That makes sense, and I think many longtermist animal advocates roughly agree. One concern I have is about what kinds of moral ideas vegism is reinforcing. For example, vegism is normally strongly associated with environmentalism, so maybe it reinforces the idea of “leaving wild animals alone” or even trying to increase populations of wild animals via habitat restoration and rewilding.
That said, as Jacy Reese has argued, maybe most animal-like suffering in the far future will be created by humans rather than natural, in which case how people view wild-animal suffering could be less relevant than how they view human-inflicted suffering like that in factory farms. OTOH, I think there’s still a question of whether creatures that inhabit virtual worlds or ancestor simulations of the far future would be seen as “wild” or as directly harmed by humans.
That makes sense, and I think many longtermist animal advocates roughly agree. One concern I have is about what kinds of moral ideas vegism is reinforcing. For example, vegism is normally strongly associated with environmentalism, so maybe it reinforces the idea of “leaving wild animals alone” or even trying to increase populations of wild animals via habitat restoration and rewilding.
That said, as Jacy Reese has argued, maybe most animal-like suffering in the far future will be created by humans rather than natural, in which case how people view wild-animal suffering could be less relevant than how they view human-inflicted suffering like that in factory farms. OTOH, I think there’s still a question of whether creatures that inhabit virtual worlds or ancestor simulations of the far future would be seen as “wild” or as directly harmed by humans.