Dogs and dog feeding

[brimstoneSalad]

I know people that work in my local shelter and have talked with them about it. As I said previously, they don't kill unwanted animals.

It's common for there to be shelters that don't euthanize, but if even one in a hundred animals are unwanted, they can't violate basic mathematics. Either they:

A. Fill up with unwanted animals and effectively stop acting as adoption venues.
B. Are forced to be very selective, in effect sending unwanted animals to shelters that DO euthanize.

As long as there are enough animals for people to be picky, no kill shelters rely on the existence of kill shelters to do the dirty work for them so they can continue to operate.

It's an entire system that acts as a whole. No shelter is an island entire of itself. Just because your particular shelter is no kill doesn't mean a dog didn't die as a consequence of your shopping instead of adopting.

Much of the shelter's funding is acquired by donations.

That they rely on donations is a problem in itself, since it's one of the least effective forms of charity. When shelters take donations they compete with other charities, and do harm by way of opportunity cost. A good shelter operates on adoption fees, not donations.

Quite a lot of old dogs find new homes as adopting is rising in popularity.

Yes, because more people are doing the right thing.
But you can't say it's OK for you to do wrong on the basis of other people doing right.

Sorry, but no one does that.

You're comparing ideals here: in that case the fact is that you could do it. Saying nobody does something good doesn't justify bad.

And just as with shelters - money does provide welfare for orphans but it's a loving family that they need the most.

Most children available aren't orphans, but wards of the state due to prison and substance abuse. And most unfortunately with much more serious behavioral problems than a shelter dog.
The fact remains that their parents could get out of jail or sober up enough to take their kids back from you at any time, since most children are only available to foster.

Depends on how young you want the child to be. I don't find the argument that you are depriving someone of a child convincing.

I don't see how, it's basic economics. Adoption isn't like a commercial enterprise where higher demand will result in a higher supply. There's a fixed supply of young children actually being given up, and no economic incentive to increase supply (outside of human trafficking which you don't want to get into).

You're absolutely depriving a family of a child if you're adopting locally.

Now if you're going outside your country to some war torn area and adopting a child where there's a surplus and a legitimate orphan problem, then the economics change. But if you thought adopting at home was expensive, international adoption is something else -- starting at around $20,000.
You would do a LOT more good just having a kid and then donating the $15k or so. That's enough money to not just provide for a child in an orphanage (MANY children), but possibly to even outright save a life.

If you want to spend $15,000 on a vacation instead that's your prerogative, but arguing that adopting a child is a meaningfully good thing is absurd; it's a very ineffective form of altruism.

Adopting in itself is a good deed, just as adopting from a shelter

Adopting from a shelter you're saving a dog's life, and the availability is such that you're not depriving anybody else of the opportunity to adopt a shelter dog in doing so.
Adopting a young child from your own country you aren't doing *anything* good at all, you're just wasting a bunch of money you could have spent on charity or even a vacation if you wanted, and in the process you're denying a couple who can't have their own children.

Now if you want to talk about the moral superiority of fostering teens instead of adopting or having a child (putting that space in your home to maximally good use) you'd probably have a good case. But fostering is radically different from raising a child (your own or adopted), and it's more different than the small difference between breeding vs. adopting dogs, so it's not a fair comparison at all.

What's morally relevant is choosing A instead of B when A and B are substantially similar.

- would you argue that choosing a good-looking dog from a shelter is unethical?

There is no shortage of cute and beautiful dogs and cats in shelters, and nobody is going to be deprived one if you select one.
I would say that choosing a hypoallergenic dog or cat (which is rare in a shelter) if you are not allergic would be wrong because that's depriving somebody with an allergy of that animal.

Don't take for yourself something rare that other people *need* if you don't need it.

How is it that adopting a child is unethical (let's assume we are talking about the US for convenience' sake)?

I think I explained that: the supply is limited, so you're denying another couple that opportunity or making them wait longer.

A huge problem where I live is people returning adopted dogs because they caused problems.

How is this dangerous? The dog isn't going to explode if returned.
The dog was taken from the shelter without creating a new dog, and can be returned with virtually no impact; then another more appropriate dog can be selected until the right fit is found.

The only case it would be a big concern is if you had young children, but the people working at the shelter will be able to help you with that selection for temperament.

The same goes for breeds - these are usually more reliable in terms of character as they have been bred to have certain traits. Adopting the wrong breed however, can result in the dog being unhappy and exhibiting signs of distress that the owners usually interpret as misbehaving.

If you're really particular you can do a DNA test to look at the breeds the dogs has; traits will usually be somewhere in between. But as I said before, unless you're literally spending no time with the dog before adopting you're going to have some idea of the dog's temperament and needs before bringing him or her home.

It's not the end of the world if you have to bring an animal back.

That's why when you're adopting a child with a tough past you become both their parent and their therapist. It's very hard but can be very rewarding (just like adopting a dog that was mistreated by a previous owner).

I wouldn't expect somebody to adopt a dog who has been mistreated; that's much more complicated. If all or even most shelter dogs had really been abused then you'd have a better argument for breeding. Most shelter dogs are perfectly fine, and you can usually tell pretty easily if they're messed up (and the people at the shelter will know if the animal has special needs).

I was comparing the act of adopting people to adopting dogs but I'm not saying dogs are more important than people - we're not talking about "whether to get a dog or a human" but whether to adopt or buy/conceive.

My point is that the stakes are much lower with dogs.

I think we should close down puppy mills, limit the practice of breeding to a minimum and promote adopting. Do you agree with that?

A minimum as in only certain service animals who really need to have a very carefully controlled temperament or ability (olfactory, etc.). However these dogs should be available only by prescription or to governmental organizations like police. Average people do not need to purchase specially bred animals. Would you agree?

It's more like the parents that trust a nanny because her credentials are flawless, she has a good cv and has had many happy customers.

That might be credible in an industry were only a tiny fraction of nannies are actually abusive; the default assumption can be that the person you hire will not abuse your child even if you don't have those credentials.
But in an industry where the norm is bad practice, you have to start with those assumptions and should require more extraordinary evidence to believe otherwise.

You're probably right on that one. Would you be so kind as to provide some sources for your claim? The topic is quite interesting.

Like this? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... new-tricks
Or on stuff like IQ heritability? (which is around 80%)
The most drastic effects retarding IQ are based on malnutrition, and exposure to disease and drugs in utero -- most of that is unfortunately set in stone at birth or soon after.

You're really downplaying it. It's a very enriching experience and something that brings out very positive emotions of love and empathy, etc. Would you call raising a baby "fun"?

For many people raising a child is fun, but in the case of human children you can probably make an argument for it satisfying some fundamental primal need along the lines of companionship, peer regard, etc. They create a sense of purpose and duty, and human children also outlive their parents and provide a sense of "immortality" or permanence to the work the parents have done.

To this end, you may be able to argue that raising dogs (and I don't think it matters if you adopt them as puppies or adults, they're still stand-ins for children) serves as a pseudo-satisfier to that essential human need. That would make it "more" than just fun, but being a pseudo-satisfier for a real need is not necessarily a good thing.

I think @Jebus spoke well as to how his rescue dogs fill the same role any purchased bred puppy could or better. I don't know if he'd agree on it being a pseudo-satisfier for some more innate need though.

My dog provides me with health and happiness - and I provide him with the same, hopefully.

Why would the same relationship be impossible with a rescued dog?
My point has always been about it providing substantially the same thing, but being more harmful to buy from a breeder.

He's also not causing any harm.

What? Dogs eat and poop almost as much as humans do. The harm footprint is proportional. This isn't a mouse we're talking about.

Humans, however, cause a lot of suffering directly and indirectly - consuming animal products, for example.

Dogs don't do that?

The action itself is amoral, not immoral. I would argue that it's good, as the amount of happiness a dog provides during his/her lifetime is priceless.

The fact is that you have to compare A to B where the utility and good effects are substantially similar, but the bad effects are radically different.
A rescue dog is arguably neutral in negative effect because he or she already existed and you didn't cause more dogs to be born by adopting. A bred dog is very different, and your purchase caused all of those negatives where otherwise there would have been none -- even if in doing so you didn't kill a dog waiting for a home (which I'm quite sure you did even if your shelter is no kill).

Because the two options are substantially similar in experience and utility and have the same potential goods, one choice is wrong compared to the other because one of them does a lot more harm for basically no reason.

No dog died directly because of me.

No child died "directly" because of the man who lounged by the pool drinking his martini while a child drowned instead of getting up and tossing in a life saving flotation device. Do you really think this guy is totally innocent?

Moral culpability doesn't follow from "direct" effects, but from relative effects from different actions and consideration of the effort involved in achieving them.
If very little effort is involved to save a life -- a very small deviation from normal behavior like adopting instead of shopping for a bred dog or taking a couple steps to throw in a life saving float --then it's wrong to not do that. That's distinct from expecting people to donate many thousands of dollars to charity to save a stranger in a developing country from dying from malaria.

