Your personal choice to stop eating animal products has no effect on the large-scale meat production less you are exceptionally influential. The animals will still suffer the same whether 100,000 or 100,001 people are vegetarians.
I've seen a similar argument used against voting in politics.

(Note, I disagree with this. However, I am somewhat lost for a logical defense when people use this to justify eating meat.)

If there was no effect, and there was no effect between 100,001 and 100,002, etc., this would mean that there's no difference between 100,000 and 200,000, which is absurd.

I don't follow. Somethings in life only matter in larger quantities, like traveling up stairs. Moving forward .0001 mm can make no difference in elevation, but the next 1 cm can hit the next step and will increase elevation.

WeAreNow, it boils down to the concept of expected value being more useful to consequentialists than actual results. Expected value is essentially value of the event you're considering multiplied by the probability of it happening in the circumstances under discussion.

For example, if 1 cow constituted on average 10 human meals, then for every 10 extra humans who ate a burger, you would expect an extra sheep to be killed. So odds are actually 10-to-1 against, that if you order 1 burger, you'll actually necessitate an extra cow being killed.

So the expected (negative) value of you eating a burger would be 1/10th of a cow's life. That's going to remain roughly the same whether 100 or 1,000,000 other people happen to eat burgers that day too. (although obviously I've just made up the actual numbers for this example)

Another answer is this:

To promote veganism is an excellent way in which many people are introduced to the topic of animal suffering and many people become animal rights activists. It's necessary a general concern for animal suffering if we want to reduce animal suffering (including suffering of wild animals).


(But veganism isn't enough. IMO we must promote an anti-speciesist meme too, what is very difficult among non-vegans.)

I second Arepo's reply. I've written something similar in "Does Vegetarianism Make a Difference?," as has Gaverick Matheny in "Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism."

yeah it'll hardly surprise you all that I think being vegan does make a difference. When you reduce your consumption of animal products, it reduces the value of animal products and the supply of animal products. If animal products are produced in batches, it doesn't matter. At a very superficial level, it might be said that you're unlikely to stop a batch of 100 eggs from being produced. However, you are making this batch less likely to be produced. A 1% chance of preventing 100 eggs from being produced is equivalent to a 100% chance of 1 particular egg from being produced. So whether eggs are produced individually or in large batches, turning vegan makes a difference.

The same argument applies for vegatarianism

For a very soft introduction to the concept of Average Marginal Utility, you can consult this article from Ethical Man

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2010/01/justin_piece.html

The process isn't smooth enough to be Average Marginal Utility. In some cases (I'll put an example), there is 0 chance of making any difference in meat production.

Personally, I'm a teenager. I'm not in charge of the groceries. If I attend a barbecue where meat is prepared, even if I don't eat any and make that fact known, the host(ess) will not make a change in the amount purchased for one single person. So, barring influence, my personal vegetarianism can not make the difference in any animal's life in this scenario.

When people make barbecues, they decide how much meat to buy beforehand based on previous experiences. You won't influence how much they made that time, but you will influence how much they make in later barbecues. After all, if nobody ever ate any meat, they wouldn't keep serving it.

If nobody ate the meat, I agree. If one person doesn't eat the meat, there is no effect. Unless they buy patties individually, I suppose.

If one person doesn't eat the meat, there is no effect.

When one person doesn't eat the meat, there's more left over at the end, which signals to the barbecue planners that they overestimated consumption by a larger amount. Over the long run, such experiences should teach them to plan for less demand in the future, as DanielLC said.

If you can contact the planners ahead of time to let them know you won't be eating meat, that's even better. Indeed, making your eating choices explicit probably has a far bigger impact than the actual effects on future demand, because it prompts conversation about animal suffering in general and provides a role model to others for eating vegetarian.

Gaverick Matheny has written an illuminating essay that seems hard to refute on how the vegan diet reduces the demand for livestock farming. He describes the phenomenon 'contributory causation' and illustrates how it works through the '100 bandits' scenario. Here is a link:
http://jgmatheny.org/matheny%202002.pdf

or if you prefer, the essay is the website under his name and is called 'Expected Utility, Contributory Causation and Vegetarianism.'

WeAreNow wrote: . . . Personally, I'm a teenager. I'm not in charge of the groceries. If I attend a barbecue where meat is prepared, even if I don't eat any and make that fact known, the host(ess) will not make a change in the amount purchased for one single person. . .

My first reaction was, Wow, not a very good hostess, not taking her guests dietary preferences into account. Well, that's maybe a bit much because perhaps she has three dozen small tasks to do to pull off the event. So, perhaps . . . you could ask your parents for money to bring something? Or perhaps you have a source of your own money (and I'm a big, big proponent that more good jobs should be readily available!). Now, hummus and pita bread, that's so common that's almost mainstream. So maybe something a little more exotic that nonvegetarians may develop a taste for it. Run it past the host(ess) first. Hopefully, he or she will view it as you helping with the event. Although in the last minute push with the flurry of tasks, I'm sure you'll understand that this is not necessarily a given! (yet another example that a lot of issues with vegetarianism and animal rights/animal welfare come down to social skills)

Alan Dawrst wrote:When one person doesn't eat the meat, there's more left over at the end, which signals to the barbecue planners that they overestimated consumption by a larger amount. Over the long run, such experiences should teach them to plan for less demand in the future, as DanielLC said.

