[andai]

Well it's kinda whataboutism, but I made a similar comment on a video about an environmental crime (a copper mine had dumped an entire lake's worth of toxic sludge into a valley).

The author of the mini documentary said something about how deeply disturbed he was and how he really thought humans were better than this.

I thought that was kind of funny since, yeah the sludge lake is nasty as hell (and if the dam holding it back breaks, it's not gonna be good), but I had to think, maybe he should visit a factory farm for his next video.

That's a far worse horror, and regular folks contribute to it every day without thinking. (I forget the exact number, but something like 80+ billion animals live through that every year.) So I think it should get a little more attention.

(Not vegan, just think we shouldn't be awful towards animals.)

[aziaziazi]

You got it right: around ~70 billion land animals in 2013, 1-2.7 trillion fishes [0] and 25 trillion shrimps [1]

But can you compare: - a fish that lived 1 year wild then died by pressure or asphyxia in a net during 15 minutes - a chicken that lived 40 days in a cage

Instead of raw count, the Welfare Footprint Institute [2] propose a framework:

> quantify animal welfare by systematically measuring animals’ affective experiences—specifically, the intensity and duration of their negative (painful) and positive (pleasurable) states […]

0 https://considerveganism.com/counter/

1 https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/shrimp-the-anima...

2 https://welfarefootprint.org/analytical-approach/

[andai]

>The Welfare Footprint Framework (WFF) is a method developed to quantify animal welfare by systematically measuring animals’ affective experiences—specifically, the intensity and duration of their negative (painful) and positive (pleasurable) states.

We got utilitarianism for chickens before GTA 6! But yeah that's roughly matches my own intuitions. A literal lifetime of suffering doesn't seem like the right approach here.

>25 trillion shrimps

Holy crap. That's not even a comprehensible number!

So I'm not against animal products (not even meat) per se, just against keeping them locked inside in cages.

(And also, it should go without saying, but I've seen the footage, I'm against paying psychopathic factory farm employees to treat them horribly...)

A return to traditional farming methods would obviously require a significant worldwide reduction in meat consumption though (and the prices would go up a lot I think), due to the increased land requirements.

I haven't given the fishing situation much thought (I don't eat fish), but that ties in with "stop devastating natural ecosystems" which seems pretty straightforward to me (just for basic self-preservation reasons).

There might be attention between "traditional farming" and that though, because having them on land instead of compacted in a giant industrial cube obviously requires way more space :/

I don't know, it doesn't seem like there's any good solutions here. (More vegan propaganda? That doesn't seem to be working very well...)

[nialse]

The issue associated with whataboutism is that it is a deflection strategy. It aims to steer the focus away from the issue at hand. Commonly regarded as intentional manipulation or lack of adherence to social conversation norms.

[andai]

Yeah Whataboutism is typically used to diminish the severity of the original issue being responded to.

I'm not sure if that's exactly the right word here, i.e. in my example earlier I'm obviously not defending lakes of toxic sludge. I just thought it was remarkable that someone claimed a lake of sludge was the most morally devastating thing they'd ever encountered, on this planet, where the mere act of making a sandwich typically involves a far more horrifying causal chain (e.g. the animals lived in darkness, in a cage so small they couldn't even turn around).

Maybe there's a better word for that? Putting things into perspective? I don't know.

[echoangle]

Isn’t that a good thing sometimes, assuming focus is a limited resource? Shouldn’t problems be addressed in order of importance? Is it whataboutism if I tell someone to stop polishing a wrecked car?

[swiftcoder]

> assuming focus is a limited resource

Focus (on a society-wide level) is not so very limited. One of the strengths of our whole society being fragmented into a bunch of distinct organisations, is that they can all go off and solve different problems at the same time.

> Shouldn’t problems be addressed in order of importance?

Most of the really big problems facing society can only be addressed through multi-solving (i.e. something like climate change isn't going to just hang around waiting for us to solve one sub-problem at a time). Not to mention, the solution space is often extremely interconnected - for example, finding alternatives so that society can eat less meat helps address both climate change and the horrors of factory farming at the same time.

[rrr_oh_man]

> Is it whataboutism if I tell someone to stop polishing a wrecked car?

Whataboutism would be "why do you worry about your wrecked car, that crackhead down the street also has a wrecked car".

[vitalyan8184]

in civilized countries, industrially farmed animals live short, uneventful lives devoid of hunger and pain, injury and disease, heat and cold, then die instant, painless deaths. in the wild, the kind of animals we farm rarely get to die of old age - most end up being mauled and eaten alive by predators.

their lives are only bad if you assume they possess adult human level of conscience, which they obviously don't.

[psini]

I don't know how narrow your definition of "civilized country" is, but a majority of industrially farmed animals do not live the kind of lives you describe. I will link the EU regulation for laying hens for exemple, and maybe it will change your mind as to how farmed animals are treated? https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

A few numbers I personally find telling:

- 550 cm² caged area per hen (roughly 10" by 10")

- Seven hens per cage

- Cages 45 cm tall

- No requirement for ever going outside

I know some animals usually have it better (cattle) but industrially farmed chicken and porks really are miserable, without even going into the levels of stress and disease they go through.

[vitalyan8184]

again, you're ascribing human level of consciousness to much simpler creatures driven primarily by instinct.

and you are aware that even humans, with our much longer lifespan and much higher cognition, can endure living in captivity for years just fine, right? hell, even outside of captivity, a double digit percentage of us doesn't have a single room of living space, and the only outside most of us see is covered with asphalt and concrete.

[andai]

Your logic implies that intellectually impaired people also don't experience pain or pleasure.

I do imagine they experience a lesser degree of psychological suffering, of the kind created by mental processes, if some of those processes are absent. But the basic pain of the type experienced by a being who is caged and killed, that's just physical.

I've sometimes heard the words pain and suffering used to separate these two types out. If you accidentally hit your toe on the table, that's pain. If you then call yourself an idiot for doing that, that's suffering. But that's not a very mainstream use of the word, I just just don't know better one for it. I think "physical suffering" and "psychological suffering" are more helpful.

Anyway my point is, that as far as we can tell we're on the same pages animals as far as physical suffering goes.

[andai]

Did you see those videos where factory workers are kicking piglets and things like that? Apparently those jobs attract a very certain type of individual.

Good thing you're totally sure they don't have consciousness though. The alternative would be a bit unpleasant I imagine.

[vitalyan8184]

they have some consciousness, but again, not as much as a human. and again, most of humans lived in similarly abhorrent conditions throughout most of the history.