I support the local shelter and donate for the dogs there.

I suggest that you do not do that, because it's among the least effective forms of charity. Like a Christian charity distributing Bibles to people who are starving... maybe a few people will learn to read and get out of poverty, but for the most part it's a waste of money.

If you want to help more people or animals, give to effective charities. The same amount of money will do a much more meaningful amount of good (rather than virtually zero):

For humans:
https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds ... s/givewell
For non-human animals:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blo ... endations/

I didn't have an accurate perception of adopting from a shelter then, as do lots of people (that's why education about it is so important).

That defense is fine. Just like the man by the pool: if he did not *know* that the child was drowning, that goes a long way to a defense of his character.

Do you really think buying from a breeder is comparable to letting a child die?

No, a child is more important than a dog. Buying from a breeder is letting a dog die.
The analogy doesn't equate children to dogs in terms of value, it just demonstrates the underlying logic in the relationship between action and culpability. It is that relationship that is analogous, not the value of humans and dogs that are the same.

I agree it isn't good to buy a dog from a breeder. I disagree it's bad. It isn't ethical. I don't think, however, that the action is unethical.

So the man who sits by the pool sipping a martini and watching a child drown? Not good, but also not bad?
I'm trying to understand how you believe inaction relates to moral culpability.

We can disagree on this point, I think, as this has to do more with moral values than with rationality. Unless you have some facts to convince me otherwise - I'm always open for logic

Well it has to do with logic.
If you really believe the man who lets a child die has done nothing wrong in choosing not to so much as lift a finger and that decision doesn't reflect poorly on his character, then your reasoning is consistent. However if as I suspect you would not be 100% comfortable with that, then you have some work to do in explaining how buying from a breeder is a logically different relationship to the more negative outcome.

[Adloud]

Most children available aren't orphans, but wards of the state due to prison and substance abuse. And most unfortunately with much more serious behavioral problems than a shelter dog.
The fact remains that their parents could get out of jail or sober up enough to take their kids back from you at any time, since most children are only available to foster.

For dogs being in a shelter can be a traumatic experience, some never fully recover. I don't know on what basis you're comparing those children with dogs in a shelter but I think in both cases the amount of stress put on the individual is not to be overlooked.

I don't see how, it's basic economics. Adoption isn't like a commercial enterprise where higher demand will result in a higher supply. There's a fixed supply of young children actually being given up, and no economic incentive to increase supply (outside of human trafficking which you don't want to get into).

You're absolutely depriving a family of a child if you're adopting locally.

Now if you're going outside your country to some war torn area and adopting a child where there's a surplus and a legitimate orphan problem, then the economics change. But if you thought adopting at home was expensive, international adoption is something else -- starting at around $20,000.
You would do a LOT more good just having a kid and then donating the $15k or so. That's enough money to not just provide for a child in an orphanage (MANY children), but possibly to even outright save a life.

If you want to spend $15,000 on a vacation instead that's your prerogative, but arguing that adopting a child is a meaningfully good thing is absurd; it's a very ineffective form of altruism.

I find it hard to even grasp what you're saying here. We're talking about probabilities of causing harm in relation to the good you can do. It's such a speculative topic that I think it's almost impossible to judge the moral value of an action in this way. In my opinion, we should consider direct effects that an action has first, and then take into account more indirect effects as valid points but carrying less argumentative power overall as more speculative.
It seems to me you're trying to justify your stance on this topic by tailoring your arguments to suit your agenda.

There is no shortage of cute and beautiful dogs and cats in shelters, and nobody is going to be deprived one if you select one.
I would say that choosing a hypoallergenic dog or cat (which is rare in a shelter) if you are not allergic would be wrong because that's depriving somebody with an allergy of that animal.

Don't take for yourself something rare that other people *need* if you don't need it.

I'm sorry if that's the way you view the world. You're very quick to assign negative moral value to deeds while ignoring the inherent good they carry.

How is this dangerous? The dog isn't going to explode if returned.
The dog was taken from the shelter without creating a new dog, and can be returned with virtually no impact; then another more appropriate dog can be selected until the right fit is found.

Some dogs are very quick to form a bond and returning them to the place they've experienced trauma causes major psychological and behavioural problems. We're talking about intelligent creatures here, not a piece of clothing you're returning to the store.

I wouldn't expect somebody to adopt a dog who has been mistreated; that's much more complicated. If all or even most shelter dogs had really been abused then you'd have a better argument for breeding. Most shelter dogs are perfectly fine, and you can usually tell pretty easily if they're messed up (and the people at the shelter will know if the animal has special needs).

Most dogs in shelters have experienced some kind of trauma and being there is a traumatic experience in itself. Some adapt very quickly to new homes and seem to forget ever being in a shelter, unfortunately, many don't.

A minimum as in only certain service animals who really need to have a very carefully controlled temperament or ability (olfactory, etc.). However these dogs should be available only by prescription or to governmental organizations like police. Average people do not need to purchase specially bred animals. Would you agree?

That could be the end goal. I don't think it should be as limited though, and I would add dogs used for sports.

That might be credible in an industry were only a tiny fraction of nannies are actually abusive; the default assumption can be that the person you hire will not abuse your child even if you don't have those credentials.
But in an industry where the norm is bad practice, you have to start with those assumptions and should require more extraordinary evidence to believe otherwise.

Like this? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... new-tricks
Or on stuff like IQ heritability? (which is around 80%)
The most drastic effects retarding IQ are based on malnutrition, and exposure to disease and drugs in utero -- most of that is unfortunately set in stone at birth or soon after.

I know older dogs can be taught and their behaviour altered from my experience with dog training. I'm more interested in studies proving that nature plays a more substantial role than nurture.

Why would the same relationship be impossible with a rescued dog?
My point has always been about it providing substantially the same thing, but being more harmful to buy from a breeder.

I agree with this statement.

Humans, however, cause a lot of suffering directly and indirectly - consuming animal products, for example.

Dogs don't do that?

Bet to a much lesser degree, considering their needs and lifespan.

I suggest that you do not do that, because it's among the least effective forms of charity. Like a Christian charity distributing Bibles to people who are starving... maybe a few people will learn to read and get out of poverty, but for the most part it's a waste of money.

I donate things, like toys, collars, blankets, etc. When I can donate money, I choose effective animal charities.

If you really believe the man who lets a child die has done nothing wrong in choosing not to so much as lift a finger and that decision doesn't reflect poorly on his character, then your reasoning is consistent. However if as I suspect you would not be 100% comfortable with that, then you have some work to do in explaining how buying from a breeder is a logically different relationship to the more negative outcome.

This argument of yours is absurd.
You can either strip the circumstances and judge an action by itself or take those circumstances into account. The act of buying from a breeder in itself is amoral. In most cases, regarding the circumstances, it's immoral. But you don't know all the circumstances, and you definitely don't know them in my case. I would like you to drop the analogy, as it brings nothing to the discussion besides serving as a baseless accusation.
You really did help me reconsider my judgment on breeders as a whole, but I still would never strive to judge someone's choice without knowing the circumstances, and even then I find it usually to be a counter-productive thing to do in any sort of relationship with that person. So please let's refrain to talking about concepts. I do understand your opinion and I simply don't share it.

[brimstoneSalad]

For dogs being in a shelter can be a traumatic experience, some never fully recover. I don't know on what basis you're comparing those children with dogs in a shelter but I think in both cases the amount of stress put on the individual is not to be overlooked.

Whether humans or dogs, most people recover from trauma pretty easily. Particularly, young are very resilient. I don't think we can assume any meaningful psychological difference between dogs and children.
If we're looking at older dogs sent to shelters after their owners die that may be, but there's a big confounding variable there in the death of their owners they've loved for decades -- perhaps that's what the dog doesn't recover from? And perhaps that's not relevant in a shelter return for a dog who didn't work out in a week.

I don't doubt that some shelters may be abusive, but not adopting doesn't really help that.

I find it hard to even grasp what you're saying here. We're talking about probabilities of causing harm in relation to the good you can do. It's such a speculative topic that I think it's almost impossible to judge the moral value of an action in this way.

There is a lot of complexity there, but you can look at the numbers, the waiting times, etc. We know shortage of children available for adoption is an issue for infertile couples.

Now it may be that you think an infertile couple adopting a child isn't a good thing because they probably would have adopted some dogs or cats otherwise as a stand-in and that would save a dog or cat from death, but the bare economic fact of supply and demand reveals a concerning consequence of adopting a child that may not be justifiable when you are able to have your own.

In my opinion, we should consider direct effects that an action has first, and then take into account more indirect effects as valid points but carrying less argumentative power overall as more speculative.

