You say you’re against killing self aware beings. If pigs were proven to be self aware, would you quit eating them?
That’s not exactly what I said, but it’s pretty close. I established the mirror test as a bound above which I’d oppose eating animals. That is only a bound—it seems entirely plausible to me that other animals might deserve moral consideration, but the test is not simply self awareness.
Absolute proof doesn’t even exist in mathematics—you take the axioms on faith, but then you can deduce other things. At the level of pigs, logical deduction breaks down. We can only have a preponderance of the evidence. If that evidence were overwhelming (and my threshold seems different than yours), then yeah, I’d be morally opposed to eating pigs, other things being equal. In that case I’d take the consequentialist action that does the most good by the numbers. Like funding a charity to swap meats in school lunch (or better yet, donating to MIRI), rather than foregoing pork in all circumstances. That pigs in particular might be self aware already seems plausible on the evidence, and I’ve already reduced my pork intake, but at present, if I was offered a ham sandwich at a free lunch, I’d still eat it.
Me being vegan isn’t my only course of action. I convince others (on a micro level and I plan to do it on a macro level), I plan to donate to things, and push for actions like the one you said, but not really focused on school. I’m just getting into effective altruism, so obviously I’m more into consequentialist actions.
Part of me being vegan is so that I can convince others, not just the physical amount of meat I forego. You can’t really convince others on a micro, macro, or institutional level if you yourself aren’t following it.
Please stop trying to convince others, at least on this forum. This is a forum for people in the unbiased search for truth, not evangelizing of already deeply held views.
That’s not exactly what I said, but it’s pretty close. I established the mirror test as a bound above which I’d oppose eating animals. That is only a bound—it seems entirely plausible to me that other animals might deserve moral consideration, but the test is not simply self awareness.
Absolute proof doesn’t even exist in mathematics—you take the axioms on faith, but then you can deduce other things. At the level of pigs, logical deduction breaks down. We can only have a preponderance of the evidence. If that evidence were overwhelming (and my threshold seems different than yours), then yeah, I’d be morally opposed to eating pigs, other things being equal. In that case I’d take the consequentialist action that does the most good by the numbers. Like funding a charity to swap meats in school lunch (or better yet, donating to MIRI), rather than foregoing pork in all circumstances. That pigs in particular might be self aware already seems plausible on the evidence, and I’ve already reduced my pork intake, but at present, if I was offered a ham sandwich at a free lunch, I’d still eat it.
Me being vegan isn’t my only course of action. I convince others (on a micro level and I plan to do it on a macro level), I plan to donate to things, and push for actions like the one you said, but not really focused on school. I’m just getting into effective altruism, so obviously I’m more into consequentialist actions.
Part of me being vegan is so that I can convince others, not just the physical amount of meat I forego. You can’t really convince others on a micro, macro, or institutional level if you yourself aren’t following it.
Please stop trying to convince others, at least on this forum. This is a forum for people in the unbiased search for truth, not evangelizing of already deeply held views.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
All aspiring rationalists are equally correct, but some are more equally correct than others ;)