Thank you for this post, Zlatko! Welcome to the forum, and well-done for your transparent criticism of a perspective you find repugnant. Many individuals prefer to call such perspectives âcrazyâ without justification. So reading this was a good way to start the week.
I think this post is quite valuable, since it defends a point of view (that itâs not super cautious to just reduce the amount of net-negative lives) that seems somewhat common in EA, but is also rarely defended as such. Some thoughts (lengthy, but thereâs a lot of content in your post!):
I think this is a much stronger point than arguing that many animal lives could simply be positive on a hedonistic utilitarian view (less repugnant, requires less arguments from implausible interpersonal tradeoffs)
In the takeaways, however, you donât focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, itâs probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more âmaximizingâ takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesnât seem to have affected the world much for now).
My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:
I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say âMost suffering is not in that category.â, and I entirely agree.
However, Iâm inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if itâs a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether thereâs a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether itâs such a strong positive value that it âoutweighsâ the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).
More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but Iâd be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they canât spread their wings. I assume, eg, âtasting foodâ feels very different when youâve only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.
Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! Thatâs not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.
I will first focus on this paragraph that you wrote:
In the takeaways, however, you donât focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, itâs probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more âmaximizingâ takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesnât seem to have affected the world much for now).
And I can only respond in somewhat illogical manner. Because, if we follow logic, then youâre probably right.
So the first thing: my life-affirming stance isnât necessarily a life-maximizing stance. Especially if this involves deliberately shifting our consumption patterns in such a way that we farm as many animals as possible or deliberately increase the extent of wildlife habitats.
If I were to support veganism, it would not be because it increases the farming of small animals on margin (indirect effect), but because I believe that reducing meat consumption lowers demand for farming animals, lowering their numbers, thus allowing us to keep those who remain in better, more humane conditions (direct effect). So when Iâm thinking about deciding whether to eat chicken, I think primarily about chicken welfare. If I decided to donate to a charity that deals with welfare of certain animals, I primarily think about those very animals that the charity deals with.
Second, and very important thing: I really donât know how far is too far when it comes to taking into consideration indirect effects. Iâm afraid that taking indirect effects too much into consideration could lead to some situations that are very difficult to resolve. It can lead to strong cluelessness, the situation in which weâre never sure if weâre doing good at all, or if it is in fact counterproductive. Imagine this process:
First we do action A to help species B, and weâre convinced doing A is very good.
Then we realize that helping B indirectly hurts species C to a much greater extent, so doing A is very bad, and we stop.
Then we realize that hurting C, is in fact great, because it indirectly helps species D to even greater extent, so doing A, once again becomes very good.
Then we go back to doing A, but not to help B, but to help D.
We might on some level love B, empathize with them, identify with them somewhat, and when we were doing A to help B, this felt like a genuine careâour actions and our emotions were in harmony.
But D? - we donât really care much about D. Our theory tells us that Ds are very numerous and that helping them might outweigh all our other moral concerns due to their sheer number, even if they arenât conscious at all. But there is still some probability they might be, and due to their sheer number we canât afford to dismiss it.
So now weâre doing A, not to help B (direct beneficiaries) whom we love , but to help D (indirect beneficiaries) about whom we donât really care, and this feels emotionally very alienating and weird.
Weâre just waiting until we learn that helping Ds is in fact terrible, because it harms Es, which are even more numerous, etc...
Since this process can be quite long, at each step of this process we can be quite unsure of whether what weâre doing is good at all, and this lack of conviction can make our motivation to help and donate grow much weaker. We can start thinking âIf Iâm unsure if it helps or hurts (in sense of increasing or decreasing aggregate welfare), maybe I shouldnât do anything at all, and instead mind my own businessâ.
So Iâm wondering can we really afford to completely divorce our actions (donations, etc...) from our love, care and emotions? Or alternatively, can we afford to maintain even a modicum of love and genuine care while weâre doing good?
I mean if we remove love and use just reasoning, maybe then indeed, the only logical project that we should pursue is eventually turning the Universe into hedonium.