The supply/demand isn't really speculative. Economics isn't that far on the soft science side, and the basic principles of supply and demand are about as established as they get.

It seems to me you're trying to justify your stance on this topic by tailoring your arguments to suit your agenda.

...People argue for what they believe to be true? I'm providing an argument. Do you have a counter-point?

There is an aspect of moral wrong to a fertile couple adopting a child because it reduces supply for infertile couples.
Please counter that point.

I'm sorry if that's the way you view the world. You're very quick to assign negative moral value to deeds while ignoring the inherent good they carry.

You seem to be missing the point.

Deed A: 5 bad points, 10 good points
Deed B: 2 bad points, 10 good points

Which one is better? Deed B is better.
And IF A and B are substantially similar in terms of accessibility/convenience/experience, etc. then it is wrong to choose A instead of B. it doesn't matter that they both added the same good to the world, or even that in both cases the good outweighs the bad, one added more bad than the other for no good reason.

Do you have a counter-argument for this?

Some dogs are very quick to form a bond and returning them to the place they've experienced trauma causes major psychological and behavioural problems. We're talking about intelligent creatures here, not a piece of clothing you're returning to the store.

Do you believe that fostering dogs is wrong? That's a process that transfers them from home to home over time.
These dogs can also form bonds with people working at the shelters.

Maybe it's a little better to keep the first dog if you can, but is it really more harmful to return a dog to a shelter than to condemn a dog to death?
If you really think it's better to be killed than returned and likely adopted by somebody else then maybe your argument makes sense, but I don't think that's a very reasonable belief considering the evidence we have on humans being able to recover from trauma.

Most dogs in shelters have experienced some kind of trauma and being there is a traumatic experience in itself. Some adapt very quickly to new homes and seem to forget ever being in a shelter, unfortunately, many don't.

If the trauma you believe is so terrible, then should they all be put down?

That could be the end goal. I don't think it should be as limited though, and I would add dogs used for sports.

For sports? Like the abusive industries of dog racing, hunting, and even dog fighting?
I don't think people should be breeding or using animals for amusement like this. Dogs should definitely never be bred for sport.

I know older dogs can be taught and their behaviour altered from my experience with dog training. I'm more interested in studies proving that nature plays a more substantial role than nurture.

There are a number of twin studies on IQ, as well as those on adoption. Once grown, children's IQ correlates to biological parents and siblings adopted into different homes, not adopted parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects.[11][12]

You can't really use upbringing to change a child's IQ much unless you're depressing it with malnutrition, disease, or outright abuse. Basically you can do harm and lower it by being uniquely terrible, but no matter how many science summer camps you send them to or how much Mozart you play them, you're not going to meaningfully move the scale. An excellent parent isn't really better than an average one.

Bet to a much lesser degree, considering their needs and lifespan.

Lifespan isn't really relevant: people get new dogs when the old one dies, so there's still a continuity of a dog eating and pooping.
What matters is amount of meat eaten per year/per capita, and for a large dog eating a grain free meat based food that's going to be more meat than the average human. For a small dog eating a grain based food it will be less. On average I don't think we can say it's so much lesser.

I donate things, like toys, collars, blankets, etc. When I can donate money, I choose effective animal charities.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

If you really believe the man who lets a child die has done nothing wrong in choosing not to so much as lift a finger and that decision doesn't reflect poorly on his character, then your reasoning is consistent. However if as I suspect you would not be 100% comfortable with that, then you have some work to do in explaining how buying from a breeder is a logically different relationship to the more negative outcome.

This argument of yours is absurd.
You can either strip the circumstances and judge an action by itself or take those circumstances into account. The act of buying from a breeder in itself is amoral.

No simple action in itself, even murdering somebody, is necessarily harmful or wrong when you remove all of the consequences and circumstance because once we consider those there can be mitigating factors.
Perhaps you're murdering a terrorist who is going to detonate a weapon to spread a biological agent across New York city and kill millions?

However, there are rules of thumb we can and *should* follow.

In most cases, regarding the circumstances, it's immoral.

Yes, which is the point of why it's wrong to do it as a non-omniscient human being.

It's also wrong to fire a gun blindly into a movie theater. There's a chance you might hit no innocent people and only kill a terrorist you didn't even know was in there and who was about the detonate a bomb. Why is it wrong? Because of the probability of harm and the fact that you didn't know.

But you don't know all the circumstances, and you definitely don't know them in my case.

Nor do you. Look into rule consequentialism.
The reason we consider things like murdering random people you suspect to be terrorists wrong and we say you should contact the authorities instead is because of the probability of doing harm by accident and the nature of human rationalization. It's very easy to excuse wrong actions you happen to want to do by fudging the numbers and guessing about the consequences -- appealing to vague positives and dismissing negatives.

It's very easy to rationalize an action you want to do and make excuses for yourself but that doesn't mean those excuses are valid. People tend to be irrational and are poor decision makers because we have biases and incomplete information.

So even if you really really think your neighbor is a terrorist, still don't murder him because you're probably wrong and murdering is overwhelmingly the wrong thing to do in almost every circumstance. It's like the counter-intuitive case of false positives in medical testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
People make *a lot* of mistakes. It's better to follow general rules because you're less likely to rationalize harm.

I would like you to drop the analogy, as it brings nothing to the discussion besides serving as a baseless accusation.

It's a sound analogy of how inaction relates to culpability. You claimed that inaction was neutral, and the analogy addresses that. Please respond to the analogy if you don't agree with it.

but I still would never strive to judge someone's choice without knowing the circumstances,

You can categorize the choice of buying from a breeder rather than adopting to be wrong in a rule consequentialist sense without condemning people as a whole who do that wrong action.

and even then I find it usually to be a counter-productive thing to do in any sort of relationship with that person.

I'm not saying to run around calling anybody who has bought from a breeder "puppy murderers".
Of course follow effective communication techniques. We're talking in the abstract here. When you apply this knowledge to outreach you may present things very differently to reach an audience and hold a few punches.

So please let's refrain to talking about concepts. I do understand your opinion and I simply don't share it.

We do a lot of talking about concepts here... that's kind of what philosophy is.
I want to understand what about the relationship between inaction and culpability you don't agree with.

[Adloud]

Whether humans or dogs, most people recover from trauma pretty easily. Particularly, young are very resilient. I don't think we can assume any meaningful psychological difference between dogs and children.
If we're looking at older dogs sent to shelters after their owners die that may be, but there's a big confounding variable there in the death of their owners they've loved for decades -- perhaps that's what the dog doesn't recover from? And perhaps that's not relevant in a shelter return for a dog who didn't work out in a week.

While young dogs usually are able to recover with sufficient care, I personally know a few dogs that, though adopted at a very young age, still struggle with some problems related to their past trauma (e.g. suddenly being scared and running away while being pet, inability to communicate with other dogs and humans, aggression.)

There is a lot of complexity there, but you can look at the numbers, the waiting times, etc. We know shortage of children available for adoption is an issue for infertile couples.

Now it may be that you think an infertile couple adopting a child isn't a good thing because they probably would have adopted some dogs or cats otherwise as a stand-in and that would save a dog or cat from death, but the bare economic fact of supply and demand reveals a concerning consequence of adopting a child that may not be justifiable when you are able to have your own.

If we judge adoption on its own, I would argue it is inherently a good thing, as you're ending suffering and providing someone with means to a better life. Sometimes it might not be the best option or even be harmful. But then we're taking circumstances under consideration, which is a completely different thing.

The supply/demand isn't really speculative. Economics isn't that far on the soft science side, and the basic principles of supply and demand are about as established as they get.

It IS speculative to assume the demand is higher than supply when the opposite is true in many places in the world.

There is an aspect of moral wrong to a fertile couple adopting a child because it reduces supply for infertile couples.
Please counter that point.

I agree with that. But maybe the only infertile couple that is causing the high supply is forcing children to work in a factory? Then adopting a child regardless would probably a morally right thing to do. Circumstances can change an action's moral value substantially, so we can consider either real incidents or generalizations or concepts.

You seem to be missing the point.

Deed A: 5 bad points, 10 good points
Deed B: 2 bad points, 10 good points

Which one is better? Deed B is better.
And IF A and B are substantially similar in terms of accessibility/convenience/experience, etc. then it is wrong to choose A instead of B. it doesn't matter that they both added the same good to the world, or even that in both cases the good outweighs the bad, one added more bad than the other for no good reason.

Do you have a counter-argument for this?

Deed A is good. Deed B is good. Maybe their inherent moral value is different but as I understand you took under consideration all circumstances. Then, of course, Deed B is better.
A person chose deed A regardless. Does that mean he gets extra bad points? Does that mean they are a bad person?

Do you believe that fostering dogs is wrong? That's a process that transfers them from home to home over time.
These dogs can also form bonds with people working at the shelters.

