Evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings (with Jamie Woodhouse)

1. Expand Moral Circle to All Sentient Beings

Extend your moral consideration to include all beings capable of experiencing suffering, not just humans. This aligns with the principle that suffering is bad and there’s no rational reason to exclude any being capable of it.

2. Practice Compassion in Conversations

Approach conversations, especially those with disagreement, with genuine compassion for others’ perspectives and reasons for holding beliefs. Understanding and connecting with others, even when disagreeing, increases the chance of finding common ground.

3. Cultivate Humility in Beliefs

Adopt humility, skepticism, and open-mindedness in your naturalistic thinking. This approach is the central power of science, making it self-correcting and allowing for continuous improvement, while avoiding the pitfalls of arrogance.

4. Embrace “I Don’t Know”

Become comfortable acknowledging when you don’t know an answer rather than inventing one or holding beliefs without sufficient evidence. This prevents arbitrary beliefs and encourages a genuine pursuit of knowledge.

5. Avoid Buying Animal Products

Refrain from buying animal products, as this sends a “marketing impulse” that encourages the continued breeding, suffering, and killing of sentient beings. This action directly reduces the demand for practices considered unethical.

6. Reduce Chicken and Fish Consumption

If not fully avoiding animal products, prioritize reducing consumption of chicken and fish. These animals represent a high density of suffering per calorie/meal due to their small size and common factory farming conditions.

7. Separate Views from Character

Differentiate between a person’s potentially harmful views and their fundamental character, recognizing that many people with “wrong” views are still good individuals. This fosters compassion and prevents conflicts from becoming personal battles.

8. Remember Personal Fallibility

Keep in mind that everyone, including yourself, has been wrong about things in the past and will be wrong about more in the future. This perspective helps foster empathy and open-mindedness when engaging with those you disagree with.

9. Acknowledge Diverse Evidence Types

Broaden your definition of evidence and reasoning beyond just scientific trials to include a wide range of types, such as personal experiences. Denying personal experience as evidence is unfair and limits understanding.

10. Seek Common Ground in Disagreements

When engaging with people holding views you perceive as poorly founded, identify and return to the common ground of naturalistic approaches they already use in daily life. This can be a more effective way to persuade and broaden the application of common sense reasoning.

11. Challenge Arbitrary Moral Boundaries

Actively question and challenge the arbitrary exclusion of any sentient being from your moral consideration. If morality is grounded in the capacity to suffer, then such exclusions are inconsistent and lack rational justification.

12. Avoid Extreme Overconfidence

Be wary of extreme overconfidence in your beliefs, especially when interpreting texts or principles. Overconfidence can lead to rigid, potentially harmful interpretations and the imposition of one’s will on others.

13. Be Prudent with Animal Sentience

Exercise prudence and caution when making assumptions about the mental capacities and quality of experiences of non-human animals. Underestimating animal sentience can be self-serving and lead to reduced moral consideration.

14. Support Compassionate Conservation

Advocate for and practice compassionate conservationism, which aims to preserve the environment in a way that is grounded in compassion for sentient beings. This approach avoids harming sentient life in the interest of a non-sentient environment.