I don't think you can make that decision so easily. They're protected from predators, well-fed, and probably healthier than they would be in the wild. (About health, the main point against is that diseases spread more rapidly. But farmers have an incentive to prevent that, and they have antibiotics and access to minimal veterinary treatment.)

'no pig' > 'happy p

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1Dagon10y

The comparison at hand is only to non-existence; you're not proposing any mechanism to improve such lives or to make them similar to a hypothetical nature, only to eliminate any experience of the life while still providing the meat. As such, you don't need too much data, but you currently have none, nor even a theory about what data you'd want. Trying to determine a preference for non-existince in animals (or vegetables, for that matter, or lumps of vat-meat) when such units don't seem to have the concepts (or at least the communication ability) to make choices for themselves doesn't seem obvious at all to me.