A somewhat disturbing problem is that there may be a direct conflict between saving poor humans and caring about the welfare of animals. This is not the well-known problem of prioritizing, that it may be rational for a utilitarian to spend all one's resources on a single cause, ignoring other causes. Rather the problem is that (according to Gaverick, in conversation) better health and thus wealth among the poor increases their meat eating. So saving human lives may lead to the loss of many animal lives.

For a utilitarian the question is not about lives but rather about pleasure/pain (or preferences). According to Gaverick increases in consumption will lead to increased factory farming. Given the assumption that factory farming leads to more suffering than pleasure, perhaps much more, we get the conclusion that the more effective human charities (charities targeting poor humans) are the more disutility we will get.

This especially relates to effective mechanisms for charity such as GWWC which get considerable support among many utilitarians. Although it has seemed to me earlier that it is more important to use one's own resources on other matters, such as avoidance of existential risk and reducing suffering among animals I still supported effective human charities very much. After all, it seemed like their work was very good, even if not optimal. Better to save many human lives, than doing nothing. It also seemed possible to get some low hanging fruit by convincing people who would not be prepared to contribute to other causes to give to human charities. But if there really is a conflict such efforts are worse than useless - they are harmful.

There is some relevant information regarding the problem in this article-summary: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 074425.htm

The authors argue that poor people need more meat to get better health. They also predict an increased milk consumption (and presumably meat consumption) in the developing world:

"The authors note, for example, that although annual consumption of milk in the developing world is expected by 2050 to rise from an average of 44 to 78 kilograms per person, this is still far less than the 202 kilos per person consumed today in wealthy countries."

One interesting point is that most of the contemporary animal-farming in poorer parts of the world seem to be small scale. Plausibly, these animals suffer far less than factory farmed animals, and may even produce positively to the total happiness (unless outweighed by wild animals).

"According to the ILRI study, most livestock operations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are far from industrial. Livestock are either raised on small farms where they feed largely on leaves, stalks and other non-edible remains of food crops, or are herded over marginal lands unsuited for crop cultivation by pastoralists in search of grass."

But perhaps increased meat consumption among the poor will in any case primarily lead to increased factory farming, and not small scale farming (Gaverick seemed to think so). The authors of the cited paper seemed to suggest that what the poor needed is increased "productivity" in third-world animal farming, which could be taken as a sign of that.

However, as Pablo Stafforini mentioned in conversation it might be premature to stop supporting human charities (and similar causes) for this reason. Rather, it seems like the best way to proceed on this question would be to look for an effective way of helping the poor without increasing their meat-eating. Do people like Toby Ord or Peter Singer know about the problem? One would think that especially someone like Singer would be prepared to take it seriously. The possible ways to work further on the issue that I've thought of this far are (except discussing it here in Felicifia):

A. Email Toby and/or Singer
B. Write a post on the GWWC forum.

Also, anyone have any ideas of ways of improving the situation for the world's poor without increasing meat-eating?

Jesper this concern is completely new to me. It's plausible, and it seems like we have to look into it really seriously. How much does industrialisation or improvement of health increase meat-eating? We ought to look at this study and related ones seriously!

Thanks for crystallizing an issue that has occurred to me before in the context of China's economic miracle, which has resulted in a large increase in (presumably factory-farmed) meat-eating. The clash of interests seems to me to be a very important concern and I'd love to see an empirical study that examines it. For example, exactly how much has factory farming increased in China in line with its development?

Regarding solutions. Vegfam is listed as a recommended charity on the Life You Can Save site. Their MO is development aid that doesn't exploit animals, such as irrigation and support for plant-based farming. But I'm not sure whether this kind of aid would do anything to prevent the expansion of factory farming that apparently accompanies economic development in the longer term.

The easiest way around this problem would be to support cost-effective humanitarian charities that have negligible impact on economic development, such as the Fred Hollows Foundation. What other example are there of these -- Red Cross/disaster relief agencies perhaps?

I e-mailed Gaverick and asked if he knew of any specific studies or data on the issue. Here is his reply. The first four links concern the connection between meat-eating and income. The next four links concern the connection between increased meat eating and increased factory farming in developing countries:

Figure 11 here http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/133/11/4048S
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/09/meat-f ... -money.php
http://smas.chemeng.ntua.gr/miram/files ... 2_2005.pdf
Slide 10 in http://www.slideshare.net/guycollender/ ... world-bank

One could update these studies by using consumption data from FAOSTAT and regressing against World Bank PPP-adjusted GDP per capita data. I expect the results would be similar: increases in GDP per capita are associated with significant increases in meat consumption (although there is significant regional variation).

It is worth noting that most of this increase in meat consumption is poultry and pork, which are produced under the most intensive conditions. And there is less meat per animal than with beef, so more animals killed.

At the margin, new farming in developing countries is factory farming:
Slide 20 http://www.slideshare.net/guycollender/ ... world-bank
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0308-521X(02)00085-9
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/includes/documen ... s_2000.pdf
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1826

Meat is expensive. Of course richer people will eat more meat. In third-world countries, I don't think it's factory farmed, so it shouldn't be as bad to eat. That said, increasing industrialization would make it so they start factory farming their meat sooner, as would increasing the demand for meat.

I think India is largely vegetarian. Should we focus on helping them?

Jesper Östman wrote:So saving human lives may lead to the loss of many animal lives.

This is a very interesting point: some ways of relieving human suffering could well lead to more net animal suffering and possibly a worse world overall. I think there is some truth in this, but I'm not sure quite how it should affect our actions. I don't have time to give a full treatment of this, but I'll try to list some salient points:

1) If you think this, then the consequences might go much further than not helping the world's poorest people. Is spending on healthcare bad because it saves the lives of people who are most likely meat-eaters and thus probably increases the amount of factory farmed meat by a lot? Are almost all cases of saving lives like this? Is it better to let people die or even to kill them? What about your near and dear? I ask these questions because it seems that the versions of the view being proposed which are strong enough to suggest we shouldn't give to fight poverty are strong enough to have very outlandish consequences on more local issues.

2) People often choose to become vegetarians on the view that they don't need to cause so much suffering in order to have a meal. They thus sidestep the question of whether any net unhappiness of animals is larger than the happiness in the human meat-eater's life. This question is legitimately sidestepped because there is the option of having the life with no meat eating. However, this option is likely to be absent when talking about saving lives in developing countries, so it must be confronted.

3) I've looked at the ethics of eating animals quite extensively, including watching many videos of nasty factory farming techniques. I've been convinced that factory farming of animals is often *much* worse than more benign farming techniques. However, there is also the question of whether it would be better for factory farmed animals never to have lived. I think this is very probably true for battery farmed chickens, quite unclear for factory farmed chicken for meat and factory farmed pork, and not that likely for beef, dairy, duck and lamb. I'm sure others will come to their own conclusions, but these are my best guesses at the moment (and based on UK farming practice which is a bit more animal-friendly than most of Europe or Australia and quite a lot more animal-friendly than the US). I think that if the lives of the animals are worth living then the argument under consideration doesn't go through. Some people will disagree with this, but probably not utilitarians.

4) You could perhaps split the concern into life-saving interventions and enriching interventions, each of which leads to more factory farming in its own way. Interventions like deworming don't do much of either: they mainly remove suffering from humans and lead to better school attendance. They will have a small effect on increased lifespan and income, but will have a more beneficial ratio than many other possibilities.

I do think it is a very sad possibility that when the poorest and most powerless among humans get better lives this might create much more suffering among many more creatures that are even more poor and powerless.

Unexpected consequences?

If you think this, then the consequences might go much further than not helping the world's poorest people. Is spending on healthcare bad because it saves the lives of people who are most likely meat-eaters and thus probably increases the amount of factory farmed meat by a lot? Are almost all cases of saving lives like this? Is it better to let people die or even to kill them? What about your near and dear? I ask these questions because it seems that the versions of the view being proposed which are strong enough to suggest we shouldn't give to fight poverty are strong enough to have very outlandish consequences on more local issues.

1) I hadn't thought about the possibilities of decreasing healthcare or kill to save animals lives. Surely, it seems not even the most extreme militant vegans are prepared to that. I guess some people would have been prepared to it if it had been humans that were factory farmed and then cannibalized. But consider: it doesn't seem obviously good to save the life of someone who kill humans and is prepared to do it again. In any case, from utilitarian considerations it would be a tremendously bad plan since it would be extremely contra-productive. In addition to the harm done to the humans the bad PR for the utilitarian and animal welfare movements would make it the case that far more animals would die.

I do make some non utilitarian prioritizations. These may include spending some resources on fun for myself, or caring about the near and dear. Some such "selfishness" may be defended on the grounds that it is psychologically very hard or impossible to avoid it. However, in the same way as I don't see a reason for favoring a fellow country-man before a poor person in the third world I neither see a reason for favoring the poor person before many suffering animals.

Another reason why killing wouldn't be justified is that is a high priority to ensure human survival and development. Not because humans are important as humans, but because plausibly an enlightened and technologically enhanced humanity can make the universe a much much better place. Of course, this could provide a reason for developmental aid also. If increasing welfare for the poor could lead to big enough decreases of existential risk in the long run it could be justified even if it would cost much animal suffering in the short run.

2) Indeed.

