Is it wrong to kill predators to protect herbivores?

 

Imagine that you take a walk in the woods, and you come across a deer - and a wolf. And as the wolf chases after the deer, time suddenly stops for everyone but you, and you are presented with two buttons, and 60 minutes to think through what to do next. Time resumes once one of the buttons are pressed and you are instructed to not leave, and not refrain from choosing, otherwise you'll die and a bomb will explode in the city and presumably harm hundreds of people. So it's really important that a choice is made.

 

The buttons are presented as such:

A) Let the wolf successfully hunt the deer to eat them alive until they die after 10-15 minutes of suffering.

B) Kill the wolf from the impact of a mysterious bullet that kills them relatively quickly.

Which should you choose, and why?

Reasons for pressing A

Status quo

"It's normally impossible that a magic bullet would come out of thin air and kill the wolf, so the thing that was going to happen without my intervention was A - it's the least intrusive option, and it's closest to taking myself out of the equation."

Why favour the status quo? Is it inherently important? Women's lack of voting rights was the status quo, and it was harmful. I see no reason to automatically favour the status quo.

"It's not my place to choose who lives and who dies".

In this hypothetical, it literally is. Besides, if you don't decide, you're just leaving the decision to nature which doesn't care at all about the moral outcome. Why would it be better to let a totally indifferent uncaring process take care of the outcome?

Nature knows best

"This is a process that has been going on in nature through all times. I am not part of nature, nor is this situation, so I should choose that which is closest to what would happen in nature, because nature knows best - when its course is run uninhibited, it will produce a better outcome in the long term."

Does nature really know best? The algorithm responsible for forming life in nature as it is, was never optimized for producing well-being, however it is probably a goal each individual has. But it only exists as a consequence of a larger goal - replication. Behaviours that are better for producing successful offspring are the primary behaviours that are passed onto the next generation - not necessarily the ones that are better for well-being. Nature, when personified, has no other goal than this, and as a consequence, one's success at replicating comes at the cost of another's well-being, and often at the cost of the offspring's well-being as well. R-selection is an example of this, where an individual has lots of offspring in order to better ensure that some individuals will make it to sexual maturity.

Nature doesn't know best for the well-being of creatures in nature, because it doesn't believe well-being is the best. As humans, we've largely overcome nature's indifferent selection process, and we've witnessed first hand that nature doesn't know best for us. We live in houses, try to predict the weather, we make vaccines and fight diseases.

Predators hunting prey creates a natural balance

Should we inherently value a balance of predators and prey? Or does it have an instrumentally good effect?

There are several ways to look at balance, but I think the common one is the view that balance is something that prevents extremes in various forms - extremely high or low populations, extreme prevalence of disease, extreme lack of food. Over time, a balanced system would show similar populations and events repeat over time.

But it's not clear to me that balance is what is best. If we imagine a system where there is a lot of suffering, balance would just be a sustainable prevalence of suffering, with no hope of improvement. Lower suffering populations would be better and higher would be worse. If the valleys are larger and longer than the peaks, this would be better than a balanced system in which the peaks and valleys are of equal size, because more individuals suffer the higher the peaks.

If suffering is more terrible than what pleasure is good - which I think there are good reasons to say - and if we have good reasons to believe that there is significant amounts of suffering in nature, then a balanced system isn't necessarily the best for the well-being of the creatures in nature.

 

If the predator kills the deer, this proves that the deer was sick or weak, compared to the rest of the flock - and thus a useful form of population control

"If we let such a deer reproduce, it weakens the deer population and makes it more susceptible to disease in the long run."

Well, the hypothetical says nothing about what you may do afterwards, if the wolf dies. What if you could make sure the deer didn't reproduce, just in a way that doesn't involve letting them be eaten alive?

"But if we kill the wolf, the wolf cannot kill other animals who also shouldn't reproduce in situations where we have no control."

Would you say that some authority should kill individuals of a society that might pass on bad qualities to their children?

"No. We can teach humans about birth control".

And what if the humans won't abide by these teachings and have children who more easily develop diseases and health issues nonetheless?

"Humans don't overpopulate like deer do, so we wouldn't need to kill humans".

I mean, how do we determine overpopulation? Many would argue that a lower population count would be very beneficial to humans. Some areas of the world where food, water and resources are scarce is also where a lot of children are born per family. Should a predator tear them apart, for population control?

"Of course not. We're just not sharing the world's resources fairly. Killing them would be to add insult to injury."

What if some natural disaster provided the population control? So we wouldn't get more blood on our hands?

"No, it's our responsibility to help populations who starve, because we're culpable for why they are living in such poverty."

And what makes us culpable?