I don't think you guys see my point... but I don't feel like arguing further :/

If nobody ate the meat, I agree. If one person doesn't eat the meat, there is no effect. Unless they buy patties individually, I suppose.

Let's assume that if nobody eats meat, a minimum amount of meat, m, is produced. I'm just defining m, so this must be true. Further, let's assume that if one more person eats meat, the amount produced is constant. This is equivalent to your second sentence. We can now prove by induction that for any integer number of people, m meat is produced. Since m - m = 0, that means that if nobody ate meat, there would be no effect, which is against your first sentence. Thus, you must be wrong somewhere.

It's possible that there are only certain points where you have an effect, but if you don't know when they are, you can't guarantee that you're not in them.

DanielLC wrote:Let's assume that if nobody eats meat, a minimum amount of meat, m, is produced. I'm just defining m, so this must be true. Further, let's assume that if one more person eats meat, the amount produced is constant. This is equivalent to your second sentence. We can now prove by induction that for any integer number of people, m meat is produced. Since m - m = 0, that means that if nobody ate meat, there would be no effect, which is against your first sentence. Thus, you must be wrong somewhere.

Sorry. I felt this was a natural assumption, but I should qualify my statement. Try this: "If one person [out of a substantially large group] doesn't eat the meat, there is no effect [on the "host's" perception]." i.e., the difference between 1000 and 1001 patties is not the same as between 0 and 1 patties. After a certain point, differences become less noticeable in human scope.

WeAreNow, thanks for continuing the good conversation. You're right about the difference in perception between 0 and 1 vs. 1000 and 1001. However, I still have an intuition that the expected impact of refraining from consumption is the same in each case. People who purchase for events may make substantial errors in estimation, but I would guess that the average percent error from truth is roughly constant -- people don't, on balance, make bigger and bigger percent errors for larger and larger crowds. So to the extent that the estimated amount continues to track the true amount, your action still has the same expected impact (even if your odds of impact are much smaller).

In fact, if we assumed that people overestimate more for larger crowd sizes, then it would be even better to avoid consumption for large events. For example, if (expected amount purchased) = 1.2 * (amount consumed on previous occasions), then by refraining from eating one chicken on a previous occasion, you prevent the purchase of an expected 1.2 chickens next time!

Beyond this, I do think that the social conversation provoked by your demonstration of vegetarianism has far more impact than these individual purchases. We are primates who learn much of our behavior through imitation. Hopefully, people will see your example and consider vegetarianism as a serious option that sane people might choose. In this case, not being too strict (e.g., not minding butter or cheese) could be a plus, to the extent that it shows that you don't have to go to extremes to reduce animal suffering through food choice. (This depends on the audience. Those tending more toward black-and-white categories might regard it as hypocritical.)

After a certain point, differences become less noticeable in human scope.

Let's assume this point is 20%, and you go to a gathering with 100 people. It seems like it would take 20 vegetarians to make a difference. This would be true if they prepared enough for 100 people. That seems like a reasonable assumption, but it isn't. If last time, they only made enough for 90, they wouldn't have noticed. Because of this, it isn't stable until it gets outside the 80 to 120 range. As such, it will be quite common that you make an effect, even if you're the only vegetarian.

Alan Dawrst wrote: . . . We are primates who learn much of our behavior through imitation. Hopefully, people will see your example and consider vegetarianism as a serious option that sane people might choose. In this case, not being too strict (e.g., not minding butter or cheese) could be a plus, to the extent that it shows that you don't have to go to extremes to reduce animal suffering through food choice. (This depends on the audience. Those tending more toward black-and-white categories might regard it as hypocritical.)

It's about keeping it real with wherever you are at that particular time in your own moral/social/intellectual/emotional/etc. trajectory. For example, I used to be into perfectionism, not so much anymore (thank goodness!). This, combined with medium disclosure. And then, if the person responds in a positive way, you can disclose more. If they don't, you don't have to.

This instead of trying to play the person like you might a fellow player in a Texas Hold'em poker game. Now, I know the original writer is not saying this. But so much formal writing in philosphy, maybe because of an emphasis on precision, by implication often treats other people as some kind of counters or holders of belief. We're trying to look three levels deep into social interaction. Okay, I suppose that is part of being a good coach or a good boss. But you've got to be ready if the person takes it in a different direction and respect them as a human being. And because of so much of the writing, yes, it is worth saying this.


'I've decided that factory farming mistreats animals. [natural pause] So, I'm doing my part'

Yes, you generally want to keep it short and sweet.

