If it’s referring to making current humans more humane by changing their terminal values, then it’s not clear to me how this would occur. My understanding is that animal rights activities tend to spend their time showing people how bad conditions are, and I see no mechanism by which this would change people’s terminal values.
Plenty of people now think that slavery is bad now that it has been abolished. It is intuitively clear to me that when people lose the ability to rationalize something, then they will tend to be more careful before endorsing it as good (especially if it causes a bunch of suffering). Right now, few people explicitly care about animal suffering (besides maybe dogs and cats) -- but in a world where factory farming is remembered as a great crime of the past, I expect our attitudes to shift.
I think that in the future, people will eliminate acquiring food by suffering animals in factory farms anyways. This is because people will presumably be able to live in virtual realities and efficiently create virtual food without causing any suffering. Thoughts?
If we reach a point in history where humans can upload themselves and survive without the consumption of physical resources, the world will look different in so many ways that almost every cause area we think about will be totally unrecognizable. This is a thing that could someday happen, but that doesn’t mean there’s any less value in bringing about the end of factory farming much sooner.
Plenty of people now think that slavery is bad now that it has been abolished. It is intuitively clear to me that when people lose the ability to rationalize something, then they will tend to be more careful before endorsing it as good (especially if it causes a bunch of suffering). Right now, few people explicitly care about animal suffering (besides maybe dogs and cats) -- but in a world where factory farming is remembered as a great crime of the past, I expect our attitudes to shift.
I think that in the future, people will eliminate acquiring food by suffering animals in factory farms anyways. This is because people will presumably be able to live in virtual realities and efficiently create virtual food without causing any suffering. Thoughts?
If we reach a point in history where humans can upload themselves and survive without the consumption of physical resources, the world will look different in so many ways that almost every cause area we think about will be totally unrecognizable. This is a thing that could someday happen, but that doesn’t mean there’s any less value in bringing about the end of factory farming much sooner.