Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…This is a challenge because if I say I’m wrong, you could just keep that . . . No, one human is worth more. You could keep upping the number of dogs. Your view aligns with that of Matti Wilks, who is my collaborator, an ex-postdoc, who ran this research, and she’s very much of a utilitarian and an animal rights person. She thinks kids are superior. She finds in this work you’re talking about, kids are less speciesist than adults. They even will favor 10 pigs over one human. Adults in our sample never do that. Gradually the speciesism comes in until you get to a person like me, who thinks, “Oh my God, a person is so much more valuable.” Matti would say what happens is, this irrational prejudice creeps in that I have, and maybe you don’t have. I don’t know. I’m a troubled utilitarian, where for the most part I am; I just would find it very difficult to trade any number of dogs for a human life. What about you? If you would make the tradeoff, how many dogs? I don’t think we can make utility comparisons across species. I think we can make limited claims of potential gains from trade with humans and dogs a lot; humans and pigs quite a bit less, but still somewhat; and that ultimately, maybe we can apply some semi-Christian-like idea of mercy to how we should treat animals, and that we only have partial comparisons. That would be my answer. Maybe we can’t, but in some way, we have to when we think about animal experimentation or, of course, using animal food. If somebody said, there’s a research we’re going to do which will save a child’s life, but it will involve killing a million dogs, I think people might balk at it, but if it was killing two dogs, people wouldn’t. But I also can’t fix a number.…

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