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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24664 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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It is quite unpleasant to argue against the core assumptions of veganism in a way that is epistemically rigorous. One has to tear down the entire concept of ethics as it is typically understood, then rebuild some sort of timeless decision theory-based normative system that reproduces the common-sense undisputed norms of "ethical" human behavior, but hopefully without the gaping security hole of giving in to utility monsters and bottomless pits of suffering.

> But QuantumFreakonomics you wise sage, I inherently care about the suffering of all sentient beings. It is part of my utility function, and I don't want to change my utility function.

You are wrong about your own utility function. You do not inherently care about the subjective experience of shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean. I don't believe you. You are confusing type I goods (goods which have intrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their own sake) with type II goods (goods which have only extrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their ability to produce/acquire type I goods). Your own pleasure and your own lack of suffering are type I goods. The pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is not a type I good, but it is often (but not always) a type II good. Assuming that the pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is a type I good is an error, as is assuming that it is always a type II good. No one wants to say this in polite company because it makes you sound like a massive asshole, but when no one has the guts to point this out you end up with people advocating to redirect the malaria net funding (which saved 100,000+ lives) to saving chickens instead.

no one has the guts to point this out you end up with people advocating to redirect the malaria net funding (which saved 100,000+ lives) to saving chickens instead.

I mean. I have to say I think you should do neither and just give the money to a car dealership for a Corvette.

You do not inherently care about the subjective experience of shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean. I don't believe you.

When most people talk about Utilitarianism they’re talking about maximizing social utility, so this objection is completely irrelevant — the whole point of Utilitarianism is that you are maximizing something you don’t feel intrinsically!

You can, of course, object that social utility should assign zero weight to the shrimp’s utility function, but using your personal feelings to argue for the social utility function's weights should feel pretty unprincipled.

advocating to redirect the malaria net funding (which saved 100,000+ lives) to saving chickens instead.

Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human's welfare than one unit of another animal's welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?

That's actually a good question. Maybe the actual root of the vegan vs carnist bloodmouth divide.

I have a very easy confident answer for myself. My family raised chickens when I was a kid. They hold, to within roundoff error, no moral worth. I watched a long vegan propaganda movie focused partially on chicken farming and heard Sam Harris' claim that chicken farming is an unrelenting moral travesty. I am unmoved. Chickens are such mean, spiteful little animals. To the degree they have any social awareness, it is to needlessly harm their fellows. Any injured chicken got relentlessly pecked on it's injury by it's fellows. They are demons, or the most Hollywood version of velociraptors, but real.

There's some enormous failure in empathy here. People wrongly projecting their human awareness and intellect onto chickens. Which I think to them feels like empathy, but is simply false.

Family also raised (and raises) chickens and I disagree your characterization of them as mean, spiteful demonic creatures. That's projecting human characteristics onto a rather dim animal species from the other direction.

Maybe your bunch was raising them en masse in tight battery conditions? In unrestricted free range conditions they form little distinct packs that wander around and roost together in a separate locations from other packs, some hens have stronger intelligence and better maternal skills than others, they'll readily adopt biddies from other species like guineas or ducks as well as orphaned chicken biddies. Some of them have noticeably different levels of fear or openness towards humans and other animals, they'll fight and form a pecking order, etc. Nothing like a dog, cow or goat but they definitely have some social awareness beyond killing their own wounded. Typical domesticated animal behavior, nothing I'd call nefarious. The phenomena of attacking wounded members of the same species, particularly during the initial injury when they're flailing about, is something I've witnessed in dogs and cattle as well - I think it's some kind of evolutionary quirk about silencing something that will attract predators or may be ill.

I honestly think we can blame Disney for a huge portion of this problem.

Antromorphism is a hell of a drug.

Let's call this the "Bambi's mom" problem.

Alternatively, you could just not be a pure utilitarian.

It is quite unpleasant to argue against the core assumptions of veganism in a way that is epistemically rigorous. One has to tear down the entire concept of ethics as it is typically understood, then rebuild some sort of timeless decision theory-based normative system that reproduces the common-sense undisputed norms of "ethical" human behavior, but hopefully without the gaping security hole of giving in to utility monsters and bottomless pits of suffering.

That's one of the pitfalls of atheism. As a Catholic, I just tell them that animals don't have souls and that they're meant to serve people. It's obviously a little more sophisticated than that, but that's the gist of it. God told Adam and Eve to "fill the earth and subdue it." This doesn't mean that wanton cruelty or destruction of nature is permissible, since it's still part of God's creation and under our stewardship, but it doesn't mean that every tree is sacred or that animals have the same status as humans.