But if we involve love and emotions, then perhaps it makes sense to help chicken because we care about chicken, to help people because we care about people, to help shrimps, because we care about shrimps, etc⌠In short to do focus our considerations on direct beneficiaries and thus retain this harmony between emotions and actions.
I think this is the way most people became altruists and effective altruists in the first place.
They donated money for malaria nets, in order to help those who receive nets. They donated to chicken charities in order to help chicken, etc⌠Imagining children dying of malaria or chicken living in terrible conditions was a strong motivating factor to step in and do something about it.
But nowadays, all I see is discussions about 2nd, 3rd, 4th order indirect effects of our actions.
But, logic is on your side, not on mine. Maybe Iâm too lazy. Maybe I donât want to make effort to consider those distant indirect effects. Maybe I donât want to follow the logic to its conclusion. Maybe. I donât know.
I probably lack certain virtues needed for such detached thinking.
But maybe such detached thinking too lacks something important that is fails to identify.
I donât want to butt into your conversation with JoA, but I just want to say that there are good, logical reasons to support your intuitions, e.g., that long chains of indirect causation are far more dubious and should be taken into account much less than the direct effects of actions. You should be more confident in your ability to think logically! Sometimes it takes time to turn intuitions into clear, logical arguments, and in that case what we need is patience with intuitions, not to deny them their voice.
Regarding the rest of what you wrote I agree to a large extent.
My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:
I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say âMost suffering is not in that category.â, and I entirely agree.
However, Iâm inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if itâs a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether thereâs a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether itâs such a strong positive value that it âoutweighsâ the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).
I think it matters a lot how long does extreme suffering last. People regularly experience some pretty horrible suffering, but still they donât consider their life not worthy of living.
Take for example childbirth, or kidney colic. Most people go on after such events, without being traumatized for life.
Also, extreme pain might render people unconscious. I donât know how often it happens, if it happens in animals as well, and how good of a protection against extreme pain and suffering it is. But it might be a thing worthy of research.
Experiences such as being eaten, probably last quite short, and being last experiences in life of animals will likely not traumatize them, as they will be dead.
Close encounters with predators, injuries that animals survive, are more problematic and could lead to lasting trauma.
In general extreme suffering should be minimized as much as possible. But when thinking of extreme suffering I often have certain non-trivial duration in mind as well. If the lion kills its pray relatively quickly, the pain they experience, even if extreme, might not be that important in big scheme of things if it last just a couple of seconds.
I do not deny the existence of extreme suffering in nature, but I think itâs not so common and when it happens itâs often of short duration.
I very well do think that reducing of such extreme suffering should be among the top priorities.
More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but Iâd be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they canât spread their wings. I assume, eg, âtasting foodâ feels very different when youâve only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.
Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! Thatâs not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.
Youâre right here. Animals on factory farms probably have capacity to feel pleasure, but itâs severely reduced and undermined by the conditions in which they live. Thatâs why I think we should eat less meat (at least if we consider direct effects) and donate to charities that help those animals.
If we consider 2nd, 3rd, etc⌠order effects, I really donât know. If weâre talking about these animals their lives should be improved. The way to do it is to eat less meat and to donate to those charities.
This will probably help them.
Whether this will also indirectly hurt someone else, and whether this is more important, Iâm really not sure.
Thank you for this post, Zlatko! Welcome to the forum, and well-done for your transparent criticism of a perspective you find repugnant. Many individuals prefer to call such perspectives âcrazyâ without justification. So reading this was a good way to start the week.
