Nice piece! My first instinct was to say something about Indian politics, how in India vegetarianism is right-coded and Kerala loves their meat. Anyway, I am a vegetarian but not a vegan.
But I do want to say that I do find the ethical case kind of bad, or at least the conventional utilitarian argument kind of lacking. I do assign much much more moral weight to human life than to all other life. If everyone going vegetarian made the GDP shrink 1%, and that slowed down for instance vaccine development which led to more deaths, it would be a bad thing. How many dollars would you pay to save a chicken? If you really think that donating to an effective animal charity is remotely reasonable vs donating to a charity like the AMF, applying simple utilitarian calculations could lead you to believe that humans don't have more inherent moral value than everything else on Earth combined, or at least to the conclusion that humans don't have more than 1000x as much moral value. I reject this conclusion, I think the actual number is either a very large finite number or just infinite. I also think the cow versus chicken debate is hard. Yes, you need to kill way fewer cows to get the same amount of meat. But definitely a cow is more sentient than a chicken. The cow is smarter and has more of a capacity to think and feel pain. It's a mammal. More closely related to a human. I would definitely save a cow over a chicken in a trolley problem. How much more? How many chickens is a cow? Difficult to know. You can get into even weirder conversations. How about wild animal suffering? Should we engineer versions of wild animals that don't feel pain and release them? You get into strange territory very fast.
I think that there are some better ethical cases against meat eating than a utilitarian calculation of animal suffering. One is honesty. You wouldn't kill the animal if you eat it yourself. Another is values. Be nice to animals, not to their sake but for our own. I mean, if we impose a society-wide moral taboo around making *animals* needlessly suffer, then probably it's hard to commit a genocide. Obvious counterpoint is that Hitler was vegetarian, but he was one person with some really strange and terrible ideas. Mainstreaming vegetarianism in society will probably have good effects on society. This is speculation, but I think it is part of the reason that India is relatively liberal, democratic, and pluralistic for its level of development.
In any case, factory farming will end when cultured meat becomes cheaper. After we phase out factory farming for purely economic and pragmatic arguments, post hoc we will say oh yeah factory farming was completely immoral. I think that's generally how these things these work. Really, slavery in the US was abolished because it stopped making economic sense. Cheap cotton from Egypt and India meant you needed huge tariffs on imported cotton for it to be competitive. The US started expanding Westward, expanding its manufacturing base which was concentrated North, and wanted cheap materials. But in hindsight, we talk all about the abolitionists and John Brown who was an actual terrorist. Brown is basically the equivalent of someone who would go to the place where Sparta where they throw the babies off and tries to shoot them. Not the way you make moral progress. Pragmatically and morally terrible. You know, as Harry Schwarz said, morality is cheap when someone else is paying.
1. Moral worth of chickens vs cows: I agree there's a large amount of uncertainty here. The main reason to prefer beef over chicken is that welfare standards for the average cow has increased significantly compared to chickens. If the animal welfare people Ive spoken to are correct in their assessment, the average north american cow has a net positive life. If you take this seriously, it's a sufficient argument to not just prefer beef, but consume as much beef as possible (Many people might not want to do this for a multitude of reasons).. To be clear, I don't think killing animals is wrong ....at all. I have no issue with happy cows and chickens being murdered for meat. This is mostly because while they might not be capable of complex emotions, abstract reasoning and have potential worth preserving, I have the intuition that suffering is bad no matter how smart the subject may be. We are planning to have Bob Fischer on our podcast to discuss this at some point since Im basically clueless about the neurobiology of it all. (I haven't read this but this might be something that might challenge your views on philatnhropic allocations between global health and animal welfare - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/btTeBHKGkmRyD5sFK/open-phil-should-allocate-most-neartermist-funding-to-animal
2. Non utilitarian reasons to be vegetarian - I don't know, you make it sound persuasive but i'm not sure I'm convinced. We evolved with no problems killing animals for food and more. So our psychological wiring can mostly handle inflicting damage on other sentient beings. in the recent past, we've developed specialization and global supply chains that have deprived basically everyone of exposure to this. We've also extended our circle of compassion to our pets (whom we now treat more as family members), which probably makes us even more squeamish by cultivating an unusually high degree of empathy. In today's world as it is, I agree that someone who is able to unflinchingly slaughter an animal reveals some alarming lack of empathy. And our "sociopath" radar goes up. But most of the people who eat meat today try very hard not to think about how the sausage gets made (pun intended). So what we have is really a terrible economic system with bad incentives. There are better and worse ways to impact this system. And if going vegetarian means incurring such a high personal cost, why not do something with higher benefit and lower costs? I agree that there might be something sinister seeming about passing the buck to someone else. But on some other issue, let's say climate change, perhaps the higher price of carbon will make you consume less electricity, for rational reasons. My point is it's best to think on the margin for altruistic purposes and then let rational self interest dictate consumption choices. Note: Thinking on the margin doesnt mean doing nothing, which is why I wanted to donate and encourage other people to as well. I have a feeling I haven't addressed the totality of your comment, what am I missing?
