At what step do you stop agreeing with this logical argument relating to animals? For each step, I’m also showing the percentage of disagreements on social media that involved this step (either direct disagreements with the step or disagreements with its premise). (There were a total of 63 such disagreements described across my posts on Facebook and X.)

Note: any time the argument mentions something being wrong or immoral, you can treat it either as referring to something being (a) objectively wrong (if you believe in objective moral truth) or (b) wrong according to your own personal moral values (if you don’t believe in objective moral truth).

Step 1: Mammals (like dogs, cats, and pigs) and birds (like parrots and chickens) are capable of suffering.

1.6% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 2: It’s wrong to cause suffering to dogs and cats if the reason you do it is just because it leads to you getting a small amount of pleasure relative to the suffering caused (e.g., if someone finds it fun to kick dogs and cats, it’s immoral for them to do so merely for pleasure).

11.1% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 3: It’s wrong to cause suffering to pigs and chickens if the reason you do it is just because it leads to you getting a small amount of pleasure relative to the suffering caused (e.g., if someone finds it fun to kick pigs and chickens, it’s immoral for them to do so merely for pleasure).

None of the disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 4: It’s wrong to cause suffering to pigs and chickens if the only reason you do it is a small amount of convenience relative to the suffering caused (e.g., if kicking a dog or pig in the face is more convenient because it causes it to go into its pen a little faster, it’s immoral to do so merely for this convenience).

6.3% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 5: It is wrong to cause suffering to pigs and chickens merely for pleasure and convenience, even if the mechanism by which you cause this suffering is by paying someone else who then creates the suffering (e.g., if you pay someone to kick an animal because you enjoy seeing an animal be kicked, or you pay someone to kick an animal because the animal is in your way, that is still immoral even though you didn’t cause the harm with your own body).

4.8% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 6: On large factory farms in the U.S., most of the pigs and chickens suffer a great deal and experience more pain than pleasure (i.e., net negative utility) throughout their lives (e.g., most egg-laying hens live in tiny cages where they can barely move most of their lives, and pigs are often kept in crowded barns with concrete floors and no ability to roam).

11.1% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 7: The vast majority of egg and (non-fish) meat products sold at stores in the U.S. come from large factory farms.

None of the disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 8: By purchasing egg and pork products from stores that use large factory farms as the suppliers for these products, throughout your whole life, you increase the number of chickens and pigs raised on factory farms (in an expected value sense – just as predicted by standard economic theory regarding what happens to production when demand increases).

1.6% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 9: The vast majority of people in the U.S. could switch to a diet that doesn’t involve eating factory-farmed pork and eggs without increasing the amount of money they spend on food (e.g., most could find an egg-free vegetarian diet that is as cheap or cheaper than their current diet, or a diet that otherwise avoids factory-farmed pork and eggs).

12.7% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 10: The vast majority of people in the U.S. could switch to a diet that doesn’t involve eating factory-farmed pork and eggs without sacrificing their health (e.g., most could find an egg-free vegetarian diet that’s as healthy or healthier for them than their current diet, or a healthy diet that otherwise avoids factory-farmed pork and eggs).

19.0% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 11: Something having been done naturally by our ancient ancestors, or being a tradition, or being a result of evolution, does not make something morally okay (e.g., even if it was common for humanity’s ancient ancestors to commit rape, or if a group had a tradition of committing rape, or if human evolution favored those who raped, that would not make rape any less immoral).

3.2% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 12: For most Americans, the only sacrifices they’d be making to switch to a well-thought-through diet free of factory-farmed pork and eggs would be a reduction of some pleasure (if they enjoy factory-farmed pork and eggs) and a loss of some convenience (when alternative food is not as convenient to obtain).

22.2% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 13: In most cases (e.g., when there aren’t overriding health concerns, dietary restrictions, or a lack of availability of alternative foods), it is immoral for Americans to buy most pork and egg products from most stores in the U.S.