I think this post is quite valuable, since it defends a point of view (that itâs not super cautious to just reduce the amount of net-negative lives) that seems somewhat common in EA, but is also rarely defended as such. Some thoughts (lengthy, but thereâs a lot of content in your post!):
I think this is a much stronger point than arguing that many animal lives could simply be positive on a hedonistic utilitarian view (less repugnant, requires less arguments from implausible interpersonal tradeoffs)
In the takeaways, however, you donât focus on what should be the biggest (drawing from your argument as only basis) from an EA perspective: that we should be in favor of actions that increase the numbers of lives. Then, itâs probably good to promote veganism as this seems to increase the farming of small animals on the margin. And to promote actions that reduce the amount of agricultural land, so that more wild animals can live there. Both of these actions seem fairly morally acceptable (especially if one realizes that wild animals have been there long before us, and that we may have some duties of preservation), compared to more âmaximizingâ takes on maximizing the amount of individual lives on earth. Doing this seems massively more important (on a numbers-scale), if one thinks life has positive value, than counteracting the small effects of lives not being lived caused by a few plant-based advocacy organizations (let alone wild animal advocacy, which doesnât seem to have affected the world much for now).
My crux for why I do not adhere to the argument personally:
I appreciated that you made a distinction between strong suffering that one may still accept, and extreme suffering. They also seem very different in my view, and the distinction is often glossed over in critiques on negative utilitarianism. You also say âMost suffering is not in that category.â, and I entirely agree.
However, Iâm inclined to believe that most of the beings who life you discuss do contain extreme suffering, even if itâs a minority of the suffering they experience (imo, extreme suffering = mid-high ranges of disabling pain in the Welfare Footprint sense ?). Chronic hunger (more intense than one may think, Ctrl+F chronic hunger here), being eaten alive, being eaten from the inside by parasites, being suffocated to death over the course of half an hour, are all likely cases of extreme suffering to me. So the question is not just about whether thereâs a strong positive value to a life containing suffering. but whether itâs such a strong positive value that it âoutweighsâ the experience of extreme suffering (you may be familiar with the sympathy-based argument against extreme suffering being outweighable).
More minor crux: you discuss animals still having a taste of potential positive experiences of life, but Iâd be skeptical that we can draw a comparison between humans, even living in difficult conditions (let alone humans living a relatively sheltered life, like me), and hens who spend their entire life in a cage where they canât spread their wings. I assume, eg, âtasting foodâ feels very different when youâve only been able to eat it with a mutilated beak, than for humans who can sometimes eat sufficiently while being relatively untroubled, and thus really enjoy the food. And in the case of wild animals, it seems many die so shortly after birth that they may not even have a single occasion to eat, or appreciate their environment.
Thanks again for this post, and perhaps more importantly, for opening your perspectives and donating outside of your preferred cause area! Thatâs not so common in EA, and I think this can be valuable for making progress in doing good impartially.
Thanks for your reply and feedback.
I will first focus on this paragraph that you wrote:
And I can only respond in somewhat illogical manner. Because, if we follow logic, then youâre probably right.
So the first thing: my life-affirming stance isnât necessarily a life-maximizing stance. Especially if this involves deliberately shifting our consumption patterns in such a way that we farm as many animals as possible or deliberately increase the extent of wildlife habitats.
If I were to support veganism, it would not be because it increases the farming of small animals on margin (indirect effect), but because I believe that reducing meat consumption lowers demand for farming animals, lowering their numbers, thus allowing us to keep those who remain in better, more humane conditions (direct effect). So when Iâm thinking about deciding whether to eat chicken, I think primarily about chicken welfare. If I decided to donate to a charity that deals with welfare of certain animals, I primarily think about those very animals that the charity deals with.
Second, and very important thing: I really donât know how far is too far when it comes to taking into consideration indirect effects. Iâm afraid that taking indirect effects too much into consideration could lead to some situations that are very difficult to resolve. It can lead to strong cluelessness, the situation in which weâre never sure if weâre doing good at all, or if it is in fact counterproductive. Imagine this process:
First we do action A to help species B, and weâre convinced doing A is very good.
Then we realize that helping B indirectly hurts species C to a much greater extent, so doing A is very bad, and we stop.
Then we realize that hurting C, is in fact great, because it indirectly helps species D to even greater extent, so doing A, once again becomes very good.
Then we go back to doing A, but not to help B, but to help D.
We might on some level love B, empathize with them, identify with them somewhat, and when we were doing A to help B, this felt like a genuine careâour actions and our emotions were in harmony.
