Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…If humanity continues for another thousand years, do you think we’ll take significant steps to improve the welfare of wild animals? A thousand years is a hard time horizon for forecasting. I don’t see it on any horizon that I can imagine. I think humans are programmed to kill and eat animals and that we’re programmed to see that it’s not that wrong. The sociological concentration of vegans and vegetarians is quite striking. And even most of them actually eat meat, no matter what they may claim. So my best guess is it won’t change for a very long time, if ever. Over time, if economic growth continues, we’ll be fabulously wealthy by that point in time. So we’ll be able to afford doing even things that we have weak inclinations to do. Or we might also have either much better philosophy — ideas might have changed, ideology might have changed. We might also have the ability to change our everyday inclinations to bring them more in line with our reflective moral values. Does any of that cause you to change your assessment of the probability?…

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