Fostering dogs often is an alternative to death and is usually much better than being in a shelter. It's not good for (most) dogs, however, not to have an owner and the transition back to a shelter is often detrimental to their health.

Maybe it's a little better to keep the first dog if you can, but is it really more harmful to return a dog to a shelter than to condemn a dog to death?

Of course not. But is it really that hard to think your decision through if you can prevent suffering?

If the trauma you believe is so terrible, then should they all be put down?

No, obviously.

For sports? Like the abusive industries of dog racing, hunting, and even dog fighting?
I don't think people should be breeding or using animals for amusement like this. Dogs should definitely never be bred for sport.

No, sports like IPO (which I do with my dog). It's a great thing both for the owner and the dog and the best dogs in the competitions are of breeds also used by the police and the military. They are dogs with long lifespans, they are healthy, agile and intelligent. They are very happy dogs, bred to form strong bonds with their owners.

There are a number of twin studies on IQ, as well as those on adoption. Once grown, children's IQ correlates to biological parents and siblings adopted into different homes, not adopted parents.

You can't really use upbringing to change a child's IQ much unless you're depressing it with malnutrition, disease, or outright abuse. Basically you can do harm and lower it by being uniquely terrible, but no matter how many science summer camps you send them to or how much Mozart you play them, you're not going to meaningfully move the scale. An excellent parent isn't really better than an average one.

That's very interesting, thank you!

Lifespan isn't really relevant: people get new dogs when the old one dies, so there's still a continuity of a dog eating and pooping.
What matters is amount of meat eaten per year/per capita, and for a large dog eating a grain free meat based food that's going to be more meat than the average human. For a small dog eating a grain based food it will be less. On average I don't think we can say it's so much lesser.

I've done a little research, and you're probably right. Pet also tend to have a quite substantial carbon footprint.

No simple action in itself, even murdering somebody, is necessarily harmful or wrong when you remove all of the consequences and circumstance because once we consider those there can be mitigating factors.
Perhaps you're murdering a terrorist who is going to detonate a weapon to spread a biological agent across New York city and kill millions?

However, there are rules of thumb we can and *should* follow.

Murder in most cultures and belief systems is considered wrong, as "a rule of thumb". Of course in some isolated incidents it can be morally justified, or even considered to have a positive moral value (killing a terrorist, for example.)

Yes, which is the point of why it's wrong to do it as a non-omniscient human being.

It's also wrong to fire a gun blindly into a movie theater. There's a chance you might hit no innocent people and only kill a terrorist you didn't even know was in there and who was about the detonate a bomb. Why is it wrong? Because of the probability of harm and the fact that you didn't know.

In most cases it's immoral, in some it is moral. Then it is not wrong. In your own situation, you know many circumstances and thus are able to asses more accurately what the right choice is from a moral standpoint. You still might be wrong but the probability of it being so is much lower than the simple assumption based on a concept.

Nor do you. Look into rule consequentialism.
The reason we consider things like murdering random people you suspect to be terrorists wrong and we say you should contact the authorities instead is because of the probability of doing harm by accident and the nature of human rationalization. It's very easy to excuse wrong actions you happen to want to do by fudging the numbers and guessing about the consequences -- appealing to vague positives and dismissing negatives.

Following your previous model
Deed A: 3 bad points, 10 good points (easy to do)
Deed B: 2 bad points, 20 good points (very hard to do)

Do you consider deed A to be inherently bad?
We can judge an action as good or bad in relation to other actions but without knowing the circumstances can you tell someone made a bad choice?

So even if you really really think your neighbor is a terrorist, still don't murder him because you're probably wrong and murdering is overwhelmingly the wrong thing to do in almost every circumstance. It's like the counter-intuitive case of false positives in medical testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
People make *a lot* of mistakes. It's better to follow general rules because you're less likely to rationalize harm.

A general rule would be to kill a terrorist. Or it wouldn't, and when the neighbour starts killing dozens of people you do nothing because it isn't with accordance with your rules?

It's a sound analogy of how inaction relates to culpability. You claimed that inaction was neutral, and the analogy addresses that. Please respond to the analogy if you don't agree with it.

Inaction in most cases is neutral. In some, like in the one you presented, it's not. I think (hope) it's common sense.

You can categorize the choice of buying from a breeder rather than adopting to be wrong in a rule consequentialist sense without condemning people as a whole who do that wrong action.

I have an issue with how you said I let a dog die. It's a pretty empty claim, as you don't know the circumstances of my decision, and can't even point out which dog, or where, I let die. In that sense, you're letting dogs die at this very moment. To me, it's a semi-accusation that doesn't bring anything to the discussion. I would ask you to please be more indirect with your arguments.

We do a lot of talking about concepts here... that's kind of what philosophy is.
I want to understand what about the relationship between inaction and culpability you don't agree with.

Inaction as a consequence of ignorance or unawareness in many cases doesn't carry culpability. Would the man be responsible for the death of the child if he had not been aware of the accident taking place?

[brimstoneSalad]

I personally know a few dogs that, though adopted at a very young age, still struggle with some problems related to their past trauma (e.g. suddenly being scared and running away while being pet, inability to communicate with other dogs and humans, aggression.)

Yes, but that's uncommon and you can figure that out at the shelter. Most shelters I've been to even say on the information tag with the animal's name whether they have problems or would be bad with children.

I think it's more reliable to trust the people working at the shelter to disclose potential problems (they don't want the dog coming back either) than to trust the genetic lottery constrained only by breed.

If we judge adoption on its own, I would argue it is inherently a good thing, as you're ending suffering and providing someone with means to a better life.

That isn't judging it on its own. If you're judging it on its own all it is is signing some paperwork.
The suffering is context, and so is the better life.

It IS speculative to assume the demand is higher than supply when the opposite is true in many places in the world.

I said that. I explicitly said that adopting from some other countries doesn't have that problem, but it has higher expense.
We're talking about adoption mostly in the U.S.A.

There is an aspect of moral wrong to a fertile couple adopting a child because it reduces supply for infertile couples.
Please counter that point.

I agree with that. But maybe the only infertile couple that is causing the high supply is forcing children to work in a factory? Then adopting a child regardless would probably a morally right thing to do. Circumstances can change an action's moral value substantially, so we can consider either real incidents or generalizations or concepts.

Most adopting couples aren't going to force the child into child labor, and you don't know where the particular child you adopt would end up so you can only make decisions based on the probability. The probability of depriving a bad couple a child is much lower than the probability of depriving a good couple a child.

It's like the shooting blindly into a theater example. You're probably not going to by happy accident kill a random terrorist. What you're probably going to do is shoot a 'innocent' person in the theater.

Deed A is good. Deed B is good. Maybe their inherent moral value is different but as I understand you took under consideration all circumstances. Then, of course, Deed B is better.
A person chose deed A regardless. Does that mean he gets extra bad points? Does that mean they are a bad person?

It doesn't mean the person is a bad person period. We all make mistakes or fall short and act selfishly or irrationally sometimes.
However, it does mean it was a wrong choice to choose deed A as a less good/more bad option when deed B was substantially similar.

Of course not. But is it really that hard to think your decision through if you can prevent suffering?

I said before that people should spend some time at the shelter getting to know the dog.
My point is only that this isn't a good argument for buying bred dogs -- being returned is still less bad than death, and a careful pet owner can avoid returns most of the time.

No, sports like IPO (which I do with my dog).

What makes IPO better than the sports I mentioned? Don't you think a lot of competitive owners are abusive of their dogs in training because they want to win (inordinate stress etc.) and that the competition itself may cause a lot of stress for some dogs? If parents will abuse their *human* children to make them more successful at sports I can hardly imagine this doesn't happen with dogs.

I'm not convinced that competitive sports like these don't contribute more suffering to the world than good.
However, even if these sports did contribute more good than suffering, is it so much good that it's worth a dog dying for?
And why couldn't shelter dogs participate in these sports if they're so good? We have minor league sports for humans. How does having them bred specifically for the sport add that much value vs just doing it for fun with any number of shelter dogs with a personality that might enjoy it? It doesn't matter if all the participants are really bad at a sport, as long as you group them roughly by skill level for competition everybody can still have fun.

I've done a little research, and you're probably right. Pet also tend to have a quite substantial carbon footprint.

That's one thing we might want to breed dogs for: making them smaller but still healthy. Small breeds have a lot of health issues, but they still provide good companionship and they're better for the environment.

I don't think we should do that until the shelters are empty, though. I don't think it's worth dogs being euthanized for.

In most cases it's immoral, in some it is moral. Then it is not wrong. In your own situation, you know many circumstances and thus are able to asses more accurately what the right choice is from a moral standpoint. You still might be wrong but the probability of it being so is much lower than the simple assumption based on a concept.

