aelephant comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - LessWrong

48 Post author: peter_hurford 23 July 2013 09:30PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 26 July 2013 05:58:20PM 5 points [-]

In this case I think that's justified because catching a thief leads to less suffering overall than failing to catch the thief.

Not everyone has harm (avoidance) as their primary moral value; many people would voluntarily accept harm to have more purity, autonomy, or economic efficiency, to give three examples.

Comment author: aelephant 27 July 2013 01:36:38AM 4 points [-]

If a moral theory accepted and acted upon by all moral people led to an average decrease in suffering, I'd take that as a sign that it was doing something right. For example, if no one initiated violence against anyone else (except in self defense), I have a hard time imagining how that could create more net suffering though it certainly would create more suffering for the subset of the population who previously used violence to get what they wanted.