Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by spraak | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

spraak

Is this a big troll? The author moves directly from

> "reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers"

> "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation"

WHY at all would that make sense?

It's a giant IF they believe reducing harm is better than non-existence.

So... er, ok... the author is saying (to put it succinctly) that IF an existence of suffering as a farmed animal is better than non-existence, then clearly vegetarians should want to

> "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation"

It doesn't follow logically at all.

View on HN

The argument is pretty straightforward.

According to this paper, vegetarian philosophers argue that livestock live lives not worth living because of the cruel treatment they receive. The paper then argues that wild animals receive worse treatment from nature. Therefore, their lives are similarly not worth living. Reducing suffering is the goal, and not living is better than living, so reducing the number of wild animals is best.

There are a number of good arguments to this. One would be that humans breeding livestock increases the amount of suffering, whereas wild animals are not bred. Another is about directly benefiting (eating) from this suffering verses not benefiting. Yet another is that active harm from cruel treatment is different from passive harm by "not helping" the wild animals.

Note that none of of these are consequentalist arguments, though. A consequentialist argument would focus on the relative amounts of suffering, not on the beneficiaries or agents of it.

This follows from the assumption "If wild animals’ well-being is indeed below the threshold for a life worth living", which is argued in the passage:

> One reason to suspect that on average this pleasure is outweighed by suffering is that most species use the reproductive strategy of r-selection, which means that the overwhelming majority of their offspring starve or are eaten shortly after birth and only very few reach reproductive age (Horta 2010; Ng 1995). For instance, ‘in her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, 1000 kits’ (Hapgood 1979), the vast majority of which will die before they could have had many pleasurable experiences. Overall, it seems plausible that wild animals have worse lives than, say, free-range cows. If vegetarians think it’s better for the latter not to exist, they must believe the same thing about wild animals.

The "giant if" you mention is stated explicitly in the section you quote: "More precisely then, ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives so bad they are not worth living, so that it is better for them not to come into existence. Vegetarians reduce the demand for meat, so that farmers will breed fewer animals, preventing the existence of additional animals. [...] I will argue that if vegetarians were to apply this principle consistently, the suffering of wild animals would dominate their concerns, and would plausibly lead them to support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com