Morality, Animals, and Technological Progress

Chapter 11Part Four: Catalyzing A Future Without Animal ProductsMarkdown

(Failed) Education of Morality

On the South Park TV show episode, “Whale Whores,” the main characters Kyle and Stan join efforts to curb the Japanese hunting of dolphins and whales.1 A roving hoard of Japanese hunters pass through aquariums, SeaWorld, and even a Miami Dolphins football game rabidly stabbing, killing, and repeatedly exclaiming “Fuck you, Dolphin! Fuck you, Whale!” In classic South Park comic absurdity, Kyle and Stan learn that the mouth-foaming hysteria stems from photos doctored by Americans. The photos show a dolphin and a whale flying the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. Kyle and Stan solve the crisis by providing the “real” photo—a cow and chicken were actually flying the plane. The bloodthirsty Japanese hunters now march through farms and pastures, eviscerating the cows and chickens crossing their path. In the final scene, Stan’s dullard dad, Randy, exclaims with misplaced enthusiasm, “Great job, son. Now the Japanese are normal, just like us.”

I’m not sure if the writers of the show intended to make this point, but they underscore an obvious dissonance. Why is hunting whales and dolphins wrong, but farming and killing cows and chickens okay? It seems like slaughtering whales, dolphins, cows, and chickens should all categorically be ethically permissible or not. Similarly, how do we know whether it is okay to eat insects or other human races? We obviously need some means to determine this; we require a morality.

The teaching of morality is not part of most of American formal, secular education, and most of us will not take an ethics or morality class unless we pursue a liberal arts college education. Wide swaths of the population receive minimal exposure to the ideas. Researcher Jonathan Haidt notes that most people draw their moral knowledge from peers and societal norms versus more thoughtful means.2

As I’ll argue in the chapter, developing morality is no different than developing awareness and expertise in any other area of scientific knowledge. Development of morality is a science, and accordingly, we must yield to the best morality. I often see this blind spot in scientifically minded groups and individuals. The German-based Kurzgesagt, a group that focuses on scientific engagement with the public, covers topics from quantum computing to genetically modified organisms using exquisitely animated videos. Kurzgesagt produced a video on eating meat.3 Generally, the video highlighted the problems well and showcased the potential alternatives (e.g., in vitro meat). Disappointingly, though, the video concludes that it’s okay to still eat meat because it tastes good and because we will replace it soon, totally ignoring what the best morality has to say on the topic. Thankfully, Kurzgesagt did redeem itself in a consequent video about milk; they admirably did not shy away from the harms of the dairy industry to cows.4

Scientists have been quick to decisively support the best science on charged issues such as climate change and vaccines.5 As soon as the banners are raised, scientists rally behind their climate or immunology comrades. Even if a scientist is not in the field, the sentiment is that we should always listen to the best science, and I completely agree. We even see scientists pick up the mantle for moral causes such as anti-racism and anti-misogyny.6 If the morality behind evolving beyond animals-as-food technology is clear, shouldn’t scientists raise their pitchforks here, too?

The primary problem I suspect again is a failure of moral education, even though the morality behind animal technology is familiar and well-trodden intellectual ground, most notably in Peter Singer’s seminal book, Animal Liberation.7 In fact, reading an essay by Singer in college inspired my growing concern for animal welfare. Other authors include Magnus Vinding and his freely available Why We Should Go Vegan.8 Nevertheless, I will add more color, especially in juxtaposition to the development of knowledge and technology. Before we can go too far though, we have to answer some meta-questions. What is morality? And where do morals come from?

