But it’s possible to order mail without a dog being kicked. It is not possible (yet) to eat meat without an animal being killed. It’s not eating the meat that’s wrong, it’s killing the animal
akberkhan
Karma: 10
Going to chime in with a comment I haven’t seen others make yet, and likely for good reason… EAs are congenial to a fault sometimes.
I used to think, as I think you are implying in your excerpts of Hanania’s piece, that a full-throated agreement and recognition of the moral imperative to not consume animal products (from factory farms or elsewhere) even if one did not or had not yet chosen to take this moral circumscription upon themselves, was commendable. Hey, I thought, at least they are aware. Then I read this argument in an otherwise excellent Noah Smith piece on the horrors of factory farming and now I encounter it in Hanania. Give me someone who doesn’t think about it at all, even someone mouthing that thin sophistry about moral consideration being rooted in reciprocity is preferable to this. Better to be ignorant than knowingly and contritely—and barely that—complicit.
If he was sincere, Hanania could have spent 10 minutes looking up what is by now widely known, easily accessible information about veganism and nutritional deficits. I applaud you for the having the patience to spoon-feed this to him and those with similar views, but it seems rather clear to me that his concerns about nutrition were simply the pretext nearest at hand when he wrote that piece.
You know what helps me evangelize the EA movement to friends? When a movement I’ve talked about being steadfastly committed to moral rigor launches a “fellowship” for people to work remotely in the Bahamas because it’s crypto-friendly?!
This is insanely tone-deaf. Ridicule and charges of hypocrisy directed at this effort will be much deserved. Purporting to carry a great moral burden means taking great pains to act with moral propriety and to head-off PR minefields like this one.
It all matters. The conditions they were raised in matter, the killing of an animal who does not want to die matters. Construct for me a hypothetical where I have to pick between an animal that suffered and then was killed, or an animal that had a good life and then was killed, and I will pick the latter. Add a third choice where no animal need die, and I’ll pick that one every time it is available.
You should think about meat eating this way: that whether or not killing an animal or causing lots of unexpected suffering is your conscious objective, you know with a substantial certainty that those results will ensue. Because you act knowing the certainty of the consequences, you are responsible whether or not the consequences are your intended objective. This is a common standard we use to determine intent in the criminal justice system.