If you want to take a more secular tack, I'd try to bait them into taking the "every tree is sacred" path. First, vegans eat plants. So find out what their justification is for eating plants that were once as alive as the animals were. I'm on my way out the door but I trust you can take the argument from there, but it's much easier if you have religion on your side. Then all of the sudden they're arguing against your religion which is much more daunting than than simply arguing against meat-eating. Since most people assume I'm not religious it usually stops them cold.

As a Catholic, I just tell them that animals don't have souls and that they're meant to serve people.

As a non-religious person, I just tell them that we conquered the food chain and earned the right to do whatever we want. We won. If chickens didn't want to be eaten they should have invented guns. They didn't.

A pig will readily devour my corpse with no compunctions. I am simply reciprocating.

I actually have pondered a more universalized application of this to utilitarians: I care as much about other people as they care about me.

For instance, if Nigeria and the US swapped economic places in a parallel universe, how much would they be doing for us? Realistically, this suggests being as selfish/altruistic as the average person, maybe correcting a bit for some bias. Likewise, most animals probably wouldn't mind much eating humans if they had the desire to.

IMO, this kind of mirrored-weight utilitarianism matches human intuition better than normal utilitarianism.

Do you think rich Nigeria wouldn't be doing a lot for african US?

No, I think they'd earmark the money and then steal it all. Of course you could say "Well what about a rich Nigeria that isn't corrupt", but there's really no end to changing the local culture once you let that cat out of the bag.

Once we said "switched places" it is up to argument how much of "being rich" we actually switch. A rich child of rich parents is not the same as a poor man who won 100 million in lottery.

I guess you should define "a lot".

I was mostly thinking along the lines of most of them presumably not earning-to-give and then donating almost of all of it to third world health charities - i.e. the Effective Altruist way.

I'm open to the idea that they would overall, as a country, do 50% more for us, or whatever.

I'm pretty sure most whites aren't Effective Altruists either.

My point is not saying "Americans are better than Nigerians." My point is that this kind of "mirrored-weight utilitarianism" avoids some of the unintuitive ethical results of normal utilitarianism.

I doubt it, looking at a list of charitable donations as a percent of income it seems to be an Anglosphere thing with South Korea being the only exception.

It's kind of how I feel about free speech; I'm not interested in protecting the speech of anyone who would try and censor me. Once you stop abiding by the covenant, you are no longer protected by it.

Yes, but this is pretty much equivalent to saying "As a Scientologist, I just tell them that Xenu said eating animals is ok". It makes no sense to anyone who isn't already on board with your religion. Meanwhile, while it makes sense to you, that probably doesn't matter because you're probably not trying to justify the behavior to yourself, you already feel ok with it.

In Catholicism, animals are usually described as having souls, but not rational, eternal, spiritual ones.

First, vegans eat plants. So find out what their justification is for eating plants that were once as alive as the animals were.

I think the answer is usually that plants don't suffer when you kill them. They see animals as part of a category of "things that experience and suffer" along with humans. Even the non-utilitarian vegans I've met seem to value suffering and experience as key to moral evaluation, in a way that deontologists and virtue ethicists don't tend to.

Of course, we can't really know if animals are conscious (just as I can't know if you are), so who knows -- maybe plants actually are conscious and do suffer. But I think the assumption of veganism is that our similarities to animals make it more likely they do, so we should be on the safe side and not harm them.

Not a vegan, but that's my steelman.

You are confusing type I goods (goods which have intrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their own sake) with type II goods (goods which have only extrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their ability to produce/acquire type I goods). Your own pleasure and your own lack of suffering are type I goods. The pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is not a type I good, but it is often (but not always) a type II good.

This is a common cynical misinterpretation of utility functions. Even if humans were utilitarian, the point of utilitarianism is to maximize utility, not to maximize one's own subjective feeling of utility. I help others because they need help, not in order to experience the fuzzies associated with helping others. If there was a drug that gave me that feeling, I would not take it.

I started taking adderall recently in order to concentrate better. It gives me a feeling identical to what I feel when I accomplish something difficult. It's a great feeling, but means nothing to me without the substance of an actual accomplishment behind it. The most important thing to me in life is accomplishing great things, yet I take Adderall only very rarely.

Shrimp aren't type 1 goods for me, but people who share my values (which is nearly all of them to some extent) are.

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