I agree with you an everything, except this. Libertarianism should NOT place higher weight on human well being than on animal rights. At least the basic rights like not be tortured in an animal farm. This is because animals have sentience and they feel the same pain as humans.
Coming to bugs:
- they aren't sentient, they don't feel pain the same way other forms of animal life do.
- even if they feel pain, they don't suffer the same way throughout their lives as cows and chickens do in farms
Animal rights isn't just about killing. Hunting animals is much less cruel than factory farming them. The animal doesn't suffer throughout its lifetime.
Regarding the food argument and how it is important to eat meat. It isn't important. Some of the highest populated human cultures have been in Asia and they are predominantly vegetarian (the Indian subcontinent comes to mind where the food is predominantly vegetarian and India throughout history has been highly populated). Meat, especially red meat, GREATLY increases the risk of cancer and other ailments that it is simply not worth it to eat ANY meat.
A complete nutritious vegan diet is possible AND is efficient for production, especially in a post industrial society.
There's a lot more discussion to be had than in this one comment but I really hope you change your mind on this and agree with your friend Michael Huemer.
I think the crucial question is something like Singer's argument from marginal cases: "what is it that's true of a human that isn't true of an animal such that we don't have to extend to them the non-aggression principle?"
Some libertarians say that humans are more intelligent than animals and that's why we don't need to extend the NAP towards animals.
But that makes no sense. The NAP exists because humans feel the pain of aggression and any sentient being can feel the pain of aggression without being particularly intelligent.
I think the difference is that suffering isn’t relevant. The problem with aggression isn’t pain, but rather the trespass on freedom of a moral agent. Is it ok if I anesthetize you before an attack of some kind? Pain isn’t the issue, so the more advanced versions of this get into defining abstract notions of suffering. Yet it seems really weird to me as a moral basis. It does have a certain intuitive appeal, and seems relevant for day to day decision making -physiological we should probably avoid cruelty to mammals to avoid cruelty to humans and that is likely some of the basis for the intuitions. But, I’d argue the ability to participate in a moral community is the basis upon why we should respect and enforce right’s for everyone within that community.
That is to say, I don’t think morality really would exist in a universe of one person, or between a tree and person- or even a very alien mind and a human. I don’t mean a star-trek alien or even something like a human-iq-level squid, but maybe something like swarm species with emergent intelligence. There needs to be some kind of meeting of the minds (as a possibility) for the basis of mutual moral codes to come into being. Something more or less like rule-utilitarianism can emerge from that - in the sense not everything needs to be circumstantial
Hunting animals is less cruel for a different reason in my opinion. The natural death of a wild animal results in much more suffering than if it is shot by a hunter. Starving, sickness, predation are more drawn out than being shot. I also don’t agree on the whole that wild animals live better lives than farmed ones. Not easy to know though, as you can’t really ask the animals. Treatment seems to be getting better in many places. Overall I agree that Bryan is really discounting the suffering of many farmed animals.
Great interview! Very impressive kid! I'll note that at 22 minutes Bryan says that he thinks that according to those who study animal welfare, milk producing cows and egg laying chickens are treated as badly as animals that are eaten, with the implication being that there is little advantage to veganism over vegetarianism.
It estimates 64 units of suffering per kg of eggs, 41 units per kg of chicken, 1.8 units per kg of beef, and 0.11 per kg of milk.
So milk consumption would have a negligable impact on animal welfare compared to animal consumption, particularly chicken consumption.
On the whole, it seems to me that Bryan relies too much on overly simply heuristics, like "we kill lots of bugs, therefore we must fundamentally think their lives lack worth, therefore we must not think that non-human animals, generally, have value." Another seemingly over simple heuristic of his is "new technologies that people fear have all turned out fine, therefore AI will, as well."
As to the first, he seems to assume too strongly that the very strong default is all animals being of nearly identical moral worth, with only a possible exception for chimpanzees.
In the case of AI, he seems to assume too strongly that all new technologies represent an equal threat.
