Conditional on animals mattering, how many animal-years on a factory farm do I see as being about as good as giving a human another year of life?
I think comparing animal suffering to extra human life is easily subject to bias if you do it directly. I think it would be better to compare nonhuman animal suffering and human suffering first, and then human suffering and human life. How miserable are farmed chickens compared to the human misery caused by chronic depression or chronic pain, and how do you compare saving a year of good human life to curing chronic depression or pain in humans?
I actually think chickens are among the worst off animals in existence, similar to the worst off humans. Many are in chronic pain from being lame, breathing toxic air, stressed from high stocking densities and deprived of natural behaviours. About 0.4 chickens suffer to death per American per year (not adjusted for elasticities).
In a study of broiler (meat) chickens from the UK:
At a mean age of 40 days, over 27.6% of birds in our study showed poor locomotion and 3.3% were almost unable to walk.
Between food laced with painkillers and food without, lame chickens are more likely than healthy chickens to choose the one with painkiller.[1] Lame chickens also walk twice as fast as they would otherwise if given painkillers, but still slower than healthy chickens.[2]
Since I get much more than $0.43 of enjoyment out of a year’s worth of eating animal products, veganism looks like a really bad altruistic tradeoff to me.
I always find this kind of comparison weird. This is primarily the instrumental value of your enjoyment, right? Otherwise, you should compare your going vegan directly to the suffering of animals by not going vegan, which on a standard diet, should include about 0.3 chickens suffering to death per year (adjusting for elasticity) and whatever number of factory farmed animals. I wouldn’t torture a chicken to death every 3 years and keep several more in factory farming conditions for the inherent value of my personal enjoyment if I thought I enjoyed it as much as the average person does from eating meat for 3 years and there were no risks. (I don’t think you would, either.)
> This is primarily the instrumental value of your enjoyment, right? Otherwise, you should compare your going vegan directly to the suffering of animals by not going vegan
I think you’re drawing the line in an unfair place between instrumental and inherent value. Most EAs I know are not so morally demanding on themselves as to have no self-interest. If someone is well-off in a non-EA job and donates 40% of their income to GiveWell or x-risk charities, they’re a fairly dedicated EA. But donating “only” 40% still implies a >10:1 income disparity between oneself and the global poor, and thus that one values one’s own enjoyment >50x more than that of an arbitrary human. I think the norm of being less than maximally demanding is beneficial to the EA community and protects against unproductive asceticism. So self-interest that looks inherent can actually be instrumental.
I think the norm of being less than maximally demanding is beneficial to the EA community and protects against unproductive asceticism.
I agree with this.
I don’t think the majority of EAs value our own “enjoyment >50x more than that of an arbitrary human” after reflection. I think most of us actually have impartial views, but don’t think it would be sustainable/productive or can’t find the willpower or motivation to be so ascetic.
So self-interest that looks inherent can actually be instrumental.
For discussions among engaged EAs, I think we should be clear about what’s going on here. Maybe for the donation pledges, we can use this kind of phrasing, although we wouldn’t be representing our own views accurately. There’s a lot of discussion about mental health, burnout and taking care of yourself in the EA community which serves this purpose for us.
Also, the same kind of argument could be used for being mean to people (anonymously) if you enjoyed it, because their harm seems insignificant compared to saving a year of human life, and you’d be willing to pay a bit to be mean every now and then.
You might respond that you can find things you’d enjoy just as much as being mean, and you should do those instead. I feel the same about animal products vs vegan meals. They don’t have to be similar substitutes, and this is likely to disappoint many. I might be unusually indifferent between foods, though, which has made being vegan pretty easy for me, and Jeff eats a lot of vegan food, and still thinks the difference is important enough.
I think comparing animal suffering to extra human life is easily subject to bias if you do it directly. I think it would be better to compare nonhuman animal suffering and human suffering first, and then human suffering and human life. How miserable are farmed chickens compared to the human misery caused by chronic depression or chronic pain, and how do you compare saving a year of good human life to curing chronic depression or pain in humans?
I actually think chickens are among the worst off animals in existence, similar to the worst off humans. Many are in chronic pain from being lame, breathing toxic air, stressed from high stocking densities and deprived of natural behaviours. About 0.4 chickens suffer to death per American per year (not adjusted for elasticities).
In a study of broiler (meat) chickens from the UK:
Between food laced with painkillers and food without, lame chickens are more likely than healthy chickens to choose the one with painkiller.[1] Lame chickens also walk twice as fast as they would otherwise if given painkillers, but still slower than healthy chickens.[2]
See Charity Entrepreneurship’s report on welfare conditions.
I always find this kind of comparison weird. This is primarily the instrumental value of your enjoyment, right? Otherwise, you should compare your going vegan directly to the suffering of animals by not going vegan, which on a standard diet, should include about 0.3 chickens suffering to death per year (adjusting for elasticity) and whatever number of factory farmed animals. I wouldn’t torture a chicken to death every 3 years and keep several more in factory farming conditions for the inherent value of my personal enjoyment if I thought I enjoyed it as much as the average person does from eating meat for 3 years and there were no risks. (I don’t think you would, either.)
> This is primarily the instrumental value of your enjoyment, right? Otherwise, you should compare your going vegan directly to the suffering of animals by not going vegan
I think you’re drawing the line in an unfair place between instrumental and inherent value. Most EAs I know are not so morally demanding on themselves as to have no self-interest. If someone is well-off in a non-EA job and donates 40% of their income to GiveWell or x-risk charities, they’re a fairly dedicated EA. But donating “only” 40% still implies a >10:1 income disparity between oneself and the global poor, and thus that one values one’s own enjoyment >50x more than that of an arbitrary human. I think the norm of being less than maximally demanding is beneficial to the EA community and protects against unproductive asceticism. So self-interest that looks inherent can actually be instrumental.
I agree with this.
I don’t think the majority of EAs value our own “enjoyment >50x more than that of an arbitrary human” after reflection. I think most of us actually have impartial views, but don’t think it would be sustainable/productive or can’t find the willpower or motivation to be so ascetic.
For discussions among engaged EAs, I think we should be clear about what’s going on here. Maybe for the donation pledges, we can use this kind of phrasing, although we wouldn’t be representing our own views accurately. There’s a lot of discussion about mental health, burnout and taking care of yourself in the EA community which serves this purpose for us.
Also, the same kind of argument could be used for being mean to people (anonymously) if you enjoyed it, because their harm seems insignificant compared to saving a year of human life, and you’d be willing to pay a bit to be mean every now and then.
You might respond that you can find things you’d enjoy just as much as being mean, and you should do those instead. I feel the same about animal products vs vegan meals. They don’t have to be similar substitutes, and this is likely to disappoint many. I might be unusually indifferent between foods, though, which has made being vegan pretty easy for me, and Jeff eats a lot of vegan food, and still thinks the difference is important enough.