Hedonic level of factory farmed animals

3) I've looked at the ethics of eating animals quite extensively, including watching many videos of nasty factory farming techniques. I've been convinced that factory farming of animals is often *much* worse than more benign farming techniques. However, there is also the question of whether it would be better for factory farmed animals never to have lived. I think this is very probably true for battery farmed chickens, quite unclear for factory farmed chicken for meat and factory farmed pork, and not that likely for beef, dairy, duck and lamb. I'm sure others will come to their own conclusions, but these are my best guesses at the moment (and based on UK farming practice which is a bit more animal-friendly than most of Europe or Australia and quite a lot more animal-friendly than the US). I think that if the lives of the animals are worth living then the argument under consideration doesn't go through. Some people will disagree with this, but probably not utilitarians.

This is a very important and complex question. I used to eat meat myself until recently, on similar grounds. What convinced me to go (mostly) vegan was that I came to the belief that the everyday life of factory farmed animals at best would be just above the 0 hedonic level and at worst below it. If that is the case it seems very unlikely that these everyday experiences could outweigh the horrific suffering all animals would feel some part of their life (slughter etc) and some animals might feel most of their life. Of course, this reasoning depends on many empirical facts which may be different for different species of animal and farming practices.

A sad fact is that most of the increase in meat consumption seems to come from chicken and pork, which as you said may very well (or even probably) have lives not worth living (I'll elaborate on this in a later post). Another consideration is the point that Mattheny and Chen has made, that factory farming and even ordinary farming prevents the lives of many more wild animals which arguably would have lead better lives than the farmed animals. Together I think these two points imply that factory farming cannot be justified on the ground that the farmed animals had lives worth living. However, because of utilitarian importance of the question I think an even more rigorous analysis of the topic might be needed. (Also a small point, the reply wouldn't go through for negative utilitarians.)

Charities which won't increase factory farming

4) You could perhaps split the concern into life-saving interventions and enriching interventions, each of which leads to more factory farming in its own way. Interventions like deworming don't do much of either: they mainly remove suffering from humans and lead to better school attendance. They will have a small effect on increased lifespan and income, but will have a more beneficial ratio than many other possibilities.

This is a very interesting possibility, and it is such suggestions I've been looking for in making this thread. Hopefully it should be possible to find a charity that is effective at relieving human suffering without increasing meat-consumption significantly. Information about such a charity could be very valueable to utilitarians and animal welfare people who care a lot both about the suffering of humans and of animals.

One would imagine that a charity based on family planning etc. would dodge this problem. Although better family planning would contribute to economic prosperity, thereby contributing to animal suffering, this would be a very small effect. The much larger effect of family planning interventions on animal suffering would be by reducing population, thereby reducing the demand for meat.

Here is how I believe the issue must someday be approached:
1) Should utilitarians sidestep the issue of how prosperity increases meat-eating by donating to animal welfare charities? Are animal welfare charities more effective than human charities by conventional measurements? If no, proceed to step 2.
2) To what extent does economic prosperity (and/or health) increase consumption of meat and other animal products? If its effect is significant, proceed to step 3.
3) To what extent does consumption of these animal products decrease animal wellbeing?
4) Which kinds of charities are made less helpful or even harmful by considering their effects on animal wellbeing?
5) Which kinds of charities are now most successful using the new and more thorough utilitarian measurement?

Here is another possibility.

The standard understanding of the demographic transition (the trend to smaller family sizes) is that people have enough children to have a sufficient chance of having enough survive to be cared for in your old age. Thus, when the chance of death due to disease goes down, they have fewer children, and the drop in birthrate can even outpace the drop in deathrate (due to considerations about needing at least 2 children to survive, not an average of 2) and this makes the population size rise more slowly of even fall.

This means that saving lives in developing countries should typically lead to fewer lives being led in total, at least on the timescale of 50 to 100 years (since the bulk effect of saving many many lives is lower birthrates and a halt to population increase). I've generally thought this was a reason for total utilitarians to be less interested in saving lives (unless we are past the point where adding a life is still a net good). However, if extra people in developing countries (in, say, 30 years time when they would be rich enough to consume factory-farmed meat) is considered to be a bad thing according to a given theory, then saving lives now could reduce the number of such people and thus count as a good thing on the same theory.

TobyOrd wrote:Here is another possibility.

The standard understanding of the demographic transition (the trend to smaller family sizes) is that people have enough children to have a sufficient chance of having enough survive to be cared for in your old age. Thus, when the chance of death due to disease goes down, they have fewer children, and the drop in birthrate can even outpace the drop in deathrate (due to considerations about needing at least 2 children to survive, not an average of 2) and this makes the population size rise more slowly of even fall.

This means that saving lives in developing countries should typically lead to fewer lives being led in total, at least on the timescale of 50 to 100 years (since the bulk effect of saving many many lives is lower birthrates and a halt to population increase). I've generally thought this was a reason for total utilitarians to be less interested in saving lives (unless we are past the point where adding a life is still a net good). However, if extra people in developing countries (in, say, 30 years time when they would be rich enough to consume factory-farmed meat) is considered to be a bad thing according to a given theory, then saving lives now could reduce the number of such people and thus count as a good thing on the same theory.

You might to to put this the context of urbanisation general deveopment, and female education and access to contraception. If a countries population is largely rural you might not as large a decrease if they stay where they are.

I think this is only the tip of the iceberg and without looking at the wider context is largely irrelevant.Sorry to be blunt.

We are living on a planet with finite resources and we are quickly approaching a point where we will be hitting a peak resource situation. People are already talking about the perfect storm of Climate Change, Peak oil and Peak General resources.

It has already been worked out we are using more renewable natural resources than the biosphere can generate therefore actually depleting the natural capital base. To make things worse we have created a world economy and industrial food system that is fundamentally dependent on cheap fossil fuels, allowing us to overshoot with our population by a large margin. One estimate thinks we would only be able to support less than half our current population without cheap oil. Throw in overuse and pollution of water and any thoughts of continuing to see meat and dairy as a fundamental part of anyone’s diet-given their water intensity- isn’t dealing with the reality of the situation.

This brings up fundamental questions concerning the ethics of finite resources, not only about sharing resources between humans, but between us and other species as well. What justification does humanity have to dominate - oftento the point of extinction-the consumption of the world’s resources? What ethical justification can have some people consuming more than their needs while others cannot even satisfy their needs. There are so many issues like this that don’t seem to be on the radar.

So unfortunately IMO talking about the “The poor meat eater problem” or even ‘The Drowning Child’, totally fails to comprehend the bigger picture or the huge mess we are in. More like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

I think this consideration, raised by Jesper, dominates:

If increasing welfare for the poor could lead to big enough decreases of existential risk in the long run it could be justified even if it would cost much animal suffering in the short run.

(See Bostrom http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html ) Health and development projects might decrease existential risk by increasing social stability, or they might increase existential risk by accelerating technology development and diffusion. In any case, I think the most cost-effective action is probably to donate one's money directly to organizations that aim to reduce existential risks, such as Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the Singularity Institute.

I'm not sure welfare to the poor will decrease existential dangers. I don't think nuclear war would kill everything, but it would certainly be a huge catastrophe. That's just what we can do so far. Given how low the existential dangers are normally, humanity is very likely increasing it.

On the other hand, there's more than one kind of existential danger. If we can dramatically increase the state of the world, and we do nothing, that's also an existential danger.

It is reassuring to hear sensible debate about whether saving human lives increases suffering in the world.
However, I do wonder why it need be asked whether it is better to have lived at all than to have never lived. If an organism has never lived, will it know what it is missing? I doubt it. So there is no such organism to feel sorry for. Don't we get pleasure from looking at the moon through its tranquility? Isn't it beautiful to think that there is no suffering there? I don't think we should give to Oxfam and the like to increase the amount of non-human animals that are bred. The fewer non-humans that live the better, or at least the lesser harm. Furthermore, humans often breed through philosophical choice, implying that for many of us at least up to a point in our lives, we find our own lives worth living and are happy to vicariously multiply our experience by having kids. We have no evidence to suggest that non-human animals breed through philosophical choice. What is there to suggest that their lives are worth living even at the best of times? I think that negative utilitarianism for non-human animals is the best policy. I also think that for humans it is the best policy, but that is another discussion.
Also, I believe that since each human will die anyway, charities that 'save' lives might increase human suffering since they lengthen the person's life, during which the person will suffer more, and then will die a more or less agonising death than that which was postponed by the charity. As this post has pointed out, if you add to that the suffering caused by the person's consumption of hypersensitive non-human animals then human 'life-saving' charities do cause more suffering.
Finally, one of my compassionate fellow Felicifia commentators implied that there is a danger that if we condone the deaths of for example starving Africans, then there is a danger that that condoning might lead us to condone murdering humans to decrease suffering. That is a slippery slope argument. Even if murdering humans is morally wrong, it doesn't necessarily make not giving to a human saving charity morally wrong.

"However, I do wonder why it need be asked whether it is better to have lived at all than to have never lived."

Some parts of life are good and some are bad. It's not obvious whether the total is positive or negative. Especially when dealing with a mind unlike your own.

"If we condone the deaths of for example starving Africans, then there is a danger that that condoning might lead us to condone murdering humans to decrease suffering."

I believe my opinions tend to go from less accurate to more accurate. It's not strictly true, but it's enough that if my past and future self disagree, I think my future self is more likely to be correct. I doubt that I'm going to believe murdering people is generally a good idea, but if I was sure I would, I'd start believing it now.