3.2% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

Step 14: The majority of Americans are acting immorally in their current purchasing behaviors regarding pork and eggs, but most of them could switch their behavior without excessive difficulty so as to have more ethical food purchasing behaviors (e.g., by adopting an egg-free vegetarian diet, or by avoiding buying animal products that come from factory farms, etc.).

3.2% of disagreements shared with me on social media involved this step.

This piece was first written on November 9, 2024, and first appeared on my website on January 22, 2025.

To figure out how much we value our time we can ask ourselves simple questions, such as, “How much would I have to get paid to be willing to do an hour of work now?” The answer we give will not always be the same from day-to-day, or even from hour to hour. On vacation we might be in a mindset where we find work more unappealing, and so might require a higher pay. On the other hand, in times when we are strapped for cash, we might be willing to accept less pay. Our required monetary reward will also depend on how pleasurable or displeasurable we expect the work to be. And if we’ve just been working for five hours, we might require more pay for the next hour than we did for each of the last five.

Let’s consider how we might actually apply this concept of placing a monetary value on our time. Suppose that a store is giving out free mugs, but to get one, you have to wait for 10 minutes in line. Ask yourself, “How much money would a person have to pay me now to wait for ten minutes in that line on his behalf?” Suppose that you decide that you’d be willing to do this waiting for no less than $5. That means that if someone said they would pay you only $4.95 to stand in line for them, you’d turn down the offer. Now, ask yourself, “In the future, would I rather have $5 or one of these mugs they are handing out?” Or, similarly, try “Would I be willing to spend $5 now to buy one of these mugs?” If the answer is that you’d prefer to have $5 than a mug then it probably doesn’t make sense to wait in the line. In this case, you are assigning that 10 minutes of time waiting in line a value equivalent to $5, but the mug is worth less than that dollar amount to you. Put another way, you would be willing to wait in that line for $5, but if you did so, you wouldn’t actually want to buy the mug with the $5 you earned! It is reasonable therefore to think of the waiting in line as being more costly for you than the mug is valuable to you. On the other hand, if you’d rather have the mug than the $5, in that case it likely would make sense to wait in the line.

Incidentally, it may be important to frame the question as “Would I spend $5 to buy that mug if I could?” rather than “Would I sell that mug for $5 if I already had it?” The problem with the latter is that research has shown that we tend to be biased to prefer items that we currently possess to ones that we don’t yet have. So, if imagining owning the mug is enough to trigger this bias, the latter question could lead to distorted answers.

This technique of placing a monetary value on our time is particularly useful in situations where something is being offered for free, since people often sacrifice an unreasonably large amount to receive free items. Perhaps genuine pleasure is created just from knowing that you got something for free, which helps compensate for such sacrifices. But nonetheless, one should be cautious about overacting to the word “free”, which can certainly snag us with its large psychological appeal.

To consider another example, suppose that you’re trying to decide whether you should drive an extra 15 minutes each way to go to the cheaper grocery store rather than the pricier one (we’ll assume, in this case, that the two stores have equally good products). The question to then ask yourself is, “How much would I have to be paid to drive for a total of 30 minutes on someone else’s behalf?” If the answer is $10, then ask yourself, “How much do I expect to save by going to the cheap store?” If the answer is more than $10, then it probably makes sense to drive the extra distance. If the answer is less than $10, it probably doesn’t make sense.

Our brains are not necessarily going to make sensible decisions unless we explicitly reason using this process. For instance, one study showed that people said they were willing to drive a certain extra distance to save a small amount of money on small purchases, but not on large purchases, even when the dollar amount saved was equivalent in the two cases. If being paid $10 is worth 30 extra minutes of driving to you, it should be worth it to drive that 30 extra minutes to save $10 whether you are then going to be spending $20 or $20,000 at your destination.

When you are making a decision involving sacrificing your time, it can be well worth it to ask yourself, “How much would someone have to pay me to use my time in this way?” Then, ask yourself, “How much would I be willing to pay to be given what my sacrifice of time is getting me?” If the former is bigger than the latter, you should seriously consider not using your time in that manner.