I don’t think it makes any arguments? I also expect less to be convinced that factory-farmed animals have net positive lives, that wild animals might seems easier to defend
50%: If factory farmed animals are moral patients, it’s more likely that they have net-negative lives (i.e., it would better for them not to exist, than to live such terrible lives).
50%: If factory farmed animals are moral patients, it’s more likely that they have net-positive lives (i.e., their lives may be terrible, but they aren’t so lacking in value that preventing the life altogether is a net improvement).
This seems like a super hard question, and not one that changes the importance of working to promote animal welfare, so naively (absent some argument for a more informative prior) it should have a 50⁄50 split within animal welfare circles.
Some of the implied claims feels weird to me. I can see a 50⁄50 split ex ante but it’s hard to justify a 50-50 split ex post.
(analogously, having a ~0.5 expectation of Heads on a fair coin toss makes sense ex-ante, but I wouldn’t expect ~50% of observers of the same coin toss to be in the Heads camp and ~50% in the Tails camp).
Who do you think would best argue that side?
If I know, I’d have already mentioned them lol.
My guess is @RobBensinger would probably hold that view, based on https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/b7Euvy3RCKT7cppDk/animal-welfare-ea-and-personal-dietary-options and it would be fun to see him debate this though unlikely he’d choose to.
I personally thought that argument was pretty bad.
I don’t think it makes any arguments? I also expect less to be convinced that factory-farmed animals have net positive lives, that wild animals might seems easier to defend
Some of the implied claims feels weird to me. I can see a 50⁄50 split ex ante but it’s hard to justify a 50-50 split ex post.
(analogously, having a ~0.5 expectation of Heads on a fair coin toss makes sense ex-ante, but I wouldn’t expect ~50% of observers of the same coin toss to be in the Heads camp and ~50% in the Tails camp).