I have no clue how someone can claim that they ascribe to hedonistic utilitarianism and justify eating animal flesh (I say that respectfully in case someone in the thread disagrees, I've only skimmed through the posts), or maybe not actually eating animal flesh but giving financial and moral support to the meat industry. Maybe Jeremy Bentham didn't have the option of a vegan diet in his day but I don't see how this is justifiable in the 21st century.

Every snow flake in an avalanche pleads 'not guilty'. Just because one person's input doesn't tip the scale doesn't mean that it doesn't count. One of the strong points of HU is that the happiness/suffering of all sentient beings is equally valuable/dis-valuable.

There was an argument I read on this forum that I think correctly points out that when meat is left over and is consumed by meat-eaters (I assume not all of the leftover meat gets thrown out), it means the meat eaters are no longer hungry and will not eat more. Because meat-eaters have a higher probability of eating meat when they eat than a vegetarian, if a vegetarian takes a chunk of the left-overs, the meat-eaters will go out and buy more food; that food will often enough be composed of meat. In this very direct manner, by eating even the left-overs (unless they are REALLY being thrown out), a vegetarian would be contributing to more purchase of meat (and therefore more suffering of animals).

Thinking about that, not eating the leftovers would mean that they're only eating meat, rather than a certain portion of meat, which could cause them to tend to eat more meat in the future.

yboris wrote:There was an argument I read on this forum that I think correctly points out that when meat is left over and is consumed by meat-eaters (I assume not all of the leftover meat gets thrown out), it means the meat eaters are no longer hungry and will not eat more. Because meat-eaters have a higher probability of eating meat when they eat than a vegetarian, if a vegetarian takes a chunk of the left-overs, the meat-eaters will go out and buy more food; that food will often enough be composed of meat. In this very direct manner, by eating even the left-overs (unless they are REALLY being thrown out), a vegetarian would be contributing to more purchase of meat (and therefore more suffering of animals).

I've been thinking about this argument recently. Eating meat that's just being put in the fridge for another day seems much the same as eating it just after it's been cooked, but there are two (or more) sides to the coin. We get surprisingly fixated on the boundaries of plates.

Eating meat that's going to be thrown away seems basically harmless. Sure it *might* have the obscure and low-probability negative effects people like to point out when I mention this, but it might also be an important source of Vit B12 for you, plus it has an obvious economic benefit to you.

What's interesting is when you go out for a meal with an omnivorous friend. Typically you, the veggie, will order a veggie dish and he’ll order something with meat (say) 2/3 of the time. Once that’s done, you would typically eat what you’ve ordered – even though it seems much the same outcome if you share both dishes between you.

Another scenario that rarely comes up is that your friend decides whether he would like to eat a meat dish. Having announced that he would, he eschews the option, and buys a vegetarian dish on your behalf, while you buy something with meat it. Clearly in this case it’s a worse outcome than if he had eschewed the option and you’d gone veggie anyway, but just as good as a ‘normal’ vegetarian/omnivore pairing. Also, your friend might only do this on the expectation that he’d get *some* of your dish, so the possibility of two veggie dishes is less than 2/3 anyway. He might also be offering it more from a sense of your benefit than the animal’s – ie. he knows you like meat and is willing to put himself out so you can have some, but not willing to put himself out if you’re just going to have vegetarian food anyway.

The last scenario is tricky and probably involves a bit of game theory, but both of the scenarios make being vegetarian easier. Some people would claim (and have, indignantly, claimed) that following this logic means you’re not really a vegetarian. While that doesn’t seem like a very interesting criticism to me, it does make me feel that it would help to come up with a separate label for this kind of pragmatic vegetarianism (especially since a lot of people seem to think of vegetarianism as such a large leap from where they are now that they assume I won’t eat food if it’s been touched by tongs used for meat). It effectively distributes some of the burden of vegetarianism from people to their friends, in a slightly better than zero sum kind of way, since if it makes being veggie slightly easier you’d expect more people to become it, and the less people you see eating meat, the easier it becomes to not do so yourself.

So, thoughts on labels? If we come up with a good one, it might be a nice entry for the Wiki to point people who think being veggie is too hard to.

There’s another downside to this kind of reasoning, though. Sometimes you’ll get a gratis vegetarian side dish. Typically you’d share this if you both had room/expected to have room after your main meal. But just because it’s meat doesn’t mean this differs from your example – if you leave this to your friend, he’s likely to eat less, you’re likely to eat more, which is a better outcome given that he sometimes eats meat. But using the same logic, once you’ve paid for your meal, assuming your friend has any interest in it at all, you do best to give every scrap of food you’ve ordered to him and then feed yourself later.

One counter to this is the same meta-argument in reverse – that it would make being a veggie much harder and strongly disincentivise people from it. Another is that if your friend eats a load of food at once it’ll be much less efficient than spreading the same calories between two people. I guess the latter is the main one – while you might give him some of your food, it becomes pointless beyond a certain point.

(was distracted repeatedly while writing this - apologies for the rambling nature)

Daniel Dorado wrote:Another answer is this:

To promote veganism is an excellent way in which many people are introduced to the topic of animal suffering and many people become animal rights activists. It's necessary a general concern for animal suffering if we want to reduce animal suffering (including suffering of wild animals).


