[rc4algorithm]

Christ. Has it ever occurred to these hipsters that factory farming feeds people? It's simple science that conventional farming is the only way to feed 7+ billion (soon to be 9+ billion) people. And referring to slaughtered chickens as "contributed deaths"... This makes me sad because I once had a little faith in this project.

[robertwiblin]

A vegetarian diet is i) requires less land and energy, ii) as a result is cheaper and iii) per $ is as nutritious as factory farmed meat. People in poverty eat very little meat. In fact, all meat production and consumption, in addition to factory farming, can be objected to on the further ground that it raises food prices for the poor: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/worldbusiness/27i.... This is inevitable as meat production is 3-10x less energy and land efficient as eating plant products.

Finally, do you think that the chickens do not die?

[rc4algorithm]

Do plants not die? Saying that people are causing death without clearly qualifying that its farm animals is childish.

The environmental issue is legitimate, but they treated it as an afterthought. It also brings up issues of personal liberty and how much we know about vegetarianism's health effects.

And yes, people in the third world eat very little meat. But, you know what? I bet a lot of them want to eat meat. Remember that that argument can be made about anything even remotely nonessential.

[griffinmahon]

The plants dying point is somewhat irrelevant in this context as 80,000 Hours's philosophy stems from Peter Singer's brand of utilitarian ethics that interpret suffering as it relates to experience, or consciousness.

[rc4algorithm]

What a wonderful sentence. You can keep concocting winding philosophical sentences like that to defend the dignity of chickens, and the rest of us will keep trying feed people.

[griffinmahon]

I only made a clarification, not a stance on the matter.

[BenjaminTodd]

The relevant difference is that animals feel pain but plants don't, because they don't have nervous systems.

[yellowapple]

Do mosquitoes feel pain when you swat them?

Not to say that I disagree with the notion that factory farming is cruel and unnecessary (I did quite a bit of ranching duties in my childhood, all of which were open-pasture). Rather, there's a point where a given human will consider it "cruel" to inflict pain or death upon another living being, and said point is a very subjective one.

I personally draw that line somewhere between the raising of livestock as food and the continuous torture of said livestock as practiced in many larger livestock facilities; that's because I recognize that humans are naturally omnivorous apex predators, and don't subscribe to the belief that there's something fundamentally different between myself eating a cow and my dog eating a cow. Others may draw that line as "vegetarian, but I'll swat a mosquito that's biting me and I might try eating bugs". Still others might even let that mosquito suck freely. Regardless, the position of said point on the scale between "I don't even kill plants; like, everything has a soul, brah" and "HAHAHAHAHA MURDER EVERYTHING! ENDLESS SLAUGHTER! BURN THE EARTH! BURN THE SKIES! SATAN/GARGAMEL 2016! HAHAHAHAHAHAA!" is very subjective, as are the notions of "good" and "evil" that tend to influence such a placement.