I am raising a duck right now. They make good pets and I hope it will help my children better understand food and the circle of life. I like to think that the duck appreciates me feeding it, and will not mind making the ultimate sacrifice so that I can enjoy a nice Magret de Canard.
The original comment is gone, maybe I lack context, is this a joke wooshing over my head?
I can't imagine any animal just gracefully accepting its death so someone can enjoy eating it. Animals go to great lengths not to be eaten. Their expressed preference tends to be not making the ultimate sacrifice so that someone can enjoy eating them.
Except for perhaps ant species who share so much DNA with their nestmates and willingly die for the colony. But the original comment was about being so disconnected from our food supply while having a lot of choices of food. Those who are around barnyard animals seem to have less trouble eating them. Perhaps they have a different view of how little cognition is going on in a chicken brain. I am convinced my duck is living a great life, and not fearing death. She lives in the moment, and when the lights go out for her she will have no regret, and living longer would perhaps have mattered little because she has no awareness of time.
Perhaps. Cows are much more intelligent than chickens though, and pigs are often compared to dogs. Other barnyard animals aside, perhaps it's true that living longer would have mattered little to the duck, and yet, as she lives in the moment, she will clearly strive her hardest to avoid death at all costs, as best she can with her little duck brain. Doesn't that mean something?
Indeed, ants are an exception, fair enough. Though they don't accept death so someone can enjoy eating them, they accept death to defend or benefit their brethren.
Assuming that pigs & ducks would ever be raised in the first place if it weren't for their meat (a bad assumption IMO, in a 100% veg society I'd expect pigs to go extinct)..
One could not, hypothetically, raise an animal & let it live forever. I see the butcher's knife as being somewhat more merciful than cancer but that's also just, like, my opinion, man.
I worked with a woman that lived out beyond the exurbs of the Twin Cities she was raising two grade school kids and for the course of the spring an summer a pig. The pig became a pet to the kids but they were warned that pigs always run away in the fall.
You also have to multiply this by how easily you can actually impact the suffering. We have reasonable interventions for reducing human suffering. Any ideas on how to effectively reduce insect suffering?
"Multiply this number by 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (number of bugs) and arrive at 1,000,000,000,000,000 suffering capacity. If I increase the number of humans on earth for the sake of simplicity to 10 billion, then the “problem of bug suffering” is 100,000 times more important than the problem of human suffering."
No. If there were a skillion gazillion bugs alive on earth and only one human, the human's worth outweighs them all.
This entire discussion is very interesting, because there are a whole range of opinions on the entire spectrum from "are you freakin' nuts?" to "I make Jains look like the Golden Horde on a particularly virulent tear" being expressed, and it's fascinating to get a peep into a completely different way of thinking. So that's good!
No, I'm not a musician. But in my field I can do things that are at least comparable, in terms of creativity and beauty. And far beyond what any number of bugs could do.
Also, now that I think of it, I can appreciate Die Zauberfloete, and that is important, because it gives meaning to Mozart's work. Bugs not only can't author Mozart, they can't appreciate it.
Do you think you could state clearly the rule that Scott broke? I try hard not to do anything that would hurt somebody's feelings, and I didn't even realize that was a possibility with this... maybe I'm just dense. But, obviously, you think he made a serious error. I'd like to be able to avoid anybody having that reaction to something I might write.
I'm not going to comment on whether Scott made an error in this instance, as I'm not Jewish, so can't really say whether it's hurtful to Jewish people, but as a general rule, if you would like to avoid hurting people's feelings, it is a good idea not to compare people of some ethnicity to vermin (rats, bugs, cockroaches), even obliquely. Comparing certain ethnic groups to vermin is a practice that has been historically (even in recent history) associated with some really terrible things, and if you are not sure if you can do it kindly, it's best to avoid doing it at all.
Im Jewish. It wasn't hurtful to me and I don't know where one finds the "rule" Scott is supposed to have broke. But I am definitely after this whole post starting to wonder if there is such a thing as too rational.
> if you would like to avoid hurting people's feelings,
at a certain point here, this is a lost cause, unless you start with a standard of:
"i wish to avoid hurting the feelings of people who make a point of moderating their own emotions, and therefore avoid take offense where it isn't intended"
You are sayimg you know u or someone has feelongs you know I am moderating? I think this is the last time i read the comments section. This whole thing has devolved into nonsense.
He didn't mean it the way you're taking it. For one thing, he's Jewish himself. For another thing, he's writing for us robots, so he doesn't say one thing and mean another like regular people do.
Yes, please. There already are no places for us robots to go in the world where everything is considered "offensive" and no one is allowed to actually mean what they say and not some imagined "offence" behind it. Don't destroy the last of the few remaining places where one can just be rational without playing the tiring mind games that constitute 90% of communication that "normal people" engage in.
It's definitely unkind. I think you could make the argument that pointing out the PR issues with the comparison is both true and necessary, but given how needlessly antagonistic he's being I personally don't feel the need to cut him a lot of slack.
When taken out of context as "Scott compares Jews to bugs" it sounds bad, but I think it's eminently clear from the context that the comparison is being used to raise the status of insects, not lower the status of Jews.
