But the effect would not be the same if the information was merely listed, rather than accompanied by shocking videos
The effect would not be the same if there was less information, rather than more. The extra imagery adds additional information.
Assuming that the technology and videos had been available, would you have considered it immoral to show the citizens of Nazi Germany videos from concentration camps? People who might have decided to not look further into the issue of Jewish treatment within their country?
Ok, that is a very good point. I think I was being biased by not caring about animals for other reasons, and thus searching for more arguments to agree with my position, rather than independently evaluating them. Mea culpa.
The obvious other care is with abortion. It might be that showing them gruesome pictures is the only way to make people care about infant beheadings and the murder to screaming children (note that this link does not contain images)
I think that if I were in Nazi Germany, it would be acceptable to forcibly show people videos of concentration camps to save Jews. However, if I were in Nazi Germany, it would also be acceptable to cheat, to destroy property, or even to shoot people in order to save Jews.
To a rational vegetarian who thinks that eating animals is as bad as killing Jews, it would be moral to do anything in order to prevent the eating of animals. However, such a variety of vegetarian is a menace to society from the point of view of other people who don’t share in his ideology, and would (according to those other people) need to be stopped—and rationality doesn’t really matter at this point; whether he is stopped would only be a question of who is more powerful.
Now, suppose that a vegetarian thinks that eating animals is only 1/1000 as bad as killing Jews. If it’s okay to do otherwise evil things to save a Jew in Nazi Germany, then this vegetarian ought to be willing to do them to create 1001 vegetarians. So vegetarians should be shooting people right and left (or doing other inherently immoral things) if they think it advances vegetarianism enough.
Of course, it’s not possible for a vegetarian to be absolutely certain about vegetarianism, and once he accounts for his own uncertainty about vegetarianism in the calculation, the possibility that he is wrong and will have committed murder makes it no longer palatable to kill people to create vegetarians even if you’re creating lots and lots of vegetarians.
(And if he then reasons “okay, I shouldn’t kill to create 1001 vegetarians, but my uncertainty about vegetarianism is so low that it’s okay to kill to create a million vegetarians, that still doesn’t work because he is also uncertain about what his uncertainty is.)
Doing an (otherwise) mildly immoral thing to create many vegetarians is similar, except that of course the acceptable bound on his uncertainty about vegetarianism is higher—maybe high enough that he actually could justify it. But then this brings in other considerations—if he can mildly hurt other people for vegetarianism, then others will also be able to mildly hurt him for their own pet causes, for instance, and things may be overall better off if nobody is allowed to hurt others for their causes.
As it turns out, I actually do think eating animals is approximately 1/1000th as bad as killing people.
I don’t go around shooting people, a) it’s a clear net loss to create a world where people kill for all their pet causes, b) it’s pretty obvious that when you’re trying to change a policy affecting the entire world, killing people will almost only hurt your cause.
“Don’t kill people” is a pretty obvious moral schelling point that everyone can agree on.
It’s dramatically less clear where lines are drawn with regards to emotional manipulation. The entire human experience is basically based around emotional manipulation (storytelling, fashion, advertisements, literature, tribal excitement at sporting events). Refraining from doing that won’t cause the rest of humanity to stop, unless you’re actively coordinating with people on a campaign to stop emotional manipulation.
So I’m not sure why I’d refrain from doing that, whatever my pet cause, unless my pet cause was removing emotional manipulation from humanity completely.
“Don’t kill people” is a pretty obvious moral schelling point that everyone can agree on.
So is “don’t inflict suffering”. At least some part of what people consider bad about killing is that it can be painful or that it causes sadness in others.
I find it interesting that when it comes to eating animals, people usually focus on killing, even though most veg*ans I know care primarily about preventing suffering.
I know zero people who would be capable of meeting that standard. On the other hand, “don’t kill people” is pretty easy. Schelling points are about actual behavior, not professed behavior.
Being uncertain about one’s uncertainty doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act according to your moral beliefs, the uncertainty can go both ways. You still have to assign probabilities in the end.
