This is mind-boggling. My scepticism about progress just ratcheted up a notch.
The forces against changing this are vastly powerful too. My chosen supplier of 'ethical beef' (slaughtered in the animal's home field at very small scale) just went into administration. The market for cheap unhappy flesh is hard to reform.
Presumably there is some benefit of this atrocity (cheap, plentiful food - although maybe a source of our health issues ironically). That should factor into the equation to some extent? We aren't torturing animals for no reason. Also, the lifespan of an animal and the suffering they would potentially endure without our intervention should be factored in. It's more about marginal suffering than absolute suffering. Plenty of humans also live in abject poverty and endure immense suffering just by the design of society (not intentional). Does that make a difference: the intentionality of it? I find this topic very fascinating and a huge source of cognitive dissonance personally so trying to understand more.
This is mind-boggling. My scepticism about progress just ratcheted up a notch.
The forces against changing this are vastly powerful too. My chosen supplier of 'ethical beef' (slaughtered in the animal's home field at very small scale) just went into administration. The market for cheap unhappy flesh is hard to reform.
Great piece, thanks.
Thanks!
And we've got octopus farming to scale up yet.
Good read
Doubtful. The worst thing in the world is probably someone increasing the risk of suffering based AGI by a tiny amount.
But yeah if we were torturing 32,000,000,000 babies/year that would also be pretty bad.
I was talking about actual badness not expected badness. In terms of expected badness, things that affect the entire future might be worse.
Presumably there is some benefit of this atrocity (cheap, plentiful food - although maybe a source of our health issues ironically). That should factor into the equation to some extent? We aren't torturing animals for no reason. Also, the lifespan of an animal and the suffering they would potentially endure without our intervention should be factored in. It's more about marginal suffering than absolute suffering. Plenty of humans also live in abject poverty and endure immense suffering just by the design of society (not intentional). Does that make a difference: the intentionality of it? I find this topic very fascinating and a huge source of cognitive dissonance personally so trying to understand more.