Regarding AI, he would say "well, people had lots of reasons to suggest that previous technologies represented great threats, too." But he isn't addressing whether he himself agrees with those comparissons. That people made ostensibly similar arguments that were bad can perhaps be a reason to doubt a particular arguement, but only if your thought process has to end there. If you can reason yourself about whether AI risk represents the same risk a priori as previously introduced technologies, then settling on the simple heuristic that "it's a technology, and technologies have been fine" seems overly crude.
Of course, the whole point of the heuristics is to avoid excessive granularity. If you get too granular in considering specific uncertain cases, you lose the benefits of clearer knowledge about particular categories. But it seems Bryan's heuristics are sometimes too simplistic.
They are sometimes simplistic - but that is exactly the kind of thing that allows him to see past the sophistic bullcrap that often clouds mainstream thinking. It makes his insights possible and interesting even if I judge his points wrong it at least lacking in nuance.
And in every other case I agree with him. When he says how most regulation just sounds nice but is awful on paper, he makes an excellent point.
But here he is making the mistake of assuming that the government is pushing animal welfare and that it is mainstream somehow.
In the western society, it is far from being mainstream. Left, Right and center all disagree with the notion of ending meat and milk subsidies. Despite the progress made by vegans, western cuisine is fundamentally meat based. Animal welfare is just cat and dog welfare in western society. Other animals are not important.
I guess you’d need to point to proposed animal welfare laws or regulations (granted they are sparse and not likely to be adopted in western countries) and justify how you think they wouldn’t be subject to second order effects that distort their intent or even backfire? Even ignoring his stance on the value in animal welfare, Bryan proposes some reforms such as allowing the private ownership and husbandry of endangered species as a way to increase their numbers and reduce poaching, or to remove regulatory barriers to open ocean aquaculture to reduce the pressure on wild species.
Hi Bryan,
I agree with you an everything, except this. Libertarianism should NOT place higher weight on human well being than on animal rights. At least the basic rights like not be tortured in an animal farm. This is because animals have sentience and they feel the same pain as humans.
Coming to bugs:
- they aren't sentient, they don't feel pain the same way other forms of animal life do.
- even if they feel pain, they don't suffer the same way throughout their lives as cows and chickens do in farms
Animal rights isn't just about killing. Hunting animals is much less cruel than factory farming them. The animal doesn't suffer throughout its lifetime.
Regarding the food argument and how it is important to eat meat. It isn't important. Some of the highest populated human cultures have been in Asia and they are predominantly vegetarian (the Indian subcontinent comes to mind where the food is predominantly vegetarian and India throughout history has been highly populated). Meat, especially red meat, GREATLY increases the risk of cancer and other ailments that it is simply not worth it to eat ANY meat.
A complete nutritious vegan diet is possible AND is efficient for production, especially in a post industrial society.
There's a lot more discussion to be had than in this one comment but I really hope you change your mind on this and agree with your friend Michael Huemer.
Thanks,
IslandObsessed
I think the crucial question is something like Singer's argument from marginal cases: "what is it that's true of a human that isn't true of an animal such that we don't have to extend to them the non-aggression principle?"
This is excellent!
Some libertarians say that humans are more intelligent than animals and that's why we don't need to extend the NAP towards animals.
But that makes no sense. The NAP exists because humans feel the pain of aggression and any sentient being can feel the pain of aggression without being particularly intelligent.
Love this Peter Singer's quote.
I think the difference is that suffering isn’t relevant. The problem with aggression isn’t pain, but rather the trespass on freedom of a moral agent. Is it ok if I anesthetize you before an attack of some kind? Pain isn’t the issue, so the more advanced versions of this get into defining abstract notions of suffering. Yet it seems really weird to me as a moral basis. It does have a certain intuitive appeal, and seems relevant for day to day decision making -physiological we should probably avoid cruelty to mammals to avoid cruelty to humans and that is likely some of the basis for the intuitions. But, I’d argue the ability to participate in a moral community is the basis upon why we should respect and enforce right’s for everyone within that community.