The Central Moral Argument

In the first chapter, I claimed that the current purpose of humanity and our endeavors is to solve problems. Like knowledge, the problems are conjectured and refuted and also can be of different magnitudes and scope. So, figuring out what I’m going to wear today is not the same problem as figuring out how to deter nuclear war. It’s easy to explain why nuclear annihilation is more pressing than my sartorial indecision. For the rest of the chapter, when I refer to problems, I’m concerned with those of the largest, possible scope. For example, if I purposely do my taxes incorrectly to avoid paying too much, then that wouldn’t be a problem for me (assuming I don’t get caught), but it would be a problem for the population at large. My unpaid taxes might have funded schools, police, and public services; therefore, me not paying my taxes is ultimately a problem. That’s what I mean by the largest possible scope. The scope includes future generations of people and animals. So, polluting today would be a problem for beings of the future.

I define morality in relation to problems. More moral behavior reduces problems, or solves or ameliorates them, while immoral behavior creates and exacerbates problems. When we consider a problem situation, i.e., if we see a child drowning in a lake, we consider all of our possible actions. We could jump in and save the child, or we could walk on. Each potential action would have associated problems: we jump in, and our clothes get wet. Or we walk on, and the child dies. We should perform the action that solves the highest magnitude of problems, in this case saving the child.

Many situations are not as cut and dried as a child drowning and will elicit controversy. Is it okay for cousins to marry and have children? Is it okay for people to commit suicide? At what stage of fetal development is abortion acceptable? We might not always have clear answers at any given moment, but we might learn more and develop better arguments, such as, a fetus develops consciousness at twelve weeks, or children sired by cousins have no significant increase in birth defects. As a result, morality changes over time as we generate knowledge and develop arguments. And the prevailing, accepted morality in society may then follow. For example, gender equality became more morally accepted and will stay accepted because any argument against it is feckless.

The idea that we can just reason our way to better morality may create uneasiness. If your amygdala is disagreeing with the above statements, I suggest the following. First, propose where notions of morality come from instead. Then ask whether that alternative is better than using the Popperian model (conjectures/refutations). Secondly, explain why moral knowledge is generated differently from any other scientific knowledge. My assertion is the most parsimonious one: morality is just like any other knowledge and the product of conjectures and refutations. Why should we have an exception for moral knowledge?

Given that morality is like other knowledge, morality is absolute and not relative, as often claimed.9 Different morality across cultures, nationalities, and religions is not privileged or excused. The best moral knowledge stands out and informs in the same way as the best biology, physics, and mathematics knowledge. Would you ride in an airplane created by someone who invented their own physics? In the same way, we should accede to the best morality. Throwing homosexuals off roofs should be wrong in both Western democracies and Islamic theocracies. Killing widowed, older women should be wrong whether in Indian or Tanzanian rituals.10 Morality does not come from religion or religious texts. The Bible, Quran, and Torah permit or extol actions such as rape, slavery, genocide, and homophobia. Because of the lack of Popperian error correction, these texts are outdated knowledge and no longer serve as useful moral guides.

Diversity of thinking is absolutely important. Generating the widest set of conjectures only helps us to solve problems and make progress. But some ideas are just simply awful, and we should not hesitate to affirm that, even if those ideas are cherished or endorsed by a specific group of people, religion, or culture. Slavery was morally wrong in the 19th century United States, and is wrong in present-day Qatar.11

Now, according to the model of morality I am presenting (solving problems), we can also conjecture what are problems and problem situations. Furthermore, we can develop a sense of what are problems to look for and to reduce. Going back to nuclear annihilation, what specifically would make it so awful? It would presumably kill a lot of people who would not want to die. It would create sorrow in their loved ones. It would create a less habitable Earth. For many of these problems, we noticed a constant theme, the problem of suffering. The nuclear bomb victims would suffer as they are vaporized. A less habitable Earth presumably means that the survivors would suffer. People would also suffer because their loved ones would die.