Hi Daniel,

thanks for your reply to my comment.
You mentioned the difficult in quantifying the total 'sum' (not your word, Daniel, mine for want of a better one) of positive or negative utility in the lives of others. But need we try to work out whether they would experience more pleasure than pain to justify not letting them be born? From memory I will outline at leasst the gist of a point that Peter Singer raised with which I agree. He was responding to an argument from people who condoned factory farming (or perhaps animal testing or both, I can't remember which). Their argument was that it was better to have lived than to have never lived at all. Peter Singer's rebuttal was that in centuries to come, when it becomes possible to through scientific procedures breed humans and other animals from matter around us, we will see the absurdity of the 'it is better to have lived than not at all' argument. He asked how much non-sentient matter will these people be trying to 'save' into becoming sentient beings.
I think Singer has some great points. But to be honest, I think that although he calls expresses his views as utilitarian, I believe that they are better described as negative utilitarian. Richard Ryder criticised Singer's utilitarianism, saying that it could justify the gang rape of a woman, providing that the rape gave enough pleasure to the gang. While I don't know enough about Singer's utilitarianism to say whether it can justify gang rape, I do believe that because utilitarianism and greater good thinking can in certain forms justify the torturous lives and agonising deaths of the millions or perhaps billions of the more abused farm animals (and not just factory farmed ones, read Tolstoy's essay on Carnivorism if you doubt this), I believe that negative utilitarianism is a more compassionate policy.

Just to add, when we hear of someone dieing peacefully in their sleep, if we believe that they died so, we are pleased that they were unconscious through such pain, even though they have 'missed out on those moments of consciousness.'

Heartfelt apologies. I shat the bed with my last comment. I meant it to read:

"Just to add, when we hear of someone dieing peacefully in their sleep, if we believe that they died so, we are pleased that they were unconscious through such pain, even though they have 'missed out' on those moments of consciousness."

Makes all the difference, eh?

The gang rape example seems biased. I don't know how bad it is, but it's said that it's worse than death. I don't expect ethical thought experiments to be perfect, but when you're assuming a difference of orders of magnitude from what's accurate, I think that will bias the response a bit. People will emotionally respond to that example based on how it would be in real life, not in a universe where it's just a bad day for the girl.

By the same token, you can justify torturing animals, if you assume they're not being tortured as much as they are. If you want to avoid it, just try and find out how the animals really feel. Don't assume they can't feel happiness.

Would you let me pinch you for a million dollars? If so, you probably think your own happiness can outweigh your own pain. Why wouldn't this be true in general?

Hi Richard,

it seems like you favour negative utilitarianism because it allows you to condemn factory farming. Traditional classical utilitarianism can allow you to condemn factory farming too. You just need to have a concept of life that is worse than not living at all. That is, you need to say that once life becomes sufficiently painful, its utility is negative. Then, you can say that the life of a factory-farmed cow or chicken is this sort of negative utility life. i.e. it would be better for these lives not to have existed in the first place.

It seems dubious that classical utilitarianism could support gang rape. Clearly the victim would experience suffering that could last for many years whereas the perpitrators would experience a pleasure that is not as great or long-lasting.

While your objections to classical utilitarianism seem easily managed, I think the age-old objection to negative utilitarianism runs deeper. If all that matters is the abolition of suffering, then the abolition of experience is desirable. We shouldn't just prevent factory-farmed animals from having lived. We should prevent all experience, even a life like yours or mine whose pleasure outweighs its suffering.

Young Ryan, my life's pleasure outweighs its pain? Young Sir. How optimistic of you. Shouldn't I decide whether my pleasure outweighs my pain?
Furthermore, you have exceeded the limits of your knowledge when you say that your life's pleasure outweighs its pain. Outside of your infant years, most of which you cannot remember, you have only experienced the easiest years of your life. Dear Ryan, I am sorry to remind such a cheery soul that a person's likelihood of suffering emotional distress increases with age. Although your comedy will be the better for it, you will become more of a Woody Allen in your thirties, possibly because of the increase in size of the pre-frontal lobes. Maybe I am too Woodylike already at a tender 36 years old to evaluate the evidence free of pessimism, so I won't debunk the downhill slump into old age here.
Just to add though, I agree with Schopenhauer, when he says, 'What is life but a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.' I wish I had been consulted on whether I should be born. I would rather go to sleep, but here I go, pushing through life's maze, too scared of the road to the dark side to take it, even though it offers a bumpy journey to a big sleep.
You spoke of problems with negative utilitarianism, but since it is a theory of lesser harm, if it is done correctly, it is less problematic than utilitarianism. In increasing lives, we increase problems. To illustrate, in an essay whose name I cannot remember, Nick Bostrom celebrates his wish that the human population will increase. He complained that he had friends and colleagues who would be contented with the prospect of the human race ending. He says that he perceives as an incongruence in their thinking, pointing out that these friends of his would all be happy for their being fewer humans, and yet they feel deep sympathy for a child crying. But it is Bostrom's idea which is incongruent. If there are more people in the world, there will be more children crying.

Shouldn't I decide whether my pleasure outweighs my pain?

a person's likelihood of suffering emotional distress increases with age.

So he can't tell you that your pleasure outweighs your pain, but you can tell old people that theirs does?

Studies have shown that well-being only decreases slightly with age. They're not exactly good studies, but until someone thinks of a better way to tell, we ought to trust them.

In any case, the point was that some people's lives have pleasure that outweigh their pain. He probably shouldn't have assumed yours does.

Young Ryan, my life's pleasure outweighs its pain? Young Sir. How optimistic of you. Shouldn't I decide whether my pleasure outweighs my pain?

This occurred to me as I posted my message. However, I can assure you my own life's pleasure will outweigh its pain since I have both the willpower and ability to euthanase myself once things go awry.

Hi Ryan,

ha ha. I hope you have plenty of pleasure in the meantime.
Hi Daniel, don't you agree though that Ryan has no observable evidence to analyse the quality of my particular life. On the other hand, I have observable evidence and anecdotal evidence (the latter from old people themselves) as well as scientific evidence to suggest that sadly life for most people gets a little more difficult as they age. Look at the oldest people you see all week, people in their 70s, 80s or 90s. I doubt they have higher pleasure to pain ratios than they had when they were in their sportive youth.

Or to put my previous point another way, when someone who does not know me or know about me makes an assumption about the quality of my life because of his or her beliefs about the quality of people's lives generally, that person is drawing a particular conclusion from a general premise. Drawing a particular conclusion from a general premise is logically invalid.
On the other hand, when a person makes a general statement about the quality of people's lives from general evidence, that person is drawing a general conclusion from a general premise. Drawing a general conclusion from a general premise is logically valid.

Jesper Ostman says this at the start of this website's 'Poor Meat-Eater Problem' discussion:

'A somewhat disturbing problem is that there may be a direct conflict between saving poor humans and caring about the welfare of animals.... Rather the problem is that (according to Gaverick, in conversation) better health and thus wealth among the poor increases their meat eating. So saving human lives may lead to the loss of many animal lives'.
Jesper, you point out that helping the poor in developing countries will probably increase their meat-eating, and you correctly imply that meat-eating is morally undesirable? But since meat-eating is morally undesirable, do you agree that it is also immoral to help the wealthy, for example by giving to cancer charities, and thus perpetuate their meat-eating? For you question whether the lives of the poor whose deaths might be postponed by western charity will be worth the suffering they cause in factory farms. So, do you also question whether the lives of those who are already wealthy are worth the suffering that they cause livestock?

Richard Pearce:

Yes. Although it would be bad, perhaps it wouldn't be as bad as it would plausibly save far less lives for the same amount of money.

Regarding age and happiness, a surprising result in happiness studies is that people on average tend to become a bit more happy as they age. However, the trend might reverse at the very highest ages.

Thank you for your reply, Jesper.
your last comment proposed a well thought out point about contributing to charities for the wealthy.
Regarding your comment on age and happiness, I am still unsure what to make of the conflicting or at least paradoxical studies and evidence. I have just also read the results of a study that concluded that up to a certain point people become more happy as they age. Here is the study:

http://www.euro.centre.org/data/1207216181_14636.pdf

Nevertheless, the study's found that students are generally happier than those in employment.
Furthermore, 'Affluenza' and 'Britain on the Couch' by Oliver James and 'Depression' by Dorothy Rowe, all support the (if they are right, paradoxical) evidence that emotional distress is more common in older people. Perhaps, the essay whose link is above paradoxically supports the finding that emotional distress occurs more frequently as people age. It says that there is greater unhappiness among people (other than students and the more wealthy, who the study says are both exceptions) who are of employment age. The study also finds that after the initial rosy pensioners period, there is a more difficult old age period. One study cited in the Guardian stated that people were most likely to be unhappy in their 50s. (By the by, I contend that young students are happier than your average person and unless they are to become uncommonly wealthy, they will have lived only through one of the happiest times of their lives, which is not far off the point I made to Ryan. )

The survey used for the study above, however, used the question 'On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being low and 10 being high, how do you rate your quality of life.' That was the study's only means of testing its subjects. Its answers, therefore, must be read with scepticism, because when people answer survey questions, they have been shown to answer differently from what they really believe. This difference between what the subjects say they prefer and what they really prefer has been illuminated by showing that when a person's preferences can be measured by his or her actions, that person often acts in a way that does not correspond with his or her stated preferences.
Furthermore, from personal experience, the people who I know in their 60s appear to be quite neurotic and prone to anxiety (one friend of mine has been diagnosed with anxiety at 65, and is facing the most challenging period of his life, after having lived a generally emotionally placid prior adulthood).
To reiterate, if we evaluate the utility of human life in order to weigh it against the burden of non-human suffering that we generate, we must bear in mind that we have not yet lived through our darkest times as individuals, and if we must weigh up the good and bad in each human life, we must discount signifantly for the downturn in our later years.

