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After Zizians and the efilist bombing I have tried to pay more attention to the cross section of ethical veganism, rationalists, and nerdy utilitarian blogs.
A Substack titled "Don't Eat Honey" was published. Inside, the argument is made that to buy or consume honey is an unethical act for insect suffering-at-scale reasons. According to the essay, bees, like livestock, suffer quite a lot at the hands of beekeepers. That's a lot of bees. Thus the title: don't eat honey.
This particular post is high on assumption and light on rigor. It received outrage. Another post on Bentham's blog on insect suffering I recall as higher quality material for understanding. Did you know that composting is an unethical abomination? I'd never considered it!
'Suffering' presents an incommensurable problem. Suffering is a social construct. Suffering is the number and intensity of firing pain receptors over time. Suffering is how many days in a row I experienced boredom as a teenager. Still, science attempts to define and quantify suffering. An equation works out the math: how conscious a cricket is in relation to man, a cricket's assumed capacity to feel pain, the length of time it spends feeling pain, and so on. My prediction is we will figure out the consciousness part of the equation with stable meaning before we ever do so for suffering.
We will manage to rethink, remeasure, and find additional ways of suffering. People always have. Today, plants do not feel "pain", but tomorrow, pain may not a prerequisite for suffering. Maybe starvation becomes a moral imperative. If the slope sounds too slippery, please consider people have already built a (relatively unpopular) scaffolding to accept and impose costs at the expense of human comfort, life, and survival. Admittedly, that suffering may present an incommensurable problem doesn't negate any imperative to reduce it. Find more suffering? Reduce that, too. It does give me reason to question the limitations and guard rails of the social technology.
According to Wikipedia, negative utilitarians (NU) are sometimes categorized as strong NUs and weak NUs. This differentiates what I'd call fundamentalists --- who follow suffering minimizer logic to whatever ends -- to the milder "weak" utilitarians. The fundamentalist may advocate for suffering reduction at a cost that includes death, your neighbor's dog, or the continued existence of Slovenia-- the honey bee capitol of the world. Our anti-honey, anti-suffering advocate has previously demonstrated he values some positive utility when it comes to natalism, but much of his commenting audience appears more in the fundamentalist category.
One vibe I pick up from the modern vegans is that the anti-suffering ethics are the ethics of the future. That our great-grandchildren will look backwards and wonder how we ever stooped so low as to tolerate farming practice A or B. I don't doubt we'll find cost effective, technological solutions that will be accepted as moral improvements in the future. I am not opposed to those changes on principle. Increase shrimp welfare if you want, fine.
My vague concern is that this social technology doesn't appear limited to spawning technological or charitable solutions. With things like lab meat showing up more frequently in the culture war I'd expect the social technology to spread. So far, however, vegans remain a stable population in the US. Nerdy utilitarian bloggers are yet to impose their will on me. They just don't think I should eat honey.
When I had a kitten I maimed a captured rat to teach it how to catch rodents. I feel no guilt about this whatsoever.
The great chain of being is real. I simply refuse to give a crap about shrimp welfare. You can too. The answer to ethical vegans saying ‘but think of the animals’ is ‘yes, when I do that I remember what they taste like’. I recommend this approach.
the corollary:
I care about treating animals better when it makes them more delicious.
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I felt what I consider an appropriate level of bad one particular time I found a rat in a traditional trap. It was gravely maimed, and as I went to put it out of its misery I saw, as it had lain incapacitated, its friends or children had taken the opportunity to feast on its guts. If I had chosen to not put it out of its misery, then I would have thought less of myself. The experience did not make me think more highly of rats, but it's not as if I am above considering the suffering of other animals.
Targeting an animal one already hopes to exterminate for pest control is not outlandishly cruel. To argue against that one needs to argue against effective rodent control more generally.
If I told you I trapped rats to torture them because it felt good and made me laugh you'd probably remember my face and tell people to avoid me. Except, in this case, instead of one weird kid you make sure your child stays away from, it's all of society that is going out of their way to torture rats. That what I imagine and have been told the emotional prism is like for dedicated vegans. As a personal choice it is common and well enough. The personal choice I don't have much objection to. The more foreign value impositions, especially done in a way that where they only logically hint at the most moral ends, are where I find objection.