Perhaps. The unintended consequence (while not a big deal) is a funny nexus of tension that HE would be well equipped to examine. But it ain’t not there.
it's less about liberals wanting those things, and more about viewing them as necessary to avert climate disaster, so the whole meme is pointing at liberals' enthusiastic willingness to curtail individual freedom in the face of collective threat.
Eating insects has other benefits, namely the very good nutritional value and the substantial lack of sugar and saturated fats - the Hitlers of nutrition
(I pressed post while trying to go the last word, oh well)
I get that it is not morally relevant but it feels as if it should play some role in the individual decision process, like, giving up red meat is good for ethics, the environment AND yourself. This is different.
I'm reminded of the story/ urban legend that when vegetarian Indians moved to England, they found that their diet was lacking in essential nutrients, because the English flour had fewer bugs in it compared to Indian flour. (I couldn't find a reference in a quick search.)
I'm not convinced this is relevant. There are other foods that are good nutritionally, but get processed with added sugars to sell better. why wouldn't this also happen with insects?
It's just a few steps away from the obvious truth "Surely it would be worth to kill one insect to produce an immortality pill". Should insect diet turn out to be much healthier for us, it would make the ethical case for not killing insects a bit weaker.
sure.. but i mean, broccoli exists, but people only seem to eat it if it gets deep fried and dipped in sugar.. yes its an exageration, the point is just that there are lots of healthy foods that we somehow manage to make unhealthy. i dont think access or existence is the barrier.
Would eating worms be morally better or worse than eating insects? I'm not a vermologist, but I think some of the creatures we call worms don't even have brains.
Relatedly, it seems surprisingly hard to view the picture for the post I'm looking at. It doesn't show up in the email, or on the post itself. To view it I have to go to another page on the site that links back to this post. Am I missing something or is that just the way it is? It doesn't seem like the way it should me.
Jake, I was feeling pretty smug about getting that reference myself. I was raised in the Lutheran Church. They tell me now that Luther probably didn't say "Here I stand, I can do no other" during that interview. Too bad, it's a really good line.
But you can't just count every farmed animal as having suffered an amount proportional to its neuron count. Surely, factory farmed insects live a hell of a lot less long than factory farmed cows do, and thus suffer a lot less long. How do they compare in terms of [neuron count]x[lifespan]? Ideally we should also be multiplying by suffering intensity, but that's harder to judge.
Yeah, I think it's relevant that bugs are generally much more adapted to cramped, crowded, dank, dark conditions than larger animals. Those mealworms might feel fine their whole lives!
The biggest issues would be (a) not allowing the animal to complete its life cycle and (b) the method of execution. When I've raised mealworms for other animals, the execution method was drowning, and they certainly do wriggle as if they're in distress (although what is reflex and what is agony?). Not sure how huge operations do it.
They freeze dry them, at least the brands I've bought. I'm assuming the first step of this is IQF (send them through a stream of liquid nitrogen) because otherwise they would clump, which is not the case.
If I'm right, then current methods are as close to instant death as it gets. Otherwise, this could be easily implemented.
Also, while I think I can broadly sketch out what a 'good' or 'bad' life is for a cow, I'm not sure I can do the same for a mealworm. How possible is it that farmed insects are not 'suffering' proportionately as much as other farmed animals, because their requirements for a 'good life are much simpler and more easily met in a factory farm?
I'm perfectly happy if mealworms are farmed to feed chickens, and then I eat the chicken. And the worms get their turn in the end:
Hamlet:
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
I would think that would come out in the wash. It's not [neuron count] x [lifespan] that matters, because if the farming is ongoing, each time one mealworm dies it is replaced by another on the farm. So it's [neuron count] x [lifespan] x [#lifespans per unit time], but [#lifespans per unit time] = 1/[lifespan], so the second two terms cancel out and we're left with just neurons.
I mean you really care about [suffering]/[calorie]. This comes out to something like [suffering]/[animal]*[animals]/[calorie], or [neurons]*[lifespan]/([calories/animal]).
You can, in general. Even in this specific case, the functionality is still there, only hidden. There are ways to re-add it (the one I've found is here https://github.com/Pycea/ACX-tweaks - note that I do not use it and do not vouch for it).
The problem is that the calories that we get from eating animals ultimately come from plants, so either we're eating the plants or the cows are. In fact, there are calories lost in that process from all the activity that the cows engage in before we eat them, so it'd kill more total plant-calorie for us to eat cows than directly eat plants. There's also the same question with fewer-small-plants (grass, hay, which cows tend to eat) versus the larger plants (broccoli for example, which humans tend to eat). Perhaps we should only eat leaves from trees? Or are trees more conscious, so indirectly eating grass is better?
Though we also have to ask what plant *suffering* looks like - perhaps conscious plants really enjoy being picked? The main problem with eating animals is the conditions that those animals are raised in, and I'm not sure that applies to plants. Factory farmed chickens clearly have horrible lives but corn plants on farm seem to have pretty nice lives, as far as plant lives go.
One alternative to either plants or animals is entirely lab-grown food (I presume we can fabricate sugar from raw materials at least), but that's a last resort since it seems like it would be quite inefficient and difficult compared to raising plants.
I suppose I should I have made it more obvious I was asking facetiously...I think the whole debate is silly. I don't get the guilt over a natural part of life. We are inextricably linked into the food chain. We cannot convert heat or sunlight into calories ourselves. This forces us to consume something that can (or something that ate something that can). Everything we eat--plant, insect, mammal, fish--is alive. Some, possibly all, has some amount of consciousness.
