[content note: cannibalism, torture and murder of babies, factory farming, horrifying thought experiments. These content warnings are not dire bullshit.] I. The argument that it is wrong to kill animals is perhaps made most eloquently in omnivore Neil Gaiman’s short story Babycakes (video of him reading it
>There is a very high risk farmed animal species go extinct.
Not a chance. Hobbyists are already keeping heritage farm animal breeds alive even though they aren't economically viable anymore. In an all-vegan world there would be enough pig hobbyists to keep pigs from going extinct, just because they like pigs even if they aren't allowed to eat them. Just like how people keep heritage pigs today. See e.g. https://www.rbst.org.uk/ for the effort and funding that is already put into this. A single dedicated millionaire with a big ranch could probably afford to keep the pig species from extinction all by themselves if they wanted to.
(For pigs, we have the entire mini pig phenomena. These breeds are pets that aren't used for meat at all. As long as pets are still allowed these breeds would be totally safe from extinction in vegan-world. )
If voluntary effort isn't enough, then we can just use subsidized zoos. Keeping a couple of thousand of farm animals alive in zoos with humane conditions sounds very cheap, and we do it already for undomesticated animals. Petting zoos are popular, I can't imagine the would be less so in vegan-world. Saving farm animals from extinction would be seen as preserving our cultural heritage, just like how governments today subsidize the preservation of heritage breeds.
Also, farm animals are needed to preserve an open rural landscape with meadows etc. so they would be kept for that as well. The Swiss will not let every single one of their famous alpine pastures that are beloved by tourists and locals alike turn to brush forest just because they aren't allowed to eat cows anymore.
Also, people will still want to occasionally buy milk and eggs even if prices are tens or a hundreds times as expensive as today because of extremely strict animal welfare laws. Demand would shrink a lot of course, but it wouldn't hit zero. Some consumers are millionaires who eat crazy expensive stuff occasional anyway. Normal people will want to eat traditional dishes occasionally, maybe for holidays or as a rare treat. The Swiss wouldn't give up on real cheese fondue forever even if it was ten times as expensive, it would just be a rarer treat (and the cows would be there anyway per my previous points).
Finally, there would always be a niche market for live farm animals for historical movies and reenactments etc. There would also be niche markets for dead animals and animal parts (that have died from natural causes of course in vegan-world). Likely this market alone would be enough to save most farm animal species from extinction, but it seems like the least important factor of the ones I've listed.
Came here to make this comment and you put it way better than me. I would expect a massive decline in the population of most farm animal species in an all-vegan world, but I've never found "fewer living things is bad because living is good" compelling.
Literally one of my life goals is to run a hobby farm. I follow a lot of Instagram accounts of people who do this. Pigs may never achieve the spread of cats and dogs (which is probably good given how badly we handle them), but the risk of extinction seems vanishingly small.
Maybe I'm forgetting some of the horrifying details of house House Elf brains work in Harry Potter cannon, but the thought of sterilizing all the House Elves seems pretty horrifying to me? I guess there's not (AFAICT) any real canon about how House Elves feel about starting families, maybe they have no independent drive to do so apart from being told to by their masters.
The bit about dogs reminds me of something I read in a Frans de Waal book, where he stated that we've researched dog intelligence more thoroughly than any other nonhuman animal, not because we have any reason to believe that dogs are more intelligent than any other animal or that information about dog intelligence would be especially valuable, but because a dog is the only animal that will willingly stick its head into a running MRI machine on a human's say-so. I've always looked a bit askance at people who say that dogs are their favorite animal, because it feels like a kind of anthropocentric narcissism to look at the entire incredible breadth of the animal kingdom and declare that the one that's been specifically and deliberately altered for maximum utility and servility is the best one.
Going to the "domesticated animals must be property" argument - I see the point, but I think a more accurate phrasing is "domesticated animals must be dependent on humans for their well-being." That's not the same as being property. Babies and children clearly depend on humans, and I'd argue adult humans can't live without the food, industry, and culture produced by other humans. Left alone, most humans would starve and go crazy, not necessarily in that order. But I don't see that and think "wow making humans is evil because humans depend on other humans for existence."
