Agreed, it's hard to imagine voluntarily embarrassing yourself in public as badly as the author has done here.
"When I went to college and met for the first time a good number of vegetarians and vegans, I used to blow their minds with this argument"
Indeed. That must have really been something. Well, he won't say anything to make us thinks he's positioning this in less than good faith, then?
"Honestly, fuck crabs"
Ok. but...
" but really octopuses are pretty horrible too. Oh, they’re smart, but, similar to crabs, they’re cannibals. They spend most of their time cavorting in a midden pile of prey bones."
Midden pile?
"If your cats were big enough, they’d eat you. Feline fillets are simply turnabout as fair play."
The author says, in the introduction, "this entire essay is ridiculous." You are taking it much too seriously. It's all meant in a joking way just to explore some sillier ideas around animal ethics that may or may not have a kernel of value hidden in them.
Nothing about this article is embarrassing, unless you intentionally misconstrue the tone and intentions of the author.
I agree, but that's kind of what we do to resolve moral cognitive dissonance all the time, with varying results. Personally it's something I really struggle with, and the questions usually boil down to whether I would be fine living my life wrongly, or if I'll give up enjoyment of my already sad life just to feel good about myself for being moral.
I just can't picture it. 9 hours a day in the office, then I come back home and I just want to hedonistically enjoy all that I can until I sleep. Of course I'm going to want to eat a big steak, watch porn, and listen to pirated music, morality be damned, and I know it makes me a bad person.
Matthias is arguing the metaphor. Which is a little fair in this case because the metaphor is the meat of the thing, but still, his response is basically "Ok, but imagine a completely different scenario. Isn't it different now?"
Not to mention he has a very, very low opinion of animals. Animals do engage in creativity and play. That we've been able to observe. We honestly don't know if they engage in philosophizing or other sorts of abstract thoughts because we don't speak dolphin. Matthias is basically basing his rebuttal on animals not being sentient. Or at the very least, minimally sentient.
So cows can't tell us if they'd rather go extinct or continue as they are. And I'd imagine that whatever way you formulate the thought, you'd find people who would prefer one or the other. If the people were only as aware as cows; if the people were as aware as normal but treated as cows; a third scenario I haven't thought of.
And there's the question of whether or not we have an obligation on how to treat them. If someone disagrees with that obligation, you have to get over that hump first. Kind of on their terms. Because if they believe we don't have an obligation because cows have hooves, you're not going to convince him that cows don't have hooves. You have to find out why hooves matter to him then find an argument along those lines. Arguing from the sentience of a cow isn't going to cut it. Arguing we have a moral imperative as the most abstract thinkers isn't going to cut it. You have got to argue hooves.
And if you can't do that because his position is so nonsensical there's no way to rationally argue against it, you have to accept he's just not going to understand.
That's a common and unimpressive argument around plant based diets. Short of suicide, is it a choice that causes the least possible harm? Surely it causes less suffering that farming all of those plants anyway, feeding them to other animals that take up more land and cause more pollution, and then killing those animals and eating them?
> Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
That is certainly true, but livestock is often eating row crops. A significant chunk of soybean meal and corn goes to feed livestock [1] [2]. If those row crops were consumed directly by humans instead, it would require a lot less land. [3]
Debates like this are a waste of time and this one even has a clickbait title. They ignore the obvious animal suffering today and instead offer a "what if we just stopped over night, what then?".
This essay gets worse as it goes.
This will never happen. So instead we should focus on limiting or entirely removing the consumption of animals and animal products in our lifestyle which will gradually reduce the number of animals bred for premature death.
Most won't and will cling to clickbait essays like this and the distant hope of widespread, affordable, lab-grown meat while continuing to ignore the obvious abuse to animals in their day to day life today.
Slavery is good, says the philosopher. Think of those millions of slave children that would have not existed if not for the slave trade. Sure, had their predecessors remained in Africa they would have had different progeny, but that is an abstraction; those children didn't exist. We are considering actual children who lived, and of course tens of millions of their offspring that resulted, many of them alive today. If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of slavery, would you? What kind of monster would you be to vanish and nullify millions of people who are currently living meaningful lives?
Would anyone actually agree with the above sentiment? How is it different than what this thinkpiece is putting forth? It is a post-hoc justification for the status quo.