I like the response! To clarify, I don't think that there is anything sinister about the passing the buck to someone else. I don't oppose donating to effective animal charities at all. I am just saying that if you think this is an effective use of their charity compared to donating to humans and an EA cause area, it has some weird implications. I am still a consequentialist/utilitarian by the way, so I am not talking about "non utilitarian reasons" but rather reasons that aren't "naive utilitarian" calculations about animal suffering and rather other consequentialist/utilitarian calculations that actually involve humans.
I think the part you are missing is this. The "weird implications" from the last paragraph. Here are a few representative questions. One can surely generate more along these lines. But the point is that any utilitarian calculation that assigns a nontrivial amount of weight to animals gets to some weird places very fast. I agree in general with consequentialism/utilitarianism. I also prefer to not answer these questions and just focused on cultured meat, which once it works will be cheaper, healthier, use less resources, and so on. Even if you don't care about animals, it will use fewer resources and land and emit less carbon. Here you go. A strong ethical argument for vegetarianism, that it incentivizes the development of cultured meat by pushing against the "ick" factor that some people have around cultured meat. Just like pro choice pushes back against the ick factor that some people have around genetic enhancement ("designer babies"). Sometimes, left-wing instincts can be useful!
Question 1: Of the biomass on Earth, what fraction of the moral value is humans and what fraction is other creatures? How much environmental damage do we have to cause before you start saying that human extinction is ethical, or at least preferable to a society that continues to do factory farming forever? I hope we can agree that's a completely absurd proposition.
Question 2: Is it also ethically very good to start genetically engineering *wild* animals that don't feel pain, and release them, to prevent wild animal suffering? Is this something we should be funding? Even if it could potentially mess with the ecosystem, it's better than letting animals suffer, right?
Question 3: How much would you pay to save a cow from torture? A chicken? A human? Every non-human animal in the world being tortured constantly at the same time? Would you sacrifice some human lives? How many? How much would you pay to save a random human life?
A related observation / question - just out of curiosity.
Have inspection and regulatory agencies clearly laid down what free-range or cage free means? (A case in comparison are the discussions surrounding organic food labelling.) Is there a cage-free period specified for a day? Do free range farms have to be of a minimum area ? Are the animals branded, docked or sheared? How are free range veal calf slaughter be considered ethical or humane compared to factory farmed, when they are slaughtered young? I can go on.
Nice piece! My first instinct was to say something about Indian politics, how in India vegetarianism is right-coded and Kerala loves their meat. Anyway, I am a vegetarian but not a vegan.
But I do want to say that I do find the ethical case kind of bad, or at least the conventional utilitarian argument kind of lacking. I do assign much much more moral weight to human life than to all other life. If everyone going vegetarian made the GDP shrink 1%, and that slowed down for instance vaccine development which led to more deaths, it would be a bad thing. How many dollars would you pay to save a chicken? If you really think that donating to an effective animal charity is remotely reasonable vs donating to a charity like the AMF, applying simple utilitarian calculations could lead you to believe that humans don't have more inherent moral value than everything else on Earth combined, or at least to the conclusion that humans don't have more than 1000x as much moral value. I reject this conclusion, I think the actual number is either a very large finite number or just infinite. I also think the cow versus chicken debate is hard. Yes, you need to kill way fewer cows to get the same amount of meat. But definitely a cow is more sentient than a chicken. The cow is smarter and has more of a capacity to think and feel pain. It's a mammal. More closely related to a human. I would definitely save a cow over a chicken in a trolley problem. How much more? How many chickens is a cow? Difficult to know. You can get into even weirder conversations. How about wild animal suffering? Should we engineer versions of wild animals that don't feel pain and release them? You get into strange territory very fast.
I think that there are some better ethical cases against meat eating than a utilitarian calculation of animal suffering. One is honesty. You wouldn't kill the animal if you eat it yourself. Another is values. Be nice to animals, not to their sake but for our own. I mean, if we impose a society-wide moral taboo around making *animals* needlessly suffer, then probably it's hard to commit a genocide. Obvious counterpoint is that Hitler was vegetarian, but he was one person with some really strange and terrible ideas. Mainstreaming vegetarianism in society will probably have good effects on society. This is speculation, but I think it is part of the reason that India is relatively liberal, democratic, and pluralistic for its level of development.
In any case, factory farming will end when cultured meat becomes cheaper. After we phase out factory farming for purely economic and pragmatic arguments, post hoc we will say oh yeah factory farming was completely immoral. I think that's generally how these things these work. Really, slavery in the US was abolished because it stopped making economic sense. Cheap cotton from Egypt and India meant you needed huge tariffs on imported cotton for it to be competitive. The US started expanding Westward, expanding its manufacturing base which was concentrated North, and wanted cheap materials. But in hindsight, we talk all about the abolitionists and John Brown who was an actual terrorist. Brown is basically the equivalent of someone who would go to the place where Sparta where they throw the babies off and tries to shoot them. Not the way you make moral progress. Pragmatically and morally terrible. You know, as Harry Schwarz said, morality is cheap when someone else is paying.