Assuming you attribute the same importance to reducing suffering, no matter in what type of being it occurs, it still wouldn’t make sense to “shoot people left and right”. People who care a lot about animals are already being branded as “extremists”, you’d have more impact by going about it with a more thought-out strategy like e.g. movement-building and / or high-earning and donating to the best outreach organizations.
But then this brings in other considerations—if he can mildly hurt other people for vegetarianism, then others will also be able to mildly hurt him for their own pet causes, for instance, and things may be overall better off if nobody is allowed to hurt others for their causes.
What’s the difference between a pet cause and a normal cause? Majority rule?
You still have to assign probabilities in the end.
True, except that one’s certainty about one’s certainty is typically not a large number. If you think that killing one person justifies creating 1001 vegetarians, are you even 50% certain about that number 1001?
it still wouldn’t make sense to “shoot people left and right”.… you’d have more impact by going about it with a more thought-out strategy
Yes, but “it makes sense to shoot people” is shorthand for “the moral reasons that normally mean we should not shoot people do not apply here”. It may still be impractical or suboptimal to shoot people.
What’s the difference between a pet cause and a normal cause? Majority rule?
Not majority rule, just a cause with a similar popularity to vegetarianism.
I agree that one has to adjust for certainty and overconfidence, and peer disagreement does seem like a good reason to downshift as well.
OK, I see your point about shooting, agreed.
Regarding popularity, if that’s the only criterion then also fAI would be a pet cause. I’d say it also depends on popularity among which group of people. Out of the smartest and most rational people I know, the majority of those who are interested in doing ethics, ie. in figuring out what “being altruistic” implies, would agree that animal suffering counts just as much as human suffering. And the smart and rational people who disagree are mostly not interested in doing ethics (in this way), as they just claim that it is all about “what they care about”, a selfish defense that could just as well be used to uphold racism or sexism.
So on the above grounds I’d object to vegetarianism being a pet cause.
Something else to consider: Person X believes that gay sex, or maybe abortions, are immoral. Is it okay for him to show people pictures of those activities in order to shock them? As in the vegetarian example, the imagery adds “information”.
But I would certainly classify trying to get someone to oppose gay sex by forcing them to confront how disgusting it looks (to non-gay people) as “immoral mind-hijacking”. It doesn’t add meaningful information. Technically, you could claim that someone wasn’t aware of how disgusting it is and now that they know, that’s new information, but that’s not the type of information that’s normally relevant to rational arguments.
You could also say “well, some disgust isn’t rational, but the disgusting aspect of animal slaughter is a different kind of disgust which is rational”, but you’d be hard pressed to come up with an argument for why the two kinds of disgust are different that doesn’t amount to a direct argument for vegetarianism that could be expressed without involving disgust at all.
In the case of gay sex and abortions, the disgust is the person’s emotional response to something that isn’t the most important (to the image provider, and perhaps to the providee too) part of the action. Dicks in butts (because anti-gay people always talk about gay men, never lesbians (probably because if they did they wouldn’t get the desired response)) are less important to them than adults being able to do something they really want to do with their own bodies. Tiny bloody fetuses having been killed aren’t as important as people’s lives not being ruined by children they can’t support, or people dying in childbirth who could have been saved by abortion.
On the other hand, piglets getting their testicles ripped out without anesthetic (and similar bad things that happens to animals) are the most important thing about eating meat.
Retracted cause this doesn’t really work for the abortion example. It does for the gay sex one though. For the abortion one, I guess I won’t condemn abortion based on some universal principle of how arguments should be conducted.
I don’t think it works for the gay sex example either for the reason I gave: in order to say that using disgust is good in one example and bad in another, you need what amounts to a separate argument for vegetarianism anyway. “That’s the most important thing about eating meat” is not an undisputed fact, it’s something that is only believed by vegetarians. Non-vegetarians wouldn’t agree with it.
This turns it into circular reasoning: You should be vegetarian because of disgust. You should accept disgust as an argument for vegetarianism because what it shows is “the most important thing”. And you only believe that that’s the most important thing if you’re already vegetarian.
