"Factory farming inflicts vast amounts of suffering for trivial reasons." Feeding people does not seem like a trivial reason to me, and veganism, especially long-term, is unhealthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism might be optimal for individuals and includes factory farming.
Thanks for the Article Mr. Bulldog. Happy Holidays to you as well! May Bentham's ghost smile upon you from utility monster Heaven.
Let's look at this post. As a note at the top, I do not actually endorse killing disabled people.
> Here’s Caplan’s graph of the wrongness of inflicting tons of suffering on a being.
I have already messaged you the *true* IQ/ethics graph. No need to reexplain it here.
> First, there are some humans that are dumber than most animals.
Then there's little direct consequence to killing them, as long as on a mental level they're stuck there.
> If the intelligence threshold allows factory farming animals, it would also allow factory farming Bree.
It
I doubt that factory farming Bree would be beneficial to the interests of people that matter. (Factory farming, after all, is fueling climate change & toxins & drought, etc.) It would probably also create an incentive to find humans to factory farm, which could lead to annoying borderline cases. Best to just stick to animals which are clearly too dumb.
> One might say that it’s wrong to farm children because they turn into adults later
This formulation is nonsense, but a version of it is true. A terminally ill child is not going to become old because of a wholly nonmental defect. The mentality is what matters, and cutting off the future of a mind that;'s going to reach good intelligence levels but for an idiosyncratic physical cause is unjust. One might consider it an equality principle. I know you hate equality though... :P
> it’s okay to walk into a Saint Jude’s hospital commercial
The children in St. Jude's commercials are significently smarter then animals.
> Not only is this wrong, but this is also maybe the most clearly wrong action ever.
Almost true. Please refer to the chart I sent you for the true "most wrong" act, though.
'
> the wrongness of holocausting terminally ill people in Saint Jude commercials hinges entirely on empirical findings about the IQ of toddlers.
This is always true. If I revealed myself as God and said I grant souls (consciousness) only to people fated to live past the age of 11, then it would be fine to kill these children (according to your own utilitarianism). Now we're quibbling over a matter of degree. Furthermore, if I had conclusive scientific evidence that these children were on the level of, say, bacteria, you would also be fine killing them. You're only counterargument would be to dispute that absurd assumption.
> This is not at all plausible
You can't assume something not plausible and then say its consequences aren't plausible because what you just assumed is implausible.
> Additionally, this would permit pretty much any animal cruelty. Kicking a dog, having sex with a dog, torturing a dog so that chocolate tastes better — all fine by the Caplan standard. Yet all of this is very obviously wrong. This would also permit bestiality presumably.
True. You would either have to legalize the conduct, find an externality, or go genius mode and start incanting gibberish about natural law and the bible. (I was reading a blog by a bunch of "integralists" that spent way too many pages explaining this).
> Thus, if Caplan were right, it wouldn’t be very bad when people in the grip of severe Alzheimer’s burn to death.
I would probably prefer dying in a fire than a mental disease that advanced.
> Should this person be indifferent to their suffering 100 days from now, because they’d be very dumb? Of course not!
I would be indifferent.
> Caplan’s graph is also very suspicious.
Yeah, that's the problem. You can look at my graph for a less suspicious curve. Regardless, there are *some* qualitative differences in intelligence between animals and humans. We have a civilization, they have nothing close to it and never will.
>Additionally, if it’s linear, then a sufficiently smart alien could torture humans for trivial benefits. This is implausible.
How many blog posts have you written about the utility monster?
> Let’s imagine that you were about to take a pill that would make you very dumb. Then, you would be set on fire, and it would be exactly as painful. Would this make the pain less bad?
Probably, though being forced to take such a pill could be way worse than any fire.
I don't know about the insect's stuff, so I'll leave it there. Happy Holidays again!
