I think the idea is to reduce the future population of meat-eaters by encouraging contraceptive use, so kind of the opposite (in terms of total population) of saving lives.
(I have to say, the idea that we should positively prefer future people to not exist sounds pretty uncomfortable to me, and certainly less appealing than supporting people in making whatever reproductive decisions they personally prefer, which would include both contraceptive and fertility/child support.)
Your writings on this subject often emphasize an extremely high regard for the value of people making their own reproductive decisions, even when the weights are (as in this case) a human’s life and an enormous amount of farmed animal suffering.
When would the other stakes be sufficiently large for you to endorse preventing someone from making their own reproductive decision?
For example, let’s say Hitler’s mother could have been forced to have an abortion, preventing Hitler’s birth. Would you say that’s a tradeoff worth making, with regret?
Or let’s say we know Alice’s son Bob, were he to be born, will save 1 billion lives by preventing a nuclear war, and Alice currently intends to abort Bob. Would you say forcing Alice to carry Bob to term would be a tradeoff worth making, with regret about the forced birth?
The reason why I ask is because my intuition is that while reproductive autonomy is very important, it seems to me that there are always ways to up the stakes such that it can be the right thing to compromise on that principle, with regrets. I feel like there’s something I’m missing in my understanding of your view which has caused us historically to talk past each other.
If you can stipulate (e.g. in a thought experiment) that the consequences of coercion are overall for the best, then I favor it in that case. I just have a very strong practical presumption (see: principled proceduralism) that liberal options tend to have higher expected value in real life, once all our uncertainty (and fallibility) is fully taken into account.
Maybe also worth noting (per my other comment in this thread) that I’m optimistic about the long-term value of humanity and human innovation. So, putting autonomy considerations aside, if I could either encourage people to have more kids or fewer, I think more is better (despite the short-term costs to animal welfare).
Thanks of course! That’s actually quite obvious in retrospect, not sure how I missed that on first pass.
There would also be a counter argument that reducing family size is strongly associated with rapid development and with it in turn mass deployment of factory farming. One American probably eats 10-30x the meat of the Nigerians FEM serves. Its tricky....
EDIT: Thanks Richard, slightly silly question in retrospect!
Thanks Constance, how is FEM better (I think Family not Female :D) from this perspective than any other “saving life” org, like AMF?
I think the idea is to reduce the future population of meat-eaters by encouraging contraceptive use, so kind of the opposite (in terms of total population) of saving lives.
(I have to say, the idea that we should positively prefer future people to not exist sounds pretty uncomfortable to me, and certainly less appealing than supporting people in making whatever reproductive decisions they personally prefer, which would include both contraceptive and fertility/child support.)
Your writings on this subject often emphasize an extremely high regard for the value of people making their own reproductive decisions, even when the weights are (as in this case) a human’s life and an enormous amount of farmed animal suffering.
When would the other stakes be sufficiently large for you to endorse preventing someone from making their own reproductive decision?
For example, let’s say Hitler’s mother could have been forced to have an abortion, preventing Hitler’s birth. Would you say that’s a tradeoff worth making, with regret?
Or let’s say we know Alice’s son Bob, were he to be born, will save 1 billion lives by preventing a nuclear war, and Alice currently intends to abort Bob. Would you say forcing Alice to carry Bob to term would be a tradeoff worth making, with regret about the forced birth?
The reason why I ask is because my intuition is that while reproductive autonomy is very important, it seems to me that there are always ways to up the stakes such that it can be the right thing to compromise on that principle, with regrets. I feel like there’s something I’m missing in my understanding of your view which has caused us historically to talk past each other.
If you can stipulate (e.g. in a thought experiment) that the consequences of coercion are overall for the best, then I favor it in that case. I just have a very strong practical presumption (see: principled proceduralism) that liberal options tend to have higher expected value in real life, once all our uncertainty (and fallibility) is fully taken into account.
Maybe also worth noting (per my other comment in this thread) that I’m optimistic about the long-term value of humanity and human innovation. So, putting autonomy considerations aside, if I could either encourage people to have more kids or fewer, I think more is better (despite the short-term costs to animal welfare).
Thanks of course! That’s actually quite obvious in retrospect, not sure how I missed that on first pass.
There would also be a counter argument that reducing family size is strongly associated with rapid development and with it in turn mass deployment of factory farming. One American probably eats 10-30x the meat of the Nigerians FEM serves. Its tricky....