Question 1: Is it more important to be a good person or to perform good acts?

I would say that it is more important to make ethical decisions than it is to be a good person. These kinds of things are all relative; If I own an oil company that employs 100,000 people, where the ability to produce and distribute product influences governments and economies all over the world (much like today’s world), I want my CEO to care as much for the environment as POSSIBLE, however he/she needs to focus on keeping the company operating at an efficient capacity and that WILL involve unethical decisions that have major consequences in the environment. If I’m an environmentalist that forces legislature that shuts down said oil company, there’s going to be major economic consequences that include 100,000 people possibly losing their jobs, not very ethical in regards to the human side of things (pretty terrible, actually) but very ethical in regards to the environment. The ‘terrible’ CEO and the ‘terrible’ environmentalist are both bad people making ethical decisions, and both of them wouldn’t be able to make these important decisions if they were ‘good’ people. Without these types of individuals there would be endless debate about what is right is wrong resulting in no progression, but if you had ‘bad’ people that stayed in their lanes of focus and make ethical decisions, you would at least have progress towards whatever ends await.

Question 5: Do the pleasure and pain of non-human animals matter as much as the pleasure and pain of humans?

The pain or pleasure of other animals does not matter as much as humans. If the entire race of human beings thought that the opposite was true, they’d would’ve gone extinct a very long time ago. Humans didn’t start off by eating plants, we started eating meat and if you think that another animal’s pleasure or pain is more important than your own, you’re probably not going to eat very much healthy meat. You can actually ask this question in different context, one where I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO GIVE ME A REASON AS TO WHY I’M WRONG: To any parent; would you rather let a lion eat your baby, or kill the lion?  The bottom line is that it would literally be impossible for humans to exist right now if we had put other species before our own. It does matter though, and should be taken into account. Ethics should be maximized when taking animals for meat, but until a Star Trek style “food synthesizer” is invented, there will be cattle slaughtered for food, hopefully as painlessly as possible. You can even apply this to other humans; If other people’s pain and pleasure was more important to you, how would be able to feed yourself knowing that there’s millions that go hungry? The answer to this question is no.

Question 6: Is my own life worth more than the lives of others, the same, or less?

This question is very interesting. I’m currently serving in the military, so to answer anything but “all of the above” would be seriously hypocritical. Is my life more important than any civilian citizen of the U.S.? No. Is my life more important than ANYONE other than an American’s? Yes. Is my life EQUALLY as important to my fellow service men or women? Yes. There’s obviously nuances within the military with rank, allies, and whatnot, but basically when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what rank a service member is, their lives are expendable when it comes to the defense of citizens. That same service member will (or should) be willing to kill another human in that same defense. To not make myself sound so indoctrinated, you can apply this to any family group in many different species. A parent will most likely be willing to sacrifice themselves in defense of their offspring. They will also be willing to take life in defense of their offspring. There is no one word answer to this question, it just depends on the circumstances.