Most of the fence sitters it’s aiming to convince care a lot more about things besides “icky dick in butt” though.
And most of the people I’ve argued with don’t take the “animals aren’t people, I don’t care about them at all” route, so if they understood the scale of the problem, animal suffering probably would be important to them, and not a distraction from the big important issues.
The effect would not be the same if there was less information, rather than more. The extra imagery adds additional information.
Assuming that the technology and videos had been available, would you have considered it immoral to show the citizens of Nazi Germany videos from concentration camps? People who might have decided to not look further into the issue of Jewish treatment within their country?
Ok, that is a very good point. I think I was being biased by not caring about animals for other reasons, and thus searching for more arguments to agree with my position, rather than independently evaluating them. Mea culpa.
The obvious other care is with abortion. It might be that showing them gruesome pictures is the only way to make people care about infant beheadings and the murder to screaming children (note that this link does not contain images)
I think that if I were in Nazi Germany, it would be acceptable to forcibly show people videos of concentration camps to save Jews. However, if I were in Nazi Germany, it would also be acceptable to cheat, to destroy property, or even to shoot people in order to save Jews.
To a rational vegetarian who thinks that eating animals is as bad as killing Jews, it would be moral to do anything in order to prevent the eating of animals. However, such a variety of vegetarian is a menace to society from the point of view of other people who don’t share in his ideology, and would (according to those other people) need to be stopped—and rationality doesn’t really matter at this point; whether he is stopped would only be a question of who is more powerful.
Now, suppose that a vegetarian thinks that eating animals is only 1/1000 as bad as killing Jews. If it’s okay to do otherwise evil things to save a Jew in Nazi Germany, then this vegetarian ought to be willing to do them to create 1001 vegetarians. So vegetarians should be shooting people right and left (or doing other inherently immoral things) if they think it advances vegetarianism enough.
Of course, it’s not possible for a vegetarian to be absolutely certain about vegetarianism, and once he accounts for his own uncertainty about vegetarianism in the calculation, the possibility that he is wrong and will have committed murder makes it no longer palatable to kill people to create vegetarians even if you’re creating lots and lots of vegetarians.
(And if he then reasons “okay, I shouldn’t kill to create 1001 vegetarians, but my uncertainty about vegetarianism is so low that it’s okay to kill to create a million vegetarians, that still doesn’t work because he is also uncertain about what his uncertainty is.)
Doing an (otherwise) mildly immoral thing to create many vegetarians is similar, except that of course the acceptable bound on his uncertainty about vegetarianism is higher—maybe high enough that he actually could justify it. But then this brings in other considerations—if he can mildly hurt other people for vegetarianism, then others will also be able to mildly hurt him for their own pet causes, for instance, and things may be overall better off if nobody is allowed to hurt others for their causes.
As it turns out, I actually do think eating animals is approximately 1/1000th as bad as killing people.
I don’t go around shooting people, a) it’s a clear net loss to create a world where people kill for all their pet causes, b) it’s pretty obvious that when you’re trying to change a policy affecting the entire world, killing people will almost only hurt your cause.
“Don’t kill people” is a pretty obvious moral schelling point that everyone can agree on.
It’s dramatically less clear where lines are drawn with regards to emotional manipulation. The entire human experience is basically based around emotional manipulation (storytelling, fashion, advertisements, literature, tribal excitement at sporting events). Refraining from doing that won’t cause the rest of humanity to stop, unless you’re actively coordinating with people on a campaign to stop emotional manipulation.
So I’m not sure why I’d refrain from doing that, whatever my pet cause, unless my pet cause was removing emotional manipulation from humanity completely.
So is “don’t inflict suffering”. At least some part of what people consider bad about killing is that it can be painful or that it causes sadness in others.
I find it interesting that when it comes to eating animals, people usually focus on killing, even though most veg*ans I know care primarily about preventing suffering.
I know zero people who would be capable of meeting that standard. On the other hand, “don’t kill people” is pretty easy. Schelling points are about actual behavior, not professed behavior.
Oh, thanks for pointing that out! In that case my example was indeed the opposite of one.