The trouble is human rationalization. If you really want a dog of a specific breed for sentimental reasons (e.g. childhood pet) then you will be able to come up with excuses that justify that to yourself even if it's not valid.
This is why you should err on the side of these general rules and assume you don't have a special case.

Following your previous model
Deed A: 3 bad points, 10 good points (easy to do)
Deed B: 2 bad points, 20 good points (very hard to do)

Do you consider deed A to be inherently bad?

If they are not substantially similar, you have to examine the good done for unit of effort.
My point is that adopting a shelter dog vs. buying a bred dog aren't very different in terms of effort; indeed, the shelter dog is probably cheaper to adopt. The result is also substantially the same kind of fulfilling emotional relationship and all of the other concrete health benefits people get from dogs.

In the case above if deed B is three times harder than deed A then deed A may still make sense to do, but if deed B is only twice as hard then deed B should be preferred over A.

We can judge an action as good or bad in relation to other actions but without knowing the circumstances can you tell someone made a bad choice?

We tell people not to smoke because for 99.9% of people it's really bad with no redeeming qualities. Yet there's a bizarre health benefit in that some people who smoke will be less likely to develop Parkinson's.
When we develop public messaging, it's always based on serving the overwhelming majority with something simple. If you complicate the message too much it will make the message less effective.

Like if the message was "Stop smoking, unless Parkinson's is common in your family in which case maybe if you keep smoking it will reduce your risk" more people would keep smoking 'just in case', but it's just such a rare thing that all that caveat does is weaken the message and make it do less good.

There's a balance that has to be struck between simplicity and precision of a message.

A general rule would be to kill a terrorist. Or it wouldn't, and when the neighbour starts killing dozens of people you do nothing because it isn't with accordance with your rules?

If you have suspicions you call the authorities, same with an active shooter. If you have a gun and experience and the neighbor is in the process of murdering people in front of you then you can kill them because you're defending people from an immediate threat (in terms of law that's an important distinction). The neighbor literally walking around killing people right then is a little different in terms of evidence than something you found in the neighbor's trash or something you thought you heard him say which fed into confirmation bias.

Inaction in most cases is neutral. In some, like in the one you presented, it's not. I think (hope) it's common sense.

What distinguishes one from the other?

I'm saying it's about the effort or risk involved. If saving somebody is very easy it's harder to justify not doing it vs. saving somebody being hard or dangerous (like running into a burning building -- which you shouldn't do because now the firefighters probably have to save you too).

I have an issue with how you said I let a dog die. It's a pretty empty claim, as you don't know the circumstances of my decision, and can't even point out which dog, or where, I let die.

If there was not a dog available to purchase from a breeder, what are the chances you would have adopted one from a shelter? You don't have to be able to point out which dog to know that, statistically, that is the result.

In that sense, you're letting dogs die at this very moment.

I absolutely am by not being out adopting them. However, consider the effort: taking care of another dog is both expensive and time consuming. It's not equivalent or even close in effort to have no dog vs. having a shelter dog.
It IS more equivalent to have a purchased bred dog vs. a shelter dog. In either case you're paying vet bills, feeding, walking, etc. If you were going to have a dog anyway, it didn't add more cost or effort to have a shelter dog instead of one who was bred for purchase.

The thing that makes somebody who bought a dog from a breeder culpable for the death of a shelter dog, but a dog-less person not culpable, is that difference in effort.

To me, it's a semi-accusation that doesn't bring anything to the discussion. I would ask you to please be more indirect with your arguments.

I said previously that if you didn't know better at the time then that goes a long way to defending the action.

Inaction as a consequence of ignorance or unawareness in many cases doesn't carry culpability. Would the man be responsible for the death of the child if he had not been aware of the accident taking place?

I already said that. It's in my post at the top of the page.

I didn't have an accurate perception of adopting from a shelter then, as do lots of people (that's why education about it is so important).

That defense is fine. Just like the man by the pool: if he did not *know* that the child was drowning, that goes a long way to a defense of his character.

Did you miss that part?

[Adloud]

That isn't judging it on its own. If you're judging it on its own all it is is signing some paperwork.
The suffering is context, and so is the better life.

Then murder is only pulling the trigger. No, it's killing a person. And I can say murder is bad because I'm judging the action itself. The way you're forming arguments against adoption could as well be used for arguing it's high moral value.
Strange how we "flipped sides", isn't it?

I said that. I explicitly said that adopting from some other countries doesn't have that problem, but it has higher expense.
We're talking about adoption mostly in the U.S.A.

Maybe we are, I lost track. My arguments apply mostly to Europe.

Most adopting couples aren't going to force the child into child labor, and you don't know where the particular child you adopt would end up so you can only make decisions based on the probability. The probability of depriving a bad couple a child is much lower than the probability of depriving a good couple a child.

Source?
I think it's hard to calculate probabilities if you're not talking about a specific situation.
By the way, have you considered the environmental cost of having a child? Of how much harm it's going to cause? You had the same argument against buying a dog. Don't you think it applies to the human example, even more in that case?

It doesn't mean the person is a bad person period. We all make mistakes or fall short and act selfishly or irrationally sometimes.
However, it does mean it was a wrong choice to choose deed A as a less good/more bad option when deed B was substantially similar.

That sounds reasonable. One thing I would add is that it's ok to decide that a specific action was a wrong choice but it's not right to pretend to know the reasoning behind it or deem it selfish or irrational as long as we don't have sufficient information regarding the circumstances of said action.

I said before that people should spend some time at the shelter getting to know the dog.
My point is only that this isn't a good argument for buying bred dogs -- being returned is still less bad than death, and a careful pet owner can avoid returns most of the time.

That was an argument for responsible adoption. In my city returning adopted or even bred dogs to a shelter is a huge problem and only causes more suffering.

What makes IPO better than the sports I mentioned? Don't you think a lot of competitive owners are abusive of their dogs in training because they want to win (inordinate stress etc.) and that the competition itself may cause a lot of stress for some dogs? If parents will abuse their *human* children to make them more successful at sports I can hardly imagine this doesn't happen with dogs.

No, it's been proven punishment training isn't very effective and a reward system is used in competitive sport. Stressed dogs perform way worse. The example of a stressful competitive environment would be dog shows. A lot of adult dogs in a tight space with no visible escape and a crowd of loud people is awful for dogs mentally and produces a lot of stress.
Dogs are very delicate creatures mentally - punishment is an inferior and useless tactic in IPO because it inflicts a change of behaviour but doesn't affect drive for that action - meaning the dog doesn't try to understand what it's supposed to be doing and often can remember an action in a wrong way or "turn off" whenever supposed to perform it. When new people come to train you can clearly see if they mistreat their dog - often its behaviour can be fixed but the mistreatment must stop to even be able to start the training. I hope I explained this aspect well enough.
And now for the positives:
- the dogs bred for this sport are extremely healthy - that's why usually the same dogs are used by the police and the military;
- they have to be well-cared-for by their owner - there has to be a strong mutual understanding between the owner and the dog to be able to compete;
- the sport uses dogs' natural predispositions (like tracking), which provides activities that many dogs are lacking in the city environment;
- it's not only physical and mental health for the dogs, but also play (which is usually the base for all of the training)
- it uses skills useful for humans and ones that can save lives (again tracking but also protecting the owner, agility, etc.)
- in many dogs, it's a useful tool for dealing with aggression and insubordination through establishing basic mechanisms of reward
There's more but I hope I got the point across.

I'm not convinced that competitive sports like these don't contribute more suffering to the world than good.
However, even if these sports did contribute more good than suffering, is it so much good that it's worth a dog dying for?
And why couldn't shelter dogs participate in these sports if they're so good? We have minor league sports for humans. How does having them bred specifically for the sport add that much value vs just doing it for fun with any number of shelter dogs with a personality that might enjoy it? It doesn't matter if all the participants are really bad at a sport, as long as you group them roughly by skill level for competition everybody can still have fun.

There's many shelter dogs participating in training. They might not compete in world championships but it's nonetheless a great thing for them. It isn't a definite argument against adopting or for only buing pure breed. It does have its positives, however, like helping keep the genes of healthy, intelligent and agile dogs. Of course it should be very limited but I wouldn't like for it to be gone completely.

That's one thing we might want to breed dogs for: making them smaller but still healthy. Small breeds have a lot of health issues, but they still provide good companionship and they're better for the environment.

I don't think we should do that until the shelters are empty, though. I don't think it's worth dogs being euthanized for.

And it's ususally the small purebreeds that are unhealthy. There's many healthy small dogs in the shelter. The only thing against small dogs for me its their intelligence. Larger dogs from my experience are smarter which is the reason why I value dogs' companionship so highly.

