> Things could be better but they also could be worse
> the moral arguments are sort of silly and illogical
You can use these to justify literally anything
> Slaughter all the lettuce you want
Yeah because we don't have compelling evidence that lettuce experiences anything comparable to conscious suffering, and the only alternative to not eating plants is dying
Yet, we don’t, is the key qualifier. The idea that babies feel pain is only somewhat recently accepted for example. What happens in a future if we determine plants also have pain signals? Would you feel some way, or would you chew that lettuce with the indifference a carnivore has towards its prey?
> The idea that babies feel pain is only somewhat recently accepted
This is crazy to me, but I still believe it's very unlikely plants experience conscious suffering
> Would you feel some way, or [...] chew [...] with the indifference
I'd probably be upset, accept that I needed to eat plants or starve, try to minimize the pain I did cause, and then grow numb to the knowledge over time because I couldn't practically do anything about it
I think you can pose many hypothetical scenarios where I'd be unsure what to do or do the selfish thing, but to me the important thing is that the world we do exist in has lots of "bang for your buck" choices like: trading getting to taste meat for animals not having to go through factory farms
> Things could be better but they also could be worse
> the moral arguments are sort of silly and illogical
You can use these to justify literally anything
> Slaughter all the lettuce you want
Yeah because we don't have compelling evidence that lettuce experiences anything comparable to conscious suffering, and the only alternative to not eating plants is dying