I don't think anyone thinks those surveys are a very good indicator, but unless there's a bias or you can find a better indicator, it's best to just trust the surveys.

Can you prove a bias? Is there any reason why we should take your opinion as stronger evidence than those of those who were surveyed?

Hi Daniel,

it is not that you should take my word for it. Nor must you take the survey's. But since there are plenty of people in their 60s to observe and speak to, if you get to know enough of them from a borad social background, you might observe for yourself that their anxiety and emotional distress levels are higher than those of people in their 20s. Furthermore, if you do not have access to many people in their 60s, you still don't have to take my word or the survey's word. Review the evidence documented by psychologists. Although I am underread on psychology, the few works on emotional distress I have read ('Affluenza' and 'Britain on the Couch' by Oliver James and 'Depression' by Dorothy Rowe) state that people are more prone to emotional distress as they become older.
Finally, the study I read angled the conclusion to say that people get happier in their old age. But is that really the conclusion one ought to draw from that study? For it finds that after school, on average, people become unhappier, with their peak unhappiness in their 50s, then the happiest time of their lives in their 60s, before another rise in their unhappiness levels that before they die.

Well, if you completely distrust surveys then shouldn't you also completely distrust what people say when you talk? (I take it that the psychological works you mention are also based on reports) Another possibility is that people don't always act in a way which would be rational given their beliefs.

Anecdotally, the people in the 60s I know don't seem less happy or more distressed than the people in the 20s I know.

Here's another study by the way, saying that people get happier and more stable as they age (this time the same individuals were followed over a period of 12 years): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101028113819.htm

If we look at neuroticism (personality), if anything people get more emotionally stable as they age: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16435954

Who said I completely distrust surveys? I do not completely distrust surveys.
Nevertheless, when a survey's evidence conflicts with evidence that I have observed then I must doubt that survey. Furthermore, the books that I mention above state that people are more prone to emotional distress as they age. If their evidence is from a survey, one would imagine that if their personal experience with patients contradicted that evidence, they would also doubt the survey. But I did not think that they did get that information from a survey. I would have to browse through the books again to be sure, but I remember for some reason thinking that they had concluded this from the demographic of the patients they treat and the severity of those patients' condition. Also, none of the case studies of depressed people in their books were of people in their twenties.
Also, from the report whose link Jesper just provided, the following passage chimes with my experience:

"As people get older, they're more aware of mortality," Carstensen said. "So when they see or experience moments of wonderful things, that often comes with the realization that life is fragile and will come to an end."

Classic anhedonia. The author then writes: "But that's a good thing. It's a signal of strong emotional health and balance." What? Thinking about death when you experience something wonderful is a good thing? From my experience, things that made me feel rapture and bliss when I was young often make me feel mild pleasure compared to the all consuming thrill that they used to give me. I wish that anhedonia were a good thing.
While I am swayed somewhat by the survey, I have my doubts from my experience, and because of the above statement's evidence of anhedonia. Also, because it seems contradictory to my personal experience, and perhaps to one's instincts, one must look at the motivation behind the article. Doesn't its conclusion make an interesting paradox? 'People get happier as they get older.' Isn't that paradox more intriguing than an article headlined: 'People get unhappier as they get older'?
Furthermore, don't we instinctively assume that we will experience less happiness as we age? For anyone who is normally sociable, wouldn't it be unusual if, despite our twenty years plus of speaking to and seeing people of a broad demographic, these years of intuition based on interpersonal experience were wrong?

Dambisa Moyo believes that Western aid to African countries prevents Africans from developing their own local economies and, in the long run, further increases poverty and the need for aid to begin with. The idea of letting people starve is not something I can easily swallow but there's no doubt in my mind that it would be justified if it prevented even more suffering than it caused (or allowed, rather). Whether or not it would, I don't know. Whether or not there is a way to eliminate both human poverty and factory farming, I don't know. I will (at least when I have an income) donate to human charities as well as continue to live a vegan lifestyle (to the best of my ability) until I'm convinced that raising the standard of living for people in third world countries would lead to more suffering then it would alleviate. Global warming is also a big issue, we would need 6(?) Earths to sustain us as it is and around 80% (?) of all humans currently live on a dollar a day, imagine how much bigger our collective carbon footprint would be if everyone lived the way that Westerners do. It's frightening.

I'm troubled by the idea that painlessly killing non-human animals is acceptable if it increases more pleasure than it prevents but I suppose it can be justified, anyone who considers themselves to be a hedonist has to be consistent and regard non-human happiness as being equally as valuable as human happiness, if killing non-human animals for food is acceptable than killing humans for food, at least in similar circumstances (like the human not realizing he or she will be killed) must also be acceptable. At least in theory, in practice, killing non-human animals for food always involves some suffering and I don't believe that any amount of happiness can make up for intolerable stress. Whether or not my views can be classified as negative utilitarian, I don't know.

Would you let me pinch you for a million dollars?

I would let you do it, if not because having a million dollars would cause me a great deal of pleasure then because it would eliminate a great deal of stress. I wouldn't have to worry about finding another job, I wouldn't have to worry about paying for food or shelter, it would provide me with a lot of entertainment that would not only be intrinsically valuable but instrumentally valuable in preventing me from becoming bored etc.

Why wouldn't this be true in general?

I don't deny that happiness is intrinsically good or that maximizing happiness for it's own sake is ethical but I view maximizing happiness as supererogatory. Only minimizing distress is morally *urgent*. From a hedonist point of view, death (or being unconscious) is of neutral value, since there is neither happiness or suffering in death. If this is true, then isn't it implied that it wasn't really *necessary* for any of us to have come into existence? It's better to be happy than it is to be unconscious/non-existent, yes, but there's nothing wrong with not existing/being unconscious/dead so avoiding harm should take priority over experiencing happiness.

Richard:
I got that impression, but I'm glad to hear that's not the case. We seem to be in more agreement than I first thought.

Well, another common "intuitive" idea is that thinking of death makes us appreciate life a lot more than we otherwise would (a common argument against life-extension is based on this, the proponents roughly say that without death we could never feel any happiness)... As with other intuitive ideas I believe they shouldn't be given too much weight unless they are supported by systematic scientific investigation.

One way to explain away the contra-intuitiveness of the thought that people should get happier as they get older is that we typically believe happiness is strongly correlated with things like health, status, beauty and wealth which decline when we get old. However, just about all happiness research has disconfirmed that happiness correlates strongly with any of these variables.

Also, note the psychology studies on neuroticism, eg, which say that people become less neurotic as they grow older:
Srivastava, S., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2003). Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: Set like plaster or persistent change? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1041-1053.

RyanCarey wrote: . . . It seems dubious that classical utilitarianism could support gang rape. Clearly the victim would experience suffering that could last for many years whereas the perpitrators would experience a pleasure that is not as great or long-lasting.

While your objections to classical utilitarianism seem easily managed, I think the age-old objection to negative utilitarianism runs deeper. . .

Well, first off, I don't like the whole "dilemma" approach to academic ethics (I mean, do we do anything but dilemma!).

But, yes, I think a more accurate accounting would go quite a ways to solving the dilemma.

And then, I don't see any reason that we can't take a moderate version of negative utilitarianism, that severe suffering should be given some extra cost. In fact, I think this agrees pretty well with our gut instincts.

Then there would be the motive utilitarian response. I mean, what do these guys do the rest of the time?! Someone wrote, I believe the description was, that motive utilitarianism was 'curiously neglected.' I quite agree.

In fact, if you really roll with motive utilitarianism and ask, 'How could one of these guys hug a future wife? Or, a future child, including a future daughter,' then you are entering the realm of authenticity. And I think at that point we get the best of both utilitarianism and Kantianism. And I don 't mean in some syrupy way that a hybrid theory "should" be true. I mean more in the sense that we as human beings are usually pursuing multiple goals and we shouldn't prematurely jump to an unitary theory (but ah, that is for another discussion!).

Give suffering extra cost compared to what? I'd interpret that as that it's worse than our gut instinct suggests, since that's pretty much all I have on what it should be, but then it wouldn't agree with our gut instinct.

From what I understand, motive Utilitarianism is applied ethics. It's just a strategy to increase Utility, not a different Utility function. It doesn't fit with this problem.

Whether or not they can have a healthy relationship after that is a perfectly good question without motive Utilitarianism.

DanielLC wrote:Give suffering extra cost compared to what? I'd interpret that as that it's worse than our gut instinct suggests, since that's pretty much all I have on what it should be . . .

Okay, point well taken. Here's what I'm trying to say. Even for those of us who have grown up in abusive families and/or those of us have been treated as outcasts at 'schools.' And the standard 'school' is such a nonfunctioning institution that having intense intellectual interests, as many people interested in philosophy do, is often enough to get you labelled as 'different' and that is often enough to get you treated poorly. Now, combine that with good descriptive art such as SCHINDLER'S LIST (either the book or the movie) and a person might feel he or she has a pretty good idea just how bad a concentration camp is. Still, to be on the cautious side, let's add 30%. That's what I'm saying.

