{"items": [{"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/292049294152059?comment_id=292151974141791", "anchor": "fb-292151974141791", "service": "fb", "text": "In all seriousness, it's really cool that you take the time to study things such as this.", "timestamp": "1320947145"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/118156077148469167305", "anchor": "gp-1321396000006", "service": "gp", "text": "Speaking as a vegan -- \n
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\n1) I don't understand why you think most vegans don't care about wild animal suffering. It's not like there is a big group of hunting vegans.\n
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\n2) I would class people who say they don't eat meat because they \"love animals\" as at least potentially in the \"animal rights\" camp. \n
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\n3) I don't think you're properly accounting for lapsedness -- while you may know a lot of lapsed vegetarians, if every lapsed vegetarian is replaced by a new vegetarian it doesn't really matter how many lapsed vegs there are. Knowing how many vegetarians there are in the US doesn't tell you much about the churn rate or about the conversion rate, which are the key numbers.", "timestamp": 1321396000}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321396336330", "service": "gp", "text": "@Frederic\n \"I don't understand why you think most vegans don't care about wild animal suffering.\"\n
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\nI'm using \"wild animal suffering\" to mean the suffering of animals in the wild when no humans are involved. Most of the vegans I know don't think this is a problem. Do you?\n
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\n\"I don't think you're properly accounting for lapsedness\"\n
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\nAlan's uses churn and conversion rates, but mine just uses that the number of vegetarians close to constant.", "timestamp": 1321396336}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/118156077148469167305", "anchor": "gp-1321398027559", "service": "gp", "text": "I think most vegans ignore wild animal suffering that's not caused by humans because it's difficult to even conceptualize how to deal with it. There's a moral issue -- the problem of carnivores -- and a practical issue -- managing an ecosystem is hard! Apart from macro-level things like increasing habitat and avoiding environmental collapse, how would you go about it? I've thought about it and I don't see us making a serious attempt until we hit singularity-level tech and can have ubiquitous robots handling most of the tasks.", "timestamp": 1321398027}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321401691892", "service": "gp", "text": "@Frederic\n \"how would you go about it?\"\n
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\nIf you think that wild animals are living lives that are more unhappy than happy, you could deal with it by extermination. Either of particularly harmful predators or of whole ecosystems. Vegans tend not to like ideas along these lines.", "timestamp": 1321401691}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/118156077148469167305", "anchor": "gp-1321409667498", "service": "gp", "text": "Do you think exterminating unhappy humans is a good solution to human unhappiness? If not, why would you think vegans would be in favor of exterminating unhappy animals?", "timestamp": 1321409667}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321414903524", "service": "gp", "text": "@Frederic\n \"Do you think exterminating unhappy humans is a good solution to human unhappiness?\"\n
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\nNo.\n
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\n\"why would you think vegans would be in favor of exterminating unhappy animals?\"\n
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\nExterminating all humans might be a good solution if I thought humans were unhappier than they were happy and there was no way to fix this. Exterminating some humans would likely make the rest a whole lot less happy. This might not be true with animals. If we determine that bears cause net suffering and kill all of them it wouldn't make other species worry.", "timestamp": 1321414903}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/118156077148469167305", "anchor": "gp-1321417290049", "service": "gp", "text": "@Jeff Kaufman\n Problem of carnivores, as I mentioned above. Whether to wipe them out or not right now (assuming that the ecological effects would be beneficial) is akin to an argument about the death penalty. Eventually in glorious vegan technoutopia we will reconfigure them so they are vegetarians or photosynthetic or something. \n
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\nIt's hard for me to wrap my head around the argument that life for the average being could be bad enough that death by exterminating an entire ecosystem would be preferable. Are you suggesting that in terms of moral value death is a neutral state between happiness and unhappiness?", "timestamp": 1321417290}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321448989421", "service": "gp", "text": "@Frederic\n \"Whether to wipe them out or not right now (assuming that the ecological effects would be beneficial) is akin to an argument about the death penalty.\"\n
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\nI think the death penalty is bad policy because it has harmful effects, not because it's inherently bad.\n
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\n\"It's hard for me to wrap my head around the argument that life for the average being could be bad enough that death by exterminating an entire ecosystem would be preferable.\"\n
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\nI find it hard to think about too. Which means this is a very abstract argument and I'm more likely to be completely wrong than when I have intuition helping me. (I also don't think this, because I don't value the suffering of animals, and if I did value that I'm still not sure I would be convinced that total suffering is greater than total joy among animals. Or that we would be unlikely to be able to improve this)\n
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\n\"Are you suggesting that in terms of moral value death is a neutral state between happiness and unhappiness?\"\n
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\nKind of. That when dead a person experiences neither suffering nor joy, and so is neutral. Killing someone usually causes them a lot of pain, and generally makes other people unhappy too. Killing that's not socially sanctioned probably causes much more harm to the greater society (in terms of increased fear, etc) than to the one killed.\n
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\nIf a person was leading a happy life, and would have continued to lead a happy life had they not died, their death is not neutral.\n
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\n(You could read me as saying a policy like \"kill all the people who are unhappy enough that they have negative total happiness\" would be a good idea. There are so many practical issues that it's not really: how do you know they're really that unhappy? How do you keep this from making other people (parents, children, spouses, friends) unhappy? What if we could make people happier in the future if they were only still living? I also don't think very many people are that unhappy.)", "timestamp": 1321448989}, {"author": "Pablo", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/105467680319054692970", "anchor": "gp-1356559739932", "service": "gp", "text": "I think you are underestimating the percentage of people who become vegetarian out of concern for animal welfare. \u00a0See\n
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\n* Rozin, P., Markwith, M., & Stoess, C. (1997), Moralization and becoming a vegetarian: The Transformation of Preferences Into Values and the Recruitment of Disgust. \nPsychological Science\n, 8(2), 67\u201373.\n
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\nand\n
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\n* Fox, N., & Ward, K. (2008). Health, ethics and environment: a qualitative study of vegetarian motivations. \nAppetite\n, 50(2-3), 422\u20139.\n
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\nI checked these papers a while ago, but my recollection is that about a third of the subjects in the sample of vegetarians were ethical vegetarians.\n
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\nMoreover, the literature distributed by Vegan Outreach also includes references to the environmental and personal benefits associated to a vegetarian diet. \u00a0As a consequence, crediting VO only for the fraction of vegetarians concerned with animal rights will underestimate the impact of that organization to some degree.", "timestamp": 1356559739}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1356566788337", "service": "gp", "text": "\"crediting VO only for the fraction of vegetarians concerned with animal rights will underestimate the impact of that organization to some degree\"\n
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\nTrue. \u00a0My calculation is very rough, though, and I'd much rather try some sort of surveying than estimates about what fractions became vegetarian for what reasons.", "timestamp": 1356566788}]}