Since dogs have been bred to enjoy following orders, they're an extreme case, but even there many people think of themselves as their dog's caretaker or companion, despite the clear dependency. And ever dog I've ever had has clearly had its own goals and interests which don't always equal doing what I want. Many people view their dogs as friends and value them over other humans. I suppose someone gung ho on this front would say it's all a delusion and the inherent power imbalance means this can never be a true relationship. I'll just say people who think that way seem unlikely to have really reflected on their human relationships, as shades of the same dynamic play out readily. Symbiotic relationships aren't evil.
I'm happy to see the Good Place meme. Probably the most philosophical television series ever. And its conclusion is supportive of Nussbaum's thesis: "Death is bad because it disrupts our life projects." When the characters are done with their projects - when Jason achieves a perfect score in Madden Football - they move on.
If everyone was vegan, I think farmed animal populations would obviously crater, but it seems incredibly unlikely they'd go extinct? Some people already keep them as pets (not cows so much admittedly), and in petting zoos; if their numbers got so low they were endangered, they would probably be kept in normal zoos as well because they'd be more special, and deliberately bred by conservationists (which, unlike some endangered species, is a completely solved problem.)
I don't think the attempt to completely dismiss humane farming as a possibility is very convincing. In the article you link to, the author says "At the California egg farm I visited, the devil was in the details. Despite the pastoral scenery...I saw many cases of Marek’s, a highly contagious disease that had led to partial blindness in many of them; swollen abdomens, some with over a pound of fluid buildup in their less-than-five-pound body; and lice."
*People* lived with lice for millennia and I don't think it made their lives worthless. Same for people living with diseases. I am okay with eating meat and eggs from pastured chickens even if some of them get diseases and mites, because that seems pretty congruent with a baseline natural lifestyle for these birds. I think it's very possible to make incremental improvements in animal welfare standards, such as California has recently done with pigs--there's definitely more room for progress there, but vegan advocates who go hardline against the very possibility of ethical farming seem to me to be working from an "ick" response rather than a rational one.
[Epistemic status: "my guess at where my ethics would shake out if I considered them really carefully" rather than "strongly held moral convictions" - in practice, I want to be more cautious than this for reasons of moral uncertainty and avoid doing things that are extremely bad by many people's lights. CW for more horrifying thought experiments.]
I think I'm pretty happy to bite the bullet on farming high-welfare babies, if you assume away all of the bits of modern society where this would cause injury to lots of non-baby humans.
On my ethics, the things that make death bad are (1) the experience of dying itself; (2) fewer positive experiences in the world when they're gone; (3) the impacts on the lives of those around them; (4) the violation of preferences, either terminally for being alive or for completion of some goals* they won't get to see.
In the animal farming case, (1) is often present but doesn't have to be negative-valence with humane methods, (2) doesn't apply since populations are kept roughly constant, (3) mostly doesn't apply outside of really really scope-sensitive bystanders**, and (4) seems unlikely in most farmed animals to me since it seems like "having a coherent notion of one's own future self" is a cognitive prerequisite that isn't met. The same would be true in the baby-farming case, *if* we make the (really large!) assumption that the surrounding society is okay with this and none of these babies' deaths lead to grief-stricken family members, etc.
For a less charged analogy than babies, I can consider myself in a cognitively-limited state, like when I've halfway woken up from a dream and am very groggy with a poor hold on reality. I think groggy!Drake is a moral patient whose experiences matter - it's bad to hurt me, even if I'd forget it later - but if I were to be permanently restricted to that capacity, it would no longer be morally wrong to replace me with a similarly-happy person in the same state (up to the preferences of people around me who might object, or for reasons of cooperation with other ethical systems).
*The goals have to reside in the animal's own brain, though. You don't get the project of "growing up" when Martha Nussbaum decides to assign it to you, only when you personally decide that you want the future to go a certain way.
**With an exception for animals with strong social or familial bonds, where it seems like the animals experience distress upon the disappearance of their friend/child/parent/etc. I'd be interested in any studies people have run on this, especially in otherwise high-welfare contexts, since I'm pretty unsure what the magnitude of this effect looks like.
Interesting post, thank you for writing it! Aligns with a lot of my thoughts, though I don't find the "project" thing very persuasive (it just seems like a way to make "preference not to die" more tangible, so that it *feels* more persuasive when it's ultimately the same thing). Relatedly, the bit about animals having no strong preference for their species' survival beyond their own seems wrong to me. That is, they might not have a broader concept of "the species", but I do think a lot of animals, insofar as they have a life-project, do really want to get the chance to reproduce; and their offspring will want to reproduce as well; and so onwards.
>There is a very high risk farmed animal species go extinct.
