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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

Why wouldn’t the life of a cow be equivalent to the life of a chicken though? I’m not asking rhetorically.

As soon as you get into gradations of value based on things like size or perceived intelligence, things get muddy pretty quickly. For instance, we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence.

Perhaps the metric should be capacity for suffering and our goal should be to minimize suffering. Does a human have greater capacity for suffering than a mosquito? I think there are many good reasons to think yes. Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken? I don’t know that that is nearly as clear.

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>Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken? I don’t know that that is nearly as clear.

If you have much experience with cows and chickens, I think the difference in capacity for suffering is pretty clear.

>we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence.

I think when forced into a decision, humans and societies will make distinctions along these lines. e.g. saving the mother or child during birth or famine, Prioritizing scientists or even sacrificing soldiers during wartime.

> If you have much experience with cows and chickens, I think the difference in capacity for suffering is pretty clear.

I’m not saying there is no difference - they are different species so we wouldn’t expect them to have an identical experience of pain and deprivation - but rather that the difference is not easily quantifiable. We are not able to access the interior lives of these animals. And in practice, I suspect many people would be as reluctant to rip the wing off a live chicken as the ear from a cow, while showing few misgivings about squashing an ant. That is to say, in practice most people are likely to behave as if the moral stances toward cows and chickens are roughly equivalent.

In terms of being forced into decisions to value one human life over another, that doesn’t change the fact that morally and ethically we value human lives equally. We don’t extrapolate from emergencies to posit that one mom = three children. In any case, what bearing does this have on the problem at hand? If one cow’s life is morally equivalent to a non-singular number of chickens, how many chickens are we choosing, and why?

> that doesn’t change the fact that morally and ethically we value human lives equally.

Do we? I can think of many counter examples, and I'm sure you can as well. How is this a fact?

>In terms of being forced into decisions to value one human life over another, that doesn’t change the fact that morally and ethically we value human lives equally.

Doesn't it? There are stated valuations and then revealed valuations on life. When asking what people really think and feel, I think it is relevant to look at how they act when their behavior is contingent. Anyone can make arbitrary claims when they are not tested. Anyways, I agree that this all a tangent from the main point.

>That is to say, in practice most people are likely to behave as if the moral stances toward cows and chickens are roughly equivalent.

This is where I think we disagree. I think most people would have a pretty difference emotional and psychological experience killing a cow or chicken. This ties back to the concept of claimed belief vs revealed beliefs.

> If you have much experience with cows and chickens, I think the perceived difference in capacity for suffering is pretty clear.

(word in bold added by me)

This is the crux of the whole debate imo. We simply don't know. For all you know, the chicken's experience is far worse, even if the external manifestation of their sufferring is less relatable.

And to take it a step further, potentially the same goes for plants.

I suppose that to a person who a) is already eating beef burgers and b) is considering swapping the meat in their burger to chicken for environmental reasons, the value of the life of a cow and the life of a chicken are both functionally nil. Perhaps not "without value", but too difficult to quantify against each other to be meaningful when decision making.

> For instance, we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult.

It's an interesting example, because we actually kind of do. If I'm not mistaken, in case of difficult pregnancies, saving the mother is favored compared to saving the child/fetus.

When it comes to valuing life in general, things are going to get muddy no matter how you look at it. Valuing females over males? Already happening. Children over adults? Sometimes. Healthy over disabled? Occasionally.

And that's just between different "categories" of people.

> For instance, we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence.

On the contrary, children are valued higher than adults, generally speaking.

We _absolutely_ value adult humans based on their intelligence, this is generally reflected in things like… salary.

What are you on about?

> Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken?

You have quite obviously never spent time around either chickens or cows if you think this is some sort of salient point. It’s not.

Can’t edit: chickens are awful animals, and having known a handful of chicken farmers, they’re universally despised.

Cows are the opposite in just about every way.

Why does capacity for suffering matter? How do we quantify suffering? Can you prove that plants and fungi don't suffer?

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