If you oppose other people donating kidneys on the grounds that it will probably increase meat consumption
I do not oppose neither support people donating kidneys, as I do not know whether is good/bad.
Being nice to other value systems is a very important heuristic, even if those value systems are slightly net negative to you. Debating the effectiveness of kidney donations on the EA forum is obviously fair game, but in general, refusing to play nice with e.g. organ donation is considered a large defection in >=95% of people’s value systems, and I think you stand to lose a lot more than you gain if you pick that battle.
I like the post you linked! I do not think this criticism applies so much because I am not refusing to play nice with organ donation. I am just arguing that it is not a robustly good way to increase welfare once one accounts for effects on animals. Note I am also moderating the conclusions of my quantitative analyses based on considerations like the ones you are pointing out. I estimated a random human causes 4.64 times as much suffering to factory-farmed animals as the happiness of human life. A naive interpretation of this would imply more human deaths being good, but that is not my takeaway. I just conclude saving lives may be beneficial/harmful.
If following a value system to its logical extremes requires supporting outcomes that feel deeply morally wrong, probably something is wrong either with the value system or how it’s being applied[2]. To me, opposing healthcare to reduce the poor meat-eater problem feels sufficiently morally wrong that if I reached the same conclusion, I would rather change my moral system than bite the relevant bullets.
That is another great heuristic! However, I would say most people do not have strong intuitions in favour of saving random human lives, otherwise GiveWell’s top charities (which save a life for 5 k$) would receive way more money. Accordingly, I do not view not supporting/opposing donating organs as being against common intuitions. If I strongly opposed organ donations, I would be going against common sense, but as I said I do not oppose neither support organ donations.
On the other hand, I do think most people (and I am no exception) have strong intuitions about saving a person (spatially or relationally) close to us being clearly good, and I support this position too, even if the saved person ends up eating lots of animals. Similarly, I strongly oppose killing people[2], regardless of how much animals they are consuming.
I hope this doesn’t come off as adversarial; I think we’re from closely-adjacent moral systems, and I disagree with you but am also very happy to talk to someone that cares a lot about animal suffering.
Thanks for elaborating, @MintSnap[1]!
I do not oppose neither support people donating kidneys, as I do not know whether is good/bad.
I like the post you linked! I do not think this criticism applies so much because I am not refusing to play nice with organ donation. I am just arguing that it is not a robustly good way to increase welfare once one accounts for effects on animals. Note I am also moderating the conclusions of my quantitative analyses based on considerations like the ones you are pointing out. I estimated a random human causes 4.64 times as much suffering to factory-farmed animals as the happiness of human life. A naive interpretation of this would imply more human deaths being good, but that is not my takeaway. I just conclude saving lives may be beneficial/harmful.
That is another great heuristic! However, I would say most people do not have strong intuitions in favour of saving random human lives, otherwise GiveWell’s top charities (which save a life for 5 k$) would receive way more money. Accordingly, I do not view not supporting/opposing donating organs as being against common intuitions. If I strongly opposed organ donations, I would be going against common sense, but as I said I do not oppose neither support organ donations.
On the other hand, I do think most people (and I am no exception) have strong intuitions about saving a person (spatially or relationally) close to us being clearly good, and I support this position too, even if the saved person ends up eating lots of animals. Similarly, I strongly oppose killing people[2], regardless of how much animals they are consuming.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
I am tagging you to let you know of my reply, as I originally only replied “Thanks for elaborating!”.
Interestingly, people often kind of support killing people by being in favour of wars. I generally do not.