To further appreciate the problem of suffering, consider the following. If we find out a child has been kidnapped, we’re heart-stricken by the suffering that child experiences. If we learn instead that the child has been kidnapped from abusive parents and is now in loving, supportive care then we see a problem as being solved, not created. We are dismayed by entity-in-question-suffering. Suffering is what’s bad about the situation, not just the act of kidnapping, and it’s a problem that we can generally agree upon. While other problems absolutely exist and merit our attention, suffering sticks out as a problem in many situations we can conjure (e.g., disease, pain). But perhaps not all suffering is bad. It can even sometimes be beneficial in the long run; for example, we suffer schooling as a necessary bridge to cross when learning a new topic, and to grant us humility. So to qualify this, we want to minimize unnecessary suffering. As a useful, illustrative exercise, try to come up with various problems worth tackling by society. Where does reduction of unnecessary suffering rank? I anticipate at the top.

So, we must now think about animal suffering and whether it’s a worthy cause to tackle, but first it’s worth asking the even more basic question, do animals suffer? The morality behind animal technology is complicated by the fact that humans cannot talk with animals. Women can draw and speak from their experience against misogyny. Likewise, this is true for minorities from different races and sexualities and their own persecution. Though they may communicate it in many other and equally persuasive ways, animals cannot vocalize to us about any pain or suffering they feel, and only advocates such as myself can speak on their behalf. But this doesn’t change the argument, ultimately, because it doesn’t matter who says it: me, a cow, or a scribble on a napkin found on the side of the road. This lack of communication ability often leads to the absurd conclusion that animals are incapable of pain and suffering.12 Philosopher Descartes famously proclaimed that animals are unconscious.13 But consider how absurd this idea is.

Earlier, I described consciousness as a mechanism to evaluate a number of sensory and internal inputs. And critically, consciousness is needed for species that naturally encounter many different situations, most notably generalist species such as humans. Many animals fit this bill as well. They must be able to find food, determine who is a friend or foe, deem a place suitable for sleep, etc. They need an appreciable consciousness.

Now, let’s consider the purpose of pain. Clearly, pain is a way to correct our behavior and actions and avoid adverse outcomes given a certain consciousness input. Let’s not jump into that fire and burn away our flesh. Animals need the same tooling for the same reason. Animals clearly feel pain; it would not make sense evolutionarily, otherwise. But unfortunately, that’s not what we see in “scientific” studies. Many studies emphasize that because we can’t get into the minds and consciousness of animals, we cannot state categorically whether or not they feel pain.14 Therefore, let’s just throw our hands up in the air and not do anything. Again, this is not science. We technically do not have a “scientific” way to access the consciousness of people as I wrote in Chapter 7,15 so do we say that we don’t know if other people feel pain or not?

I hope the folly of this specious thinking is obvious. To repeat and summarize our best epistemology: we start with a conjecture (e.g., “animals feel pain”) and try to falsify it versus competing conjectures (“animals do not feel pain”). What remains is our best science. Chickens screaming after being debeaked, or calves crying out for their separated mother all support the first conjecture versus the second.16 The most durable explanation is that animals have consciousness and feel pain. When a steer reels and screams after being fire-branded, he’s in pain. Otherwise, one must present a more falsifiable explanation that also explains the observation. We must guide our morality accordingly.

In the background, we should also consider whether we’re motivated to want to believe that animals don’t feel pain. As claimed earlier, revealed knowledge is sometimes inconvenient and remains germane no matter our ego or feelings. Revealed knowledge can’t care about anything. Eating bacon cheeseburgers and performing ill-conceived animal experimentation—both are certainly easier if we’re convinced that rats, pigs, and cows are unfeeling automatons. Acknowledging these feelings and how they might weigh in as absurd conjectures will help refute them.

Pain and consciousness are undoubtedly intertwined. Given that consciousness is the capacity to assess sensory inputs, more consciousness should be tantamount to greater capacity to feel pain. Putting our hand on the hot stove should interrupt our consciousness in a way that drowns out anything else. Obviously, it’s an imperfect heuristic, but a level of consciousness should accord with the capacity to feel pain. I would love a more precise way to gauge this, but I’m going with the best I’ve come across. We’ll discuss this more in a bit. Prolonged pain is what I consider to be suffering. We suffer when a loved one dies or when we’re worried about where our next meal is coming from.

