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Arturo Macias's avatar

One of the main advantages of utilitarianism is that beyond good and evil, it allows for all the intermediate shades of grey.

In my view there is a lot of room between “veganism” and welfare indifferent omnivorism.

Keeping a given amount of animal protein consumption you can displace meat by diary (or free range eggs), and you can also displace meat from species raised in CAFO (pigs and chickens) by that raised by ruminants feed on pasture (cows and sheep).

There is more that accepting “imperfection”. Utilitarianism provides directions for continuous improvement.

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JG's avatar

Loved this article!! I strongly agree that anti-hypocrisy norms get in the way of a lot of positive moral change.

It’d be helpful if this phenomenon had a name (“anti-hypocrisy bias”? “cognitive-behavioral dissonance”?). I think the fact that we all know what “confirmation bias” is and can refer to it quickly helps us (even if only marginally) to resist it. Something similar would be helpful here.

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