Yeah, we shouldn't torture animals, but caring about the abstract suffering of mealworms or crickets (both of which I've raised) just smacks of bored overprivileged navel-gazing. And it reminds me way too much of eating disorder recovery, and people going vegetarian -> vegan -> oh wait no I can't eat anything because eating is immoral.
I don't fully disagree with you, in fact; there really isn't much point in worrying about insect suffering when you can barely get idiots like the commenter quoted by Scott to care about obviously conscious beings like dogs; but I think that shows why the argument here is necessary — if you don't, you'll just get people going "hurr durr but what's the difference between a chicken and a bug?!". As if you couldn't make the exact same argument against caring about killing *humans*.
There is at least one criterion that rules most humans in and the vast majority of animals out, which is the criterion of negotiation. Humans are at least capable of negotiating in good faith.
Why does this matter? Because something that can't negotiate in good faith is something you can *only* coexist with from a position of strength; it is a permanent enemy if you cannot defeat it and you have different goals, the same way a paperclip maximiser is. There is *no way* to treat flies as equals - you can, at best, make them your pampered slaves.
I havn't come across this argument before, and I find it deeply interesting... on the face of it its a light bulb moment for me (but that might be because I have only just come across it) ... off to search the interwebs for a more thourgh (can never spell that) discussion of it. Thank you!
The terms "ramen" and "varelse" (in conjunction) might find you something (though probably not everything around this); they're borrowed from the sequels to Ender's Game (which in turn borrow the words themselves from Swedish), which go heavily into the idea of what makes coexistence with aliens possible or impossible. "Ramen" are those aliens that you can understand and deal with; "varelse" are those you can't.
Yes, the moral calculus required to care about this at all, and then the idea of applying actual numbers to it, are both beyond my grasp. I don’t care at all about a single mealworm’s suffering, and a trillion times zero is still zero. And I just can’t shake the feeling that trying to prevent the suffering of little critters whose not-suffering is apparently indistinguishable from their suffering is...not actually an effective use of one’s resources.
I think you're right that there's a dark side to this amusing piffle, which is that there *are* people (with eating disorders) who are capable of internalizing it as some degree of social approval of their distorted thinking.
I think it's hard to draw a line - if we agree that all moral people need refrain from is torturing animals, what counts as torturing animals? Many of the more persuasive arguments for refraining from animal consumption basically amount to arguing that factory farming is animal torture. That's more persuasive to me than most of the other arguments, and eating high welfare animals that get adequate space and social interaction is an alternative solution.
Of course, this reasoning doesn't just apply to mammals and birds - asphyxiating in a massive pile seems unpleasant for fish, some argue we should kill them painlessly (less stress also means the fish tastes better apparently), for much the same reason that people think we shouldn't boil lobsters alive.
Not torturing insects seems achievable since I don't think they have very complex desires, a Bug's Life notwithstanding.
I mean, most guilt and moral concern is about natural parts of life - attack, spite, revenge, and hatred are all natural parts of life, and people might still reasonably think it's a moral improvement to engage in them either somewhat less, or under different circumstances than they actually do.
This is obviously a debate that is only possible to have in a place of extreme privilege, but just because one needs privilege to think about an issue doesn't mean that the issue shouldn't be thought about.
I think one of the values of this sort of discussion is specifically to *stop* the slide you mention in the last sentence, to help people think about the issue in harm reduction terms rather than purity and bans.
"I think one of the values of this sort of discussion is specifically to *stop* the slide you mention in the last sentence, to help people think about the issue in harm reduction terms rather than purity and bans."
I'm not getting why this is a debate that comes from a place of privilege, rules around food have been part of many moral/religious traditions for millennia. Furthermore, this is an area where the industrialization of life has made revolutionary changes in the underlying material conditions, so taboos that come down to us from the pre-industrial era are not going to address the salient aspects of a situation where some portion of humanity is dealing with the problems that come with having too much food, rather than too little.
Yeah, I don't buy that this necessarily *does* come from a place of privilege, but I was replying to this comment: "caring about the abstract suffering of mealworms or crickets (both of which I've raised) just smacks of bored overprivileged navel-gazing."
Like life-changing injuries and agonizing diseases?
> We cannot convert heat or sunlight into calories ourselves.
We also "cannot" travel faster than 20mph, or fly, or breathe underwater, or communicate across thousands of miles, except that we now do all those things because we decided they were worthwhile.
Look, I love eating meat and I'm not going to stop, but it sounds like you're just making an argument from nature.
The vegetarian -> eating disorder connection is interesting and probably worth talking more about.
"We also "cannot" travel faster than 20mph, or fly, or breathe underwater, or communicate across thousands of miles, except that we now do all those things because we decided they were worthwhile."
... and we found energy sources that let us build machines to do those things, the use of which now threatens the existence of human civilization. I agree with you that an argument from nature is not really useful here, because we have been modifying nature for thousands of years, but I don't see why that means we shouldn't consider the moral and ethical dimensions of how humanity supports its existence.
"Look, I love eating meat and I'm not going to stop..."