This brings us to the central argument of this chapter. Animal agriculture creates tremendous, unnecessary suffering in conscious, pain-feeling animals. As stressed throughout the book, we do not need animal technology, and ultimately, we’ll do better in the long run without it. There is nothing special or specific to it that we won’t be able to reap better from other technology, whether in terms of efficiency, taste, or health. And we have much to gain, morality-wise, when doing away with animal agriculture. Therefore, we should strive to minimize and reproach animal agriculture. And in the next section, I’ll address the tripwires that might have been triggered in your head.

Responding to Potential Rejoinders

First, you might be asking, what about the suffering of insects, plants, and microbes? Isn’t the pain of anything living argument a slippery slope problem. In other words, if animal agriculture is bad, then isn’t plant agriculture bad for the same reason? Suffering is suffering. If we have strong conjectures and explanations that plants, insects, and microbes can experience profound suffering, then we must weigh those ideas in. But as stated earlier, a reasonable heuristic for level of consciousness is the quantity of neuron cells the organism possesses or the number of environments they inhabit. Plants are sedentary, and consciousness would not benefit them as much as a land-roaming animal. Microbes likewise do not have to make complex decisions about their environments. Insects clearly straddle the line between animals and plants. By the Pareto frontier described in the Chapter 4, it would be too evolutionarily costly to develop a sophisticated consciousness in these organisms.

Furthermore, in the event that we do find that plants suffer tremendously from agricultural practices, it would still morally favor non-animal agriculture. After all, what do animals eat? And given how inefficient animal technology is, if anything, plant-suffering damns the technology even more. We’re causing more plant suffering by sticking with animal technology.

Secondly, we unfortunately must draw a line of moral consideration; we must make an uncomfortable choice. We just do not have the technology and knowledge to solve all of these problems in a satisfactory way. This lack of satisfaction may indeed deter change, but it’s not an argument for inaction, even if it may shift over time as a function of technology. Consider if we developed chemical transmutation and could apparate food out of the air, or if we could load our consciousness onto silicon-based computers powered by sunlight. That would completely skirt the moral dilemmas presented here.

In fact, we already societally do draw a line for the life that’s permitted to be farmed and consumed. For example, we clearly forbid people to eat other people. Throughout history, cannibalism was accepted under specific circumstances by a few different cultures. For example, the Wari tribe of the Amazon consumed flesh of deceased loved ones as part of the mourning process.17 Today, cannibalism is broadly verboten, especially the idea of enslaving, breeding, and cultivating humans for meat, skin, or cheese. In the West, we also strongly frown on the consumption of dog and cat meat. Dogs and cats have endeared themselves to us as pets. This is not the case in many Asian societies, where both have been consumed in recent history, if not currently.18

More efforts have been made to expand the human, dog, and cat side of the “do not eat” line. Former NBA star Yao Ming has helped reduce consumption of shark fins.19 And activists have reined in commercial whale-hunting practices throughout the world.20 But weirdly, most people do not have similar feelings about cows, pigs, and chickens, which remain firmly and broadly on the other side, as illustrated in the South Park episode described earlier.

What we collectively consider normal is a product of humanity’s inability to reason morally and effectively. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has documented this effect profoundly, establishing that generally people first intuit about whether something is right or wrong and then apply post hoc reasoning to justify their decision.21 They take cues from those around them. What’s ingrained as normal becomes a moral blind spot. This is why, historically, Americans could condone slavery, segregation, misogyny, and homophobia, and why Germans could shy away from too deeply contemplating the abduction, forced labor, and eventual extermination of Jews. The antidote is reasoning and arguing about what is truly moral, not being satisfied with our intuitions or surroundings.