"We're over consuming while they are under consuming, they're the first to suffer from climate change that is largely caused by populations that aren't in extreme poverty, and we spend a lot of resources on luxuries when we could spend those resources on helping them."

And why not consider the same for deer?

"They will be in a predator prey cycle and starvation cycle regardless of how irresponsible first world countries are."

If first world countries are obligated to help populations in great poverty when we spend a lot on luxiries that could rather go to help them, it sounds like that's true regardless of whether we're directly causing their misery or not, right?

"But we are directly causing it in many ways!"

Yeah, but if we weren't, and happened to just be in a much more favourable position in terms of infrastructure and resources, would we then accept predators tearing them apart?

"No. They're part of our community, and we must help each other and leave nature to its own. They are their own community".

Why exclude deer from your community?

"Different species, different home, different rules, different everything".

That's a lot of talk of differences and not much about similarities.

Murder is wrong

"Killing the wolf would be murder, but letting the wolf eat the deer isn't murder, because they don't have moral agency and need to do it for survival."

Aren't you in a sense murdering the deer by pressing the button that makes them be eaten by the wolf?

"It's not murder since the wolf is doing the killing."

If I pay someone to kill someone else, am I also not a murderer?

"Well, in this case you're doing it for the killer's own survival, so it's still a necessity for them."

What about the deer's survival? Isn't it a necessity for them to survive as well? Is it really not murder if you're killing a human on behalf of someone who's starving?

"Maybe in the human case, but the wolf doesn't have moral agency, so they can't do something wrong."

Well, you have moral agency, and your actions determine the outcome - you can still do something wrong. Imagine if you pressed a button to make a deranged individual without moral agency attack and kill a child. Just because they don't have moral agency, it doesn't mean that you're not doing something wrong by letting the deranged individual go loose and cause harm.

 

Everyone has a right to their own survival

That would apply to the wolf and the deer. If your right to your own survival isn't met with someone else's duty to respect your survival, then we end up with "might makes right". Everybody watches out for themselves, and the weaker ones lose.

Since you are a moral agent, and the deer a moral "patient", don't you have a duty to protect the deer's rights?

"You have the duty not to violate their right to survival unless you're in a survival situation."

But you're not.

"But the wolf is."

But do I have the right to kill a child in order to feed my cat, if we imagined a situation where my cat would otherwise risk starving to death?

"No, you can't do it on their behalf."

So why can you violate the deer's right to survival, on behalf of the wolf?

"Because the wolf is the one doing the killing and ensuring their own survival."

So what if my cat was big enough to kill the baby on their own?

"The cat would be under your supervision, so you'd be responsible for their actions. You shouldn't have let them out of the house."

The wolf is under your supervision here. Letting the cat out of the house, while bad, seems less bad than actively sending a predator at someone. You'd be responsible for their actions as soon as you choose that outcome.

"They're not under my supervision because they're not a part of my family like my cat would be".

So if kids that arent' part of your family are fighting violently, without supervision of other adults, aren't you as an adult responsible for stepping in? The outcome is as bad and as certain whoever is supervising the wolf or the cat. Why does your familial relationship matter?

 

You shouldn't impose your morals on wild animals

"They should be left alone and we humans should not apply our sense of right and wrong onto their way of life. These animals don't think as we do, and it's wrong to assume what's best for them using our human moral frameworks. It's imperialistic."

When you're clicking the button to resume and let the wolf eat the deer, aren't you imposing your morals onto them? You're choosing your preferred outcome.

"No, because the wolf eating the deer is what would have happened without this hypothetical, and what represents best the morals in nature."

Should we not impose our morals on children? They don't have our sense of morals.

"Well, they're in your care, you have to make sure they're okay."

What if I come across kids that are not in my care, and they're playing dangerous games?

"They're still a part of society, and you have a collective responsibility to take care of them."

Shouldn't animals be collectively in our care? They are in many ways like children.

"We shouldn't harm them, but the animals in question are grown individuals, and looking at them as human children is a form of anthopomorphism, and not the right way of doing it. They aren't governed by anthropocentric ideals."

Aren't they alike children in some ways though, like their lack of moral agency? What's the difference between a wild animal and a homeless dog?

"Homeless dogs are a consequence of humans acting irresponsibly, so we have a responsibility to take care of them."

Why not just let them fight with other animals and the strongest comes out on top, like in nature?

"It's just not a way to run society. We should protect and show compassion for all those within it."

But if it's bad for them, it should be bad for wild animals too. And those animals use the exact same moral framework. It doesn't matter whether you're in or outside of society - lacking moral agency in or outside of society shouldn't change whether we should protect them or not. Just like how a deranged individual should be kept from harming a child, the same thing happening outside of civilized society is just as bad.

"Wolves aren't deranged though, they're normal for wolves, but a deranged human isn't a normal human."