I was a ovo-lacto-vegetarian for eight years in my 20s. I started eating meat again in the full knowledge that I could not justify doing so within my moral framework. I eat meat because biologically, I'm an omnivore and I like eating it, but I can't deny that my choices have a deleterious impact on both myself (I was a lot trimmer when I was veggie; I'm biologically attracted to energy dense foods, which is an impulse that is now evolutionarily maladaptive in a world flooded with high-fructose corn syrup) and, more importantly in a moral context, other people now living and not yet born.
I'm not sure that this is a question for which quantitative analysis is the right approach, but "Bob" bless Scott for trying to think it through.
> I started eating meat again in the full knowledge that I could not justify doing so within my moral framework.
I'd offer then that your actual moral framework is different from whatever stated moral framework you violated. This is just semantics, but to say that you knowingly, continually violate your own moral framework gives a worse implication than reality.
Since you have concerns about energy usage and the fate of humanity, I'm guessing we have different predictions about nuclear energy. For me that's an entirely separate issue, but I can see why for you they might be the same issue.
> I'm biologically attracted to energy dense foods
Meat can be pretty energy-sparse, no? If you measured calories/satiety, lean meat would rank below most carbs and fats
"to say that you knowingly, continually violate your own moral framework gives a worse implication than reality."
That's very kind of you to say, but I was born a monster in a monstrous world. If we actually took our moral frameworks seriously we would never stop throwing up. Took me about 20 years to stop being entirely paralyzed by that realization and even now, I'm not sure what to do. I try not to be a dick.
I would love for nuclear energy to pan out and some of the new designs are intriguing. If any nation had managed to establish a repository for its spent nuclear fuel over the past 70 years, I would be more sanguine about its prospects. Unless & until that happens, I'll oppose generating more high-level waste.
> Meat can be pretty energy-sparse, no? If you measured calories/satiety, lean meat would rank below most carbs and fats
Well, to add to the weird, it’s possible to use spinach leaf vein structure as a scaffold to grow cultured meat cells into a piece of meat. Presumably, the result of that is never sentient.
Some people, for example Jains, aim to avoid killing anything - including plants - so they only eat fallen fruit. In Jainism its called Ahimsa fruitarianism. (I don't know if he was being ironic or what, but notable dictator, evil despot, and all round bad guy Idi Amin claimed to have become a fruitarian while exhiled in Saudi Arabia.)
> One alternative to either plants or animals is entirely lab-grown food (I presume we can fabricate sugar from raw materials at least), but that's a last resort since it seems like it would be quite inefficient and difficult compared to raising plants.
There's a Finnish company that synthesises protein using air and solar power:
By 2025 they predict it to surpass South American soya as the cheapest source of protein. I'm quite excited about this because my biggest worry with animal agriculture is land use. Fields of solar panels take up much less land per calorie even than crops for human consumption, let alone animals, which enables a huge amount of rewilding.
Then you just calculate the expected suffering value of all your options and minimize, same as now... except no one gets to pretend their hands are *entirely* clean, which might actually make the debate easier and less factional.
“What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."
"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.
"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."
The Universe raged about him in its death throes.
"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.
"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."
"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.
"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"
"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
I almost typed "you're probably not joking but this reads like a parody" but before hitting Post I had my doubts and now I'm genuinely not sure if this is serious or meant as mockery of over-serious animal rights types.
I am raising a duck right now. They make good pets and I hope it will help my children better understand food and the circle of life. I like to think that the duck appreciates me feeding it, and will not mind making the ultimate sacrifice so that I can enjoy a nice Magret de Canard.
My sister once got her kids some chicks for Easter. I don't think eating them was the plan, but the dog went ahead and did it.
The original comment is gone, maybe I lack context, is this a joke wooshing over my head?
I can't imagine any animal just gracefully accepting its death so someone can enjoy eating it. Animals go to great lengths not to be eaten. Their expressed preference tends to be not making the ultimate sacrifice so that someone can enjoy eating them.
Except for perhaps ant species who share so much DNA with their nestmates and willingly die for the colony. But the original comment was about being so disconnected from our food supply while having a lot of choices of food. Those who are around barnyard animals seem to have less trouble eating them. Perhaps they have a different view of how little cognition is going on in a chicken brain. I am convinced my duck is living a great life, and not fearing death. She lives in the moment, and when the lights go out for her she will have no regret, and living longer would perhaps have mattered little because she has no awareness of time.
Perhaps. Cows are much more intelligent than chickens though, and pigs are often compared to dogs. Other barnyard animals aside, perhaps it's true that living longer would have mattered little to the duck, and yet, as she lives in the moment, she will clearly strive her hardest to avoid death at all costs, as best she can with her little duck brain. Doesn't that mean something?
Indeed, ants are an exception, fair enough. Though they don't accept death so someone can enjoy eating them, they accept death to defend or benefit their brethren.
It's better to have lived & lost than to have never lived at all.
One could, hypothetically, raise an animal, and, you know, just not kill and eat it.
Assuming that pigs & ducks would ever be raised in the first place if it weren't for their meat (a bad assumption IMO, in a 100% veg society I'd expect pigs to go extinct)..
One could not, hypothetically, raise an animal & let it live forever. I see the butcher's knife as being somewhat more merciful than cancer but that's also just, like, my opinion, man.