My usual reaction to catching a rodent is to break its neck and feed it to the cat already dead, not to torture it. But the cat needed to learn to catch rats, to be clear(and that is how cats learn- their mothers bring them wounded prey). It is, of course, beneath a person to maim an animal because its attempts at escape are amusing, Ivan thé terrible style. But we shouldn’t worry about the suffering of lower animals in veal or shrimp or egg production. Their suffering is instrumental, not intentional.
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If you told me that you enjoy a video game where the goal is to torture fictional characters, I'd also probably remember your face and tell people to avoid you. What makes me suspicious of you is that by playing this hypothetical game you are reacting as though you want to cause suffering. It doesn't matter whether the suffering is real.
That doesn't generalize to society "wanting to torture rats" because "society" is only "torturing rats" as an instrumental goal in the process of doing something else. If it's an instrumental goal, whether the suffering is real actually matters.
(Likewise, I'd look askance at anyone committing bestiality, not because it harms the animal, which isn't a person, but because of what it says about the person doing it. First of all, humans who are attracted to animals are generally messed up anyway, and second, anyone having sex with an animal probably has false beliefs about the animal's consent, which is delusional.)
First off, it is not me torturing them in that game. They brought this on themselves. They board my ship then they deserve for me to cut power to life support, open the air locks and wait with the crew locked in the medical bay while they suffocate. They set foot on my ship, they choose the path of suffering.
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How do you feel about furries?
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Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld fanbase in shambles.
To be fair, once you've built a colony industry around Human Skin Leather and Human Skin Leather accessories, there's an upper limit to how much of a surprise this could become.
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Listen, I did not intentionally trap those Sims in their living room. The placement of the stove was an innocent mistake. That fire could have happened anywhere! A terrible tragedy.
One man's instrument is another man's cross to bear, or something like that. They demonstrate that it's not as instrumental as you (or I) claim, or not instrumental at all, by existing and being more righteous. People in Africa or Indonesia get a necessity pass for now, but you, neighbor, have a choice. That is if they cast judgment. I've met more vegans who are simply tired of the same old jokes, jabs, and want to be left alone than I have met the stereotype, or vegans cognizant of utilitarianism for that matter.
You know, sometimes pools just accidentally lose their exit. Common engineering mishap. My sincere condolences to those affected.
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There would be some level of getting emotionally attached to how the Sims "suffer" that I would indeed consider suspicious. I presume you are not at this level, though of course I have no proof.
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I have a huge amount of experience working with animals (both wild and domesticated). Slaughtered quite a few head of livestock by hand in my back yard today, as it happens, which I do about once a week. So I have a lot of thoughts here -- but the main thing I want to suggest to you is that cruelty toward animals is irreverent toward the Creator.
Yes, the chain of being is real and man's place is that of dominion over all other animals and more besides. How then shall we conduct ourselves?
FWIW I completely endorse your perspective on the rat and the kitten, though I don't expect most others to get it. Regardless of intentions, learning to kill animals well requires botching the process rather a lot of times.
Even so, not giving a crap is contraindicated. I doubt you've had much occasion for (or inclination toward) abuse but it never hurts to bear in mind that one will someday stand before the dread judgment seat of Christ.
I crush a worm for no reason - I feel sorrow.
I feed a worm to my chickens - I feel peace.
The first action goes against my values, but not because the worm suffers. The first action is wrong because it reduces a beautifully complex piece of nature to mere goo. The second action transmutes that complexity into a new form.
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I don’t think we’re talking past each other much.
Cats, uh, do not generally deliver a humane and quick death, and hunters who place their shots poorly are not thought well of. I certainly wouldn’t tolerate a novice Hunter making gut shots. But that’s an unrealistic expectation of cats; what animals do to each other is not bound by the golden rule.
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The Buddhist would, of course, be horrified.
The Christian could reason that, acting in the same way as a mother cat would for her kittens, the man is simply doing what a cat would be inclined to do in nature, which is to hunt. And God made his creatures to do what they do, and lacking volition are inherently blameless in deed.
The aesthete would go: "Which is cuter and/or tastes better?"
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