Richard Pearce wrote: . . . do you agree that it is also immoral to help the wealthy, for example by giving to cancer charities, and thus perpetuate their meat-eating? . . .

Yes, we do seem to be putting an extra hurdle in front of helping poor people.

What humans need is not assistance in growing their numbers until the earth can support not a single human more, but assistance in understanding what will happen to the planet if humans fail to learn how to control their reproduction. I'll start with the assumption that humans will continue on their current course such that population will rise to the point where all arable land is farmed, all the easy-to-get resources will be gone, habitats will be destroyed, and the combination of overcrowding and cyclical periods of starvation will contribute to mass suffering and wide-spread civil unrest. It follows that any assistance to help a carnivorous people to thrive will work toward both animal suffering and a future state of enduring endemic human suffering. Helping poor people to prevent their deaths contributes toward this end (e.g., give them free rice and they will have more money for meat and will make more carnivorous babies), but alleviating the suffering from non-life threatening conditions does not. For example, providing pain killers (e.g., aspirin), fixing broken legs, and distributing eye glasses seem like worthy causes with few adverse side-effects. Teaching people about family planning and educating women so that they can take control of their reproductive ability seem OK.

It might seem as though helping senior citizens in poor countries would reduce human suffering without the side-effect of increasing the base of sufferers, but if that assistance allows younger people to thrive or eat meat (due to not having to support grandpa), then the vegetarian utilitarian might be causing harm. Maybe feeding poor senior citizens good, vegetarian meals can help a utilitarian reduce the suffering of others and reduce criticisms of friends who call you a cold-hearted cheap-skate.

Just out of good luck, the "nice" methods of reducing population growth of education for women (statistically, more of such women delay families and have smaller familes) and social security work among the best.

Yeah, SnowLeopard, your moderate negative utilitarianism doesn't sound too radical. The way you weakly phrase it - being in a concentration camp is worse than it appears from a distance - is something I strongly agree with. I think most people agree that intense suffering is hard to imagine without having experienced it before. Whether the same is true for happiness is an interesting question.

And re your latest point - educating women seems to effectively reduce population growth - I think this is correct. Bombing an overpopulated section might reduce population. It might even do it cheaply. But would this prevent more suffering than it causes? No. Would this even cause population to be depressed over the long term? Who knows. This is not effective in any utilitarian sense.

Okay, we make our best estimate of how bad a concentration camp is, and then we multiply it by three. If we say, no, let's multiple it by 100, then we might be sloppy in that initial estimate. So, good estimate, then times 3, this as a conservative strategy. And yes, this is a weak version of negative utilitarianism.

Now what I'm really in favor of is better alternatives. That is, we need to go against what we're often told in philosophy classes, including grad classes. "No, assume the facts are like that." No thank you, I want to find different facts! That is, what I precisely do want to do is to break the dilemma. And that's often an open field. For starters, in many real life situations, you can break the dilemma, or at least have a reasonable chance to do so. It seems like it would be a good heuristic device to assume 'There must be a better way.' Or, 'The only way we're going to find a solution is to assume that there is a solution.'

And in the classic example, between sacrificing a smaller group (or one person) and sacrificing a larger group, I'd rather not sacrifice either group.

And again, we seem to be putting an extra hurdle in front of helping poor people.

One way to solve the dilemma could be to donate to research and/or create political support for research that aims at creating animal products (or fully competitive substitutes) without creating suffering brains as a by-product. In-Vitro meat and artificial diary products/eggs/etc. could be one solution. Creating animals that cannot suffer would be another potential solution. Ideally, these production methods should be cheaper and more resource-efficient, and they should be applicable by developing countries and their local economies themselves.

I would also further investigate the assumption that factory-farmed animals are suffering more than locally farmed animals; it seems like this could strongly depend on implementation details of these systems. For instance, manual slaughter by unprofessionals could create more suffering on average than modern industrialized slaughter routines. I would intuitively expect the lives of animals in both types of systems to be net-negative, however.

I would intuitively expect the lives of animals in both types of systems to be net-negative, however.

Yes, me too, and this seems to be the key point.

Ultimately, the difficulty is this:
Alleviating poverty could have a massive positive effect on worldwide wellbeing.
The same is true for alleviating the suffering of farm animals.
We can confidently say that the suffering of wealthy human beings pales in comparison to the suffering of poor humans and farm animals. However, it's hard to tell whether we can act more cost-efficiently for poor humans, or farm animals.We have to try to pick the lowest hanging fruit. But which fruit is easier to reach is uncertain. All we can do is make calculations, based on our best estimates, and a survey of the limitic scientific papers on the topic.

There are about 1.3 billion people ( http://www.gdrc.org/sustdev/poverty-stats.html ). These are big numbers, of course. But how many farm animals are there? This is a difficult question, partly because animals are killed systematically. We have some data anyway. 58 billion of mammalian and birds were killed in 2007. This data doesn't include fish.

http://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpre ... tat071.jpg

(Data can be obtained here: http://faostat.fao.org/site/569/default.aspx#ancor )

Most of these animals have extreme suffering in their life. It's a bad thing that humans feel hungry, fall ill and so on. But it's a very worse thing what most of animals suffer in farms. I guess what most of animals suffer is equivalent to what tortured humans suffer.

Moreover, we can help a lot of more animals than humans with the same money. See: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/dollar-worth.pdf

In short:

- There are a lot of more farm animals than poor humans.
- Most of farm animals suffer more than poor humans.
- To increase meat consumption among the poor will lead to increase animal suffering.
- We will avoid a lot of more suffering if we support to animal charities.

We can avoid a lot of more suffering if we support animal charities, and I think this it's pretty clear. There are utilitarians who give a lot of importance to the existential-risk issue. I understand their points, although I prefer to put my efforts promoting the anti-speciesist meme (this issue would deserve a different message). In any case there are charities that reduce existential risk and benefit animals too.

Daniel Dorado wrote:- We will avoid a lot of more suffering if we support to animal charities.

Unless these charities are either inefficient or their work has side-effects that cause more suffering. As for inefficient, I once donated to a hard-sell animal protection charity whose founder ended up in jail because he used the donations to buy a boat for himself.

As for side-effect...

In any case there are charities that reduce existential risk and benefit animals too.

Which is actually a reason why I hesitate donating to New Harvest. Existential risk isn't straightforwardly bad. It could be good. In this case, any sustainability technology, including one that could prevent suffering from factory farming, would increase expected suffering by orders of magnitude.

Unless these charities are either inefficient or their work has side-effects that cause more suffering...

this point is good. Hard-sell animal rights / welfare charities do alienate meat-eaters. If you know meat-eaters, you will know this to be true. The alienation of meat-eaters will slow some people's transition to a cruelty-free diet. I doubt that the alienation of some meat-eaters would make the effort of an organisation of New Harvest useless. However, it probably is a significant consideration that is ignored.

As for inefficient, I once donated to a hard-sell animal protection charity whose founder ended up in jail because he used the donations to buy a boat for himself.

Do you think that you can read so much into a single anecdote?

RyanCarey wrote:Hard-sell animal rights / welfare charities do alienate meat-eaters. If you know meat-eaters, you will know this to be true. The alienation of meat-eaters will slow some people's transition to a cruelty-free diet. I doubt that the alienation of some meat-eaters would make the effort of an organisation of New Harvest useless.

That's right. In-vitro meat will have an initial yuck factor, but if it can be made cheaper\more resource-efficient than ordinary meat, it might gain substantial market shares rather quickly. I can't really see China forfeit any significant consumption out of animal welfare considerations, but if in-vitro meat is competitive, they may adopt it more readily than, say, Europe.

My point about side-effect mostly was aimed at the potential sustainability increase of such technologies, which will in turn decrease existential risk, which will significantly increase the expected value of total suffering in the future universe. Even if you prefer total util over neg util considerations, you're still in danger of creating massive disutility if a large-scale dystopic scenario materializes later. Investments in empirical refinement of the most relevant priors to this question seem most promising. If you don't know which way is the right one, investing time in order to find that out may be far better spent than covering ground in any given direction, even if you have a gut feeling what the right direction is.

For example, it might make sense to do more research to understand how minds in general work, what the fundamental limits or possibilities of hedonic advancements are, how much alien wildlife there probably is etc. Then decide whether existential risk is probably good or probably bad, only then invest money strategically. Unless you're convinced that there is no realistic way to spend time/money to better model the big picture, and therefore turn to more local utility.

As for inefficient, I once donated to a hard-sell animal protection charity whose founder ended up in jail because he used the donations to buy a boat for himself.

Do you think that you can read so much into a single anecdote?

No, and the fact that he was successfully convicted actually exemplifies that correction mechanims against open fraud do work. Nevertheless, accountability and controlling of charities are relevant for expected utility considerations. In the case of New Harvest, I would have liked some online resources on how many donations they get and which research projects are funded with how much money. Non-profits should have a high standard of transparency. In private investments, self-interested investors will select for credibility and effectiveness traits. The same might make sense for utility-maximizing donors, at least in cases where donations are high enough for it to be worth the extra research effort.