If they are not substantially similar, you have to examine the good done for unit of effort.
My point is that adopting a shelter dog vs. buying a bred dog aren't very different in terms of effort; indeed, the shelter dog is probably cheaper to adopt. The result is also substantially the same kind of fulfilling emotional relationship and all of the other concrete health benefits people get from dogs.

That's not true. You haven't considered costs of healthcare for the dog, issues with family (in many places shelter dogs are perceived completely differently and some young people, for example, might be allowed to get a dog from a breeder but not from the shelter), the emotional baggage of the dog (many people might not be ready to help dogs deal with trauma), legal issues, etc. Those situations are true for quite many people and we should consider those factors in judging specific cases. It doesn't change the fact that adoption is almost always the better choice but I think it's important to see the big picture.

We can judge an action as good or bad in relation to other actions but without knowing the circumstances can you tell someone made a bad choice?

We tell people not to smoke because for 99.9% of people it's really bad with no redeeming qualities. Yet there's a bizarre health benefit in that some people who smoke will be less likely to develop Parkinson's.
When we develop public messaging, it's always based on serving the overwhelming majority with something simple. If you complicate the message too much it will make the message less effective.

It's obvious in terms of public messaging, I'm talking about specific cases. Before I know someone's situation I won't tell them "you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you, you know", because they might have their reasons and it might be good for them in their case.

If you have suspicions you call the authorities, same with an active shooter. If you have a gun and experience and the neighbor is in the process of murdering people in front of you then you can kill them because you're defending people from an immediate threat (in terms of law that's an important distinction). The neighbor literally walking around killing people right then is a little different in terms of evidence than something you found in the neighbor's trash or something you thought you heard him say which fed into confirmation bias.

But now you're introducing more complicated rules. All I'm saying is that we can't contain all of human ethics on a pamphlet with a set of rules, or a decalogue if you will, and expect anyone who follows it to ultimately be a good person. Sure, you can set moral guidelines but I think you could refute almost all rules with hypothetical plausible scenarios where they wouldn't apply.

Inaction in most cases is neutral. In some, like in the one you presented, it's not. I think (hope) it's common sense.

What distinguishes one from the other?

I'm saying it's about the effort or risk involved. If saving somebody is very easy it's harder to justify not doing it vs. saving somebody being hard or dangerous (like running into a burning building -- which you shouldn't do because now the firefighters probably have to save you too).

Exactly. Therefore, inaction isn't inherently immoral.

I have an issue with how you said I let a dog die. It's a pretty empty claim, as you don't know the circumstances of my decision, and can't even point out which dog, or where, I let die.

If there was not a dog available to purchase from a breeder, what are the chances you would have adopted one from a shelter? You don't have to be able to point out which dog to know that, statistically, that is the result.

In my case - pretty small, honestly. Also, consider that in many places killing healthy dogs isn't standard practice.
Maybe statistically more (1) dogs died as a result of someone dying from a breeder - though I don't think this is measurable. Still, we're talking about *a dog* that died, which is a false statement. I think saying that buying from a breeder is 'contributing to x deaths of dogs yearly in shelters' would be more accurate.

The thing that makes somebody who bought a dog from a breeder culpable for the death of a shelter dog, but a dog-less person not culpable, is that difference in effort.

I simply don't agree that culpability applies in this case regardless of the effort needed to make a better choice. It's similar to how I don't see a person eating a burger culpable of the cow's death. Putting more money into the meat industry helps induce more suffering and death but I can't estimate correctly the amount of harm this person caused. Unless, of course, you're using culpability in the legal sense of the word, that is "that an act performed is wrong but does not involve any evil intent by the wrongdoer" (from https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/culpable) - it does not contain the amount of recklessness needed to "let a dog die". I think I agree with the message, the wording of it is just too strong for me.

That defense is fine. Just like the man by the pool: if he did not *know* that the child was drowning, that goes a long way to a defense of his character.

Did you miss that part?

I misinterpreted it as sarcasm. My apologies.

[brimstoneSalad]

Then murder is only pulling the trigger. No, it's killing a person. And I can say murder is bad because I'm judging the action itself.

I don't know what you're trying to say. No, you can not judge the action in isolation. Dr. Kevorkian killed somebody, was that wrong?
Context is what tells us if something was actually harmful or good in consequence.

What you can do is pool certain actions based on unknowns and their probabilistic effects to say what's right or wrong to do (in ignorance), but it's always based on the consequences of that pool of actions.

I know it seems complicated to say that consequences are what really matter but at the same time we have to go by general rules-- the reason we go by those general rules is due to the consequences when we take into account human limitations.

The way you're forming arguments against adoption could as well be used for arguing it's high moral value.

You'll have to provide that argument.
No sides were flipped here: see above.

Source?

That most couples are not abusing adopted children? Really?

I think it's hard to calculate probabilities if you're not talking about a specific situation.

No, that's the only time probabilities are important; you take what you know and you apply probability to that. Specific situations aren't useful to calculating probabilities because we don't have data on details like that.

By the way, have you considered the environmental cost of having a child? Of how much harm it's going to cause? You had the same argument against buying a dog. Don't you think it applies to the human example, even more in that case?

I have considered that, and no I don't think it applies the same to human beings.
Human beings give back to the economy and spread social consciousness in ways dogs don't. A person can apply a positive influence to peers and change the world to prevent much more harm than is caused by an individual impact.

Of course that harm does apply to children who would grow up to become conservative climate change denialists or other anti-environmentalists. I don't believe that's the majority, though, and it's very unlikely if the parents aren't like that. What we need is for the next generation to outpopulate the old one as soon as possible to put into effect needed changes. It's not the number of humans that's the problem, the Earth can sustainably support billions more people, it's how we're misusing resources that's the problem.

Adding a billion more people to the Earth right now would be a good thing IF those people vote for environmentally friendly policies (and vote with their dollars too; e.g. eating more plant based). The only problem would be adding to the population and maintaining the current conservative demographic that impedes positive change.

One thing I would add is that it's ok to decide that a specific action was a wrong choice but it's not right to pretend to know the reasoning behind it or deem it selfish or irrational as long as we don't have sufficient information regarding the circumstances of said action.

When it is sufficient? You never have perfect information. Judgement has utility even when it's imperfect, as long as it's right 99.9% of the time.

Reminds me of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcircleje ... flowchart/

No, it's been proven punishment training isn't very effective and a reward system is used in competitive sport. Stressed dogs perform way worse.

That kind of sounds like the "Stressed meat tastes bad, meat tastes good, therefore animals are treated well" argument.
Reward training can be a lot more effective, but it doesn't mean the opposite doesn't work at all, and sometimes reward based training requires more skill from the trainer and a more patient personality. Doesn't mean punishment based training doesn't occur or that dogs trained in that way never win. And even if they never win, there are plenty of losers who could have been treated that way by people entering the dogs.

It does have its positives, however, like helping keep the genes of healthy, intelligent and agile dogs.

We can keep those genes by saving a hair and mapping the genome, they don't need to be bred. Breeding is actually a very unreliable way of saving genes because you can't guarantee any will be passed on. If we run out of shelter dogs in the future we could pull from those genes to create more dogs of that kind (healthy, happy, etc.).

Any argument for breeding is a better argument for *not* breeding and just using genetic technology instead if a time should come when we're out of dogs and need more.

That's not true. You haven't considered costs of healthcare for the dog,

There's no reason to believe a bred dog is cheaper on average.

issues with family (in many places shelter dogs are perceived completely differently and some young people, for example, might be allowed to get a dog from a breeder but not from the shelter),

Bigotry isn't a good excuse to continue a bigoted practice. That's like justifying bigotry against interracial couples on the basis that people are bigots and will look down on them. These families should be educated not given in to.

the emotional baggage of the dog (many people might not be ready to help dogs deal with trauma)

I understand that, but there are plenty of non-traumatized shelter dogs.

, legal issues, etc.

Bigoted laws need to change, it's not a justification to continue the practice and give into bigotry at the expense of a dog's life.

It's obvious in terms of public messaging, I'm talking about specific cases. Before I know someone's situation I won't tell them "you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you, you know", because they might have their reasons and it might be good for them in their case.

If you're taking that much time to learn about somebody before you tell them not to smoke, I think you're spending way too much energy on this and you're not going to be very effective at outreach. In that amount of time you could have delivered the message to dozens of people rather than one, and that one person is overwhelmingly not likely going to have a good reason to smoke.

I would say it's very important to be willing to be wrong 0.01% of the time, because otherwise you're analyzing things to death and you won't have enough time to be right the rest of the time.

There's a good reason we have these simple slogans and messages; they spread more easily. When you add caveats to it or spend too much time on it people get skittish. People are really bad at risk assessment, and if you let them know smoking prevents Parkinson's then 99.99% of people who should have quite smoking will keep that in mind as an excuse to continue just in case (because they already wanted to keep smoking).