(But veganism isn't enough. IMO we must promote an anti-speciesist meme too, what is very difficult among non-vegans.)

I'm new here but I've been giving a lot of thought to the issue of whether veganism helps reduce suffering. I'm wondering if more people can comment on DD's claim above. To some extent it seems valid to me. I am a vegan and I doubt I would have started learning about wild animal suffering if I hadn't first become a vegan. If we lay out each step in DD's argument, I'm not sure how compelling the argument is though. If you first note that veganism increases the number of living animals (or at least fails to decrease the number like factory farming does) and that there is likely to be a net negative well-being in the wild (see Oscar Horta's work), then you come to the conclusion that veganism at least initially promotes more suffering. So DD's message above would be that we should promote an activity that initially increases suffering (veganism) in order to produce a change in people's general concerns or ideologies, which will then lead to a decrease in suffering. That argument is hard to swallow. I don't mean this post to sound like I'm picking on DD. Because of my personal experiences as a vegan, I see some appeal to his/her argument above and am genuinely trying to figure out if the promotion of veganism is a good thing.

Fortunately not all aspects of veganism lead to an overall increase of animal life years. It seems to only be the case for larger animals like pigs and cows. According to this paper (page 586), chicken farming increases animal life years: http://www.qalys.org/animal-welfare.pdf
And according to Brian's estimates, eating wild-caught fish leads to an increase of smaller fish, which would mean more animal life years in the wild: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=455
And fish farming is the worst practice in terms of suffering anyway: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-per-kg.html

Ignoring all the effects of personal veganism on other people, it seems that, while veganism is not the optimal way to reduce animal suffering, it's probably still better than the average lifestyle (mainly because people eat a lot of chicken and fish).

Eating pigs and cows appears to be better still, but cows increase global warming, and that may again lead to an overall increase of wild animals: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/veg-a ... imals.html

Pork (or lamb?) seems like the best choice in that regard then. But it's unhealthy and, at least for me, not as tasty as other animal products.

There is obviously a lot of empirical uncertainty here. Let's suppose that the trend shifts away from factory farming and more towards sustainable ways of using land, which will increase the effect of decreasing the numbers of wild animals. Would veganism then lose out?

As I see it, spreading the right memes is extremely important. And I don't see how one would try to introduce a mainly deontological public to anti-speciesism if one supports large-scale farming practices. Even if veganism paradoxically increases animal suffering in the short term, the change of attitudes seems important enough to make up for it in the future. I don't see a better way to make this happen. A big caveat is that veganism would have to be thoroughly anti-speciesist and not coupled with deep ecology or similar views. That's why it might not be a good idea to use environmental arguments for the promotion of veganism, even though the trade-off becomes complicated here.
The issue of wild animal suffering is important for people who already care about animal rights. That's another strong reason for utiltiarians to be vegan: If you're not, you lose nearly all credibility in the eyes on animal rights people. And we need them as allies when it comes to wild animal suffering.

As a vegan I'm biased here, but overall, I'm convinced that veganism is the best way to go. I'm curious what others here think about this though!

LJM1979 wrote:I'm new here but I've been giving a lot of thought to the issue of whether veganism helps reduce suffering. I'm wondering if more people can comment on DD's claim above. To some extent it seems valid to me. I am a vegan and I doubt I would have started learning about wild animal suffering if I hadn't first become a vegan. If we lay out each step in DD's argument, I'm not sure how compelling the argument is though. If you first note that veganism increases the number of living animals (or at least fails to decrease the number like factory farming does) and that there is likely to be a net negative well-being in the wild (see Oscar Horta's work), then you come to the conclusion that veganism at least initially promotes more suffering. So DD's message above would be that we should promote an activity that initially increases suffering (veganism) in order to produce a change in people's general concerns or ideologies, which will then lead to a decrease in suffering. That argument is hard to swallow. I don't mean this post to sound like I'm picking on DD. Because of my personal experiences as a vegan, I see some appeal to his/her argument above and am genuinely trying to figure out if the promotion of veganism is a good thing.

Hi LJM1979. I'm sure that you aren't picking on me. Your comment is very interesting.

If veganism increases the number of living animals and there is a net negative well-being in the wild, then veganism would be increasing wild-animal suffering. On the other hand, veganism reduces the number of farmed animals, so it reduces domestic-animal suffering. I don't know what is the global balance.

But even if veganism promotes more suffering (at least initially), I think it has a positive impact, because it produces a change in people's general concerns. There are several people that have wild-animal suffering into account (mainly utilitarians), but I think it's very hard for most speciesist people that we must reduce wild-animal suffering.

Could we fight speciesism without a vegan message? I think it's nearly impossible. Veganism is a good rule of thumb if we want to increase moral consideration for animals. The most involved people that I know defending all the animals (including wild animals) are vegan. I think it's very difficult for a non-vegan to support a charity with the goal of reducing wild-animal suffering.

