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>because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for exam

>because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. Wowzers, this is the most strawmanny characterisation of this view I think I've seen outside of scifi villains in B movies. I don't think the most charitable view is that species "deserve to suffer." It's that they have different capacities for suffering, and that differences in the complexity of the nociceptive and the nervous systems are inputs into our understanding when we try to figure this stuff out. That leads to, say, jellyfish being treated with different moral urgency than mammals, or eggs being treated differently than hatched birds. The B-Movie scifi villian characterization also is problematic not just because of it's anti-intellectual shallowness, but also because it considers moral assessment in it's negative sense but not it's positive. Namely, that this is about tending to the needs and moral well-being in cases where the urgency in protecting it is greatest, and we can make good choices to do the most good. We make choices that prioritize the well-being and safety of our children in ways that take their well-being seriously, and we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building. To treat them equally, or to prioritize the other way around, would find someone facing the moral condemnation of the community as well as legal consequences, and nobody would be convinced to withhold those judgments by speeches about speciesism.

boston_clone 5y ago
Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism, I think. Much of the urgency in the vignettes of moral assessment isn't realistic, either. To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. There is much about our practices that absolutely reflects an absence of consideration - shouldn't we be working to improve that? Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. We're not even on equal ground. It's just raising the bar for a thankfully growing number of different animals off the floor. I maybe didn't grok your point of view on speciesism, though - could you try to reframe it?
- glenstein 5y ago
  >Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism I don't think that a statement about avoiding pitfalls of anti-intellectualism needs to be read as endorsing the opposite extreme, and I don't making that kind of assumption contributes to constructive conversation. >To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. This response to the burning building example is fascinating and strange to me for a number of reasons. For one I started by providing a simple, clear cut, face value example of a case where doing good means considering how to prioritize wellbeing of different species. And as far as the example itself is concerned, you're just not engaging with it at all, and asking about a different example. I mean, fair enough, we can get to your chosen example, but I already feel like we're a bit off kilter. If that were not already strange enough, you are saying "there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do." Well, maybe not in your chosen example, but in some other cases there is, quite literally as in the example I just mentioned. And to be clear, it's not just that I want my example to be seen because I think I'm special. It's that if someone says there is no such thing as that proverbial burning burning (e.g. no reason to treat species differently), and I show an example showing exactly that, it would seem important to engage with that example, not just to switch to consideration of other examples. So I don't know what the disconnect is here. As to your example, well, sure. I think you are right, there is no proverbial burning building requiring harmful farming practices, and in my opinion those should be abolished, as you can argue there is no calculus in which they are neccessary Perfectly true, both in the literal sense, and as a matter of principle that it's a case where you don't have to think of it in terms of tradeoffs. But here again, I am wondering where this is coming from? Do you think "save humans from fire before mice" means ignore harmful farming practices? Where are you getting that? >Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. Again, very strange to me. I feel like my comments are anchored to reality by the fact that I try to stick closely to responding directly to specific things that someone else said. In this case, the commenter I was replying to was speaking generally about speciesm. I felt this was narrow, and that a more fair characterization about what drives this way of thinking is that it's how to make positive, morally good choices, in contrast to their one-sided view that only talked about it in the negative sense, in terms of inflicting harm. For some reason, you have come in and decided that me responding directly to that is "not the matter at hand." But again, it very much was, because the subject was speciesm writ large, and I was speaking to that. So I just don't know what you are talking about, at least not without a bit more framing.
causasui 5y ago
> ... we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building The building isn't burning. We don't have to choose between our children and mice. You can live a full, healthy life while minimizing to as full extent as possible the suffering you directly or indirectly inflict on other sentient creatures. The argument you present here against your characterization of the OPs point is akin to saying "my kid really loves McNuggets so I don't care about the horror 50 billion chickens suffer in a given year". Again, the building isn't on fire; you don't have to choose one or the other.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  You don't minimise suffering by not eating meat. You're maximising your bragging rights about your superior ethics. What minimises the suffering of farm animals is... farming. Because without farming they'd live in the wild where they'd suffer from disease, parasites and bad weather and they'd be eaten by predators. Each and every one of them. And most of the time, they'd die while being eaten alive. At least humans kill our food before we eat it. That is minimising suffering.
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    > Because without farming they'd live in the wild where they'd suffer from disease No. Without farming, farm animals just wouldn't exist to live a miserable life. Farmers are not doing them any favors by bringing them into the world.
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      Farm animals dont' live miserable lives. Animals in large scale, factory farms are mistreated, but they are still better off than in the wild. The majority of farms in the world are small-sale family farms were animals are treated at least as good as humans: > Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares, operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35 percent of the world's food, according to a study published in World Development. https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/ https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/ If you listen to vegan propaganda you may get the impression that all farming everywhere in the entire world means that animals must be tortured in factory farms, but that's a lie. There is nothing in small-scale farming to make animals' lives miserable.
adriand 5y ago
It’s one thing to prioritize saving children from a burning building but not mice, and another to justify one’s decision to do so based on the neural complexity of children compared to mice. I don’t think killing a mouse is the moral equivalent of killing a child, but that’s me making a value judgment. I don’t need to cite a scientific (objective) criterion for this, such as how many neurons a child has, or whether or not it is conscious or has an ego (if such a thing is even scientific). Suggesting that I’m saying species ought to be treated “equally” is the real straw man argument here (although I don’t feel you’re arguing in bad faith, for the record - I can see how my comments may be taken that way). I don’t believe species ought to be treated equally but rather that we ought to give all species consideration. It’s curious that this view is considered so extreme by so many, while the treatment we inflict on living beings, which is often extreme to the point where “torture” is an accurate description, is generally ignored. As an aside, we treat jellyfish far better than the way we treat the billions of mammals currently trapped in the dystopian hell of factory farming.
- glenstein 5y ago
  >It’s one thing to prioritize saving children from a burning building but not mice, and another to justify one’s decision to do so based on the neural complexity of children compared to mice. I don’t think killing a mouse is the moral equivalent of killing a child, but that’s me making a value judgment. I don’t need to cite a scientific (objective) criterion for this, such as how many neurons a child has, or whether or not it is conscious or has an ego (if such a thing is even scientific). I mean, you certainly can go ahead and declare that that is how it works. Declaring that Its Not About Neurons is most definitely a statement you can make. That's step 1. Steps 2, 3, 4 etc are making arguments in support of that statement, explaining what the alternative basis for making moral judgments is based on, explaining why it's a better system, explaining how its meaningfully different and not just a restatement of what I said but with different words, etc. You haven't done any of those things though. So this boils down to saying "no! it's not that! It's something else!" If we were using Graham's Argument Hierarchy[0], this would amount to DH3, which is Contradiction. It's one step better than DH2 (responding to tone), but it's one step worse than DH4 which is making a counterargument, which involves stating something else (contradiction) plus a layer of reasoning and/or evidence of some kind. In fact I would say this is barely even a contradiction, because contradiction means stating an alternative and I'm not even sure what the alternative is that you're stating. >Suggesting that I’m saying species ought to be treated “equally” is the real straw man argument here That was basically being put forward as a definition of speciesm that I was responding to, so I'm not sure how that's a straw man. If you can elaborate on what it means to value species differently but not have it count as speciesm, but not to it based on appealing to any biological information about species, but with something that is still a "moral judgment" differentiating species, I'm all ears. Let me remind you that you were using "deserve to suffer" as your idea of good faith characterization of the view you disagreed with, which is B-movie scifi villian, which to me qualifies it as a straw man. >which is often extreme to the point where “torture” is an accurate description, is generally ignored. >As an aside, we treat jellyfish far better than... These are also beside the point. So the long and short of it is there's not really anything responsive here that I can respond to. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