If we start from the principle of trying to minimize unnecessary suffering, then that suggests we need to account for level of consciousness, which then becomes the boundary. If we as a society believe that cats, dogs, dolphins, and whales are worthy and deserve protection, we must consider other animals with equivalent or higher levels of consciousness. Cows, pigs, and octopi clearly fit the profile, and we should thus absolutely arrogate their right to avoid suffering needlessly given the members already in our circle of consideration. Certainly, chickens may be controversial and straddle the line, but I think most of us would want birdlife on our side of the “don’t-eat-me-I’m-conscious” fence. The line blurs even more for fish, insects, shrimp, and oysters. And I do not have an obvious, clear explanation for the inclusion of fish, but not insects. Nonetheless, any line that we draw using this reasoning is argumentatively stronger than the prevailing one in Western society, and that’s enough to warrant inclusion of more animals.

You might object that the consciousness line “feels” wrong. So, I challenge you to come up with your own line. If you do come up with something better, let me know, and I’ll adopt it. Many have tried other lines, and commentators have suggested features such as species, i.e., our moral imperative is to maximize the well-being and proliferation of our species and the ones that we have relationships with (e.g., dogs and cats).

But why is species a meaningful moral attribute? Consider the concept of species historically. It’s to help draw lines for biological classification, specifically with respect to biological evolution. Members within the same species can interbreed with each other but not those outside.22 That doesn’t sound like it should have anything to do with morality and the problems of unnecessary suffering. To drive this point home further, consider that we could revive Homo neanderthalensis, more commonly known as Neanderthals. Synthetic biologist George Church muses that this could be done for a modest sum of money.23 And as technology develops, this will become easier.

Imagine that we bring them back. They are similar to us Homo sapiens but with conspicuous differences: being stockier on average, with bigger noses and smaller chins. Mentally, they are not as developed as us, but they’re able to communicate and form tribes. They have culture, aspirations, and can learn new knowledge. As best as we’re able to tell, they have consciousness and are able to suffer. Even if they are less intelligent on average, we’ll obviously see that they deserve rights. We would quickly realize that it’s absolutely wrong to enslave them, harvest them for organs, or to inflict harmful experimentation on them.

We’ve seen this moral reasoning play out in our media such as the book Never Let Me Go and the movie Blade Runner 2049, where the rights of “subhumans” are addressed and advocated. We can only conclude that drawing moral lines by species holds no more sense than lines drawn using race, nationality, or gender. The victims in question don’t even have to be corporeal. The television show Black Mirror routinely harps on the issue of conscious beings who are purely digital, only existing as a virtual program in a computer. As the show emphasizes through some grueling examples, it would still be wrong to torture and, otherwise, impoverish them. (Further elaboration: I’m not arguing that “subhumans” are equal, i.e., should have the right to vote. I’m arguing that they, at least, deserve the right to not needlessly suffer.)

The value of existence is another argument that exponents invoke to support animal agriculture: all of these cows, chickens, and pigs would never have existed without our industrial practices. There are nearly 24 billion chickens in the world right now; this is orders of magnitude more than there ever were in nature.24 Based on the value of existence alone argument, this is a good thing, right? Cows should be happy because we’re creating more of their brethren, and their “species” is winning the evolution game, at least in terms of reproduction! Bummer about the living conditions and eventual slaughter, though.

But if sole existence was a positive attribute, then why don’t we do the same with humans? Every nubile woman should be pregnant, and we should actively be seeking ways to make artificial wombs to crank out as many humans as possible. But we don’t do this, and no one is advocating for it because we, at least implicitly, acknowledge that existence is best coupled with a life worth living. Two partners may just have two children because seven children would diminish everyone’s well-being. The same principle holds with animals. Bringing 20 billion chickens into the world to waste away in cages for their entire life does not bring value. It creates more problems than it solves. (Note that there is a difference between life that already exists versus life that could come into existence. For already existing lifeforms, taking away their life has at least the additional problems of their desire to stay alive and to suffer at the prospect of death. Such a problem cannot exist by definition for life that does not exist yet.)