I think there would be a good veganism and a bad veganism:
- Good veganism: consequentialist, anti-environmentalist, anti-speciesist, non-political, education-centered...
- Bad veganism: rightist, environmentalist, non anti-speciesist ("just vegan"), political...

I know this a tricky issue, but I think an alternative is needed if someone rejects veganism.

Thanks for the replies. Daniel, I guess the alternative approach would be to try to directly change people's attitudes towards wild animal suffering rather than arguing that veganism has to be an indirect, intervening step. All else being equal, a direct intervention should be more effective than one that requires indirect steps, although you could argue all else isn't equal here. A benefit of the direct approach is that it might not elicit defensiveness in meat-eaters. Alternatively, though, if we could ever get mainstream animal rights, pro-vegan organizations to discuss issues about wild animal suffering, then we could reach a much bigger, possibly receptive audience. Imagine if such organizations show attention-grabbing factory farming videos and then viewers go to those organizations' webistes and the websites have links discussing wild animal suffering. I'd add that if we do decide that there is net suffering in nature and that reducing the amount of nature or wilderness is a good thing, there are probably much more effective ways to do so than to build factory farms. Still, I think extendedcircle is right that there's a lot of uncertainty in the calculations at this point.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it would be harder and would sound incoherent to argue that humans can continue to eat factory-farmed animals but they ought to stop predation in nature. Even if such an argument could be justified on utilitarian grounds if certain assumptions are made, I don't think the argument would help to achieve the goal of reducing wild animal suffering.

Would an animal like a cow suffer more in the wild or in a factory farm?

peterhurford wrote:Would an animal like a cow suffer more in the wild or in a factory farm?

Large mammals like cows and humans are such a small percentage of the animal kingdom that in any non-speciesist aggregation of well-being they would likely have no meaningful impact. The impact of factory farming on the population of animals that reproduce using r-selection is much more pertinent. Cows' and humans' suffering is real and powerful in an absolute sense but negligible for purposes of aggregation.

Thanks for starting this conversation, LJM1979. You guys have made some really great points!

ExtendedCircle, Daniel, and LJM1979 have already said most of what I would have mentioned in reply, so thanks. I agree with essentially every point they made.

Daniel Dorado wrote:Could we fight speciesism without a vegan message? I think it's nearly impossible. Veganism is a good rule of thumb if we want to increase moral consideration for animals. The most involved people that I know defending all the animals (including wild animals) are vegan. I think it's very difficult for a non-vegan to support a charity with the goal of reducing wild-animal suffering.

Yeah, I think this is true on credibility grounds alone. You should almost certainly be publicly veg*n yourself to avoid claims of hypocrisy. The harder question is whether it's worthwhile to actively fund veg outreach or if the money would be better used elsewhere. I think veg outreach is sufficiently valuable that we should fund it in the short term, but I also look forward to the eventual creation of a real wild-animal-suffering organization at some point down the road.

peterhurford wrote:Would an animal like a cow suffer more in the wild or in a factory farm?

Few cows live in the wild, and in any event, the question isn't whether to keep cows on farms or release them. The question is whether the environmental impacts of cow farming lead to bigger or smaller populations of other wild animals.

LJM1979 wrote:The impact of factory farming on the population of animals that reproduce using r-selection is much more pertinent.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Hello, I am new too but this question is of great interest to me.

As others have pointed out, the boycott aspect is not entirely useless. But I think that the main way that an individual's veganism is useful is that it makes it easier for others to transition to veganism or at least reduced animal consumption, through multiple routes:

In addition to the boycott of animal foods, vegans tend to purchase items that are distinctly vegan, such as non-dairy milks, veggie burgers, and so on. It is an incredible success that mainstream grocery stores now carry a wide variety of non-dairy milks, not just soy, and this makes being vegan far more realistic for most people. Buying these products ensures that grocery stores continue to stock them, helps restaurants consider adding more vegan options to their menu (especially since we have a reputation for dictating where the entire group goes to dinner!), and encourages the invention and advertising of new, tastier, cheaper vegan options.

Being vegan starts conversation, which allows us to dispel misinformation that may be preventing others from reducing their animal consumption. Also, every individual breaks at least some of the stereotypes, which can remind others that veganism can "happen" to anyone, that (almost) nobody was born vegan. Furthermore, very many people are not yet aware or convinced that vegan is healthy, so being vegan lets us set an example that it is, that a vegan world would work just fine.

At least once in a while, many of us tend to cook vegan meals for others, which reduces (slightly) more animal consumption, but more importantly, may turn them on to new non-animal foods they never would have tried.

All in all, I think that even if the boycott aspect is not convincing, the many ways that being vegan helps others reduce their animal consumption are more than enough reason for an individual to be vegan.

Welcome to Felicifia, Lnpagin!

Lnpagin wrote:Being vegan starts conversation

Indeed, this may sometimes be the biggest benefit of all. There are certainly other ways to start conversations, but being veg is one socially acceptable way to raise the topic of animal suffering on a regular basis.