But D? - we donât really care much about D. Our theory tells us that Ds are very numerous and that helping them might outweigh all our other moral concerns due to their sheer number, even if they arenât conscious at all. But there is still some probability they might be, and due to their sheer number we canât afford to dismiss it.
So now weâre doing A, not to help B (direct beneficiaries) whom we love , but to help D (indirect beneficiaries) about whom we donât really care, and this feels emotionally very alienating and weird.
Weâre just waiting until we learn that helping Ds is in fact terrible, because it harms Es, which are even more numerous, etc...
Since this process can be quite long, at each step of this process we can be quite unsure of whether what weâre doing is good at all, and this lack of conviction can make our motivation to help and donate grow much weaker. We can start thinking âIf Iâm unsure if it helps or hurts (in sense of increasing or decreasing aggregate welfare), maybe I shouldnât do anything at all, and instead mind my own businessâ.
So Iâm wondering can we really afford to completely divorce our actions (donations, etc...) from our love, care and emotions? Or alternatively, can we afford to maintain even a modicum of love and genuine care while weâre doing good?
I mean if we remove love and use just reasoning, maybe then indeed, the only logical project that we should pursue is eventually turning the Universe into hedonium.
But if we involve love and emotions, then perhaps it makes sense to help chicken because we care about chicken, to help people because we care about people, to help shrimps, because we care about shrimps, etc⌠In short to do focus our considerations on direct beneficiaries and thus retain this harmony between emotions and actions.
I think this is the way most people became altruists and effective altruists in the first place.
They donated money for malaria nets, in order to help those who receive nets. They donated to chicken charities in order to help chicken, etc⌠Imagining children dying of malaria or chicken living in terrible conditions was a strong motivating factor to step in and do something about it.
But nowadays, all I see is discussions about 2nd, 3rd, 4th order indirect effects of our actions.
But, logic is on your side, not on mine. Maybe Iâm too lazy. Maybe I donât want to make effort to consider those distant indirect effects. Maybe I donât want to follow the logic to its conclusion. Maybe. I donât know.
I probably lack certain virtues needed for such detached thinking.
But maybe such detached thinking too lacks something important that is fails to identify.
I really donât know.
I donât want to butt into your conversation with JoA, but I just want to say that there are good, logical reasons to support your intuitions, e.g., that long chains of indirect causation are far more dubious and should be taken into account much less than the direct effects of actions. You should be more confident in your ability to think logically! Sometimes it takes time to turn intuitions into clear, logical arguments, and in that case what we need is patience with intuitions, not to deny them their voice.
Regarding the rest of what you wrote I agree to a large extent.
I think it matters a lot how long does extreme suffering last. People regularly experience some pretty horrible suffering, but still they donât consider their life not worthy of living.
Take for example childbirth, or kidney colic. Most people go on after such events, without being traumatized for life.
Also, extreme pain might render people unconscious. I donât know how often it happens, if it happens in animals as well, and how good of a protection against extreme pain and suffering it is. But it might be a thing worthy of research.
Experiences such as being eaten, probably last quite short, and being last experiences in life of animals will likely not traumatize them, as they will be dead.
Close encounters with predators, injuries that animals survive, are more problematic and could lead to lasting trauma.
In general extreme suffering should be minimized as much as possible. But when thinking of extreme suffering I often have certain non-trivial duration in mind as well. If the lion kills its pray relatively quickly, the pain they experience, even if extreme, might not be that important in big scheme of things if it last just a couple of seconds.
I do not deny the existence of extreme suffering in nature, but I think itâs not so common and when it happens itâs often of short duration.
I very well do think that reducing of such extreme suffering should be among the top priorities.
Youâre right here. Animals on factory farms probably have capacity to feel pleasure, but itâs severely reduced and undermined by the conditions in which they live. Thatâs why I think we should eat less meat (at least if we consider direct effects) and donate to charities that help those animals.
If we consider 2nd, 3rd, etc⌠order effects, I really donât know. If weâre talking about these animals their lives should be improved. The way to do it is to eat less meat and to donate to those charities.
This will probably help them.
Whether this will also indirectly hurt someone else, and whether this is more important, Iâm really not sure.