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Matt Ball's avatar

This is so important. The horrible problem, IMHO, is the more people you help out of poverty, the more animals suffer on factory farms. Keeping other animals in the conversation is vital.

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Aditya's avatar

It is indeed a conundrum. From my personal anecdotes of talking to people in India about animal welfare, I can tell you they look at me as if I am a lunatic. They typically respond with something along these lines "How can you tell us to care about animals when we are suffering through so many basic necessities? How is this a priority?".

I wish we could do both at the same time (and we should try to whenever possible) but I believe a movement that does not take suffering of humans seriously will never be able to convince others to take suffering of animals seriously as well.

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Vishnu Amrit's avatar

While I do love cosmicism, I'm curious if you think there are any other concerns in the Progress movement besides the sharply human-centric views? What would you propose as an alternative?

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Aditya's avatar

Overall, I think the movement offers a good narrative for why and how things can get better, but I definitely think certain elements are strange or don't appeal to me (such as treating population as infrastructure). Also, I am not qualified enough to propose an alternative :) but if I had to pick it would be something like techno-sentientism.

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