The reasonable counterargument to this is that you are comparing the actual pain and suffering of real, existing animals, to the potential life of animals who do not currently exist. "What happens if we stop raising livestock?" means that no further cows will be born to a life of suffering. That's...really it. Those hypothetical animals aren't floating around in the aether wishing someone would just have let them be born.
While certainly not the majority, some livestock are actually treated quite well until the point of slaughter.
On the other side, many wild herbivores and prey animals live lives in an almost perpetual state of alertness and fear, just a moment away from being viciously torn apart and eaten alive.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, approximately 99% of chickens used for meat in the United States are raised in factory farms.
According to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments.
This doesn't necessarily clash with what you said, but I feel it bares pointing out that less than 1% of feedstock is NOT kept in conditions that perpetuate a state of fear and alertness (basically all factory farming is like that).
Actually they refer to suffering as one alternative a few times:
"Even if, on net, the humans in the alien world suffer, is oblivion really the preferable alternative to net suffering? Especially if you could alleviate that suffering through action?"
Sure, but what meaning is derived by causing the unbearable suffering, mutilation, and murder of billions of fellow conscious beings on this planet just for the sake of pleasing your taste buds?
Are animals people? For most of human history, the answer has been no.
I'm sure that there have always been humans that thought of their favorite animals as people (or similar), but the scientific and social acceptance of animals having consciousness and emotions similar to humans is VERY recent. Look at the pushback that Jane Goodall got for her research for context.
Anyway, I don't have a good ethical argument in favor of eating animal, other than history and my personal rights. This is similar to my feelings on abortion - women have personal rights, but other than that, abortion is not good.
I'm sure people will have problems with these statements, but please consider that I am not trying to change your mind or morality.
Some humans treat some dogs like they treat people, or even better than they treat people. It's very normal and common to treat a pet dog better than a human stranger. Many animals are at least as smart as dogs; however dogs seem to have distinct abilities in understanding and empathising with humans (because they have been bred to do so).
Animals have some of the same rights as humans - it's illegal to torture animals for instance.
I'm not making a strong argument that animals ARE people, because I don't have a strong belief that animals are people; but some people do have that strong belief, and I feel like history will be on their side.
If our meat animals didn't exist, a lot of other animals would. Animals eat a lot of food that would be available calories for other animals instead, after all.
Also, never existing at all is not a negative, it is null. There is nobody to experience a negative effect of not existing.
> I’ve written before about longtermism, the idea that future lives carry moral weight—in this case, there will be millions of humans on this alien world that never exist if you choose (b) and abandon them to their fate on the hostile planet.
The idea of it automatically being better to choose the outcome where more future lives will exist seems problematic to me.
If it is better to have animals living miserably in factory farms if it means more future animals will be born (even if those animals will live miserably in factory farms) and that has moral weight, is there also a moral obligation to give birth to as many children as possible even if you are going to mistreat, neglect or abuse them?
I think most people would agree that it is better not to have children unless you will be able to avoid mistreating, neglecting, or abusing them, so wouldn't the same apply to animals?
Readit News
1. Plant-based diets are good for the environment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316289/
2. Animals are sentient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494450/
3. The "thought experiment" is flawed. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the... - good rebuttal here
Keeping animals alive in the worst possible conditions on the promise that "we'll do better!" just so the species don't die out is utterly ridiculous.
"When I went to college and met for the first time a good number of vegetarians and vegans, I used to blow their minds with this argument"
Indeed. That must have really been something. Well, he won't say anything to make us thinks he's positioning this in less than good faith, then?
"Honestly, fuck crabs"
Ok. but...
" but really octopuses are pretty horrible too. Oh, they’re smart, but, similar to crabs, they’re cannibals. They spend most of their time cavorting in a midden pile of prey bones."
Midden pile?
"If your cats were big enough, they’d eat you. Feline fillets are simply turnabout as fair play."
Cats?
"we should obviously be eating hyenas"
I'm done. Seriously, it's this guy https://as.tufts.edu/biology/people/faculty/erik-hoel ? what a waste of intellect.
Nothing about this article is embarrassing, unless you intentionally misconstrue the tone and intentions of the author.
