I am happy to read your arguments! Again, I do not intend to carry out a serious investigation of the topic until I have the time and energy to do it with full charity towards both sides and the ability to actually update, but I am glad to have evidence I can evaluate with more focus and in more detail when I do.
”You are assuming their lives are net util even if their lives may be miserable. (which I think is the repugnant conclusion? I’ve never really liked the framing of it either) Let’s break this down.”
Not quite. I am assuming their lives are not subjectively miserable even if they look like they are objectively miserable. That’s what I mean by ‘net util.’ There are situations where people who look objectively happy commit suicide and situations where people who look objectively unhappy actively and strongly desire to keep living.
”Additionally, there are other negative externalities which you are not acknowledging[.]”
And there’s additional positive externalities I’m not acknowledging! I would need to carry out a serious exploration of all the externalities and of the entire situation to feel comfortable making a decision on my own instead of trusting my most-trusted authorities, who eat meat.
”1. We don’t care about qualia. We care about suffering.”
I think it is possible for pain to exist without suffering, but I’m not sure suffering can exist without the-thing-I-am-labeling-qualia. I think that pain-without-suffering is possible either because the brain interprets pain in a non-suffering manner, or because there is nothing there to notice the pain—if I’m unconscious, there may be pain signals in my nervous system, my body may be flinching, but I do not suffer because I’m unconscious, so there’s nobody there to suffer. These seem to be cheap examples that the thing is possible. I do not know whether or not it is true.
By “qualia,” what I fundamentally mean is “the thing that makes pain into suffering and pleasure into joy.” And I think I do require that in order to care about pain.
”The current conception of consciousness (correct me if I’m wrong any neuroscientists in the crowd) is that consciousness is the interaction of the thalamus and the cortex.”
I am not a neuroscientist in the slightest and this is one of the things I would need to launch a serious investigation of when I launch a serious investigation, which I am not doing right now but which I agree is the highest launch-serious-investigation-priority once I have tried to figure out whether literally infinite positive and negative utility are relevant thanks to the existence of an afterlife.
”Some people live net negative lives and won’t off themselves because they think suicide is a net neutral decision. (infinite bad and infinite good possibility after death) I don’t see how them persisting is justification of net util.”
And this is why I attempted to clarify (possibly in another thread?) that I feel that similar patterns persisted in classical antiquity, back before Hell and Heaven were common beliefs.
OK, back to the specific chicken welfare question:
”They are killed after birth because they are deemed worthless. I don’t believe these were net util lives. I believe they were negative lives...”
I’m not sure if this helps, but I tend to think of comparing utilities across lifetimes as imagining serial reincarnation. Like, I-the-force-looking-out-from-behind-Bill-Friedman’s-eyes lives through each life in turn.
But, in that case, lifespan matters. Two days of good life is two days of good life; two days of bad life is two days of bad life. Living for 2000 days in one body seems to me equivalent to living in 2 days in 1,000 bodies, except for how it changes the goodness or badness of those days.
But in that case—I mean, I don’t actually know whether the male chicks’ lives are worth living, because I haven’t done the serious in-depth investigation required to know this, but if they were negative and female lives were positive, 7 years = 2556 days = each female outweighs 1278 males.
… But, also, I don’t know if female chickens’ lives are worth living! Or males! I do not know the answer and the investigation is on the queue.
I am happy to read your arguments! Again, I do not intend to carry out a serious investigation of the topic until I have the time and energy to do it with full charity towards both sides and the ability to actually update, but I am glad to have evidence I can evaluate with more focus and in more detail when I do.
”You are assuming their lives are net util even if their lives may be miserable. (which I think is the repugnant conclusion? I’ve never really liked the framing of it either) Let’s break this down.”
Not quite. I am assuming their lives are not subjectively miserable even if they look like they are objectively miserable. That’s what I mean by ‘net util.’ There are situations where people who look objectively happy commit suicide and situations where people who look objectively unhappy actively and strongly desire to keep living.
”Additionally, there are other negative externalities which you are not acknowledging[.]”
And there’s additional positive externalities I’m not acknowledging! I would need to carry out a serious exploration of all the externalities and of the entire situation to feel comfortable making a decision on my own instead of trusting my most-trusted authorities, who eat meat.
”1. We don’t care about qualia. We care about suffering.”
I think it is possible for pain to exist without suffering, but I’m not sure suffering can exist without the-thing-I-am-labeling-qualia. I think that pain-without-suffering is possible either because the brain interprets pain in a non-suffering manner, or because there is nothing there to notice the pain—if I’m unconscious, there may be pain signals in my nervous system, my body may be flinching, but I do not suffer because I’m unconscious, so there’s nobody there to suffer. These seem to be cheap examples that the thing is possible. I do not know whether or not it is true.
By “qualia,” what I fundamentally mean is “the thing that makes pain into suffering and pleasure into joy.” And I think I do require that in order to care about pain.
”The current conception of consciousness (correct me if I’m wrong any neuroscientists in the crowd) is that consciousness is the interaction of the thalamus and the cortex.”
I am not a neuroscientist in the slightest and this is one of the things I would need to launch a serious investigation of when I launch a serious investigation, which I am not doing right now but which I agree is the highest launch-serious-investigation-priority once I have tried to figure out whether literally infinite positive and negative utility are relevant thanks to the existence of an afterlife.
”Some people live net negative lives and won’t off themselves because they think suicide is a net neutral decision. (infinite bad and infinite good possibility after death) I don’t see how them persisting is justification of net util.”
And this is why I attempted to clarify (possibly in another thread?) that I feel that similar patterns persisted in classical antiquity, back before Hell and Heaven were common beliefs.
OK, back to the specific chicken welfare question:
”They are killed after birth because they are deemed worthless. I don’t believe these were net util lives. I believe they were negative lives...”
I’m not sure if this helps, but I tend to think of comparing utilities across lifetimes as imagining serial reincarnation. Like, I-the-force-looking-out-from-behind-Bill-Friedman’s-eyes lives through each life in turn.
But, in that case, lifespan matters. Two days of good life is two days of good life; two days of bad life is two days of bad life. Living for 2000 days in one body seems to me equivalent to living in 2 days in 1,000 bodies, except for how it changes the goodness or badness of those days.
But in that case—I mean, I don’t actually know whether the male chicks’ lives are worth living, because I haven’t done the serious in-depth investigation required to know this, but if they were negative and female lives were positive, 7 years = 2556 days = each female outweighs 1278 males.
… But, also, I don’t know if female chickens’ lives are worth living! Or males! I do not know the answer and the investigation is on the queue.