This brings me to the final point about whether to consider vegetarianism versus veganism. I grant the good intentions of vegetarian thinking in that what’s wrong with animal agriculture is the slaughter of the animals. Yes, that’s a problem; however, should we want the creation of such wretched lives in the first place? Would it be that much better if heifers weren’t killed, merely injected with hormones and separated from their families for their entire lives? Furthermore, products such as dairy milk lead to slaughter. Heifers must continually be pregnant in order to produce milk, and sometimes they birth a male calf, effectively a waste product to the dairy industry. These calves are turned into cheap, dairy-subsidizing veal steaks through a truly heinous process, details of which I’ll spare you here but can be found online.25

Finally, you might ask about free-range animals or if we could ensure that the animals have a good life while consuming their eggs, milk, and, eventually, their meat. I will probably surprise and infuriate a lot of vegans here, but I see a plausible scenario where this is morally permissible if not morally good. Practically though, it won’t scale. Industrial agriculture is designed to hit demand numbers for animal products such that ninety-nine percent of slaughtered animals come from factory farms in the US.26 As stated throughout, these ignominious practices are the outcome of the physically-limited performance metrics of animal technology and financial incentives, not some inherent sadism in producers. We’d somehow need to convince or mandate for vastly lower consumption, 10 to 100 times lower based on the numbers I presented earlier. So, going from eating meat once a day to once a month, that’s a big ask of society. All of this can be completely side-stepped with better non-animal technology, so shouldn’t we just go there instead?

Wildlife Suffering and Future Problems

If animals have the right to not needlessly suffer, why fixate on just animals in agriculture. Why not consider all animals, including those in the wild? For example, predator relationships have a well-documented effect on the stress levels of prey. Elk in Yellowstone National Park experience chronic terror from roving wolves, confirmed by elevated cortisol levels, the neurochemical signature of stress.27 These elk eat and reproduce less.28 Wild chickadee birds develop post-traumatic stress disorder after exposure to predators, with a sensitive fight-or-flight alarm when signs of another predator are present.29

It’s not just distresses over predators. Primates who fall too low in social standing among their troop experience depression.30 Elephants, cats, and baboons will grieve over the loss of loved ones.31 Animals in the wild manage hunger, drought, disease, and injury on a day-to-day basis. Wild animals clearly suffer; furthermore, they lack the tools, capabilities, and knowledge to improve their station. Generations of these animals will experience similar problems without circumstances ever improving from their predecessors. And fundamentally, with very few exceptions, animals have limited capability to pass and use knowledge to solve their problems in the way that humans do. However, this biological deficit and environmental unluckiness are still not reasons to consign them to their wretched lives.

So, the best argument right now is that for whatever line we draw, wild animals must be considered as well. At face value, this seems ludicrous, and often wildlife suffering is invoked to draw the argument for veganism ad absurdum. However, cutting through any knee-jerk incredulity, we must ask if this is a reasonable concern. Does wildlife suffering merit applying problem-solving bandwidth from humanity? If it is truly absurd, then we should be able to shoo it away with argumentation. (The ad absurdum argument is also inadequate because two wrongs don’t make a right. Animal agriculture occurs independent of what happens in the wild. Animals are created for agriculture that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.)

Harking back to the first chapter, problems must always be tackled in stages. For example: first our immediate starvation and drought, then long-term food and water security, followed by devastating but treatable diseases (e.g., malaria and worm infections), and only then long-term, difficult-to-solve diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Knowledge such as disease-resistant crops and vaccines potentiate our ability to handle and solve these problems.

Imagine the continued providence of new technology—solving problems only becomes easier and less costly. We solve problems such as poverty by, say, instituting a world-wide universal basic income program because of the vast wealth we’ve accumulated. We’ve reduced crime to near zero because we’ve learned how to cultivate and reciprocate social and institutional trust by reducing corruption, wealth inequality, and improving how justice is dispensed. We have fully personalized health care that, on a daily basis, helps individuals avert or delay cancer. When the cancer does hit, we can use genetic engineering to mobilize a person’s immune cells against it effectively. In this future, we’re only grappling with shallower, but nonetheless vexing problems such as figuring out how to fold a fitted sheet. The remaining human-specific problems are existent, but pale in comparison to the problems of today.

