I’m in the “killing/eating animals is (mostly) fine but torturing them/giving them intensely negative lives is not” camp. To me giving farm animals reasonable lives would basically be total victory (in this small slice of the total animal suffering).
I think the idea of “ending meat eating” without PBM seems very impossible in the medium term (10-30 years) (and maybe impossible with PBM), but forcing the government to regulate farms (adding as much utility as possible, with an allowed +30-50% price increase, effectively a tax on suffering) seems totally possible to me. Maybe not quite yet because we are too poor but at some point pretty soon (like potentially when the elasticity of meat starts approaching 0). I think the parsimonious answer is that people do in fact have compassion for farm animals. Just not as much as for dogs and they gain more from their suffering. I’d expect if we double US GDP in the next ~15 years even without a lot of other culture changes (ignoring that ai will rule the world for sec.) it will be much more politically palatable to ban (or tax) animal torture of all mammals at least.
I’m sure ACE and others have thought much more about this and have actual psychological evidence, for my part I guess I just feel a little bit optimistic that humanity can fix this soonish.
I’m in the “killing/eating animals is (mostly) fine but torturing them/giving them intensely negative lives is not” camp. To me giving farm animals reasonable lives would basically be total victory (in this small slice of the total animal suffering).
I think the idea of “ending meat eating” without PBM seems very impossible in the medium term (10-30 years) (and maybe impossible with PBM), but forcing the government to regulate farms (adding as much utility as possible, with an allowed +30-50% price increase, effectively a tax on suffering) seems totally possible to me. Maybe not quite yet because we are too poor but at some point pretty soon (like potentially when the elasticity of meat starts approaching 0). I think the parsimonious answer is that people do in fact have compassion for farm animals. Just not as much as for dogs and they gain more from their suffering. I’d expect if we double US GDP in the next ~15 years even without a lot of other culture changes (ignoring that ai will rule the world for sec.) it will be much more politically palatable to ban (or tax) animal torture of all mammals at least.
I’m sure ACE and others have thought much more about this and have actual psychological evidence, for my part I guess I just feel a little bit optimistic that humanity can fix this soonish.