Pigs are among the least likely species imaginable to go extinct lmao
I worked with a woman that lived out beyond the exurbs of the Twin Cities she was raising two grade school kids and for the course of the spring an summer a pig. The pig became a pet to the kids but they were warned that pigs always run away in the fall.
You also have to multiply this by how easily you can actually impact the suffering. We have reasonable interventions for reducing human suffering. Any ideas on how to effectively reduce insect suffering?
good point. Also, don't forget positive utility bugs also likely have.
"Any ideas on how to effectively reduce insect suffering?"
These? https://c8.alamy.com/comp/T8NMFD/paris-france-april-27-2019-shelves-with-a-variety-of-herbicides-in-a-french-hypermarket-roundup-is-a-brand-name-of-an-herbicide-containing-glyp-T8NMFD.jpg
After all, dead insects don't suffer!
OK. Fine. Any ideas on ways to effectively reduce *net* insect suffering (i.e. suffering minus enjoyment)?
"Multiply this number by 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (number of bugs) and arrive at 1,000,000,000,000,000 suffering capacity. If I increase the number of humans on earth for the sake of simplicity to 10 billion, then the “problem of bug suffering” is 100,000 times more important than the problem of human suffering."
No. If there were a skillion gazillion bugs alive on earth and only one human, the human's worth outweighs them all.
This entire discussion is very interesting, because there are a whole range of opinions on the entire spectrum from "are you freakin' nuts?" to "I make Jains look like the Golden Horde on a particularly virulent tear" being expressed, and it's fascinating to get a peep into a completely different way of thinking. So that's good!
Because bugs can't write Mozart's Die Zauberfloete. Not even a gazillion of them, working together.
No, I'm not a musician. But in my field I can do things that are at least comparable, in terms of creativity and beauty. And far beyond what any number of bugs could do.
Also, now that I think of it, I can appreciate Die Zauberfloete, and that is important, because it gives meaning to Mozart's work. Bugs not only can't author Mozart, they can't appreciate it.
>farm with hundreds of trillions of happy ants
I liked it more when it was rats on heroin.
What are the odds it's just heroin?
Everyone will be ok. X
What would the world be without the asinine pleasure of tortured comparisons?
In my opinion, to be clear, it would be stodgier and less fun. You, however, might prefer such a world; that is your right.
At least we don't have to worry about comparisons being conscious enough to suffer. I hope.
Do you think you could state clearly the rule that Scott broke? I try hard not to do anything that would hurt somebody's feelings, and I didn't even realize that was a possibility with this... maybe I'm just dense. But, obviously, you think he made a serious error. I'd like to be able to avoid anybody having that reaction to something I might write.
I don't think being upset by comparing Jews to bugs can fairly be called being "easily" hurt.
I'm not going to comment on whether Scott made an error in this instance, as I'm not Jewish, so can't really say whether it's hurtful to Jewish people, but as a general rule, if you would like to avoid hurting people's feelings, it is a good idea not to compare people of some ethnicity to vermin (rats, bugs, cockroaches), even obliquely. Comparing certain ethnic groups to vermin is a practice that has been historically (even in recent history) associated with some really terrible things, and if you are not sure if you can do it kindly, it's best to avoid doing it at all.
Im Jewish. It wasn't hurtful to me and I don't know where one finds the "rule" Scott is supposed to have broke. But I am definitely after this whole post starting to wonder if there is such a thing as too rational.
Scott is also Jewish, so has a J word pass
> if you would like to avoid hurting people's feelings,
at a certain point here, this is a lost cause, unless you start with a standard of:
"i wish to avoid hurting the feelings of people who make a point of moderating their own emotions, and therefore avoid take offense where it isn't intended"
You are sayimg you know u or someone has feelongs you know I am moderating? I think this is the last time i read the comments section. This whole thing has devolved into nonsense.
Meant i not you. Bye folks. Silly.
He didn't mean it the way you're taking it. For one thing, he's Jewish himself. For another thing, he's writing for us robots, so he doesn't say one thing and mean another like regular people do.
Yes, please. There already are no places for us robots to go in the world where everything is considered "offensive" and no one is allowed to actually mean what they say and not some imagined "offence" behind it. Don't destroy the last of the few remaining places where one can just be rational without playing the tiring mind games that constitute 90% of communication that "normal people" engage in.
Is this true, kind, and necessary?
It's definitely unkind. I think you could make the argument that pointing out the PR issues with the comparison is both true and necessary, but given how needlessly antagonistic he's being I personally don't feel the need to cut him a lot of slack.
Taking 'go' literally:
High vs low decouplers (I'm assuming you're a high-decoupler by the way you connotationally overloaded 'compare'): https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8fnch2/high_decouplers_and_low_decouplers/
The absurdity heuristic can fail even on really absurd sounding stuff: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/atcJqdhCxTZiJSxo2/talking-snakes-a-cautionary-tale
And I guess something something Overton window and moral circle expansion?
When taken out of context as "Scott compares Jews to bugs" it sounds bad, but I think it's eminently clear from the context that the comparison is being used to raise the status of insects, not lower the status of Jews.
Perhaps. The unintended consequence (while not a big deal) is a funny nexus of tension that HE would be well equipped to examine. But it ain’t not there.
Less of this, please.
Seconded
But will you live in the pod?
I stayed in a capsule hotel once, it was nice.
Is this a Moldbug reference -- the VR pods and bug burritos thing? Or something else?