Hedonic Treader wrote:For example, it might make sense to do more research to understand how minds in general work, what the fundamental limits or possibilities of hedonic advancements are, how much alien wildlife there probably is etc. Then decide whether existential risk is probably good or probably bad, only then invest money strategically. Unless you're convinced that there is no realistic way to spend time/money to better model the big picture, and therefore turn to more local utility.

Hi HT. You have a good point here. On the other hand, I'm concerned about suffering in a world where humans don't take animal interests into account, and for that reason I promote charities that promote moral consideration of (domestic and wild) animals. This increases the possibility of a world with less suffering in any case.

I agree that there are a lot of inefficient animal-rights charities though. My ideal one is a hedonist anti-speciesist and highly philosophical "animal rights" charity, what doesn't exist for now. I prefer to save my money basically at this moment, although I'm an activist of several animal-rights in my free time -- I think they make a good job.

I agree with both HT and Daniel here. It would indeed be valuable to "to do more research to understand how minds in general work, what the fundamental limits or possibilities of hedonic advancements are, how much alien wildlife there probably is etc." However, it's not obvious that existential risk is the key factor we should target. My preferred approach is to make future humans more cognizant of the badness of (wild-animal) suffering so that, if our species survives, it makes better decisions with respect to preventing cosmic suffering and rather than multiplying it.

I'm basically agreed on the whole "more research on existential risk badness front", especially as I had previously thought all increases were bad but am now having to re think (due to torture scenarios, terraforming making massive wild animal suffering, lab-universes etc. I've updated to 80% probability that x-risks are bad)

Just to chip in with another factor that has been mentioned only briefly, I'm concerned about the impact of any utilitarian project on wild animal suffering. This seems of overriding importance given large numbers of wild animal suffering (especially as I assign probability of ~25% to insect suffering and there are ~10*17 insects around).

To bring things back to the basic question of aid to poor humans increasing factory farmed animals, the question seems to be whether this increases or decreases the number of wild animals around, as the wild animals seem to outweigh the factory farmed animals (in number if not in intensity of suffering). I am inclined to think that a greater human population would be likely to reduce wild animal population and increases in meat consumption would do this as well. The likely effect of aid then seems to be in a positive direction, if my assumptions hold true. However, there is still the problem of existential risk being bad and increased environmental damage (which is what my argument counts on) causing an increase in existential risk.

And of course we might still do best to do as Alan suggests and try to increase understanding of wild animal suffering.

Thanks, Gedusa! Needless to say, I agree with your comments about wild animals.

Gedusa wrote:To bring things back to the basic question of aid to poor humans increasing factory farmed animals, the question seems to be whether this increases or decreases the number of wild animals around, as the wild animals seem to outweigh the factory farmed animals (in number if not in intensity of suffering). I am inclined to think that a greater human population would be likely to reduce wild animal population and increases in meat consumption would do this as well.

That tends to be my assumption, which is why I suspect that poverty relief is likely to be positive on balance. (Still, it isn't obvious.)

Obviously, if you want to go down the path of altering wild animal populations by alleviating poverty, you could go down the path of either saving human lives, or improving contraception and family planning.

To bring things back to the basic question of aid to poor humans increasing factory farmed animals, the question seems to be whether this increases or decreases the number of wild animals around, as the wild animals seem to outweigh the factory farmed animals (in number if not in intensity of suffering). I am inclined to think that a greater human population would be likely to reduce wild animal population and increases in meat consumption would do this as well.

S***, good argument!

That tends to be my assumption, which is why I suspect that poverty relief is likely to be positive on balance.

Alan, doesn't Gedusa's argument suggest that we should be encouraging "happy farming" rather than veganism?

Alan, doesn't Gedusa's argument suggest that we should be encouraging "happy farming" rather than veganism?

It (partly) depends on whether you think they're the only alternatives. Seems to me that the best option might just be creating more food for people - why have animals around at all?

In the short term though, it's not obvious that feeding more people doesn't increase existential risk (or the risk of a total societal breakdown).

Alan, doesn't Gedusa's argument suggest that we should be encouraging "happy farming" rather than veganism?

It might. "Happy farming" I'll take to mean "free-range", and that would certainly use more resources than factory farming, e.g. more food needs to be grown to be fed to the animals. In this case, we would expect animal lives in general to be reduced in number, leading to better outcomes overall.

But I'm not sure about this conclusion. We might do better in the long run if we discouraged speciesism in general, promoting free-range stuff doesn't seem to do this as strongly as promoting veganism. So there's that, and Alan also argued here that we might want to think about global warming as well, if it leads to more wild animal suffering in the long term, then we would do well to try and stop it, and veganism would be better than free-range farming at doing that.

And yeah, this doesn't take x-risks into account at all, and those could potentially be the most important in the long run.

Once again, Gedusa has beat me to the punch on my reply.

Yes, "happy farming" might very well be better than veganism. But the main point of Vegan Outreach is, as Gedusa suggests, to reduce speciesism. Most "happy farming" efforts tend to be at the level of targeting producers or governments. I doubt an organization would have as much success handing out brochures encouraging people to buy happy meat, mainly because it's expensive and very hard to find! If promoting vegetarianism is even 1% better at combating speciesism than promoting happy farming, then I'd prefer to promote vegetarianism.

I don't believe the Food for Life Global has been mentioned yet:

http://www.ffl.org/
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ization%29

"Hare Krishna Food for Life is the world's largest vegan and vegetarian non-profit food relief organization with projects in over 60 countries. Volunteers serve more than 1,500,000 free meals daily in a variety of ways, including: food vans serving to the homeless within major cities around the world; lunch time meals for poor school children throughout India; and also in response to large natural disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake."

Thanks for the link, James!

I didn't have time to read through this entire thread so I don't know if Peter Singer has already responded on this problem, but I do know that the @TheLifeYouCanSave Twitter account is currently hosting a Q&A with Peter Singer, and I put in a request for a response to this problem, and they responded that they would forward it to Singer.

Oh THAT's what you asked! I think I'll put in a good word for that question

LadyMorgana wrote:I think I'll put in a good word for that question

Haha, it pays to be connected!

Turns out I wrote to Singer in 2005 asking about this (first full paragraph on page 2 of the linked document). He actually typed an email back. Rereading my letter now, I sometimes wonder whether I've learned anything new since the first few months after I discovered utilitarianism during ~June 2005. (Answer: Yes, but with rapid diminishment in marginal wisdom.)

BTW, for the record, I don't now agree with everything in this paragraph on page 4 of my letter:

As before, it would not be a good idea to publicly proclaim concern for insect pain as part of animal liberation, inasmuch as doing so would make the movement appear to hold crazy and impossible goals. [...] Even if insects are sentient, I find the promotion of veganism still to be one of the most effectual ways to reduce suffering, since the raising of animals requires the cultivation of far more grain (and the accompanying use of far more pesticides) than direct growing of plants for human consumption.

I think it is good to talk openly about the possibility of insect suffering among the right audiences. If we don't do it, will anyone do it, or will the issue get lost? Considering that insects may dominate all larger animals in their extent of suffering, the issue seems to big to ignore. I also don't know whether pesticide use is net good or net bad, considering that it does reduce insect populations on crop land in the short run. I suspect crop production might still be net bad for insects, but maybe the stronger argument is that crop production is an efficient way to convert sunlight into food, and more food means more suffering animals that can come into existence.

As far as this line: "I still consider the weighted-average expected value for the change in utility that results from [...] preservation of the environment to be very positive," my change of sentiments since 2005 is more clear (depending on what kind of environmental preservation we're talking about).

Thanks for sharing, Brian! I wonder specifically about the effect of extreme poverty reduction also leading to a reduction in population, and how that effects the tilt of the problem. I also wonder if you could have persuaded Singer not based on the poor meat-eater problem, but based on the calculated cost-effectiveness of Vegan Outreach alone.

Though I suspect that since Singer is such a public figure, his biggest impact is in persuading others to donate, and thus needs a cause that can be put forth with a public face. Right now, I think converting people from donating more or less randomly without concern to effectiveness to GiveWell top charities is a bold and likely step in the right direction, whereas convincing the population at large to start donating to Vegan Outreach seems much less likely to work.

"but based on the calculated cost-effectiveness of Vegan Outreach alone." also cos a vegan world is better for the poor

I think a relevant difference here might be that Singer is a moral realist (I think?) and so has more faith in the arc of history bending towards utilitarianism

LadyMorgana wrote:also cos a vegan world is better for the poor

I've never heard of that before. I could think of a few reasons, but I'm interested to hear why you think that.

LadyMorgana wrote:I think a relevant difference here might be that Singer is a moral realist (I think?) and so has more faith in the arc of history bending towards utilitarianism

I think it's unclear whether Singer is a realist. Someone close to him (hint hint) should consider asking.

As I've said before:

I think it's actually an open question whether Peter Singer is a moral realist. He definitely uses very realist language, but in his book The Expanding Circle (p201-203) Singer states he agrees with Mackie that moral truth cannot be "built into the very nature of things", but follows Derek Parfit in his argument for moral truth in On What Matters.

peterhurford wrote:I also wonder if you could have persuaded Singer not based on the poor meat-eater problem, but based on the calculated cost-effectiveness of Vegan Outreach alone.

Well, that was my previous paragraph in the letter (see bottom of page 1, top of page 2).

peterhurford wrote:whereas convincing the population at large to start donating to Vegan Outreach seems much less likely to work.