Being uncertain about one’s uncertainty doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act according to your moral beliefs, the uncertainty can go both ways. You still have to assign probabilities in the end.
Assuming you attribute the same importance to reducing suffering, no matter in what type of being it occurs, it still wouldn’t make sense to “shoot people left and right”. People who care a lot about animals are already being branded as “extremists”, you’d have more impact by going about it with a more thought-out strategy like e.g. movement-building and / or high-earning and donating to the best outreach organizations.
What’s the difference between a pet cause and a normal cause? Majority rule?
True, except that one’s certainty about one’s certainty is typically not a large number. If you think that killing one person justifies creating 1001 vegetarians, are you even 50% certain about that number 1001?
Yes, but “it makes sense to shoot people” is shorthand for “the moral reasons that normally mean we should not shoot people do not apply here”. It may still be impractical or suboptimal to shoot people.
Not majority rule, just a cause with a similar popularity to vegetarianism.
I agree that one has to adjust for certainty and overconfidence, and peer disagreement does seem like a good reason to downshift as well.
OK, I see your point about shooting, agreed.
Regarding popularity, if that’s the only criterion then also fAI would be a pet cause. I’d say it also depends on popularity among which group of people. Out of the smartest and most rational people I know, the majority of those who are interested in doing ethics, ie. in figuring out what “being altruistic” implies, would agree that animal suffering counts just as much as human suffering. And the smart and rational people who disagree are mostly not interested in doing ethics (in this way), as they just claim that it is all about “what they care about”, a selfish defense that could just as well be used to uphold racism or sexism.
So on the above grounds I’d object to vegetarianism being a pet cause.
Something else to consider: Person X believes that gay sex, or maybe abortions, are immoral. Is it okay for him to show people pictures of those activities in order to shock them? As in the vegetarian example, the imagery adds “information”.
But I would certainly classify trying to get someone to oppose gay sex by forcing them to confront how disgusting it looks (to non-gay people) as “immoral mind-hijacking”. It doesn’t add meaningful information. Technically, you could claim that someone wasn’t aware of how disgusting it is and now that they know, that’s new information, but that’s not the type of information that’s normally relevant to rational arguments.
You could also say “well, some disgust isn’t rational, but the disgusting aspect of animal slaughter is a different kind of disgust which is rational”, but you’d be hard pressed to come up with an argument for why the two kinds of disgust are different that doesn’t amount to a direct argument for vegetarianism that could be expressed without involving disgust at all.
In the case of gay sex and abortions, the disgust is the person’s emotional response to something that isn’t the most important (to the image provider, and perhaps to the providee too) part of the action. Dicks in butts (because anti-gay people always talk about gay men, never lesbians (probably because if they did they wouldn’t get the desired response)) are less important to them than adults being able to do something they really want to do with their own bodies. Tiny bloody fetuses having been killed aren’t as important as people’s lives not being ruined by children they can’t support, or people dying in childbirth who could have been saved by abortion.
On the other hand, piglets getting their testicles ripped out without anesthetic (and similar bad things that happens to animals) are the most important thing about eating meat.
Retracted cause this doesn’t really work for the abortion example. It does for the gay sex one though. For the abortion one, I guess I won’t condemn abortion based on some universal principle of how arguments should be conducted.
I don’t think it works for the gay sex example either for the reason I gave: in order to say that using disgust is good in one example and bad in another, you need what amounts to a separate argument for vegetarianism anyway. “That’s the most important thing about eating meat” is not an undisputed fact, it’s something that is only believed by vegetarians. Non-vegetarians wouldn’t agree with it.
This turns it into circular reasoning: You should be vegetarian because of disgust. You should accept disgust as an argument for vegetarianism because what it shows is “the most important thing”. And you only believe that that’s the most important thing if you’re already vegetarian.
Most of the fence sitters it’s aiming to convince care a lot more about things besides “icky dick in butt” though.
And most of the people I’ve argued with don’t take the “animals aren’t people, I don’t care about them at all” route, so if they understood the scale of the problem, animal suffering probably would be important to them, and not a distraction from the big important issues.