Many books have trumpeted the knowledge-induced progress of today, including Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and Hans Rosling’s Factfulness.32 Nonetheless, there is some balking at the idea that we’re making progress. But there’s never been a better time to be alive in most parts of the world, as measured by poverty reduction, safety, and access to healthcare, food, education, and wealth. Messenger Steven Pinker has received a lot of flak.33 Given the amount of ink spent on the topic, it’d be superfluous to make the same points as Pinker, but a few comments:

  • Remember, how you feel about the present is not an argument. This point is especially important because, as we saw earlier in Chapter 7, we’re not naturally designed to be contented or complacent due to our evolutionary programming. News media capitalizes on this with emphasis on negative stories more intended to draw our attention rather than inform us about reality.
  • Progress does not mean the problem is eliminated. Yes, racism still exists, but an elected black president for two terms is very different from the reality of 100 years ago.
  • Progress occurs at different speeds in different domains; while income has risen overall, it’s unfortunately not even across levels or demographics.
  • Yes, some areas have gotten worse, for example, climate change. But overall big picture, would you rather live in the world a century ago?
  • Even if you disagree with Pinker’s fundamental thesis and claim that we’re not making progress, then what’s the alternative? Should we just keep things as they are and mope? If we’re not making progress, then shouldn’t we at least try?

Presume that we can and do make progress, then imagine it proceeding further and further. We will reach a point where human problems are trifling. In such a scenario, wouldn’t it be absurd to have a group of prosperous, contented beings (humans) surrounded by miserable, abject ones (animals in the wild)? Furthermore, it’s only going to become easier to help those animals. A vaccine-on-demand system would help animals just as much as it helps humans. Imagine a few button presses and dollars and we have a vaccine that curtails a devastating disease for a herd of deer. Shouldn’t we use it? Similarly, once our bioreactors are producing so much alternative meat, far more than our population can and should eat, then shouldn’t we share it with the wolves, who then leave the hares and elk alone?

The most common objection is that by intervening, we’re disrupting the ecosystems, implying that this is a bad thing. That kind of thinking is just another misplaced fetishization of the natural world that I inveighed against in the first chapter. Certainly, we want to be careful; we don’t want to make the situation worse than it is. For example, if we feed wolves and help the deer, then maybe the deer population will explode leading to downstream problems like the overconsumption of resources and thus starvation. We might want some form of birth control for the deer. So, we’ll want to try experiments and learn what works and doesn’t. The point is that we should try. We should try to reduce wildlife animal suffering and produce the knowledge to figure out the best way to do so.

To drive this point home, we societally want to care for disabled people and orphaned children. These people lack the wherewithal or ability to improve their circumstances on their own. We would even be contented to financially support them and maintain their livelihood with housing, education, healthcare, food, and socialization. The same reasoning applies for sentient animals: they lack the means to improve their situation, so let us step in and provide as much sanctuary as we can afford.

We can see that there is something of a treadmill effect here. As we solve problems, other problems then take our attention. Some might remark that we can’t win, that all problems cannot be solved, so why bother? Yes, we’ll always have problems, but we’re tackling the most severe ones and then moving on to the less severe ones ad infinitum. That is progress, and it’s making the universe a better place. I want to live in a world where my biggest concern is what to wear today.

Morality, Knowledge, and Technology

An implicit theme throughout this book is that moral progress and technological progress are intertwined, and that connection is not explicitly acknowledged enough. Obviously, when we have non-animal products superior in every way to animal-based ones, we will have made moral progress, even unwittingly. This is not the only arena where we’ve seen this result.