Not a chance. Hobbyists are already keeping heritage farm animal breeds alive even though they aren't economically viable anymore. In an all-vegan world there would be enough pig hobbyists to keep pigs from going extinct, just because they like pigs even if they aren't allowed to eat them. Just like how people keep heritage pigs today. See e.g. https://www.rbst.org.uk/ for the effort and funding that is already put into this. A single dedicated millionaire with a big ranch could probably afford to keep the pig species from extinction all by themselves if they wanted to.
(For pigs, we have the entire mini pig phenomena. These breeds are pets that aren't used for meat at all. As long as pets are still allowed these breeds would be totally safe from extinction in vegan-world. )
If voluntary effort isn't enough, then we can just use subsidized zoos. Keeping a couple of thousand of farm animals alive in zoos with humane conditions sounds very cheap, and we do it already for undomesticated animals. Petting zoos are popular, I can't imagine the would be less so in vegan-world. Saving farm animals from extinction would be seen as preserving our cultural heritage, just like how governments today subsidize the preservation of heritage breeds.
Also, farm animals are needed to preserve an open rural landscape with meadows etc. so they would be kept for that as well. The Swiss will not let every single one of their famous alpine pastures that are beloved by tourists and locals alike turn to brush forest just because they aren't allowed to eat cows anymore.
Also, people will still want to occasionally buy milk and eggs even if prices are tens or a hundreds times as expensive as today because of extremely strict animal welfare laws. Demand would shrink a lot of course, but it wouldn't hit zero. Some consumers are millionaires who eat crazy expensive stuff occasional anyway. Normal people will want to eat traditional dishes occasionally, maybe for holidays or as a rare treat. The Swiss wouldn't give up on real cheese fondue forever even if it was ten times as expensive, it would just be a rarer treat (and the cows would be there anyway per my previous points).
Finally, there would always be a niche market for live farm animals for historical movies and reenactments etc. There would also be niche markets for dead animals and animal parts (that have died from natural causes of course in vegan-world). Likely this market alone would be enough to save most farm animal species from extinction, but it seems like the least important factor of the ones I've listed.
Came here to make this comment and you put it way better than me. I would expect a massive decline in the population of most farm animal species in an all-vegan world, but I've never found "fewer living things is bad because living is good" compelling.
Literally one of my life goals is to run a hobby farm. I follow a lot of Instagram accounts of people who do this. Pigs may never achieve the spread of cats and dogs (which is probably good given how badly we handle them), but the risk of extinction seems vanishingly small.
Maybe I'm forgetting some of the horrifying details of house House Elf brains work in Harry Potter cannon, but the thought of sterilizing all the House Elves seems pretty horrifying to me? I guess there's not (AFAICT) any real canon about how House Elves feel about starting families, maybe they have no independent drive to do so apart from being told to by their masters.
The bit about dogs reminds me of something I read in a Frans de Waal book, where he stated that we've researched dog intelligence more thoroughly than any other nonhuman animal, not because we have any reason to believe that dogs are more intelligent than any other animal or that information about dog intelligence would be especially valuable, but because a dog is the only animal that will willingly stick its head into a running MRI machine on a human's say-so. I've always looked a bit askance at people who say that dogs are their favorite animal, because it feels like a kind of anthropocentric narcissism to look at the entire incredible breadth of the animal kingdom and declare that the one that's been specifically and deliberately altered for maximum utility and servility is the best one.
Going to the "domesticated animals must be property" argument - I see the point, but I think a more accurate phrasing is "domesticated animals must be dependent on humans for their well-being." That's not the same as being property. Babies and children clearly depend on humans, and I'd argue adult humans can't live without the food, industry, and culture produced by other humans. Left alone, most humans would starve and go crazy, not necessarily in that order. But I don't see that and think "wow making humans is evil because humans depend on other humans for existence."
Since dogs have been bred to enjoy following orders, they're an extreme case, but even there many people think of themselves as their dog's caretaker or companion, despite the clear dependency. And ever dog I've ever had has clearly had its own goals and interests which don't always equal doing what I want. Many people view their dogs as friends and value them over other humans. I suppose someone gung ho on this front would say it's all a delusion and the inherent power imbalance means this can never be a true relationship. I'll just say people who think that way seem unlikely to have really reflected on their human relationships, as shades of the same dynamic play out readily. Symbiotic relationships aren't evil.