But now you're introducing more complicated rules. All I'm saying is that we can't contain all of human ethics on a pamphlet with a set of rules, or a decalogue if you will, and expect anyone who follows it to ultimately be a good person. Sure, you can set moral guidelines but I think you could refute almost all rules with hypothetical plausible scenarios where they wouldn't apply.

The thing is to use heuristics that are resistant to human biases and rationalization.

Exactly. Therefore, inaction isn't inherently immoral.

The point is being able to understand the relationship to culpability in a logically consistent way.

In my case - pretty small, honestly.

Why is that?

Also, consider that in many places killing healthy dogs isn't standard practice.

If there is enough demand for dogs that shelters are running empty, I think you'd have to look at whether you can get a dog from nearby where there is a population issue or even import one as long as the cost was still comparable to a bred dog.

Maybe statistically more (1) dogs died as a result of someone dying from a breeder - though I don't think this is measurable. Still, we're talking about *a dog* that died, which is a false statement. I think saying that buying from a breeder is 'contributing to x deaths of dogs yearly in shelters' would be more accurate.

You can't divorce personal responsibility from action like that. Statistically speaking it was a dog; that you do not know *which* dog specifically or where is irrelevant.
In terms of moral culpability, a 100% chance of one dog dying is identical to a 50% chance of zero dogs dying and a 50% chance of two dogs dying.

It's similar to how I don't see a person eating a burger culpable of the cow's death. Putting more money into the meat industry helps induce more suffering and death but I can't estimate correctly the amount of harm this person caused.

One burger isn't one cow, because a cow yields more meat than a burger. A burger is a % of a cow. Only once you've eaten a certain amount of meat are you culpable for the whole cow's death.

This article explains the issue of culpability in more detail: wiki/index.php/Individual_Responsibility

[Adloud]

What you can do is pool certain actions based on unknowns and their probabilistic effects to say what's right or wrong to do (in ignorance), but it's always based on the consequences of that pool of actions.

I know it seems complicated to say that consequences are what really matter but at the same time we have to go by general rules-- the reason we go by those general rules is due to the consequences when we take into account human limitations.

I agree but at the same time, we have to be able to approximate our ability to determine those probabilities and judge an action accordingly. We have to choose the scope of context from going by the definition to judging an isolated incident.

You'll have to provide that argument.

The suffering is context, and so is the better life.

Therefore, adopting a child is a good thing, because it prevents suffering and provides a better life.

Source?

That most couples are not abusing adopted children? Really?

The probability of depriving a bad couple a child is much lower than the probability of depriving a good couple a child.

Source of how bad it is to "deprive" a couple a child, and how there is a shortage of children to adopt.

No, that's the only time probabilities are important; you take what you know and you apply probability to that. Specific situations aren't useful to calculating probabilities because we don't have data on details like that.

What you're talking about is speculation. You have to calculate your probabilities based on data and an established background.

I have considered that, and no I don't think it applies the same to human beings.
Human beings give back to the economy and spread social consciousness in ways dogs don't. A person can apply a positive influence to peers and change the world to prevent much more harm than is caused by an individual impact.

People can also do the contrary (dogs can't), which is spread misinformation and malice, stop positive change and harm other people. All this while also causing the "default" harm that all people cause. You just can't assume your child is going to be the world's next great philanthropist. Do you really believe most people have an overall positive impact on the world, environmentally speaking? I do share your views on this topic, we just seem to come to different conclusions.

When it is sufficient? You never have perfect information. Judgement has utility even when it's imperfect, as long as it's right 99.9% of the time.

When you don't know a person at all, it's not sufficient. Audibly judging someone in social situations also makes them even more defensive of the views they hold. Even if judgement has moral utility, it may not be effective to express it, especially in context of inducing social change.

That kind of sounds like the "Stressed meat tastes bad, meat tastes good, therefore animals are treated well" argument.
Reward training can be a lot more effective, but it doesn't mean the opposite doesn't work at all, and sometimes reward based training requires more skill from the trainer and a more patient personality. Doesn't mean punishment based training doesn't occur or that dogs trained in that way never win. And even if they never win, there are plenty of losers who could have been treated that way by people entering the dogs.

Of course there are anti-abuse laws, and probably even still abuse happens. I don't think banning a sport completely is a valid idea just because mistreatment can happen. How about banning dogs because many people treat them awfully?

We can keep those genes by saving a hair and mapping the genome, they don't need to be bred. Breeding is actually a very unreliable way of saving genes because you can't guarantee any will be passed on. If we run out of shelter dogs in the future we could pull from those genes to create more dogs of that kind (healthy, happy, etc.).

Any argument for breeding is a better argument for *not* breeding and just using genetic technology instead if a time should come when we're out of dogs and need more.

It's a similar case to your previous argument about having more children so they can outnumber the conservative climate-change-deniers. If we keep healthy dogs instead of the genetic abominations we created with selective breeding, in the future dogs on average will be healthier, even those in shelters.

There's no reason to believe a bred dog is cheaper on average.

A healthier breed is generally cheaper than an unhealthy breed. If we focus on breeding for health, an average bred dog would be healthier than most shelter dogs.

Bigotry isn't a good excuse to continue a bigoted practice. That's like justifying bigotry against interracial couples on the basis that people are bigots and will look down on them. These families should be educated not given in to.

I don't agree with your interpretation of my argument. Take a child with mental health problems, whose parents wouldn't get a dog from a shelter - is no dog really better than a responsibly bred dog? And would you call something like this bigotry?

I understand that, but there are plenty of non-traumatized shelter dogs.

Depends on where you live.

Bigoted laws need to change, it's not a justification to continue the practice and give into bigotry at the expense of a dog's life.

I wouldn't call this bigotry. And I don't agree that this isn't a justification.

If you're taking that much time to learn about somebody before you tell them not to smoke, I think you're spending way too much energy on this and you're not going to be very effective at outreach. In that amount of time you could have delivered the message to dozens of people rather than one, and that one person is overwhelmingly not likely going to have a good reason to smoke.

I'm not an activist, just a regular person and I'm talking from a perspective of such. I don't try to convince people of something if I don't care enough to do so.

The thing is to use heuristics that are resistant to human biases and rationalization.

We agree here.

The point is being able to understand the relationship to culpability in a logically consistent way.

To achieve this we cannot be blind to context. I would also argue that this relationship is fluid.

In my case - pretty small, honestly.

Why is that?

In short, it wasn't me who got the dog (paid for him). I approved of the choice and took ownership but wouldn't have gotten him without the outward initiative.

If there is enough demand for dogs that shelters are running empty, I think you'd have to look at whether you can get a dog from nearby where there is a population issue or even import one as long as the cost was still comparable to a bred dog.

Sure. Still, the fact that in some places there are no-kill shelters contributes to harmfull misinformation (I, for one, didn't know about the issue until fairly recently).

You can't divorce personal responsibility from action like that. Statistically speaking it was a dog; that you do not know *which* dog specifically or where is irrelevant.
In terms of moral culpability, a 100% chance of one dog dying is identical to a 50% chance of zero dogs dying and a 50% chance of two dogs dying.

I don't know if this is how bad the situation in the US really is but in my country most dogs in shelters get adopted at some point in their lives.
According to a study I dug up, in my country, while the number of dogs in a shelter doesn't change much per given year, about 70 new dogs are taken in, 60 adopted or given out to owners and about 10 die / are killed / escape (in each county). As much as I would want all the numbers to be 0, those statistics don't seem that dramatic to me.
This number also doesn't average to 1 dog killed per dog not adopted.

One burger isn't one cow, because a cow yields more meat than a burger. A burger is a % of a cow. Only once you've eaten a certain amount of meat are you culpable for the whole cow's death.

I don't find that entirely convincing. It's more like ordering to kill rather than killing. Eating a burger isn't a direct action, therefore the culpability itself can't be linear.

[brimstoneSalad]

Therefore, adopting a child is a good thing, because it prevents suffering and provides a better life.

The latter is true if you really assume the alternative parents are going to be abusive. I'm astonished that you believe this though.

Source of how bad it is to "deprive" a couple a child, and how there is a shortage of children to adopt.

At least in the US, it's very expensive and there are waiting lists for young children. Thus why many parents out of frustration go abroad.
Of course as I said this changes if you're looking to adopt a pre-teen. That's not really comparable though... it's complicated as hell. Example: https://vocal.media/families/adoption-a ... lercoaster

In terms of the badness, it could be a small harm, but it doesn't really take much to tip the scales there. I don't believe that keeping parents who want to adopt waiting is a small harm; I would suspect it's similar to the emotional toll of infertility. Many parents end up being connected before the child is born (although there can be a long wait for that). In those cases there's so much waiting and unknown, and the biological mother could change her mind at any time before it's finalized.

Emotionally and legally there are complications that don't compare in the least to adopting pets. With more supply at least some of that could be eased (like you know if this mom says no you won't have to wait months or years for another chance).