There's a meme about liberals wanting you to live in a pod and eat bugs. The title of this post is a reference to it.
it's less about liberals wanting those things, and more about viewing them as necessary to avert climate disaster, so the whole meme is pointing at liberals' enthusiastic willingness to curtail individual freedom in the face of collective threat.
Eating insects has other benefits, namely the very good nutritional value and the substantial lack of sugar and saturated fats - the Hitlers of nutrition
(I pressed post while trying to go the last word, oh well)
I get that it is not morally relevant but it feels as if it should play some role in the individual decision process, like, giving up red meat is good for ethics, the environment AND yourself. This is different.
I'm reminded of the story/ urban legend that when vegetarian Indians moved to England, they found that their diet was lacking in essential nutrients, because the English flour had fewer bugs in it compared to Indian flour. (I couldn't find a reference in a quick search.)
I'm not convinced this is relevant. There are other foods that are good nutritionally, but get processed with added sugars to sell better. why wouldn't this also happen with insects?
It's just a few steps away from the obvious truth "Surely it would be worth to kill one insect to produce an immortality pill". Should insect diet turn out to be much healthier for us, it would make the ethical case for not killing insects a bit weaker.
sure.. but i mean, broccoli exists, but people only seem to eat it if it gets deep fried and dipped in sugar.. yes its an exageration, the point is just that there are lots of healthy foods that we somehow manage to make unhealthy. i dont think access or existence is the barrier.
I agree, Candied Crickets will be in every grocery store if the West ever gets over it's insect eating taboo.
It's an odd year, saturated fat is good for you again.
It took me way to long to figure out your choice of picture for the post (rof13: Znegva Yhgure ng gur Qvrg bs Jbezf ).
*slow clap*
Would eating worms be morally better or worse than eating insects? I'm not a vermologist, but I think some of the creatures we call worms don't even have brains.
For anyone as lazy as me, handy link to convert that: https://rot13.com/
Relatedly, it seems surprisingly hard to view the picture for the post I'm looking at. It doesn't show up in the email, or on the post itself. To view it I have to go to another page on the site that links back to this post. Am I missing something or is that just the way it is? It doesn't seem like the way it should me.
Same here. It would be nice to have the picture above or below the headline. Also to quicker identify open tabs with ACX posts.
Jake, I was feeling pretty smug about getting that reference myself. I was raised in the Lutheran Church. They tell me now that Luther probably didn't say "Here I stand, I can do no other" during that interview. Too bad, it's a really good line.
But you can't just count every farmed animal as having suffered an amount proportional to its neuron count. Surely, factory farmed insects live a hell of a lot less long than factory farmed cows do, and thus suffer a lot less long. How do they compare in terms of [neuron count]x[lifespan]? Ideally we should also be multiplying by suffering intensity, but that's harder to judge.
I did make the mistake of not thinking about this, but now that I am thinking about it, I think they might have roughly similar lifespans. See eg https://www.treehugger.com/how-long-do-chickens-live-4859423, which suggests broiler chickens are killed at 7 weeks old, and https://bugible.com/2018/03/20/how-to-farm-your-own-mealworms/, which suggests a few weeks to months for mealworms.
Yeah, I think it's relevant that bugs are generally much more adapted to cramped, crowded, dank, dark conditions than larger animals. Those mealworms might feel fine their whole lives!
The biggest issues would be (a) not allowing the animal to complete its life cycle and (b) the method of execution. When I've raised mealworms for other animals, the execution method was drowning, and they certainly do wriggle as if they're in distress (although what is reflex and what is agony?). Not sure how huge operations do it.
They freeze dry them, at least the brands I've bought. I'm assuming the first step of this is IQF (send them through a stream of liquid nitrogen) because otherwise they would clump, which is not the case.
If I'm right, then current methods are as close to instant death as it gets. Otherwise, this could be easily implemented.
We need a measure for net [pleasure-suffering]. All those neurons are not registering pain all the time.
But it would make a difference for mealworms vs. cows though, right?
Also, while I think I can broadly sketch out what a 'good' or 'bad' life is for a cow, I'm not sure I can do the same for a mealworm. How possible is it that farmed insects are not 'suffering' proportionately as much as other farmed animals, because their requirements for a 'good life are much simpler and more easily met in a factory farm?
I'm perfectly happy if mealworms are farmed to feed chickens, and then I eat the chicken. And the worms get their turn in the end:
Hamlet:
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
I would think that would come out in the wash. It's not [neuron count] x [lifespan] that matters, because if the farming is ongoing, each time one mealworm dies it is replaced by another on the farm. So it's [neuron count] x [lifespan] x [#lifespans per unit time], but [#lifespans per unit time] = 1/[lifespan], so the second two terms cancel out and we're left with just neurons.
I mean you really care about [suffering]/[calorie]. This comes out to something like [suffering]/[animal]*[animals]/[calorie], or [neurons]*[lifespan]/([calories/animal]).
So what does this debate look like if it turns out plants qualify as conscious, as some scientists have argued?
Then we'll just have to start eating hufflepuffs, as there's no question regarding their moral worth.
I really wish I could like substack comments.
You're funny
A perfect example of why I'm glad we mostly don't have them. Silly throwaway references to hpmor are seasoning, not substance.
In the future, I will restrain my wit, for all of our sakes. 😆
No you really don't.
