One worry I would have with your argument is that if insects on farms have lives worth living, then it would actually be a tremendous good to farm them in mind-boggling numbers.
I am of course no mealworm-psychologist, but they generally don't seem to have very many complex desires in their little minds. They seem quite content with being clumped together in large groups, and really they only seem to care about getting food (greedy bastards) - something which they will surely have plenty of on farms.
And so their eventual demise will surely be weighed up by living some weeks in mealworm-utopia.
I could of course be wildly mistaken about how sad mealworms are in general.
If it can be shown that they "enjoy" the lives in the farm, I'd be more open to it, but I tend to think it's better to play these things safe. I'd also have to be very confident Utilitarianism is true, but I'm no Matthew Adelstein lol
Yeah, there is certainly a risk that we are causing a large amount of harm. But there is also a risk of doing a lot of good - think of all the insects having lives worth living, which they wouldn't otherwise have!
We could make an analogy to someone who is considering having a baby. She is pretty confident that the baby will have a good life, but there is also some small chance that it could be born with a horrible disease which causes it to suffer and then die. Would she be allowed to have a baby? I think the answer is clearly yes, in fact I think this is the situation most people are in when having kids (or at least people in the past) - you don't know whether the baby will have some horrible disease and then die.
I also don't think these considerations would require utilitarianism, I just think it requires that insects don't have absolute rights (something which looks quite implausible to me anyways). I also think that the insects would consent to being brought into existence to have a life worth living, even if they knew they would be killed (to the extent that insects can know things and give consent).
I totally agree. I eat wild fish, but avoid shrimp for this exact reason. And if insects do have a subjective experience, I wonder if their simplicity might not actually make it more rather than less intense. But mostly I just don't want to eat dozens of hundreds of individuals.
One worry I would have with your argument is that if insects on farms have lives worth living, then it would actually be a tremendous good to farm them in mind-boggling numbers.
I am of course no mealworm-psychologist, but they generally don't seem to have very many complex desires in their little minds. They seem quite content with being clumped together in large groups, and really they only seem to care about getting food (greedy bastards) - something which they will surely have plenty of on farms.
And so their eventual demise will surely be weighed up by living some weeks in mealworm-utopia.
I could of course be wildly mistaken about how sad mealworms are in general.
If it can be shown that they "enjoy" the lives in the farm, I'd be more open to it, but I tend to think it's better to play these things safe. I'd also have to be very confident Utilitarianism is true, but I'm no Matthew Adelstein lol
Yeah, there is certainly a risk that we are causing a large amount of harm. But there is also a risk of doing a lot of good - think of all the insects having lives worth living, which they wouldn't otherwise have!
We could make an analogy to someone who is considering having a baby. She is pretty confident that the baby will have a good life, but there is also some small chance that it could be born with a horrible disease which causes it to suffer and then die. Would she be allowed to have a baby? I think the answer is clearly yes, in fact I think this is the situation most people are in when having kids (or at least people in the past) - you don't know whether the baby will have some horrible disease and then die.
I also don't think these considerations would require utilitarianism, I just think it requires that insects don't have absolute rights (something which looks quite implausible to me anyways). I also think that the insects would consent to being brought into existence to have a life worth living, even if they knew they would be killed (to the extent that insects can know things and give consent).
I totally agree. I eat wild fish, but avoid shrimp for this exact reason. And if insects do have a subjective experience, I wonder if their simplicity might not actually make it more rather than less intense. But mostly I just don't want to eat dozens of hundreds of individuals.