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This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
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1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
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This was named the Meat-Eater Problem in this article in the Journal Of Controversial Ideas by @MichaelPlant (as comments point out, there are many earlier examples).
I think we need to be extremely suspicious of the conclusion that development is bad because of animal suffering. Development has given us everything that makes life better (as most would see it) than in pre-industrial times: antibiotics, vaccines, surgery, food security, shelter, cheap and plentiful access to knowledge and entertainment.
I don't see how you can accept the Meat-Eater Problem without also concluding that all human development in the last 10,000 years has been a mistake in light of the horrible toll we've demanded of the workhorses and mulesed sheep and caged chickens that we tortured along the way. The Ted Kaczynskiist view that the development of society has been overall bad is internally consistent and valid but also crazy and just not compatible with any sort of continued functioning of society.
To avoid this absurd conclusion that would lead us all to nihilism or posting explosive letters, I think we have to accept that development so far has been worth the costs, and that further development, for similar benefits, will be worth the additional costs.
I think it's quite plausible that over the last 10,000 years the benefits have not outweighed the costs.
It's also plausible that the next 10,000 years will be dramatically better - for humans, farmed animals, and wild animals. Further human economic development will be necessary to build the knowledge and resources to fully enable this.
But this doesn't address whether supporting economic development of developing countries right now is a net benefit.
How would you get the "Further human economic development" "necessary to build the knowledge and resources" to build a better world without supporting the development of developing countries?
Are you talking a top-heavy approach where we keep poor countries poor until fake/cultured meat is cheap enough to supplant farmed animals?
That's a pretty good idea
The name is much older than this, though it has generally been refered to as 'The Poor Meat-Eater Problem' which I think is a better name; I remember discussing it in 2012 and I don't think it was new then. On the forum with a quick search I found this from over 9 years ago.
The term date from at least 2009.
Thanks for finding! If it was new to Toby and Ryan in that thread this was probably the earliest EAs had come across it.
That's not really an argument at all. How do we prevent future suffering? Is enriching the global poor in line with that ambition? I can think of ways that it isn't—that it will lead to increased suffering. A counterargument would evide that global development will not lead to increased suffering. That we like having undergone development ourselves is not a counterargument and does not imply that funding global development is of positive utility.
It will probably lead to increased suffering of animals (at least for a time) and this is necessary for the greater good of technological development. We're forced to consider the technological development a greater good because the alternative is to accept that the last 10,000 years of development was a mistake, which is not a viable belief.
I guess. Can you formulate an argument against nihilism that's any more substantial than that?
The theory that human development has been evil is nihilistic and could well be true, much like the nihilistic theory that the existence of biological life itself could is net evil. On what basis do you reject this other than: "we can't do anything with that".
I'm not sure how you're defining nihilism there?
Fair, I really mean pessimism rather than nihilism. On what basis can you reject philosophical pessimism - a self-consistent and valid belief that is seemingly impossible to prove/disprove - other than that it is just not pragmatic or constructive at all.
What is unpragmatic about not pouring money into global development if we determine that it is harmful?
Because development has been the human project for the last 10,000 years and if we accept that it has been and continues to be a mistake then the conclusion is... what? anarcho-primitivism/regressing to pre-industrial hunter-gather life/Return to Monke. That doesn't seem very practical.
The conclusion would be that we'd better stop dumping money on the global poor to make sure we have as many meat-eaters as possible to support an unregulated factory farming industry, and direct altruistic focus strategically so as to be of positive utility rather than just rtitualistically making offerings to the past.
“direct altruistic focus strategically so as to be of positive utility”
Vague and evasive. Say what you mean. If you want to keep poor people poor until some new technology comes out, you should say that. If you don’t think further development will ever be justified, you should say that (so that your contention can be discarded as absurd and impractical)
I mean spending money and energy on animal welfare or some other positive cause rather than on alleviating poverty.
Doesn't that sound more like "direct altruistic focus strategically so as to be of positive utility" than does the "absurd and impractical" contention that "further development will [not] ever be justified"?