boston_clone 5y ago

Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism, I think. Much of the urgency in the vignettes of moral assessment isn't realistic, either. To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. There is much about our practices that absolutely reflects an absence of consideration - shouldn't we be working to improve that? Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. We're not even on equal ground. It's just raising the bar for a thankfully growing number of different animals off the floor. I maybe didn't grok your point of view on speciesism, though - could you try to reframe it?

glenstein 5y ago
>Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism I don't think that a statement about avoiding pitfalls of anti-intellectualism needs to be read as endorsing the opposite extreme, and I don't making that kind of assumption contributes to constructive conversation. >To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. This response to the burning building example is fascinating and strange to me for a number of reasons. For one I started by providing a simple, clear cut, face value example of a case where doing good means considering how to prioritize wellbeing of different species. And as far as the example itself is concerned, you're just not engaging with it at all, and asking about a different example. I mean, fair enough, we can get to your chosen example, but I already feel like we're a bit off kilter. If that were not already strange enough, you are saying "there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do." Well, maybe not in your chosen example, but in some other cases there is, quite literally as in the example I just mentioned. And to be clear, it's not just that I want my example to be seen because I think I'm special. It's that if someone says there is no such thing as that proverbial burning burning (e.g. no reason to treat species differently), and I show an example showing exactly that, it would seem important to engage with that example, not just to switch to consideration of other examples. So I don't know what the disconnect is here. As to your example, well, sure. I think you are right, there is no proverbial burning building requiring harmful farming practices, and in my opinion those should be abolished, as you can argue there is no calculus in which they are neccessary Perfectly true, both in the literal sense, and as a matter of principle that it's a case where you don't have to think of it in terms of tradeoffs. But here again, I am wondering where this is coming from? Do you think "save humans from fire before mice" means ignore harmful farming practices? Where are you getting that? >Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. Again, very strange to me. I feel like my comments are anchored to reality by the fact that I try to stick closely to responding directly to specific things that someone else said. In this case, the commenter I was replying to was speaking generally about speciesm. I felt this was narrow, and that a more fair characterization about what drives this way of thinking is that it's how to make positive, morally good choices, in contrast to their one-sided view that only talked about it in the negative sense, in terms of inflicting harm. For some reason, you have come in and decided that me responding directly to that is "not the matter at hand." But again, it very much was, because the subject was speciesm writ large, and I was speaking to that. So I just don't know what you are talking about, at least not without a bit more framing.

