Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…The ESG stuff. I think they've all made these targets that they need to implement. Those targets are getting much higher priority than the targets they made on animal welfare. But then why do animal charities… It's not just a cynical attempt by the meat industry. If you go to animal charity websites, they'll often also emphasize sustainability on their landing page. I understand other people's psychologies are different, so I don't want to project the way I think about it. At least whenever I see that, I'm like, "Oh wait, are you actually optimizing for the thing that makes this a really salient issue for me? Or are you just going to optimize for carbon footprint rather than this incredible amount of suffering that this industry produces?" So why are they doing this? Why have your friends roped sustainability into this area? I think a lot of people care about multiple things, right? They care about animal welfare and they care about sustainability. It is true that in certain cases, these things go hand in hand. Alternative proteins are both better for animal welfare and have a smaller environmental footprint. They are more sustainable. This is not always the case. One thing that is wild to me is where you have people out there telling people to switch from beef to chicken because it's better for the climate. Literally that switch is 23 more animals per year you'll be consuming, costing several years worth of suffering in these factory farms, for a pretty marginal climate impact. I do think there is often this tendency that climate just gets total precedence. It's just seen as obviously more important than any number of animals suffering. I actually think that that is more of an elite narrative than it is what regular people think. I actually think regular people are just pretty horrified by animal suffering and do prioritize that.…

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