A few things to respond to here:
1. Moral worth of chickens vs cows: I agree there's a large amount of uncertainty here. The main reason to prefer beef over chicken is that welfare standards for the average cow has increased significantly compared to chickens. If the animal welfare people Ive spoken to are correct in their assessment, the average north american cow has a net positive life. If you take this seriously, it's a sufficient argument to not just prefer beef, but consume as much beef as possible (Many people might not want to do this for a multitude of reasons).. To be clear, I don't think killing animals is wrong ....at all. I have no issue with happy cows and chickens being murdered for meat. This is mostly because while they might not be capable of complex emotions, abstract reasoning and have potential worth preserving, I have the intuition that suffering is bad no matter how smart the subject may be. We are planning to have Bob Fischer on our podcast to discuss this at some point since Im basically clueless about the neurobiology of it all. (I haven't read this but this might be something that might challenge your views on philatnhropic allocations between global health and animal welfare - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/btTeBHKGkmRyD5sFK/open-phil-should-allocate-most-neartermist-funding-to-animal
2. Non utilitarian reasons to be vegetarian - I don't know, you make it sound persuasive but i'm not sure I'm convinced. We evolved with no problems killing animals for food and more. So our psychological wiring can mostly handle inflicting damage on other sentient beings. in the recent past, we've developed specialization and global supply chains that have deprived basically everyone of exposure to this. We've also extended our circle of compassion to our pets (whom we now treat more as family members), which probably makes us even more squeamish by cultivating an unusually high degree of empathy. In today's world as it is, I agree that someone who is able to unflinchingly slaughter an animal reveals some alarming lack of empathy. And our "sociopath" radar goes up. But most of the people who eat meat today try very hard not to think about how the sausage gets made (pun intended). So what we have is really a terrible economic system with bad incentives. There are better and worse ways to impact this system. And if going vegetarian means incurring such a high personal cost, why not do something with higher benefit and lower costs? I agree that there might be something sinister seeming about passing the buck to someone else. But on some other issue, let's say climate change, perhaps the higher price of carbon will make you consume less electricity, for rational reasons. My point is it's best to think on the margin for altruistic purposes and then let rational self interest dictate consumption choices. Note: Thinking on the margin doesnt mean doing nothing, which is why I wanted to donate and encourage other people to as well. I have a feeling I haven't addressed the totality of your comment, what am I missing?
I like the response! To clarify, I don't think that there is anything sinister about the passing the buck to someone else. I don't oppose donating to effective animal charities at all. I am just saying that if you think this is an effective use of their charity compared to donating to humans and an EA cause area, it has some weird implications. I am still a consequentialist/utilitarian by the way, so I am not talking about "non utilitarian reasons" but rather reasons that aren't "naive utilitarian" calculations about animal suffering and rather other consequentialist/utilitarian calculations that actually involve humans.
I think the part you are missing is this. The "weird implications" from the last paragraph. Here are a few representative questions. One can surely generate more along these lines. But the point is that any utilitarian calculation that assigns a nontrivial amount of weight to animals gets to some weird places very fast. I agree in general with consequentialism/utilitarianism. I also prefer to not answer these questions and just focused on cultured meat, which once it works will be cheaper, healthier, use less resources, and so on. Even if you don't care about animals, it will use fewer resources and land and emit less carbon. Here you go. A strong ethical argument for vegetarianism, that it incentivizes the development of cultured meat by pushing against the "ick" factor that some people have around cultured meat. Just like pro choice pushes back against the ick factor that some people have around genetic enhancement ("designer babies"). Sometimes, left-wing instincts can be useful!
Question 1: Of the biomass on Earth, what fraction of the moral value is humans and what fraction is other creatures? How much environmental damage do we have to cause before you start saying that human extinction is ethical, or at least preferable to a society that continues to do factory farming forever? I hope we can agree that's a completely absurd proposition.
Question 2: Is it also ethically very good to start genetically engineering *wild* animals that don't feel pain, and release them, to prevent wild animal suffering? Is this something we should be funding? Even if it could potentially mess with the ecosystem, it's better than letting animals suffer, right?
Question 3: How much would you pay to save a cow from torture? A chicken? A human? Every non-human animal in the world being tortured constantly at the same time? Would you sacrifice some human lives? How many? How much would you pay to save a random human life?
A related observation / question - just out of curiosity.
Have inspection and regulatory agencies clearly laid down what free-range or cage free means? (A case in comparison are the discussions surrounding organic food labelling.) Is there a cage-free period specified for a day? Do free range farms have to be of a minimum area ? Are the animals branded, docked or sheared? How are free range veal calf slaughter be considered ethical or humane compared to factory farmed, when they are slaughtered young? I can go on.