I think it depends on how much you care about the two causes. I think animals are sufficiently more important in quantitative terms than humans that it would be worth the reduced audience. But I can see your point.

LadyMorgana wrote:I think a relevant difference here might be that Singer is a moral realist (I think?) and so has more faith in the arc of history bending towards utilitarianism

As Peter observed, it's hard to say. On the one hand, he has written, "I am not defending the objectivity of ethics in the traditional sense. Ethical truths are not written into the fabric of the universe: to that extent the subjectivist is correct." But then he goes on to say:

On the other hand, once there are beings with desires, there are values that are not only the subjective values of each individual being. The possibility of being led, by reasoning, to the point of view of the universe provides as much "objectivity" as there can be. When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and (in an appropriate case) matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true.

I don't know how this falls out in terms of his optimism about the future.

I'm not a moral realist, but even if I were, I would still be worried. Who's to say that future humans will follow the moral truth? Certainly many human actions in the past haven't been consistent with the moral truth. Moreover, it may not even be humans who control the future. Most likely, the future will slip out of our hands and be dominated by some other force that outcompetes us. This doesn't seem to bode well for moral progress.

peterhurford wrote:I could think of a few reasons, but I'm interested to hear why you think that.

Reduced climate change, more food availability, etc.

I think a vegan world would be better for the poor for the reasons you cite, but I'd be very surprised if it were more effective (for the sake of the poor alone) to pursue a vegan world than to pursue current interventions (like GiveWell). That being said, pursuing a vegan world seems to me right now best for the sake of all beings.

I find meta-ethics deeply confusing, but I had the impression that Singer shifted his position the realism issue. The Expanding Circle is pretty old. From his review of On What Matters:

Parfit’s entirely secular arguments, and the comprehensive way in which he tackles alternative positions, have, for the first time in decades, put those who reject objectivism in ethics on the defensive.

What we gain from Parfit’s work is the possibility of defending these and other moral claims as objective truths.

peterhurford wrote:That being said, pursuing a vegan world seems to me right now best for the sake of all beings.

A world in which more humans are vegan is not the same as a vegan world, if you count wild predators as non-vegan.

The veganism-advocacy-as-optimal-charity argument seems to hinge on the prevented direct animal suffering + indirect long-term changes in caring for animals/sentient beings generally + indirect prevented suffering from climate change (e.g. more wild animals, but also future poverty and a small impact on existential risk). I think only the first point is very strong in correlation, and probably more than outweighed by the prevented wild animal suffering from use of farm land. The expected utility of the two latter points is less clear since the effects are indirect, and with climate change, I'm neither sure about the sign nor the quantity.

There is also the possibility that we have underrated the remaining option space for optimal altruism. What if there are still low-hanging fruit in speeding up/increasing the probability of hedonic enhancement? A proof of concept of a functional being without involuntary pain could shift the whole paradigm of how the world looks at compassionate ethics, including animal ethics. An earlier start could also shift the distribution of phenotypes of the population that will ultimately live on earth and beyond. Starting sooner rather than later with, say, identifying and selecting genes for low involuntary suffering may have flow-on effects due to inheritance and shifts in status quo biases.

Hedonic Treader wrote:A world in which more humans are vegan is not the same as a vegan world, if you count wild predators as non-vegan.

Good point.

Hedonic Treader wrote:The veganism-advocacy-as-optimal-charity argument seems to hinge on the prevented direct animal suffering + indirect long-term changes in caring for animals/sentient beings generally + indirect prevented suffering from climate change (e.g. more wild animals, but also future poverty and a small impact on existential risk). I think only the first point is very strong in correlation, and probably more than outweighed by the prevented wild animal suffering from use of farm land. The expected utility of the two latter points is less clear since the effects are indirect, and with climate change, I'm neither sure about the sign nor the quantity.

I only think the first one can be known with any reasonable certainty. The other three are best considered "guesses".

Hedonic Treader wrote:There is also the possibility that we have underrated the remaining option space for optimal altruism. What if there are still low-hanging fruit in speeding up/increasing the probability of hedonic enhancement?

I think it would be great if accomplished, but I don't think we're anywhere close to even knowing what a plan would look like, let alone have the organization ready for donations.

Hedonic Treader wrote:A proof of concept of a functional being without involuntary pain could shift the whole paradigm of how the world looks at compassionate ethics, including animal ethics. [...] may have flow-on effects due to inheritance and shifts in status quo biases.

Interesting idea. I wouldn't rule this out as an option. That said, I agree with Peter that the actual technology would be further in the future, and at this point, it's possible the best we could do would be meme-spreading, the way we plan to do for wild animals. This could be pretty useful, though it wouldn't be obviously very different from general meme-spreading about hedonistic utilitarianism, status-quo biases, preventing wild suffering by future technology, etc.

One thing to think about is that chasing targets with measurable effects has strong benefits in itself. You’ll then be able to submit yourself to evaluation by EAA, GWWC and Givewell should they choose to take an interest, which will both give you the chance to get recommended to a huge user-base and give you a source of external feedback.

If you focus on something intangible like meme promotion, it would be very hard for any of the above groups to confidently recommend you.

Brian Tomasik wrote:That said, I agree with Peter that the actual technology would be further in the future, and at this point, it's possible the best we could do would be meme-spreading, the way we plan to do for wild animals. This could be pretty useful, though it wouldn't be obviously very different from general meme-spreading about hedonistic utilitarianism, status-quo biases, preventing wild suffering by future technology, etc.

Right now, I think we're at the position where we might do even better to channel our money into research on meme-spreading. Meta-meta-spending, if you'd like.

peterhurford wrote:I think we're at the position where we might do even better to channel our money into research on meme-spreading.

I'm not sure, because there's no shortage of general literature on the spread of ideas, psychological persuasion, religions, social movements, etc. Also, if we did come up with a new killer idea for how to spread memes, it would be quickly appropriated by everyone else. If the research were on specific ways to run campaigns, then it could be more directly applied, but often the best way to do such research is to try it with an example (e.g., wild animals) and see which methods work the best.

Regarding Arepo's point about measurability, one area where research on memes could be useful would be to identify better metrics for meme-spreading itself. The ability to measure (at least approximately) something that was previously unmeasurable would be extremely valuable, not only because it might allow wild-animal meme-spreading to compete with standard charities, but also because when you have a metric, you can optimize for it.

Brian Tomasik wrote:I'm not sure, because there's no shortage of general literature on the spread of ideas, psychological persuasion, religions, social movements, etc. Also, if we did come up with a new killer idea for how to spread memes, it would be quickly appropriated by everyone else. If the research were on specific ways to run campaigns, then it could be more directly applied, but often the best way to do such research is to try it with an example (e.g., wild animals) and see which methods work the best.

Good points. I imagine much is to be learned through trial-and-error of running the campaigns as well. However, while there are a lot of good ideas out there, they aren't yet compiled into nice, easy-to-read guides for utilitarian meme-spreaders, and I think there still needs to be a lot more work done on making them more rigorous.

~

Brian Tomasik wrote:Regarding Arepo's point about measurability, one area where research on memes could be useful would be to identify better metrics for meme-spreading itself. The ability to measure (at least approximately) something that was previously unmeasurable would be extremely valuable, not only because it might allow wild-animal meme-spreading to compete with standard charities, but also because when you have a metric, you can optimize for it.

Definitely. Though I'd have trouble imagining what this could look like, especially when you think your payoff is going to be in the far future. It has similar problems to x-risk reduction. (Yet people still claim to measure x-risk reduction and fund x-risk reduction.)

peterhurford wrote:Right now, I think converting people from donating more or less randomly without concern to effectiveness to GiveWell top charities is a bold and likely step in the right direction, whereas convincing the population at large to start donating to Vegan Outreach seems much less likely to work.

I'm not so sure. If the poor meat-eater problem is indeed valid, then donating to effective human charities is worse than donating to ineffective charities. Furthermore, effective altruists do not seem particularly inclined to care about animal suffering. (A lot of utilitarians care about effectively preventing animal suffering, but there's a confounding variable there.) It might be worthwhile to encourage effective altruism if that made them more likely also to care about animal suffering, but this does not appear to be the case.

peterhurford wrote:Definitely. Though I'd have trouble imagining what this could look like, especially when you think your payoff is going to be in the far future.

As far as near-term metrics, I suggested some in the comments of another blog post:

----
One can identify lots of SMART subgoals, like number of members/supporters of [our wild-animal charity], number of views/shares/likes of articles, number of people reached by articles/leaflets, funds raised, number of publications, number of people influenced to write about the topic, etc. Really, the goals aren't that different from those of veg outreach or any marketing campaign. How do marketers for Bing measure their success? By people reached, traffic to the website, opinion surveys, etc. We can do basically the same things here.
----

Now, granted, these are just subgoals, and I think your point is that even if we achieve these subgoals, it doesn't mean we've succeeded in the long term at changing political policies around WAS [wild-animal suffering] 200 years down the road.

We can be creative and aim to come up with better metrics. But even in the worst case, where we don't find better metrics, the expected-value argument won't go away. If there's even a small chance we're making things better, WAS meme-spreading is a lottery whose tickets we should buy.

