Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the ethical dilemmas posed by advancements in technology, particularly regarding animal welfare.
Peter Singer's quote emphasizes the clash between rapid technological progress and the slower evolution of our ethical standards. It suggests that while our capabilities to exploit and produce through technological means, such as factory farming, have grown significantly, our moral understanding and responsibility toward these advancements have not kept pace, leading to troubling consequences for animal welfare.
In practice
During a debate on animal rights, one might use this quote to argue against factory farming practices.
The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.
Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.
Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)
People think 'big data' avoids the problem of discrimination because you are dealing with big data sets, but, in fact, big data is being used for more and more precise forms of discrimination - a form of data redlining.
If every sector of business and society will be driven by software - how does that get enabled? By highly-paid computer scientists funded by risk capital in Silicon Valley? Or by lots of engineers who can build it themselves?
Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.
The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.
There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.
I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind theyβve got a wonderful long-term plan.
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