In the post that prompted the ban, they asked whether murdering meat-eaters could be considered ethical. I don’t want to comment on whether this would be an appropriate topic for a late night philosophy club conversation, it is not an appropriate topic for the EA Forum.
I think speculating about what exactly constitutes the most good is perfectly on-topic. While ‘murdering meat-eaters’ is perhaps an overly direct phrasing (and of course under most ethical frameworks murder raises additional issues as compared to mere inaction or deprioritization), the question of whether the negative utility produced by one marginal person’s worth of factory farming outweighs the positive utility that person experiences—colloquially referred to as the meat-eater problem—is one that hasbeendiscussedherea numberoftimes, and that I feel is quite relevant to the question of which interventions should be prioritized.
In the post that prompted the ban, they asked whether murdering meat-eaters could be considered ethical. I don’t want to comment on whether this would be an appropriate topic for a late night philosophy club conversation, it is not an appropriate topic for the EA Forum.
I think speculating about what exactly constitutes the most good is perfectly on-topic. While ‘murdering meat-eaters’ is perhaps an overly direct phrasing (and of course under most ethical frameworks murder raises additional issues as compared to mere inaction or deprioritization), the question of whether the negative utility produced by one marginal person’s worth of factory farming outweighs the positive utility that person experiences—colloquially referred to as the meat-eater problem—is one that has been discussed here a number of times, and that I feel is quite relevant to the question of which interventions should be prioritized.