Wednesday, March 3, 2010

I don't want to hate economists

Economists were the reason I grew out of my idealistic world view. If we dig out of the filth of the mathematical models, we do find gems like Taleb, Cowen etc and I greatly respect them. But yet there are times when even these highly respected economists try to quantify things which cannot be quantified and go out of their league. Like this euphemism - Philosophical Cow:

"
If each cow brought to life adds even some small bit of cow utility to the grand total of cow welfare must not beef eaters be lauded, at least if they are hungry enough?  Or is the pro beef-eater argument simply repugnant


Should a cow behind a haystack of ignorance choose the world with the highest expectation of utility?  In which case, a world of many cows each destined for slaughter could well be preferable to one with many fewer but happier cows.
Or is it wrong to compare the zero of non-existence with existence?  Should a cow philosopher focus on making cows happy or on making happy cows?  If the former, would one (or two) supremely happy cows not be best?"

Please, give me break. How long can we justify this cognitive dissonance?
When IVF meat enters the market, there will be debate on "taste" even if it tastes exactly like a grass fed organic cow (like this wine tasting test) and there would mad rush to go back to corn fed factory farms. Only thing that will change this will be $$. Economists need to do some work then, until then please stay out of morality.

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