Lnpagin wrote:At least once in a while, many of us tend to cook vegan meals for others, which reduces (slightly) more animal consumption, but more importantly, may turn them on to new non-animal foods they never would have tried.

Just make sure you're a good cook before inviting them to try your food.

Brian Tomasik wrote:The question is whether the environmental impacts of cow farming lead to bigger or smaller populations of other wild animals.

I agree this is a very key question. Excuse me for being new, but has there been any attempt at an answer?

Also, I currently think that suffering in a factory farm is much greater than suffering in the wild, though I do agree that animals in the wild may still live net-negative lives. I'm trying to work out the scope insensitivity to the sheer number of animals in the wild, work out how to weight animals by their capacity for suffering (which animals can suffer and by how much?), to work out the ramifications of this all.

I imagine this is why wild-animal suffering strikes people as so implausible; it's such a huge problem that it's very difficult to think about. I start to think I'm being hit by Pascal's Mugger with talk about how the future of wild animals may be shifted by my actions.

peterhurford wrote:

Brian Tomasik wrote:The question is whether the environmental impacts of cow farming lead to bigger or smaller populations of other wild animals.

I agree this is a very key question. Excuse me for being new, but has there been any attempt at an answer?

Here is one attempt. I think the overall answer isn't clear, though it may be that animal farming is net bad if climate change increases insect populations.

peterhurford wrote:I start to think I'm being hit by Pascal's Mugger with talk about how the future of wild animals may be shifted by my actions.

Haha, welcome to my life.

peterhurford wrote:Excuse me for being new

Never! Death to the interloper!

Brian Tomasik wrote:

peterhurford wrote:

Brian Tomasik wrote:The question is whether the environmental impacts of cow farming lead to bigger or smaller populations of other wild animals.

I agree this is a very key question. Excuse me for being new, but has there been any attempt at an answer?

Here is one attempt. I think the overall answer isn't clear, though it may be that animal farming is net bad if climate change increases insect populations.

peterhurford wrote:I start to think I'm being hit by Pascal's Mugger with talk about how the future of wild animals may be shifted by my actions.

Haha, welcome to my life.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of the argument about climate change increasing insect populations. If that is correct and if insects are sentient, then that likely eliminates the concerns I expressed earlier. So many "ifs"; so little is known about wild animal suffering at this point.

peterhurford wrote:Also, I currently think that suffering in a factory farm is much greater than suffering in the wild, though I do agree that animals in the wild may still live net-negative lives. I'm trying to work out the scope insensitivity to the sheer number of animals in the wild, work out how to weight animals by their capacity for suffering (which animals can suffer and by how much?), to work out the ramifications of this all.

Care to comment more on this? I think most of us agree that most of the worlds suffering occurs in the wild so it would be very interesting if you are arguing the opposite?

As regards what cause one should work for it's worth considering how soon one expects in-vitro meat to come along.

Ruairi wrote:

peterhurford wrote:Also, I currently think that suffering in a factory farm is much greater than suffering in the wild, though I do agree that animals in the wild may still live net-negative lives. I'm trying to work out the scope insensitivity to the sheer number of animals in the wild, work out how to weight animals by their capacity for suffering (which animals can suffer and by how much?), to work out the ramifications of this all.

Care to comment more on this? I think most of us agree that most of the worlds suffering occurs in the wild so it would be very interesting if you are arguing the opposite?

I was wondering about that too.

Care to comment more on this? I think most of us agree that most of the worlds suffering occurs in the wild so it would be very interesting if you are arguing the opposite?

Oh, I wasn't very clear, sorry.

When I said more suffering takes place in factory farms than in the wild, I meant to say per organism -- I think an individual organism suffers much more in a factory farm than the same animal would in the wild. However, in total aggregation, I agree with you guys that suffering is exceedingly likely to be greatest in the wild.

However, I do have a lot of skepticism regarding what to do about wild animal suffering. I tend to be on the skeptical side of sentience. I want to weight organisms on their capacity to suffer, but I really don't think non-vertebrates suffer that much, if at all. Thus, I would but heads against Brian's suffering-per-kg.

To be careful, I place very high value of information regarding the capacity of pain for non-human animals, and would want to investigate the issue as fully as I can before I make my next charity donation. Do you guys (especially Brian) have any data that would help in forming answers to Brian's columns 5 and 6? Especially for animals that occur in the wild?

Lastly, I have a lot of skepticism for things we can do to decrease wild animal suffering. As I mentioned earlier, it strikes me as a lot in common with Pascal's Mugging. I tend to have objections to "very large utility / very small probability" estimations of expected utility when the numerator and denominator are both highly uncertain, and the problem is exceedingly poorly understood. I have the same problem with existential risk.

~

As regards what cause one should work for it's worth considering how soon one expects in-vitro meat to come along.

Definitely. I admit that I have a pretty poor understanding of IV-meat, though. Is it supposed to be indistinguishable from real meat? If not, why would it experience more popularity than already existing meat substitutes? Is there any data needed to calibrate an expectation of when the research would come out, and how long it would take to reach massive acceptance?