That is to say, I don’t think morality really would exist in a universe of one person, or between a tree and person- or even a very alien mind and a human. I don’t mean a star-trek alien or even something like a human-iq-level squid, but maybe something like swarm species with emergent intelligence. There needs to be some kind of meeting of the minds (as a possibility) for the basis of mutual moral codes to come into being. Something more or less like rule-utilitarianism can emerge from that - in the sense not everything needs to be circumstantial
Hunting animals is less cruel for a different reason in my opinion. The natural death of a wild animal results in much more suffering than if it is shot by a hunter. Starving, sickness, predation are more drawn out than being shot. I also don’t agree on the whole that wild animals live better lives than farmed ones. Not easy to know though, as you can’t really ask the animals. Treatment seems to be getting better in many places. Overall I agree that Bryan is really discounting the suffering of many farmed animals.
Great interview! Very impressive kid! I'll note that at 22 minutes Bryan says that he thinks that according to those who study animal welfare, milk producing cows and egg laying chickens are treated as badly as animals that are eaten, with the implication being that there is little advantage to veganism over vegetarianism.
At least per this analysis: https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/, he's right about the eggs, but not about the milk.
It estimates 64 units of suffering per kg of eggs, 41 units per kg of chicken, 1.8 units per kg of beef, and 0.11 per kg of milk.
So milk consumption would have a negligable impact on animal welfare compared to animal consumption, particularly chicken consumption.
On the whole, it seems to me that Bryan relies too much on overly simply heuristics, like "we kill lots of bugs, therefore we must fundamentally think their lives lack worth, therefore we must not think that non-human animals, generally, have value." Another seemingly over simple heuristic of his is "new technologies that people fear have all turned out fine, therefore AI will, as well."
As to the first, he seems to assume too strongly that the very strong default is all animals being of nearly identical moral worth, with only a possible exception for chimpanzees.
In the case of AI, he seems to assume too strongly that all new technologies represent an equal threat.
Regarding AI, he would say "well, people had lots of reasons to suggest that previous technologies represented great threats, too." But he isn't addressing whether he himself agrees with those comparissons. That people made ostensibly similar arguments that were bad can perhaps be a reason to doubt a particular arguement, but only if your thought process has to end there. If you can reason yourself about whether AI risk represents the same risk a priori as previously introduced technologies, then settling on the simple heuristic that "it's a technology, and technologies have been fine" seems overly crude.
Of course, the whole point of the heuristics is to avoid excessive granularity. If you get too granular in considering specific uncertain cases, you lose the benefits of clearer knowledge about particular categories. But it seems Bryan's heuristics are sometimes too simplistic.
They are sometimes simplistic - but that is exactly the kind of thing that allows him to see past the sophistic bullcrap that often clouds mainstream thinking. It makes his insights possible and interesting even if I judge his points wrong it at least lacking in nuance.
And in every other case I agree with him. When he says how most regulation just sounds nice but is awful on paper, he makes an excellent point.
But here he is making the mistake of assuming that the government is pushing animal welfare and that it is mainstream somehow.
In the western society, it is far from being mainstream. Left, Right and center all disagree with the notion of ending meat and milk subsidies. Despite the progress made by vegans, western cuisine is fundamentally meat based. Animal welfare is just cat and dog welfare in western society. Other animals are not important.
I guess you’d need to point to proposed animal welfare laws or regulations (granted they are sparse and not likely to be adopted in western countries) and justify how you think they wouldn’t be subject to second order effects that distort their intent or even backfire? Even ignoring his stance on the value in animal welfare, Bryan proposes some reforms such as allowing the private ownership and husbandry of endangered species as a way to increase their numbers and reduce poaching, or to remove regulatory barriers to open ocean aquaculture to reduce the pressure on wild species.
I'm really curious how this came about
I really enjoy your common sense take on things. I've always found the extreme animal rights groups as too much philosophy, not enough real world.
This should be fun.