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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Peter Singer the "father of the animal rights movement" and really interesting philosopher, is I think a vegan but he argues for a disclosure number on eggs and chicken saying how many chickens there were per acre, because he argues that IF the chickens lived a happy life and were killed without distress, it's ethical to eat them, and at some really low density the evidence shows they are happy.
He also makes a claim that there are circumstances where it's ethical to eat meat like if the airplane serves you the wrong meal and if you reject it they will throw it away, because the animal is already dead and your decision doesn't incentivize more death, and demanding a new meal wastes food.
So, that's what living true values sounds like to me. Not picking a rule and sticking by it, but taking each decision and weighing it against your values.
He also claimed that kids with disabilities should be executed and infanticide should be legal up to the age of 30 days.
It sounds like he took a few plane trip, which my explain the second part of that statement.
Har har, I must admit it is rather difficult being on a seven hour flight next to a baby. Especially when you hit lots of turbulence.
That doesn't invalidate the above statement, it just illustrates that he also has abhorant opinions.
People like him make a point of having full consistent systems of thought. So at best his opinion happens to be correct which is not the same as being correct for the right reasons. Even a stopped clock etc.
Also fuck his ablism bullshit
A modest proposal.
What ever happened to galoshes anyway?
Yeah. This is how I live life. I don't create demand for meat. But I'm not vegetarian.
Personally, I find a lot of Peter Singer's arguments to be pretty questionable. As for some of the ones you've mentioned:
For one, killing humans, no matter how humanely the means, is seen by most to be an act of cruelty. I do not want to be killed in my sleep, so why is it okay to assume that animals would be okay with it? While he is a utilitarian and doesn't believe in rights, killing a sentient being seems to me to have much greater negative utility than the positive utility of the enjoyment of eating a chicken.
Also, farming animals for slaughter will always be destructive towards habitats and native species. Even if broiler chickens were kept alive for their natural lifespan of 3-7 years instead of 8 weeks to alleviate any kind of ethical issue with farming them, there is still an opportunity and environmental cost to farming chickens. We could use that land for to cultivate native species and wildlife, or for growing more nutritious and varied crops for people to eat, yet instead we continue to raze the amazon rainforest to make more land for raising farm animals and growing feed. De-densification of farms would only make the demand for farmland even greater than it already is.
Finally, the de-densification of farms would mean a significant increase in the costs of mear production. We'd be pricing lower income groups out of eating meat, while allowing middle- and upper-class folks to carry on consuming animal products as usual. We should not place the burdens of societal progress on the lower class.
But factory farming is completely separate from the scenario of throwing away the entree on the plane.
It does feel like the opportunity to maintain a diet deemed ethical to oneself is a considerable luxury of our age, not a sustainable human condition.
Mammals are not a source of b12. They get it from their diets. In cows it is artificially supplemented.
Peter Singer isn't vegan, he's a utilitarian. Also known as someone who uses "math" to ignore the hard problems in ethics.
Why won't that dreg just die already? The Utility Monster has been known since it's introduction and is an unsolvable problem for them. Also it doesn't actually have calculations, it has opinions with weights. I can argue two radically different courses of actions just by playing with the values I assign to the opinions. Plus humans really do not operate according to it, nothing evolution has done for us would wire us to think and act accordingly.
It's the kinda idea that most people have at least once and then throw it away when they see it can't do anything for them except make them and the people around them miserable. The Good Place had it right.
I disagree with this. The notion of ending a happy life is more cruel than ending a suffering life. How bout we just don't raise animals for slaughter?
If you're able to choose to not eat meat then I believe that is the morally correct choice.
The ethical problem is weighing a happy life cut short vs no life at all. There's no mathematical solution.
This is under the impression that life as a concept is good. I know personally that I'd rather never have been born. Being born isn't some cosmic lottery that souls just float around in the void hoping they win.
As much as I'm generally on your side, that's not honestly answering the premise, which is that those chickens do live a happy live.
I personally don't seek so-called ethical meat because every example I've looked into has been a lie, and if it does exist it's not worth my time to comb through supply lines in search for a product whose origin I would always worry about, and that I can do perfectly well without.
Imagine you're living a happy life. One day someone comes up to you and ends that life. You don't know why it happened, but your happy life has now been ended. How is that any less disturbing than a chicken's experience?
I agree with the ethical meat comment. That's why I don't bother and just eat plants.
The question is if somehow given the choice, would you pick that over no life at all?
Me personally? No life. I don't want to be here and even if I had the best life a human could have, I would still be contributing to suffering in some form.
You wish you’d never been born, would choose no life and think ending the life of suffering is more acceptable.
Help is available if you need it.
Thanks, but I'm not suicidal. This is just how my brain works.
This kind of edgy comment has no place in real discussion, because of you were serious about it, you wouldn't be able to post it because you'd be dead.
Your comment demeans and trivializes suicidal ideation.
Committing suicide isn't as easy as you apparently think it is.
I am a survivor of suicide, which is why I take this kind of tripe seriously.
Throwing doubts about how serious people are about suicide is important. Wanting to kill yourself is a sign of an illness, not a position one reasons themselves into.
I'm sorry you've experienced that.
I have CPTSD which if you or anyone reading doesn't know is continued, long term traumatic experiences. I'm much older than my "edgy" comments seem at 42. My life experience has led to my illness, but reorganizing and unraveling the knot of that experience has led to this view of life not being something I'm happy to have to continue. The real kicker is that having stripped away the "life is worth living" propaganda has given me some peace. However, there isn't anything on this planet that is more corrosive than happy people telling you to be happy.
If it gives you peace, I am happy for that. I hope we can agree to disagree and see that we both have positive intent.
I just can't help but dismiss out of hand these sorts of melodramatic comments that aim for maximum angst while stating nothing of value.
It's not melodrama and if you can't gain any knowledge from what I've said, that's on you.
I've not had the best experience with life and just as your experience has painted your opinion in a more positive light, mine has painted mine negatively. It doesn't discount my view or bolster yours.
So why would anyone listen to you about how to live it, especially ethically? No, really I am asking. I don't want someone in my government heading up an agency that they don't think should exist, or someone at my job who doesn't want to work there, or date someone who doesn't want to be with me.
If you don't want to exist that is your baggage but for those of us who do why would we trust you to tell us how to exist?
Ethics is for us humans to figure out how to have a good life with other people also having one. It isn't for serving some abstract concept. When you start the Peter Singer games you turn it from a practical art to worship of some secular idol.
I don't expect anyone to listen to me. Read the comments here. If anything my opinion has done a pretty good job of uniting people against how I view things.
You don't have to trust me or listen to my views. However, everyone that's responded to me has implied that I should exist as they do.
If ethics as a concept has the job of focusing solely on humans having a good life then it's a failure.
Citation needed.
It makes sense to eat food that would otherwise be thrown away.
It does not make sense to say killing an animal is justified because they were happy or it was done humanely.
Doesn't sound like he has values to me. Sounds like he has exceptions. It's a good thing people with 'true values' don't have to prove them to you, lol.
I mean, regardless how you feel about them, those are values. Values in this case as made up of inclusions and exclusions, to say that his values are "exceptions" because they're different than your inclusions and exclusions is condescending and frankly wrong.
Sure man. Believe whatever you want.