62: “Animal farming will end by the end of this century” – Jacy Reese Anthis – Sentientist Conversation

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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Jacy (https://twitter.com/jacyanthis & https://jacyanthis.com/) is a social scientist & co-founder of the Sentience Institute (https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/). His acclaimed book, The End of Animal Farming  (https://jacyanthis.com/book), analyzes the development & popularisation of food technologies such as plant-based & cultivated meat.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:26 Jacy’s Intro

Utilitarianism, Effective Altruism, Buddhism, neuroscience, community building, Animal Charity Evaluators, Sentience Institute, The End of Animal Farming, Sociology PhD & moral expansion.

3:22 What’s Real?

– Growing up around Baptist & Catholic churches near Houston but in an agnostic family

– Attending church “lockins”

– “I wasn’t even told Santa was real growing up”

– Interested in Buddhist views of suffering, but not the supernatural aspects

– Naturalism has a connotation that there is nothing supernatural. “That’s an empirical claim about which I remain uncertain”

– Would multiverses, our universe being a simulation or pre-Big Bang history be seen as “supernatural”?

– The varieties of religious identity: metaphysics, ethics, community

9:20 What Matters?

– Moral heuristics & their conflicts

– Adopting utilitarianism at 12 yrs old & looking for a “proof”

– From moral realism to anti-realism (per Brian Tomasik)

– It’s up to us to decide which mental phenomenon to put in the “sentience” and “consciousness” categories

– Objectivity, relativism, nihilism & arbitrariness

– Even most religious people would act morally if there was no god

– Rejecting “mind-independent” truth as the next step up from rejecting supernatural truths

– Non-objective morality can still be compelling

– Grounding morality in a concern for the experiences of others

– The priority balance between reducing suffering vs. enhancing flourishing

18:20 Moral Scope & Expansion

– Utilitarianism led to vegetarianism then veganism

– Focusing initially on human issues, working at GiveWell

– Cause prioritisation led back to non-human issues

– Persuading sentiocentrists to be more effective & effective altruists to be sentiocentric

– The bias against helping other species

–  Non-human animal causes can seem sentimental until you engage w/the arguments

– Far future/long-termism

– Effective Altruists have the highest veg*n % of almost any human group

– Ancient roots of sentiocentrism/veganism & naturalism

– “Everything has been said before”

… And much more – see Sentientism.info for full show notes.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.

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Thanks Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.