causasui 5y ago

> ... we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building The building isn't burning. We don't have to choose between our children and mice. You can live a full, healthy life while minimizing to as full extent as possible the suffering you directly or indirectly inflict on other sentient creatures. The argument you present here against your characterization of the OPs point is akin to saying "my kid really loves McNuggets so I don't care about the horror 50 billion chickens suffer in a given year". Again, the building isn't on fire; you don't have to choose one or the other.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
You don't minimise suffering by not eating meat. You're maximising your bragging rights about your superior ethics. What minimises the suffering of farm animals is... farming. Because without farming they'd live in the wild where they'd suffer from disease, parasites and bad weather and they'd be eaten by predators. Each and every one of them. And most of the time, they'd die while being eaten alive. At least humans kill our food before we eat it. That is minimising suffering.
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
  > Because without farming they'd live in the wild where they'd suffer from disease No. Without farming, farm animals just wouldn't exist to live a miserable life. Farmers are not doing them any favors by bringing them into the world.
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    Farm animals dont' live miserable lives. Animals in large scale, factory farms are mistreated, but they are still better off than in the wild. The majority of farms in the world are small-sale family farms were animals are treated at least as good as humans: > Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares, operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35 percent of the world's food, according to a study published in World Development. https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/ https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/ If you listen to vegan propaganda you may get the impression that all farming everywhere in the entire world means that animals must be tortured in factory farms, but that's a lie. There is nothing in small-scale farming to make animals' lives miserable.

adriand 5y ago

It’s one thing to prioritize saving children from a burning building but not mice, and another to justify one’s decision to do so based on the neural complexity of children compared to mice. I don’t think killing a mouse is the moral equivalent of killing a child, but that’s me making a value judgment. I don’t need to cite a scientific (objective) criterion for this, such as how many neurons a child has, or whether or not it is conscious or has an ego (if such a thing is even scientific). Suggesting that I’m saying species ought to be treated “equally” is the real straw man argument here (although I don’t feel you’re arguing in bad faith, for the record - I can see how my comments may be taken that way). I don’t believe species ought to be treated equally but rather that we ought to give all species consideration. It’s curious that this view is considered so extreme by so many, while the treatment we inflict on living beings, which is often extreme to the point where “torture” is an accurate description, is generally ignored. As an aside, we treat jellyfish far better than the way we treat the billions of mammals currently trapped in the dystopian hell of factory farming.

glenstein 5y ago
>It’s one thing to prioritize saving children from a burning building but not mice, and another to justify one’s decision to do so based on the neural complexity of children compared to mice. I don’t think killing a mouse is the moral equivalent of killing a child, but that’s me making a value judgment. I don’t need to cite a scientific (objective) criterion for this, such as how many neurons a child has, or whether or not it is conscious or has an ego (if such a thing is even scientific). I mean, you certainly can go ahead and declare that that is how it works. Declaring that Its Not About Neurons is most definitely a statement you can make. That's step 1. Steps 2, 3, 4 etc are making arguments in support of that statement, explaining what the alternative basis for making moral judgments is based on, explaining why it's a better system, explaining how its meaningfully different and not just a restatement of what I said but with different words, etc. You haven't done any of those things though. So this boils down to saying "no! it's not that! It's something else!" If we were using Graham's Argument Hierarchy[0], this would amount to DH3, which is Contradiction. It's one step better than DH2 (responding to tone), but it's one step worse than DH4 which is making a counterargument, which involves stating something else (contradiction) plus a layer of reasoning and/or evidence of some kind. In fact I would say this is barely even a contradiction, because contradiction means stating an alternative and I'm not even sure what the alternative is that you're stating. >Suggesting that I’m saying species ought to be treated “equally” is the real straw man argument here That was basically being put forward as a definition of speciesm that I was responding to, so I'm not sure how that's a straw man. If you can elaborate on what it means to value species differently but not have it count as speciesm, but not to it based on appealing to any biological information about species, but with something that is still a "moral judgment" differentiating species, I'm all ears. Let me remind you that you were using "deserve to suffer" as your idea of good faith characterization of the view you disagreed with, which is B-movie scifi villian, which to me qualifies it as a straw man. >which is often extreme to the point where “torture” is an accurate description, is generally ignored. >As an aside, we treat jellyfish far better than... These are also beside the point. So the long and short of it is there's not really anything responsive here that I can respond to. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html