Hacker News Reader

Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

I'm not quite sure which of the two you're suggesting we do now. They neither live in luxury nor their lifespan. Instead, they're basically tortured all their short life before we kill them.

View on HN

You don't have to torture animals to eat them. Assuming advances in technology and energy we could get to the point where a hypothetical farmer could raise animals in luxury. As tech increases the luxury will increase. If animals are indeed sentient, farms would essentially transform into happiness factories generating and funneling new minds into earthly paradise.

If your ethical code is a variation of 'reducing pain and increasing pleasure for all sentient life' this would be orders of magnitude more good then the Peta option of turning them loose to die in the wild or never exist. It would be far more ethical than even artificial meat.

Heck from a strict cost/benefit analysis it may be one of the greatest moral triumphs mankind has ever given the universe.

Animals that have lived a full lifespan are not delicious to eat. Meat from old animals is tough and often contains tumors. So you're still stuck with killing them in early maturity.

> Assuming advances in technology and energy we could get to the point where a hypothetical farmer could raise animals in luxury. As tech increases the luxury will increase.

Why would an industrial food processor care about how luxurious the sentient inventory finds the warehouse?

Consumer pressure

If you'd like to learn more about this line of thinking:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/

As mentioned by zerofries, the only way this would happen is by consumer pressure. Otherwise there’s no way it would ever make sense to raise chickens in the way you’ve said. There’s not enough ROI on ensuring really happy chickens for anything other than boycotting normal chicken meat to make it probably. At least in the near future (next 100 years) I would say not existing is far preferable to the hell theyre put through in factory farming.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com