LJM1979 wrote:So many "ifs"; so little is known about wild animal suffering at this point.

Yes. Isn't it great to be working in a field where just a little bit of research can change your views on insanely important questions?

Brian Tomasik wrote:Isn't it great to be working in a field where just a little bit of research can change your views on insanely important questions?

Is there any way we can philanthropically support thorough research on questions related to wild animal suffering? I think such research would have such insanely high value, if it could be done well.

peterhurford wrote:To be careful, I place very high value of information regarding the capacity of pain for non-human animals, and would want to investigate the issue as fully as I can before I make my next charity donation. Do you guys (especially Brian) have any data that would help in forming answers to Brian's columns 5 and 6? Especially for animals that occur in the wild?

Well, those columns are just intuitive guesses even for factory-farmed animals. They haven't been sanctioned by an official committee or anything.

You could multiply the painfulness of a day of life for factory-farmed animals by some factor (say, 1/3?) to get the number for wild animals. Or you could even conservatively take the day-to-day life of wild animals to be hedonically neutral. Either way, you're going to end up with massive suffering in the process of death alone, because most species give birth to hundreds or tens of thousands of offspring, only two of which can survive on average. Granted, not all of babies are sentient when they die, but a nontrivial fraction probably are. There's more discussion of this in "The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering."

I would guess that death in the wild is at least as painful per animal as on factory farms, because farms in the industrialized world usually make at least an attempt to stun the animals in some fashion. (Of course, the stunning systems break down, and even when they work they may work badly, but it's probably better than nothing.) Compared with slaughter on factory farms, I expect slaughter in the developing world may be generally less humane, and slaughter in the wild is downright atrocious.

peterhurford wrote:I tend to have objections to "very large utility / very small probability" estimations of expected utility when the numerator and denominator are both highly uncertain, and the problem is exceedingly poorly understood.

I'm not turned off by these scenarios. Even if you're skeptical of any particular intervention, you should see very high expected value of information in studying them further.

peterhurford wrote:Definitely. I admit that I have a pretty poor understanding of IV-meat, though. Is it supposed to be indistinguishable from real meat?

Yes.

peterhurford wrote:Is there any data needed to calibrate an expectation of when the research would come out, and how long it would take to reach massive acceptance?

As the conclusions of scientific papers will tell you, "more research is [always!] needed." But I've heard estimates like 10-15 years for chicken-nugget-style meat and maybe twice that for full steaks. This sounds a bit optimistic to me, so don't hold your breath.

BTW, while I support New Harvest, I support Vegan Outreach and The Humane League more for memetic reasons.

peterhurford wrote:Is there any way we can philanthropically support thorough research on questions related to wild animal suffering?

Not yet, but at some point I'm pretty certain there will be an organization of one type or another dedicated to research and advocacy around wild-animal suffering. See, e.g., this discussion.

In the mean time, feel free to join the Reducing wild-animal suffering Facebook group.

peterhurford wrote:

Care to comment more on this? I think most of us agree that most of the worlds suffering occurs in the wild so it would be very interesting if you are arguing the opposite?

Oh, I wasn't very clear, sorry.

When I said more suffering takes place in factory farms than in the wild, I meant to say per organism -- I think an individual organism suffers much more in a factory farm than the same animal would in the wild. However, in total aggregation, I agree with you guys that suffering is exceedingly likely to be greatest in the wild.

However, I do have a lot of skepticism regarding what to do about wild animal suffering. I tend to be on the skeptical side of sentience. I want to weight organisms on their capacity to suffer, but I really don't think non-vertebrates suffer that much, if at all. Thus, I would but heads against Brian's suffering-per-kg.

To be careful, I place very high value of information regarding the capacity of pain for non-human animals, and would want to investigate the issue as fully as I can before I make my next charity donation. Do you guys (especially Brian) have any data that would help in forming answers to Brian's columns 5 and 6? Especially for animals that occur in the wild?

Lastly, I have a lot of skepticism for things we can do to decrease wild animal suffering. As I mentioned earlier, it strikes me as a lot in common with Pascal's Mugging. I tend to have objections to "very large utility / very small probability" estimations of expected utility when the numerator and denominator are both highly uncertain, and the problem is exceedingly poorly understood. I have the same problem with existential risk.

~

As regards what cause one should work for it's worth considering how soon one expects in-vitro meat to come along.

Definitely. I admit that I have a pretty poor understanding of IV-meat, though. Is it supposed to be indistinguishable from real meat? If not, why would it experience more popularity than already existing meat substitutes? Is there any data needed to calibrate an expectation of when the research would come out, and how long it would take to reach massive acceptance?

There's a wide range of actions that can be taken to decrease wild animal suffering - some of which don't warrant much skepticism. For example, placing a water bowl outside daily for animals on very hot days is quite feasible. Increasing funding for wildlife rehabilitation is also feasible. Much grander ideas require more research, though.