The thing is, if we're successful enough, we'll know pretty well that we'll make a difference down the line, assuming human values continue to control the future. Consider something like gay rights. By now, it's pretty darn certain that a future friendly AI is not going to be significantly prejudiced against gays. That's because elite culture has so absorbed the idea of gay tolerance that it becomes like breathing. If we can do something similar for the notion that wild-animal suffering is no more tolerable than human suffering from malaria or starvation, we'll be in a better position.

BBC has just posted this story about the difficulty of acquiring morphine in poor countries, despite being cheap and highly effective: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20625482

Perhaps one avenue to consider for those concerned about the poor meat eater problem (the potential for development aid to increase meat/dairy consumption and therefore animal suffering, offsetting any benefit)?

You mean, instead of increasing wealth, increase availability of painkillers only?

Not a bad idea, but there's more that can be done: I think AMF or SCI don't increase meat eating that drastically. You could also focus on animal activism directly. Switching to (cheap) in-vitro meat could solve the poor meat eater problem too.

Sure thing, it was just an idle thought.

In addition to AMF or SCI, I think there are sight-saving charities recommended by GiveWell that would probably have little effect on meat eating.

There's always VegFam.

peterhurford wrote:There's always VegFam.

An interesting suggestion, however I am not sure if it is optimal to tell people in developing countries how to do agriculture projects. It is also implausible that they will refrain from eating meat as soon as they can afford it, since that is what most humans do, and agriculture products from veg projects can be traded or bartered for meat from cruel production done by other people.

Admin request: Maybe this thread could be integrated into the other poor-meat-eater-problem thread so all aspects of the discussion are in one place.

spindoctor wrote:BBC has just posted this story about the difficulty of acquiring morphine in poor countries, despite being cheap and highly effective

They also mention some acceptance problems because morphine is seen as "giving up" on people sometimes. And is there any charity that specifically facilitates the availability of such drugs to the accepting poor? It seems pain-killers are really important for suffering alleviation.

Admin request: Maybe this thread could be integrated into the other poor-meat-eater-problem thread so all aspects of the discussion are in one place.

Merge complete.

Elijah wrote:On a strict utilitarian view, yes, let them starve. But I think some level of speciesism is justifiable.

By definition, speciesism is treating humans as more important purely because of their species. Unless you define it differently, I don't see how that's justifiable.

Elijah wrote:But I think some level of speciesism is justifiable.

How so?

Elijah wrote:As a meta-ethical error theorist, I use expressions like 'Suffering is bad' as 'I want to reduce suffering'. For irrational reasons, I care more about members of my own species. Therefore I want to reduce their suffering more.

So you're not really saying it's justified, you're just saying you want to do it?

And isn't it not logically possible to believe that your own arguments are irrational? You can believe that your actions are irrational, but not your beliefs. You can't say, "I believe X, even though the truth is Y." You don't actually believe X; you believe Y. Similarly, you can't say, "I think members of my own species are more important, even though they're actually not."

Unless you make a distinction between caring about other species and believing that other species are important?

I think one can consistently say "Utilitarianism says animals matter exactly in proportion to how much they suffer" and also say "While utilitarianism matches a lot of my moral motivations, I don't really feel like going with utilitarianism on this one."

It's unfortunate and I'd try to talk you out of it, but I don't think you're making a rational flaw...

Elijah wrote:

peterhurford wrote: It's unfortunate and I'd try to talk you out of it, but I don't think you're making a rational flaw...

How so? I'm honestly interested as to how.

Do you mean how would I try to talk you out of it or how are you not making a rational flaw?

I think my best shot is to get you to watch this video.

Elijah wrote:A speciesist need not approve of factory farming, any more than a racist need support slavery or an antisemite the holocaust.

The point of me showing you that video is not that I expect it to rationally convince you to become anti-speciesist (if you already accept that animals can suffer and that eating meat does cause them suffering not outweighed by pleasure to your taste buds, then nothing more may be possible on the rational angle), but I expected the jarring images to grab you on a more emotional level.

Hedonic Treader wrote:The veganism-advocacy-as-optimal-charity argument... The expected utility... and with climate change, I'm neither sure about the sign nor the quantity.

You're not sure whether veganism increases or decreases climate change? That really surprises me! Why do you think it might increase it?

LadyMorgana wrote:

Hedonic Treader wrote:The veganism-advocacy-as-optimal-charity argument... The expected utility... and with climate change, I'm neither sure about the sign nor the quantity.

You're not sure whether veganism increases or decreases climate change? That really surprises me! Why do you think it might increase it?

I thought he was expressing uncertainty about the effects of climate change on animal welfare, rather than about the effects of veganism on climate change.

Ah.

Incidentally, guys, Peter Singer is (now) a moral realist. You can check out http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/667837 and he'll go into details in his next book.

LadyMorgana wrote:Ah.

Incidentally, guys, Peter Singer is (now) a moral realist. You can check out http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/667837 and he'll go into details in his next book.

Yes, this was discussed here. I'm looking forward to reading his forthcoming book.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:I thought he was expressing uncertainty about the effects of climate change on animal welfare, rather than about the effects of veganism on climate change.

On total welfare, yes.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:

LadyMorgana wrote:Ah.

Incidentally, guys, Peter Singer is (now) a moral realist. You can check out http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/667837 and he'll go into details in his next book.

Yes, this was discussed here. I'm looking forward to reading his forthcoming book.

I didn't think preference utilitarianism could be reconciled with moral realism if it necessarily rejects the concept of intrinsic value.

Ubuntu wrote:I didn't think preference utilitarianism could be reconciled with moral realism if it necessarily rejects the concept of intrinsic value.

Why?

peterhurford wrote:

Ubuntu wrote:I didn't think preference utilitarianism could be reconciled with moral realism if it necessarily rejects the concept of intrinsic value.

Why?

Correct me if I'm wrong but from the P.U point of view, nothing is objectively valuable by it's very nature, things are only subjectively valuable 'to' people. As soon as I stop valuing the existence of the tree in front of the house I grew up in, it stops being valuable to me.

Moral statements are value judgments. Without intrinsic value, there is nothing bad simpliciter about torturing someone, it's only bad for the person being tortured (if they have a preference not to be tortured). I don't understand how you can have moral realism without intrinsic value and I don't understand how, without moral realism, not giving consideration to the interests of other people can be considered 'irrational'. Criticism, intellectual or moral, requires some kind of objectively correct standard. How can a moral proposition be objectively true if nothing has objective value (and by' objective' I don't mean mind independent, which nothing I know of is, just factually true) ?

Ubuntu wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but from the P.U point of view, nothing is objectively valuable by it's very nature, things are only subjectively valuable 'to' people. As soon as I stop valuing the existence of the tree in front of the house I grew up in, it stops being valuable to me.

That sounds like you're confusing what's of value and what's of preferences. Essentially, preference utilitarianism from a moral realism point of view says there is real, intrinsic value in satisfying preferences. However, preference should not be confused with this kind of realist value. As soon as you stop preferring the tree to exist, you stop having that preference, yes. But your preference satisfaction would still be of intrinsic value, and the tree would too, in so far as you prefer it to be there.

I'm not a realist, but preference utilitarianism is compatible with realism.

Peter is right. Preferences may enter the picture at both the normative and the metaethical level. Preference utilitarianism is the normative theory according to which satisfied preferences have intrinsic value. This theory can be combined with a realist metaethics that regards the fact that preferences are intrinsically valuable as an objective, mind-independent moral fact.

Elijah wrote:I cannot in good conscience support anti-factory farming efforts if they would directly lead to people's starvation. This includes sacrificing human wealth for animal welfare. As I said above, I am a speciesist.

How do you weight the suffering of animals to the suffering of humans? 10:1? 1,000,000:1?

How many animals do you think it's ethical to suffer in order to prevent suffering of humans?

Elijah wrote:I would kill 1,000 gorillas to save 1 human (child). I would let 1,000 gorillas boil in oil to save 1 human (child) from boiling.

Why do you give so more weight to a gorilla than to a child? A gorilla is probably more intelligent than a child, so I guess you don't think intelligence is the determinant factor.

That's a circular reasoning. You give more weight to a human because is a human.

Some speciesists try to argue their position appealing to intelligence, emotional lives, relationships or another attributes. It seems that you think it's an axiom that any human is more important than any non-human animal.

I cannot accept that, and I think it's not compatible with a mental state nor a preferentialist theory of value.

Elijah wrote:My theory of value is a nihilist one. Because I do not think objective values exist, I use terms such as "moral" as shorthand for my preferences. I prefer human success and well-being over animal success and well-being.

I am also an anti-axiomatist. I do not think normative judgements can be deduced from first principles. I think it is coherent to judge two isomorphic scenarios, such as in the trolley problem, differently.

I don't think your moral values can be described as utilitarian. (Non-utilitarians are still welcome on this forum, of course.)

I wonder how the cultural development of speciesism was affected by the historical happenstance that we're the only human species still around.

Imagine a modern world in which Homo floresiensis and Homo erectus lived side by side with Homo sapiens. Imagine a cultural state where this would have been obvious for the past several thousand years. Maybe speciesism would have been seen simply as a stronger form of racism.

How ironic that other -isms have been fought with references to our common humanity: They are human too. Unfortunately, you can't do that with gorillas.

Elijah wrote:FWIW, I think Unger's thought experiments in LHLD are a reductio of, not just utilitarianism, but all axiomatic theories of ethics.

How so?

I do know the thought experiment you refer to, but I don't understand (a) how it is consistent with other axiomatic theories or (b) why that matters.