Natural Harm

February 6th, 2013
morality
A: Life begins at conception. From that point on the embryo is a person and has the same moral status as a child.

B: What do you think of diseases that kill small children?

A: They're horrible and we must eliminate them.

B: The children?

A: The diseases!

B: Sorry! What do you think of embryos that die between conception and birth? [1]

A: Because of abortions?

B: No, because they just die on their own.

A: Natural embryo loss and miscarrages? They're just things that happen. It can be very sad for the parents, but it's not a moral issue like abortion.

B: What about animal suffering?

A: Animal suffering counts just like human suffering, and we should minimize it. Factoring farming is horrible. If you keep a cat you shouldn't let it outside because cats kill birds. Consider giving up meat.

B: What about suffering of animals in nature? [2]

A: Again, that's just something that happens. It's not a moral issue.


Update 2013-02-08: I agree with B.


[1] The Scourge: Moral Implications of Natural Embryo Loss (Toby Ord, 2008)

[2] The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering (Brian Tomasik, 2009)

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Thing of Things AI use policy

dynomight recently wrote an article calling for bloggers to state publicly whether and how they use AI

via Thing of Things July 6, 2026

Agentic test processes, LLM benchmarks, and other notes on agentic coding from Galapagos Island

I've been using AI fairly heavily since last November and the whole thing is a funny experience. An agent will do something that, if a human did it, you'd immediately fire them. My reaction, of course, is to act as if this is great and spin up a t…

via Posts on July 3, 2026

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

more     (via openring)