Echarmion comments on The ethics of eating meat - Less Wrong Discussion
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I always felt that argument 1 is a bit hypocritical and not very rational. We kill animals constantly for many reasons - farming even for vegetables requires killing rodents and birds to prevent them eating the crops, we kill rats and other pests in our buildings to keep them from transmitting disease and damaging cables, we regularly kill animals by bumping into them when we drive a car or take a train or a plane, ... And of course, we massively take living space away from animals, leading them to die.
So why stop eating meat, and yet disregard all the other multiple cases in which our technological civilization massively kill animals ? I personally don't think most animals matter from an utilitarian point of view (they have no consciousness), but if they did, "not eating meat" wouldn't be enough, and eating meat from "dump" fish or chicken would be less a violation of ethics than killing "smart" rats for pest control.
Reason 2. would prevent eating factory-farmed meat, but it wouldn't prevent eating meat from less intensive forms of meat producing (or from wild game) which are usually available in supermarkets here in France, but a slightly higher price.
Reason 4. is just false taken in its absolute form - there are several studies showing that eating too much meat (especially processed meat) is harmful, but so far it seems some kind of meat (like chicken) is pretty harmless, and that eating a bit of meat is better health-wise than not eating any.
Reason 3. and 5. could justify eating less meat, but not no meat at all.
So with the available data, I would recommend eating perhaps less meat (for reasons 3., 4., 5.), less of the high-fat processed meat (like bacon) and try to buy food from more "humane" farms (for reasons 2), but not to stop eating meat completely.
Doesn't intent matter? I cannot control the entirety of society with my will, nor can I control what animals I unknowingly kill, but I can react to the things I know with my own actions.
It also seems irrational to let the "better be the enemy of the good". There is no rule that says that unless I solve all the problems at once, solving one problem is being hypocritical. The single decision doesn't get irrational just because I am not actually making 100% rational decisions all the time. That would only be hypocritical if I claimed that all my decisions are 100% rational when they are not.