That's a common problem on Substack, it seems. Lots of people writing long "essays" on topics they don't quite understand, but think they do.
I just can't picture it. 9 hours a day in the office, then I come back home and I just want to hedonistically enjoy all that I can until I sleep. Of course I'm going to want to eat a big steak, watch porn, and listen to pirated music, morality be damned, and I know it makes me a bad person.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
> At a mean age of 40 days, over 27.6% of birds in our study showed poor locomotion and 3.3% were almost unable to walk.
And keep in mind we're talking about 60 billion chickens annually.
https://www.humanesociety.org/news/super-size-problem-broile...
Not to mention he has a very, very low opinion of animals. Animals do engage in creativity and play. That we've been able to observe. We honestly don't know if they engage in philosophizing or other sorts of abstract thoughts because we don't speak dolphin. Matthias is basically basing his rebuttal on animals not being sentient. Or at the very least, minimally sentient.
So cows can't tell us if they'd rather go extinct or continue as they are. And I'd imagine that whatever way you formulate the thought, you'd find people who would prefer one or the other. If the people were only as aware as cows; if the people were as aware as normal but treated as cows; a third scenario I haven't thought of.
And there's the question of whether or not we have an obligation on how to treat them. If someone disagrees with that obligation, you have to get over that hump first. Kind of on their terms. Because if they believe we don't have an obligation because cows have hooves, you're not going to convince him that cows don't have hooves. You have to find out why hooves matter to him then find an argument along those lines. Arguing from the sentience of a cow isn't going to cut it. Arguing we have a moral imperative as the most abstract thinkers isn't going to cut it. You have got to argue hooves.
And if you can't do that because his position is so nonsensical there's no way to rationally argue against it, you have to accept he's just not going to understand.
— The Vegan Society, Definition of veganism
Emphasis mine.
[1] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/where_do_all_these_soybeans_go [2] https://www.iowacorn.org/corn-uses/ [3] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...
Dead Comment
This essay gets worse as it goes.
This will never happen. So instead we should focus on limiting or entirely removing the consumption of animals and animal products in our lifestyle which will gradually reduce the number of animals bred for premature death.
Most won't and will cling to clickbait essays like this and the distant hope of widespread, affordable, lab-grown meat while continuing to ignore the obvious abuse to animals in their day to day life today.
Would anyone actually agree with the above sentiment? How is it different than what this thinkpiece is putting forth? It is a post-hoc justification for the status quo.
On the other side, many wild herbivores and prey animals live lives in an almost perpetual state of alertness and fear, just a moment away from being viciously torn apart and eaten alive.
According to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments.
This doesn't necessarily clash with what you said, but I feel it bares pointing out that less than 1% of feedstock is NOT kept in conditions that perpetuate a state of fear and alertness (basically all factory farming is like that).
"Even if, on net, the humans in the alien world suffer, is oblivion really the preferable alternative to net suffering? Especially if you could alleviate that suffering through action?"
Dead Comment
I'm sure that there have always been humans that thought of their favorite animals as people (or similar), but the scientific and social acceptance of animals having consciousness and emotions similar to humans is VERY recent. Look at the pushback that Jane Goodall got for her research for context.
Anyway, I don't have a good ethical argument in favor of eating animal, other than history and my personal rights. This is similar to my feelings on abortion - women have personal rights, but other than that, abortion is not good.
I'm sure people will have problems with these statements, but please consider that I am not trying to change your mind or morality.
Animals have some of the same rights as humans - it's illegal to torture animals for instance.
I'm not making a strong argument that animals ARE people, because I don't have a strong belief that animals are people; but some people do have that strong belief, and I feel like history will be on their side.
Also, never existing at all is not a negative, it is null. There is nobody to experience a negative effect of not existing.
So I don't think this is a very good argument.
The idea of it automatically being better to choose the outcome where more future lives will exist seems problematic to me.
If it is better to have animals living miserably in factory farms if it means more future animals will be born (even if those animals will live miserably in factory farms) and that has moral weight, is there also a moral obligation to give birth to as many children as possible even if you are going to mistreat, neglect or abuse them?
I think most people would agree that it is better not to have children unless you will be able to avoid mistreating, neglecting, or abusing them, so wouldn't the same apply to animals?