>>There is also more optimism about farm animal lives coming from farmers, who are more familiar with them than anyone else.
I believe this familiarity is a much weaker factor than the bias farmers have to think of themselves as ethical and to justify the industry they work in.
Neither here nor there, but while we’re counting possible biases, it may also be worth considering the possibilities that
people who conclude that farm animals’ lives are good may select into farming, and people who conclude that they’re bad may select out, making farmers “more optimistic than others” even before the self-serving bias; and, pointing the other way,
people who enter animal advocacy on grounds other than total utilitarianism could then have some bias against concluding that farm animals have lives above hedonic zero, since it could render their past moral efforts counterproductive (and maybe even kind of embarrassing).
>>There is also more optimism about farm animal lives coming from farmers, who are more familiar with them than anyone else.
I believe this familiarity is a much weaker factor than the bias farmers have to think of themselves as ethical and to justify the industry they work in.
Well we have to count countervailing biases among animal activists and utilitarians too.
Neither here nor there, but while we’re counting possible biases, it may also be worth considering the possibilities that
people who conclude that farm animals’ lives are good may select into farming, and people who conclude that they’re bad may select out, making farmers “more optimistic than others” even before the self-serving bias; and, pointing the other way,
people who enter animal advocacy on grounds other than total utilitarianism could then have some bias against concluding that farm animals have lives above hedonic zero, since it could render their past moral efforts counterproductive (and maybe even kind of embarrassing).