No, that's the only time probabilities are important; you take what you know and you apply probability to that. Specific situations aren't useful to calculating probabilities because we don't have data on details like that.

What you're talking about is speculation.

What I'm talking about is anti-speculative. Speculation involves too much bias. It's fine when you're detached from something, but if e.g. you want a particular breed of dog and you start speculating, your speculations are very likely to play out in your favor.

People can also do the contrary (dogs can't),

Yes, but as with dogs genetics plays a large role in that.

You just can't assume your child is going to be the world's next great philanthropist.

You don't have to make an exaggerated assumption like that to assume they'll be on the better side of change. If the parents are progressive, the child probably will be too. We actually do have data on politics.
Interestingly, the same is true for conservatives once the kids grow up (they may rebel and be more liberal when they're young, but when they get older and start collecting money and property those selfish genes will likely kick in and turn them into their parents). Kind of sucks. A lot of the kids campaigning for Bernie today will be voting for the equivalent of Trump in 20 years.

Do you really believe most people have an overall positive impact on the world, environmentally speaking? I do share your views on this topic, we just seem to come to different conclusions.

I think it's split down the middle, in terms of the better and worse halves of humanity. Those who are on the side of progress relative to the norm and those who are laggards and conservatives holding it back.

If you're a progressive and you have kids, they'll end up being progressive too in the same way they'll probably have similar physical features to you. Unless you take out a loan from a conservative sperm bank or something, then it could go either way.

When you don't know a person at all, it's not sufficient.

Why, if there's utility in the judgement?

Audibly judging someone in social situations also makes them even more defensive of the views they hold.

I'm not arguing that. There are good and bad ways to use social pressure.

Even if judgement has moral utility, it may not be effective to express it, especially in context of inducing social change.

But general slogans like "adopt don't shop" and a shift in the mindset of the majority that creates, even a little shaming for purebreds, does have utility. If people get welcomed with their mutts at dog parks but get the cold shoulder with a purebred that makes a difference over time. Shame campaigns can and do work if they're done right and carried out by the majority with something that's easy to do.

There's a lot of good discussion to be had about the when and how of judgement and shame. There are cases where it doesn't work or even backfires. That's something to be worked out with research. However, where it does work it's pretty counterproductive to reject it on ideological grounds because it will inevitably be misapplied and unfair 0.0001% of the time. The harm of those hurt feelings doesn't compare to the good done 99.9999% of the time.

I don't think banning a sport completely is a valid idea just because mistreatment can happen. How about banning dogs because many people treat them awfully?

I think we should look at having licenses to have pets, and for people to lose them when there's evidence of abuse or neglect. I'm sympathetic to the argument that we should never breed dogs ever because we should let them go extinct due to the inevitable abuse of dogs. I don't agree with it, I think once shelters are really empty you could make an argument from human welfare for limited breeding as we talked about -- that is, I think there's solid peer reviewed evidence of the benefit of dogs to people that at least may outweigh that harm to dogs overall.

Competitive sports for dogs don't have that kind of evidence to weigh against the risk of abuse, and they have much lower risk alternatives in non-competitive activities like walking dogs which offer benefits to the owners and dogs.

It's a similar case to your previous argument about having more children so they can outnumber the conservative climate-change-deniers. If we keep healthy dogs instead of the genetic abominations we created with selective breeding, in the future dogs on average will be healthier, even those in shelters.

My point is that we can do that overnight. Dogs can be genetically engineered as needed. We're also not fighting against people deliberately trying to breed poor health.
We don't need to work on outnumbering them like we have to with conservatives who are already working to outnumber and brainwash their children to fight progressives.

A healthier breed is generally cheaper than an unhealthy breed. If we focus on breeding for health, an average bred dog would be healthier than most shelter dogs.

If there's evidence of a dog which can be purchased and save money over a shelter dog on veterinary care, then arguably buying that dog and donating the difference to an effective charity might be better than adopting the shelter dog and saving a life or the accompanying carbon footprint of an extra dog.

I don't think it makes sense to breed a dog for that speculative advantage though. Most of the problems come from breeding. A hybridized shelter dog is already going to be healthier than most bred dogs, special breeding probably isn't going to see that big of a monetary advantage over natural random hybridization of mutts.

I don't agree with your interpretation of my argument. Take a child with mental health problems, whose parents wouldn't get a dog from a shelter - is no dog really better than a responsibly bred dog?

Yes, because that's 0.001% of the population and that enabled 99.999% to be pushed to adopt rather than shop.
However, I already provided for exemption for working animals and assistance animals like seeing eye dogs and presumably a dog bred to help a child with mental illness: I would just want to see solid scientific evidence and a prescription from a doctor that's covered by insurance.

Depends on where you live.

If you live in an area where dog fighting is the norm and there are no non-traumatized shelter dogs, then it would make sense to import a dog until the finances didn't compare to bred dogs any more.

Bigoted laws need to change, it's not a justification to continue the practice and give into bigotry at the expense of a dog's life.

I wouldn't call this bigotry. And I don't agree that this isn't a justification.

Why wouldn't you call it bigotry? And why do you think that's a valid justification?

I'm not an activist, just a regular person and I'm talking from a perspective of such. I don't try to convince people of something if I don't care enough to do so.

That's fine if that's what you prefer, but why speak against the general messaging of activists? Why judge people who don't have *time* to get to know people but still want to make a difference on average?

The point is being able to understand the relationship to culpability in a logically consistent way.

To achieve this we cannot be blind to context. I would also argue that this relationship is fluid.

Context matters, but it has to matter in an evidence based way and not based on biased speculation.
What is fluid about it? Like having double standards based on your mood that day?

Sure. Still, the fact that in some places there are no-kill shelters contributes to harmfull misinformation (I, for one, didn't know about the issue until fairly recently).

Informing people is often the most important part of activism.

According to a study I dug up, in my country, while the number of dogs in a shelter doesn't change much per given year, about 70 new dogs are taken in, 60 adopted or given out to owners and about 10 die / are killed / escape (in each county). As much as I would want all the numbers to be 0, those statistics don't seem that dramatic to me.
This number also doesn't average to 1 dog killed per dog not adopted.

It is, though, when it comes to YOUR choice not to adopt. It's one of those ten dogs who would have not died if you had adopted. Yes there are other people who *could have* adopted the dog, but they did not. It's like saying the man by the pool is innocent of letting the child drown because there was another man sitting beside him who also did nothing.

When it comes to the individual choice of buying from a breeder and the opportunity cost, that's one dead dog from that choice.

If you would divide the responsibility of letting the child drown 50-50% for the two men sitting by the pool, then you can do the same for letting dogs die from not adopting, but the fact remains that either of those men (and any dog purchaser) could save a life entirely on their own and chose not to.

I don't find that entirely convincing. It's more like ordering to kill rather than killing.

Are you one of those people who blame the *farmers* for the death of the cow and consider the consumer innocent? It's the most morally outrageous belief which adds insult to injury.
Farmers do what they can to survive and feed their families. They'd grow potatoes instead if people ate those rather than beef. Miyoko is actually working on helping dairy farmers do just that.

It's like when a mob boss orders a hit on a witness: it's the mob boss, not the hitman, who initiated and ultimately caused the death. The hitman would not have killed anybody if not paid to, and if he did not do it another hitman would because the job was still there. It's the mob boss who bears virtually all of the responsibility -- and it's only virtually all because being a hitman is illegal and they are in limited supply so if the hitman refused there is a small chance that the mob boss might not find another person to do the job.
Animal farming is legal and where one farmer does not produce beef to meet market demand another will (or a factory farm will take up the slack by adding more cows). There's complete fungibility there in source of supply. It's the consumer who decides how much beef to consume and how many cows will be killed, it's not from a specific farm.

The reality is that if you eat 10% of a cow you're actually killing more than 10% of a cow because there's waste and the market over-produces to avoid shortages (because it's cheaper to make extra and waste it or sell it off for a loss than to lose profits from running short of demand). You can't pawn off that responsibility on farmers who 1. don't have a choice and 2. that if they don't do it somebody else (or a soulless company) will. The consumer is the one with the choice and the action that initiates and sustains the harmful practice.

Eating a burger isn't a direct action, therefore the culpability itself can't be linear.

There are edge cases like buying meat on clearance because it's expiring which may be being sold for a loss and might not feed as much profit into the machine (it still does some by saving loss), but when it comes to economics while the relationship is statistical in nature it is well established and MORE THAN linear. More demand means more supply and a more efficient supply line which lowers the cost and results in even more demand (at that price). Participating in an industry doesn't just sustain it, it feeds is. Beyond waste the consumers are even more responsible for animal harm because they make it cheaper to harm animals the more they do it, it encourages other people to do it more too.