During my high school days, I remember the ethical quandary over stem cell research. Stem cells are cells in early development that have not yet specialized for specific roles (e.g., to become a muscle cell). Stem cell research promises new means for regenerating injured tissue and organs. At that point in 2001, all stem cells were harvested from aborted human fetuses. Given that abortion was and is still a hot-button issue, federal funding of this research came under fire, and then-president George W. Bush subsequently restricted it.34 Fast forward a few years later and scientists figured out a way to have specialized cells convert back into stem cells, circumventing the need for human embryos.35 Most of the research community now focuses on these induced stem cells, which also offer other advantages such as the fact that we can form the stem cells from the patient in question and ensure better immune system compatibilities.36 New technology and knowledge allowed us to completely sidestep a moral dilemma.

Similarly, we cannot ignore the facilitative role of technology in the progress of gender equality. In the recent past, devices such as washers, vacuums, and microwaves mean that less time is needed for a homemaker to complete domestic chores.37 The (presumable) missus was able to find work outside the home and develop a career. We could continue to foster gender equality with technology. An artificial womb would abrogate the biggest biological disadvantage of women when it comes to the modern workplace. Women also tend to bear more of the familial responsibilities taking care of kids and parents,38 which in turn limits their careers. Technology to delegate such care would also even the playing field of opportunity and flexibility for women. Note: artificial wombs and robotic care strike me as fanciful, intractable technologies. Better policies are a more sensible starting place, as in mandated, long paternity leave, subsidized child care, and societal expectation that men take over more nurturing responsibilities.

In conclusion, we undervalue the generation and spread of knowledge too much; just look at how poorly academic scientists and other teachers are paid. I suspect that this is because the value of innovation is so hard to measure. First, it’s hard to associate a piece of knowledge with the ultimate outcome. We can trace individual cases with enough investigation, but a wholesale study that definitively proves that such and such research led to X percent benefit to this industry is difficult to formulate and carry out. It’s always going to be a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, the way knowledge seeps and spreads make it difficult to propose a negative control. We’d need to see another part of the Multiverse (Appendix A) where that knowledge wasn’t spread. So, it would be difficult to summarize the argument in a scientific paper, which unfortunately remains the prevailing currency for professional acceptance. But that doesn’t mean that knowledge isn’t one of the most powerful forces for good. We have the explanations for the value of knowledge and that should convince us enough.

Chapter Terms

  • morality: the solution, reduction, exacerbation, or creation of problems. Better morality is solving and reducing problems; whereas, worse morality is exacerbating and creating problems (such as suffering). We should strive for better morality.
  • relativism: the untenable idea that morality can be different for different cultures, religions, or species. Given that moral knowledge is like any other knowledge domain (developed through conjectures and refutations), saying morality is relative is akin to saying that each culture can have its own physics or biology.
  • suffering: prolonged pain in conscious entities. One of the most pressing problems we strive to solve today.

Chapter Summary

Morality is about problem-solving versus problem exacerbation/creation. The most moral action is the one that diminishes the total magnitude of all problems. The least is the opposite. We also argue what the problems actually are through the same knowledge generation process (and so what are problems may actually change over time, i.e., we come to learn that animals can experience pain). One of the biggest, hardest-to-refute problems is unnecessary suffering. Therefore, it would be highly moral to diminish animal agriculture as much as possible because of the unnecessary suffering that it thoughtlessly and needlessly entails. We’re confident that animals are conscious beings susceptible to pain and suffering. The moral blind spot of animal agriculture has persisted due to how people learn morality (via osmosis from family and peers). That blind spot dissolves upon argumentation and good faith. As we develop new technology, moral issues will become easier to address, and we can then start to tackle problems that seem intractable, if not beyond consideration, such as the suffering of wild animals. Finally, we see that our ability to generate knowledge and technology inexorably affects our ability to solve moral dilemmas because it helps us solve problems. Therefore, generating and spreading knowledge can be a morally-righteous effort to pursue.

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