{"id":97114,"date":"2025-11-14T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T06:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=97114"},"modified":"2025-11-13T10:37:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T15:37:51","slug":"qotd-a-modest-utilitarian-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/11\/14\/qotd-a-modest-utilitarian-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: A modest Utilitarian proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m really into utilitarianism lately, especially reducing suffering, and two big numbers have stood out: <\/p>\n

– An avg person eats ~3,500 animals\/yr (including shrimp)
\n– A human body has ~125,000 calories of edible tissue <\/p>\n

So you only have to eat six humans\/yr to meet your calorie needs, assuming you’re a good cook and don’t waste too much. Maybe 5.5 with veggies and sauces. And this saves the lives of roughly 150,000 animals, assuming you can catch a 30-year-old. But even if you just prey on the old and infirm, you’re still at bodhisattva<\/em> levels of reducing suffering.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’ve tallied up the units of suffering and the logic is unassailable. The single best thing you can do — for the climate, the environment and the end of suffering for all sentient beings — is to switch to an all homovore diet. I’m shopping for chest freezers right now and plan to phase out all animals by the end of the year. Who’s with me?<\/p>\n

Vivid Void, Twitter<\/em><\/a>, 2025-08-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m really into utilitarianism lately, especially reducing suffering, and two big numbers have stood out: – An avg person eats ~3,500 animals\/yr (including shrimp) – A human body has ~125,000 calories of edible tissue So you only have to eat six humans\/yr to meet your calorie needs, assuming you’re a good cook and don’t waste […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,57,41],"tags":[463,576],"class_list":["post-97114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-parody","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pgm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99042,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97114\/revisions\/99042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}