Top all-time · #4343
Bentham's Bulldog
Personal blog · benthams.substack.comphilosophypolitics
Bentham's Bulldog writes Bentham's Newsletter, a personal blog at benthams.substack.com about philosophy and politics. Since 2023, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Conspiracy Theorists Aren't Ignorant. They're Bad at Epistemology”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Readers link these Substack essays on animal welfare, factory farming, animal testing and moral progress. One commenter says a post on meat-eating gave them an actionable step and led them to donate.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Utilitarianism, ethical veganism, culture war stuff, philosophy, morality, and more!
Most-linked posts?
- Conspiracy Theorists Aren't Ignorant. They're Bad at Epistemology3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-28
- May the Factory Farms Burn2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-08
- Don't Eat Honey2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-10
What Hacker News says?
"The Horror of Unfathomable Pain" [1] [1] https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-horror-of-unfathomable-p... I can't find it (looked for 10 minutes), but there was an article at some point talking about a video that activists took after sneaking into a certain slaughterhouse. It showed cows (or was it pigs?) being put in a cage and slowly lowered down into a pit full of hot smoky gas. They were freaking out all along t…
Comment linking /p/the-horror-of-unfathomable-pain?utm_source=publication-search
on “Alternatives to animal testing are finally taking off”Submitted The shrimp welfare project as a story · 82 points
HN discussionThe suffering of test animals is a tiny decimal point compared to the suffering of factory farmed animals, which produce 99% of the animal products humans eat. Literally 50 billion chickens a year in the most inhumane conditions imaginable for their entire lives. Over one billion pigs per year. They die in horrible 9/11-like conditions. Edit: I used to dismiss all that since I figured animals don't have enough neuro…
Comment linking /i/151605056/2-intensely-what-about-neuron-count
on “Alternatives to animal testing are finally taking off”Submitted The Federal War on Animal Welfare as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThis is offtopic (and not affiliated in any way), but I recently read this blog post [ https://benthams.substack.com/p/what-to-do-if-you-love-meat-... ] which gave me an interesting point of view about this, much in line with what you are saying, but most importantly, an actionable (and easy if you have some spare money) thing to do. I have since started donating to the mentioned organization, because I can't really…
Comment linking /p/what-to-do-if-you-love-meat-but-hate
on “The Origin of the Pork Taboo”Submitted Conspiracy Theorists Aren't Ignorant. They're Bad at Epistemology as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThe article seems to have been well-received: https://benthams.substack.com/p/you-all-helped-hundreds-of-m... I think this is a tough call in general. Current morality would be considered "ridiculously unacceptable" by 1800s standards, but I see it as a good thing that we've moved away from 1800s morality. I'm glad people were willing to challenge the 1800s status quo. At the same time, my sense is that the environm…
Comment linking /p/you-all-helped-hundreds-of-millions
on “The shrimp welfare project”Submitted Shut Up About Slave Morality as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI hope that over the next 10-20 years the more social media native Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha kids start learning how to mix hard science with good general public communication skills. But also I think the scientific community has to lean into the fact that communicating the truth is harder than communicating falsehoods. I think there's this somewhat justifiably lazy narrative that if you have the truth on your side you're job…
Comment linking /p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant
on “Trust in scientists hasn't recovered from Covid. Some humility could help”Submitted Inverted Bacteria That Might Kill Everyone as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere's a recent blog post in a similar vein: https://benthams.substack.com/p/voting-self-interestedly-is-... Although your plane crash example seems to fall afoul of the broken window fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Comment linking /p/voting-self-interestedly-is-immoral
on “We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society”Submitted A Million Is Made Out of a Million Ones as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI imagine there's Neuralink, and then animal research facilities that go to great lengths to be as humane as is possible in such a line of work. In the same way, I bet free-range animals live very humane lives, yet factory farms kind of suck: https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est
Comment linking /p/factory-farming-delenda-est
on “At Musk’s brain-chip startup, animal-testing panel is rife with conflicts”Submitted Don't Eat Honey as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Insects Matter More Than People as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can Everyone Please Stop Being Stupid About Who Pays Tariffs? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The case for taking the giving what we can pledge as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't Eat Honey as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Losing Faith in Contrarianism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Conspiracy Theorists Aren't Ignorant. They're Bad at Epistemology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted May the Factory Farms Burn as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Book Review: Kakistocracy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted "The AI Con" Con as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Cult vs. an Exclusive Club as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hordes of Vultures Descend on Bostrom as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