Brian Tomasik wrote:BTW, while I support New Harvest, I support Vegan Outreach and The Humane League more for memetic reasons.

I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better memetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Arepo wrote:

Brian Tomasik wrote:BTW, while I support New Harvest, I support Vegan Outreach and The Humane League more for memetic reasons.

I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better mimetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Why? You mean memetic, right? VO seems more closely oriented towards antispeciesism.

LJM1979 wrote:There's a wide range of actions that can be taken to decrease wild animal suffering - some of which don't warrant much skepticism. For example, placing a water bowl outside daily for animals on very hot days is quite feasible.

The intention is good and it may alleviate some local thirst, but it's not really scalable and not very feasible for city-dwellers.

Increasing funding for wildlife rehabilitation is also feasible.

Doesn't that increase the number of wild animals living net-negative lives?

Much grander ideas require more research, though.

Well, what are the basics? We need to understand animal sentience, map the types of suffering and pleasure in wildlife, understand the consequences of habitat intervention or (realistically mostly) destruction for human economies and civilization, and find out how to convince people that their pro-nature view was wrong ethically (or be convinced by them that we are wrong about the suffering surplus or the consequences).

What other research did you have in mind?

Arepo wrote:I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better mimetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Duly noted. At least 2-3 other people that we know believe this as well. The point is discussed on both pages of the original thread, but a quick summary is in this quote: "An exception is if you think that a significant amount of the resistance to giving animals ethical consideration is the fact that people don't want to give up eating them. A technological fix might allow people to realize the barbarity of their previous attitudes toward factory-farmed livestock, similarly to the way in which the industrial revolution made it easier for people to see the barbarity of slavery."

Hedonic Treader wrote:Doesn't that increase the number of wild animals living net-negative lives?

I was wondering the same.

Hedonic Treader wrote:What other research did you have in mind?

IMO, it is both more important and an easier sell to persuade people that life in the wild is bad enough that we have an ethical obligation to avoid spreading it further (into space, in simulations, etc.). This could matter orders of magnitude more than the tragic suffering now on Earth. That said, spreading awareness of animal suffering on Earth is one important part of this strategy, so talking about suffering here and now isn't irrelevant; it's just that interventions specific to Earth may not be crucial.

LJM1979 wrote:

Arepo wrote:I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better mimetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Why? You mean memetic, right? VO seems more closely oriented towards antispeciesism.

Yeah, fixed. Basically I think (mainly from anecdotal conversation with people who've studied history and whose analytical ability I respect, not from any argument I could formulate at the moment) that most big changes in public morality throughout history have been driven by economic or technological developments that made the original form of oppression inefficient, or at least much less efficient.

Doesn't that increase the number of wild animals living net-negative lives?

I was assuming that the mammals wildlife rehab places focus on tend to have lives worth living. Maybe I'm wrong though.

The intention is good and it may alleviate some local thirst, but it's not really scalable and not very feasible for city-dwellers.

Many animals die slowly and painfully from dehydration. I don't think it should be downplayed. Of course it's not the case that 100% of humans can participate in the activity.

Arepo wrote:

LJM1979 wrote:

Arepo wrote:I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better mimetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Why? You mean memetic, right? VO seems more closely oriented towards antispeciesism.

Yeah, fixed. Basically I think (mainly from anecdotal conversation with people who've studied history and whose analytical ability I respect, not from any argument I could formulate at the moment) that most big changes in public morality throughout history have been driven by economic or technological developments that made the original form of oppression inefficient, or at least much less efficient.

My instinct is that the causation probably goes in both directions: technological advances make it easier to be moral, but wanting to be moral can spur the creating of the right technological advances. And one thing to remember is that even if technological advances make a former atrocity inefficient, that's not always enough: in the 1800's slavery was becoming less of an efficient process, but it still took a war to convince an entire society to change the way they operated, and another hundred fifty years on top of that to convince the society to really change their opinions towards blacks, and it seems likely to me that it was not entirely an economically fueled change: that people's conscience helped lead to the changes, and that in particular the work of people to turn the resistance to (slavery/discrimination) from a pet project of some liberals to the cultural norm.

Also, something that's worth keeping in mind when e.g. deciding whether it's moral to eat meat is that just the act of being vegan helps to convince other people to give a shit about animal suffering, which in the long term is very important. Similarly, (a point that Brian has made) when evaluating wildlife sanctuaries, it might be less important to be worried about the particular conditions on them than to be worried about what their existence does to society.

Arepo wrote:

LJM1979 wrote:

Arepo wrote:I just want to chime in here to point out that I still think NH has better mimetic expectation than any group which works purely on social change.

Why? You mean memetic, right? VO seems more closely oriented towards antispeciesism.

Yeah, fixed. Basically I think (mainly from anecdotal conversation with people who've studied history and whose analytical ability I respect, not from any argument I could formulate at the moment) that most big changes in public morality throughout history have been driven by economic or technological developments that made the original form of oppression inefficient, or at least much less efficient.

Interesting. I do think you have a reasonable point.