I'm happy to see the Good Place meme. Probably the most philosophical television series ever. And its conclusion is supportive of Nussbaum's thesis: "Death is bad because it disrupts our life projects." When the characters are done with their projects - when Jason achieves a perfect score in Madden Football - they move on.
If everyone was vegan, I think farmed animal populations would obviously crater, but it seems incredibly unlikely they'd go extinct? Some people already keep them as pets (not cows so much admittedly), and in petting zoos; if their numbers got so low they were endangered, they would probably be kept in normal zoos as well because they'd be more special, and deliberately bred by conservationists (which, unlike some endangered species, is a completely solved problem.)
I don't think the attempt to completely dismiss humane farming as a possibility is very convincing. In the article you link to, the author says "At the California egg farm I visited, the devil was in the details. Despite the pastoral scenery...I saw many cases of Marek’s, a highly contagious disease that had led to partial blindness in many of them; swollen abdomens, some with over a pound of fluid buildup in their less-than-five-pound body; and lice."
*People* lived with lice for millennia and I don't think it made their lives worthless. Same for people living with diseases. I am okay with eating meat and eggs from pastured chickens even if some of them get diseases and mites, because that seems pretty congruent with a baseline natural lifestyle for these birds. I think it's very possible to make incremental improvements in animal welfare standards, such as California has recently done with pigs--there's definitely more room for progress there, but vegan advocates who go hardline against the very possibility of ethical farming seem to me to be working from an "ick" response rather than a rational one.
[Epistemic status: "my guess at where my ethics would shake out if I considered them really carefully" rather than "strongly held moral convictions" - in practice, I want to be more cautious than this for reasons of moral uncertainty and avoid doing things that are extremely bad by many people's lights. CW for more horrifying thought experiments.]
I think I'm pretty happy to bite the bullet on farming high-welfare babies, if you assume away all of the bits of modern society where this would cause injury to lots of non-baby humans.
On my ethics, the things that make death bad are (1) the experience of dying itself; (2) fewer positive experiences in the world when they're gone; (3) the impacts on the lives of those around them; (4) the violation of preferences, either terminally for being alive or for completion of some goals* they won't get to see.
In the animal farming case, (1) is often present but doesn't have to be negative-valence with humane methods, (2) doesn't apply since populations are kept roughly constant, (3) mostly doesn't apply outside of really really scope-sensitive bystanders**, and (4) seems unlikely in most farmed animals to me since it seems like "having a coherent notion of one's own future self" is a cognitive prerequisite that isn't met. The same would be true in the baby-farming case, *if* we make the (really large!) assumption that the surrounding society is okay with this and none of these babies' deaths lead to grief-stricken family members, etc.
For a less charged analogy than babies, I can consider myself in a cognitively-limited state, like when I've halfway woken up from a dream and am very groggy with a poor hold on reality. I think groggy!Drake is a moral patient whose experiences matter - it's bad to hurt me, even if I'd forget it later - but if I were to be permanently restricted to that capacity, it would no longer be morally wrong to replace me with a similarly-happy person in the same state (up to the preferences of people around me who might object, or for reasons of cooperation with other ethical systems).
*The goals have to reside in the animal's own brain, though. You don't get the project of "growing up" when Martha Nussbaum decides to assign it to you, only when you personally decide that you want the future to go a certain way.
**With an exception for animals with strong social or familial bonds, where it seems like the animals experience distress upon the disappearance of their friend/child/parent/etc. I'd be interested in any studies people have run on this, especially in otherwise high-welfare contexts, since I'm pretty unsure what the magnitude of this effect looks like.
Regarding the "life project" thing -- I feel like I should point out my old post on "goal thinking vs desire thinking": https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iWJ5kzeqvx4kvB527/goal-thinking-vs-desire-thinking
(It's really surprising to me how many people seem to find what I called "goal thinking" to be unnatural...)
I think I'm much less against killing babies and making House Elves than you are.
Interesting post, thank you for writing it! Aligns with a lot of my thoughts, though I don't find the "project" thing very persuasive (it just seems like a way to make "preference not to die" more tangible, so that it *feels* more persuasive when it's ultimately the same thing). Relatedly, the bit about animals having no strong preference for their species' survival beyond their own seems wrong to me. That is, they might not have a broader concept of "the species", but I do think a lot of animals, insofar as they have a life-project, do really want to get the chance to reproduce; and their offspring will want to reproduce as well; and so onwards.