{"items": [{"author": "Victor", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=128183557308644", "anchor": "fb-128183557308644", "service": "fb", "text": "You don't value the suffering of animals at all? Any concerns about the environmental damage related to factory farming?", "timestamp": "1331131176"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=128209787306021", "anchor": "fb-128209787306021", "service": "fb", "text": "@Victor: Environmental damage matters to me in as much as it affects current and future humans, which is often a lot.", "timestamp": "1331133723"}, {"author": "Rick", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=128822370578096", "anchor": "fb-128822370578096", "service": "fb", "text": "Would it be true that you value the suffering of humans more than the suffering of animals, but you put some value on reducing the suffering of animals? If you saw our cat, Ella, suffering because she was stuck, would you help her get free, or leave her stuck and suffering? If her food bowl was empty, would you feed her?", "timestamp": "1331202168"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=128888333904833", "anchor": "fb-128888333904833", "service": "fb", "text": "@Richard: I like Ella, and I would help her, but I don't think I have a moral requirement to.
If you learned that Ella was killing mice, would you stop her?", "timestamp": "1331211547"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114588710186521489410", "anchor": "gp-1331242137175", "service": "gp", "text": "I would expect internet users considering vegetarianism to look at a lot of resources. So if I look at a a particular page, I'm probably also looking at other pages, and if I soon after decide to go veg, it's inaccurate to chalk it all up to any given page. \n
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\nIdeally you'd get the pool of people who had visited the page, contact them to find out if they had changed their diet, and then ask them to list any resources that influenced their decision.", "timestamp": 1331242137}, {"author": "Brian", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/116207869987058429586", "anchor": "gp-1331266810685", "service": "gp", "text": "Nice point, Julia. For Hidden Face of Food, I think it's safe to assume that many of the visitors who go veg did so because of the site (either due to the content on the page itself or because the page spurred further exploration). The reason to think so is that most of the visitors come through ads directed at general teenagers, i.e., almost all of the site's visitors didn't intend to come to learn about animals in factory farms. (The ads leading to the page are pretty generic and don't mention factory farming explicitly.) Because Nick's survey was done within a few months of the participants seeing HFoF, it's mildly unlikely that there would have been other factors having a big influence on the decision to eat less meat in that same time window (except things initially triggered by HFoF itself).", "timestamp": 1331266810}, {"author": "Brian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=129408293852837", "anchor": "fb-129408293852837", "service": "fb", "text": "I would stop Ella from killing mice. :) This is one of the reasons I don't have a cat. (Others being time cost, non-vegetarian cat food, and money cost that could be used to fund veg ads and the like.)", "timestamp": "1331267090"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=129413067185693", "anchor": "fb-129413067185693", "service": "fb", "text": "Could you elaborate on your thoughts on animals, Jeff? I think that the reasons I would not want to be killed and eaten have nothing to do with any uniquely human characteristics and everything to do with the capacity all animals share for suffering. That's why I care about animals...", "timestamp": "1331267674"}, {"author": "Rick", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=129544333839233", "anchor": "fb-129544333839233", "service": "fb", "text": "I think I would do what I could easily do to reduce the suffering of animals that I came accross. I also put a higher value on animals that I know, and on animals that I think are more intelligent. Jeff, do you feel differently about chimps, gorillas, dolphins? What if we found a living tribe of neanderthals in the remote jungle. Would they count?", "timestamp": "1331290523"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114588710186521489410", "anchor": "gp-1331299577201", "service": "gp", "text": "The ads don't mention animals or factory farms? What do the ads looks like?", "timestamp": 1331299577}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1331299729980", "service": "gp", "text": "@Brian\n What do you mean that the ads are generic? They don't mention not eating meat?\n
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\nIf they do mention anything to do with vegetarianism, then because the clickthrough rate for ads is low and the fraction 'like'ing is low, it's possible that you are getting many people who were already considering vegetarianism. Your sample stops being 'general teenagers' once you pull them in with something vegetarian related.", "timestamp": 1331299729}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=129761480484185", "anchor": "fb-129761480484185", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ryan, @Richard: I'm not entirely sorted out on this. Human joy/suffering definitely counts. I think some sort of \"human running on a computer\" [1] would count too, as would neanderthals if they turned out to be as similar to us as I think they probably were. The farther things get from us the less I think they matter, and I don't think most animals matter at all. I'm not sure, though, and need to think more.
@Rick: \"I think I would do what I could easily do to reduce the suffering of animals that I came across\" sounds more like something you might do because it made you happy than part of a moral system.
[1] http://www.jefftk.com/news/2011-11-02.html", "timestamp": "1331315546"}, {"author": "Brian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=130091147117885", "anchor": "fb-130091147117885", "service": "fb", "text": "What do you think of permanently disabled adults with minimal cognitive function but who can still feel pain? Is it best to treat them well for slippery-slope reasons only? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_marginal_cases", "timestamp": "1331353238"}, {"author": "Brian", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/116207869987058429586", "anchor": "gp-1331356777587", "service": "gp", "text": "I've actually never seen the ads myself (though I would like to). Some do mention meat but aren't that explicit. Nick gave a few examples via email: (1) A picture of a singer saying \"Find out why [singer] leaves meat off his plate.\" (2) Picture of an abused dog, saying \"Help stop this abuse.\" (3) A picture from Harry Potter saying \"Worse than Voldemort.\" (Apparently that last one didn't have a good success rate upon clickthrough.)\n
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\nI was surprised that the ads are so misleading, but Nick said they seem to work pretty well, and we want to avoid the situation where we only get clicks from people who already care about factory farming. (Of course, there will always be some bias, except with cases like the Harry Potter ad where you have no idea what it's about.)\n
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\nNick talked about the idea of getting veg artists to do a 15-second intro to the video about why they're veg, which would make the ads much less misleading, but he hasn't gotten a chance to try this yet.\n
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\nBias toward people already considering vegetarianism is partly a problem, but not entirely, because that is a population more likely to be impacted. As long as the survey accurately measures changes based on the video, rather than just whether the respondents are already veg, then the measurement should be okay. (However, it's possible that some people already veg misleadingly reported that they became veg due to the video.)\n
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\nIt would be interesting to see how veg ads do in a forum where people don't have to actively click on the ads. For example, on certain YouTube videos, you can't tell what the ad will be ahead of time. Of course, usually users can still skip past the ads if not interested.", "timestamp": 1331356777}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=130333847093615", "anchor": "fb-130333847093615", "service": "fb", "text": "@Brian: I think dividing people by cognitive function is probably corrosive and harmful. But yes, it's best to treat them well mostly or entirely because of their effect on other people.", "timestamp": "1331388403"}, {"author": "Jesper", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=130599097067090", "anchor": "fb-130599097067090", "service": "fb", "text": "Which types of closeness count for you? For example, according to Berridge and Kringelbach \"Hedonic brain mechanisms are largely shared between humans and other mammals...[and] brain mechanisms of higher abstract pleasures strongly overlap with more basic sensory pleasures\"
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/.../Berridge%20&%20Kringelbach...", "timestamp": "1331416311"}, {"author": "Pablo", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/128165223977144?comment_id=130643133729353", "anchor": "fb-130643133729353", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, if you care about suffering because of how it feels like, it seems you should care about the suffering of any creature capable of suffering, independently of the biological species to which it belonged, or its degree of similarity to (typical?) members of the human species. And if you care about suffering for other reasons, could you elaborate on what these reasons are?", "timestamp": "1331421417"}]}