What if you learned that there are lots of humans in other societies that are deranged, such that the humans in our society was a minority? It shouldn't matter, right? Wolves don't have a moral framework, just as kids, and just as deranged individuals don't have a moral framework. Imposing our morals on them is no worse than doing it so someone with moral agency. And we do it every time we tell someone to stop doing something.

A life is a life - it doesn't matter which one I pick

Consider the suffering involved though. Would you rather risk starving to death or have bits of you ripped out by a carnivore until you're finally dead?

"Starvation is a longer process. Perhaps it's better if it's quick."

I'm not so sure. Many who have starved or observed starvation report that starvation is painful for a while, and then you cross a threshold where the suffering decreases a lot. Perhaps you'd eventually fall unconscious and not wake up. And just imagine the pain and the terror of being eaten alive. When fully appreciated, it may be among the worst experiences one could have.

Consider also that a wolf will kill several individuals over the span of their life. So it's not just a one to one trade.

The hypothetical doesn't mirror reality - you don't actively cause the predator to kill the deer in reality

Aren't you in any way responsible though? What is the significance when you have the power to change the outcome? Is standing idly by not a moral wrong? What if you came across someone who's stuck in an elevator? You didn't cause that. If you could press a button to open the doors, and yet you walk by even if you know what is happening, isn't that practically the same as pressing a button to keep the doors shut?

"The person who actively presses the button to keep the doors shut has a harmful intention, but the person who chooses not to open the doors may not have a harmful intention, but rather dismisses themselves from the situation altogether."

And what is the significance of that?

"If we select for what types of people we want in society, we would rather have the types who disengage rather than seek to cause harm. The latter is more dangerous."

But even if someone who's doing harm instead of allowing harm is a worse type of character to have around, advocating against one doesn't mean you must advocate for the other. We don't actually want a society where people don't stand up for others, right?

And that's the point, to show that we have placed too much comfort in the idea that disengaging frees you from responsibility for the outcome. There are psychological differences between doing and allowing harm, but we can construct cases where the difference in wrongness is very hard to discern.

For instance, let's say someone wants to kill someone else, but when arriving already finds the other in a situation where they will die unless saved. Letting this person die when saving them would have been just as easy is hard to distinguish from murder, especially when the attitude of murder was already present in the person who arrived.

 

A society in which we condone causing great harm in order to prevent greater harm is going to create more suffering in the long term

"Murdering someone in order to prevent harm, while successful in the short term, will not give us a world in which we can feel safe, and will make the world a worse place in the long term if condoned."

I find this the most plausible. Maybe it crosses a societal boundary that sets a bad precedence and encourages reckless decisions. People may get onboard with the moral reasons, but they probably will be very speciesist about it. So maybe it's too hard to do it without reinforcing speciesist ideas. That doesn't mean it's automatically not worth it though, but at the very least something to be super careful about.

 

Final thoughts

The point of the hypothetical is to ask what the difference is between allowing the predator to eat the deer, and actively causing the deer to be killed by the predator. The question comes up when we consider trophic rewilding, the idea of introducing predators into an eocystem in order to "restore balance" - clearly this bears some resemblance to finding an overpopulated tribe of humans, and sending creatures after them to eat the weakest ones alive. It seems absurdly cruel.

When reconsidering that, the question that this article asks also comes up - what is the difference between introducing those predators, and allowing the same existing predators to do the same aforementioned things? I do believe there is a lot of nuance in practice, but if we can imagine some of those practicalities out of the way, what does this say about our values? And about what we'll do when those practicalities can actually be dealt with?

I don't condone killing predators, and I would be much more in favour of a non-lethal solution to the problem. That's perhaps one of the few cases where I'd be in favour of zoos as a vegan, in principle. In practice, I can't tell how deranged this is, let alone figuring out half the practical details. If we put the best minds and hearts to it, I don't think we'd end up with a dichotomy of either killing predators or neglecting prey animals. A time may come when we collectively have the resources and aspirations to address this issue in a compassionate manner.

Variations to play around with:

1. Remove the first button and let there be a default outcome of the predator eating the deer, if you don't make a decision in time.
2. Same as above, but reverse the outcome so that by default the wolf will be shot, if you don't make a decision.
   
3. Modify the "machine" to kill the deer instead of the wolf.
4. Switch the deer out with a human.
5. Switch the predator with a deranged individual.
6. Remove the connection to the ecosystem.
7. Become the deer immediately after pressing the first button.
8. Make it not one, but 20 deers, vs a super hungry and super lethal wolf who is guaranteed to chomp them all.
9. Have the situation come up every time a predator is about to kill a deer.
10. Design an algorithm that calculates what button to press, given full knowledge of the circumstances.
11. Introduce probabilities that the deer will escape.