You can, in general. Even in this specific case, the functionality is still there, only hidden. There are ways to re-add it (the one I've found is here https://github.com/Pycea/ACX-tweaks - note that I do not use it and do not vouch for it).
Surely only when we run out of muggles
It's not a real food unless there's an associated scarcity.
The problem is that the calories that we get from eating animals ultimately come from plants, so either we're eating the plants or the cows are. In fact, there are calories lost in that process from all the activity that the cows engage in before we eat them, so it'd kill more total plant-calorie for us to eat cows than directly eat plants. There's also the same question with fewer-small-plants (grass, hay, which cows tend to eat) versus the larger plants (broccoli for example, which humans tend to eat). Perhaps we should only eat leaves from trees? Or are trees more conscious, so indirectly eating grass is better?
Though we also have to ask what plant *suffering* looks like - perhaps conscious plants really enjoy being picked? The main problem with eating animals is the conditions that those animals are raised in, and I'm not sure that applies to plants. Factory farmed chickens clearly have horrible lives but corn plants on farm seem to have pretty nice lives, as far as plant lives go.
One alternative to either plants or animals is entirely lab-grown food (I presume we can fabricate sugar from raw materials at least), but that's a last resort since it seems like it would be quite inefficient and difficult compared to raising plants.
I suppose I should I have made it more obvious I was asking facetiously...I think the whole debate is silly. I don't get the guilt over a natural part of life. We are inextricably linked into the food chain. We cannot convert heat or sunlight into calories ourselves. This forces us to consume something that can (or something that ate something that can). Everything we eat--plant, insect, mammal, fish--is alive. Some, possibly all, has some amount of consciousness.
Yeah, we shouldn't torture animals, but caring about the abstract suffering of mealworms or crickets (both of which I've raised) just smacks of bored overprivileged navel-gazing. And it reminds me way too much of eating disorder recovery, and people going vegetarian -> vegan -> oh wait no I can't eat anything because eating is immoral.
I don't fully disagree with you, in fact; there really isn't much point in worrying about insect suffering when you can barely get idiots like the commenter quoted by Scott to care about obviously conscious beings like dogs; but I think that shows why the argument here is necessary — if you don't, you'll just get people going "hurr durr but what's the difference between a chicken and a bug?!". As if you couldn't make the exact same argument against caring about killing *humans*.
There is at least one criterion that rules most humans in and the vast majority of animals out, which is the criterion of negotiation. Humans are at least capable of negotiating in good faith.
Why does this matter? Because something that can't negotiate in good faith is something you can *only* coexist with from a position of strength; it is a permanent enemy if you cannot defeat it and you have different goals, the same way a paperclip maximiser is. There is *no way* to treat flies as equals - you can, at best, make them your pampered slaves.
I havn't come across this argument before, and I find it deeply interesting... on the face of it its a light bulb moment for me (but that might be because I have only just come across it) ... off to search the interwebs for a more thourgh (can never spell that) discussion of it. Thank you!
The terms "ramen" and "varelse" (in conjunction) might find you something (though probably not everything around this); they're borrowed from the sequels to Ender's Game (which in turn borrow the words themselves from Swedish), which go heavily into the idea of what makes coexistence with aliens possible or impossible. "Ramen" are those aliens that you can understand and deal with; "varelse" are those you can't.
Yes, the moral calculus required to care about this at all, and then the idea of applying actual numbers to it, are both beyond my grasp. I don’t care at all about a single mealworm’s suffering, and a trillion times zero is still zero. And I just can’t shake the feeling that trying to prevent the suffering of little critters whose not-suffering is apparently indistinguishable from their suffering is...not actually an effective use of one’s resources.
I think you're right that there's a dark side to this amusing piffle, which is that there *are* people (with eating disorders) who are capable of internalizing it as some degree of social approval of their distorted thinking.
I think it's hard to draw a line - if we agree that all moral people need refrain from is torturing animals, what counts as torturing animals? Many of the more persuasive arguments for refraining from animal consumption basically amount to arguing that factory farming is animal torture. That's more persuasive to me than most of the other arguments, and eating high welfare animals that get adequate space and social interaction is an alternative solution.
Of course, this reasoning doesn't just apply to mammals and birds - asphyxiating in a massive pile seems unpleasant for fish, some argue we should kill them painlessly (less stress also means the fish tastes better apparently), for much the same reason that people think we shouldn't boil lobsters alive.
Not torturing insects seems achievable since I don't think they have very complex desires, a Bug's Life notwithstanding.
I mean, most guilt and moral concern is about natural parts of life - attack, spite, revenge, and hatred are all natural parts of life, and people might still reasonably think it's a moral improvement to engage in them either somewhat less, or under different circumstances than they actually do.
This is obviously a debate that is only possible to have in a place of extreme privilege, but just because one needs privilege to think about an issue doesn't mean that the issue shouldn't be thought about.
I think one of the values of this sort of discussion is specifically to *stop* the slide you mention in the last sentence, to help people think about the issue in harm reduction terms rather than purity and bans.
"I think one of the values of this sort of discussion is specifically to *stop* the slide you mention in the last sentence, to help people think about the issue in harm reduction terms rather than purity and bans."