Thanks for this, Ben. As Cleveland Amory said, we have an infinite capacity to rationalize, especially when it comes to something we want to eat.
https://www.mattball.org/2022/11/infinite-capacity-to-rationalize.html
"Factory farming inflicts vast amounts of suffering for trivial reasons." Feeding people does not seem like a trivial reason to me, and veganism, especially long-term, is unhealthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism might be optimal for individuals and includes factory farming.
Thanks for the Article Mr. Bulldog. Happy Holidays to you as well! May Bentham's ghost smile upon you from utility monster Heaven.
Let's look at this post. As a note at the top, I do not actually endorse killing disabled people.
> Here’s Caplan’s graph of the wrongness of inflicting tons of suffering on a being.
I have already messaged you the *true* IQ/ethics graph. No need to reexplain it here.
> First, there are some humans that are dumber than most animals.
Then there's little direct consequence to killing them, as long as on a mental level they're stuck there.
> If the intelligence threshold allows factory farming animals, it would also allow factory farming Bree.
It
I doubt that factory farming Bree would be beneficial to the interests of people that matter. (Factory farming, after all, is fueling climate change & toxins & drought, etc.) It would probably also create an incentive to find humans to factory farm, which could lead to annoying borderline cases. Best to just stick to animals which are clearly too dumb.
> One might say that it’s wrong to farm children because they turn into adults later
This formulation is nonsense, but a version of it is true. A terminally ill child is not going to become old because of a wholly nonmental defect. The mentality is what matters, and cutting off the future of a mind that;'s going to reach good intelligence levels but for an idiosyncratic physical cause is unjust. One might consider it an equality principle. I know you hate equality though... :P
> it’s okay to walk into a Saint Jude’s hospital commercial
The children in St. Jude's commercials are significently smarter then animals.
> Not only is this wrong, but this is also maybe the most clearly wrong action ever.
Almost true. Please refer to the chart I sent you for the true "most wrong" act, though.
'
> the wrongness of holocausting terminally ill people in Saint Jude commercials hinges entirely on empirical findings about the IQ of toddlers.
This is always true. If I revealed myself as God and said I grant souls (consciousness) only to people fated to live past the age of 11, then it would be fine to kill these children (according to your own utilitarianism). Now we're quibbling over a matter of degree. Furthermore, if I had conclusive scientific evidence that these children were on the level of, say, bacteria, you would also be fine killing them. You're only counterargument would be to dispute that absurd assumption.
> This is not at all plausible
You can't assume something not plausible and then say its consequences aren't plausible because what you just assumed is implausible.
> Additionally, this would permit pretty much any animal cruelty. Kicking a dog, having sex with a dog, torturing a dog so that chocolate tastes better — all fine by the Caplan standard. Yet all of this is very obviously wrong. This would also permit bestiality presumably.
True. You would either have to legalize the conduct, find an externality, or go genius mode and start incanting gibberish about natural law and the bible. (I was reading a blog by a bunch of "integralists" that spent way too many pages explaining this).
> Thus, if Caplan were right, it wouldn’t be very bad when people in the grip of severe Alzheimer’s burn to death.
I would probably prefer dying in a fire than a mental disease that advanced.
> Should this person be indifferent to their suffering 100 days from now, because they’d be very dumb? Of course not!
I would be indifferent.
> Caplan’s graph is also very suspicious.
Yeah, that's the problem. You can look at my graph for a less suspicious curve. Regardless, there are *some* qualitative differences in intelligence between animals and humans. We have a civilization, they have nothing close to it and never will.
>Additionally, if it’s linear, then a sufficiently smart alien could torture humans for trivial benefits. This is implausible.
How many blog posts have you written about the utility monster?
> Let’s imagine that you were about to take a pill that would make you very dumb. Then, you would be set on fire, and it would be exactly as painful. Would this make the pain less bad?
Probably, though being forced to take such a pill could be way worse than any fire.
I don't know about the insect's stuff, so I'll leave it there. Happy Holidays again!