I'm not getting why this is a debate that comes from a place of privilege, rules around food have been part of many moral/religious traditions for millennia. Furthermore, this is an area where the industrialization of life has made revolutionary changes in the underlying material conditions, so taboos that come down to us from the pre-industrial era are not going to address the salient aspects of a situation where some portion of humanity is dealing with the problems that come with having too much food, rather than too little.
Yeah, I don't buy that this necessarily *does* come from a place of privilege, but I was replying to this comment: "caring about the abstract suffering of mealworms or crickets (both of which I've raised) just smacks of bored overprivileged navel-gazing."
> a natural part of life.
Like life-changing injuries and agonizing diseases?
> We cannot convert heat or sunlight into calories ourselves.
We also "cannot" travel faster than 20mph, or fly, or breathe underwater, or communicate across thousands of miles, except that we now do all those things because we decided they were worthwhile.
Look, I love eating meat and I'm not going to stop, but it sounds like you're just making an argument from nature.
The vegetarian -> eating disorder connection is interesting and probably worth talking more about.
"We also "cannot" travel faster than 20mph, or fly, or breathe underwater, or communicate across thousands of miles, except that we now do all those things because we decided they were worthwhile."
... and we found energy sources that let us build machines to do those things, the use of which now threatens the existence of human civilization. I agree with you that an argument from nature is not really useful here, because we have been modifying nature for thousands of years, but I don't see why that means we shouldn't consider the moral and ethical dimensions of how humanity supports its existence.
"Look, I love eating meat and I'm not going to stop..."
I was a ovo-lacto-vegetarian for eight years in my 20s. I started eating meat again in the full knowledge that I could not justify doing so within my moral framework. I eat meat because biologically, I'm an omnivore and I like eating it, but I can't deny that my choices have a deleterious impact on both myself (I was a lot trimmer when I was veggie; I'm biologically attracted to energy dense foods, which is an impulse that is now evolutionarily maladaptive in a world flooded with high-fructose corn syrup) and, more importantly in a moral context, other people now living and not yet born.
I'm not sure that this is a question for which quantitative analysis is the right approach, but "Bob" bless Scott for trying to think it through.
> I started eating meat again in the full knowledge that I could not justify doing so within my moral framework.
I'd offer then that your actual moral framework is different from whatever stated moral framework you violated. This is just semantics, but to say that you knowingly, continually violate your own moral framework gives a worse implication than reality.
Since you have concerns about energy usage and the fate of humanity, I'm guessing we have different predictions about nuclear energy. For me that's an entirely separate issue, but I can see why for you they might be the same issue.
> I'm biologically attracted to energy dense foods
Meat can be pretty energy-sparse, no? If you measured calories/satiety, lean meat would rank below most carbs and fats
"to say that you knowingly, continually violate your own moral framework gives a worse implication than reality."
That's very kind of you to say, but I was born a monster in a monstrous world. If we actually took our moral frameworks seriously we would never stop throwing up. Took me about 20 years to stop being entirely paralyzed by that realization and even now, I'm not sure what to do. I try not to be a dick.
I would love for nuclear energy to pan out and some of the new designs are intriguing. If any nation had managed to establish a repository for its spent nuclear fuel over the past 70 years, I would be more sanguine about its prospects. Unless & until that happens, I'll oppose generating more high-level waste.
> Meat can be pretty energy-sparse, no? If you measured calories/satiety, lean meat would rank below most carbs and fats
Fair enough, but lean meat tastes terrible.
Well, to add to the weird, it’s possible to use spinach leaf vein structure as a scaffold to grow cultured meat cells into a piece of meat. Presumably, the result of that is never sentient.
Some people, for example Jains, aim to avoid killing anything - including plants - so they only eat fallen fruit. In Jainism its called Ahimsa fruitarianism. (I don't know if he was being ironic or what, but notable dictator, evil despot, and all round bad guy Idi Amin claimed to have become a fruitarian while exhiled in Saudi Arabia.)
> One alternative to either plants or animals is entirely lab-grown food (I presume we can fabricate sugar from raw materials at least), but that's a last resort since it seems like it would be quite inefficient and difficult compared to raising plants.
There's a Finnish company that synthesises protein using air and solar power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods
By 2025 they predict it to surpass South American soya as the cheapest source of protein. I'm quite excited about this because my biggest worry with animal agriculture is land use. Fields of solar panels take up much less land per calorie even than crops for human consumption, let alone animals, which enables a huge amount of rewilding.
Er, come again?
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/plants-are-they-conscious/
I haven't really looked into it, but I've heard of it. No idea how serious this is.
Then you just calculate the expected suffering value of all your options and minimize, same as now... except no one gets to pretend their hands are *entirely* clean, which might actually make the debate easier and less factional.
“What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."
"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.
"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."
The Universe raged about him in its death throes.
"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.
"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."
"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.
"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"
"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
I almost typed "you're probably not joking but this reads like a parody" but before hitting Post I had my doubts and now I'm genuinely not sure if this is serious or meant as mockery of over-serious animal rights types.
Do you come here often?
lmao.
This is Scott following his thoughts down the randomly selected rabbit hole of the day.
Completely serious arguments said with a silly tone.
Diffractor, you hit the nail on the head. The combination is what makes these sorts of discussions fun--and sometimes very funny.
"Most people are only about as moral as the average of the other people they hear about and interact with."
Very well put.