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The vast majority of animal suffering happens to wild animals. If your reason for supporting animal rights is to reduce suffering (not the only possible reason)

by mrob 10y ago

The vast majority of animal suffering happens to wild animals. If your reason for supporting animal rights is to reduce suffering (not the only possible reason) then eliminating wild animals is not a bad thing: http://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/ http://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-anim...

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
Reading that article was a serious WTF. The basic argument is that most animals are insects, small fish etc. which live lives so short that they do not have the time to experience enough pleasure to compensate for the pain of death. I believe this is the worst kind of bike shedding, as it detracts from the very important discussion on actual human influences on actual animal welfare.
- mrob 10y ago
  Preventing wild animal suffering is much more difficult than preventing suffering in captive animals. We don't understand nature well enough to make major changes without risk of making things worse. Therefore it's a reasonable choice to focus on captive animals. I don't see how awareness of a difficult problem prevents work on the easier one.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    The point I was trying to make is: do we really believe insect suffering is a larger problem than mammal suffering? The author of the article linked above implements some moral calculus where insect suffering is weighted lower, but since there is such a huge number of insects, they still end up concluding that insect suffering is a huge problem. My claim is that instead it's correct to give zero weight to insect suffering, since it's not a "difficult problem", it's a literally unsolvable problem. Well, the only way to solve it would be to exterminate all insects in order to end their cycle of suffering, and that would entail so much destruction and ecosystem collapse it would literally render the entire earth barren and lifeless. TL;DR: when someone claims we have a big problem where the only possible solution is killing all living organisms on planet Earth, I say they're wrong: that what they claim is a problem is, in fact, not a problem.

by mrob 10y ago

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

Reading that article was a serious WTF. The basic argument is that most animals are insects, small fish etc. which live lives so short that they do not have the time to experience enough pleasure to compensate for the pain of death. I believe this is the worst kind of bike shedding, as it detracts from the very important discussion on actual human influences on actual animal welfare.

mrob 10y ago
Preventing wild animal suffering is much more difficult than preventing suffering in captive animals. We don't understand nature well enough to make major changes without risk of making things worse. Therefore it's a reasonable choice to focus on captive animals. I don't see how awareness of a difficult problem prevents work on the easier one.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  The point I was trying to make is: do we really believe insect suffering is a larger problem than mammal suffering? The author of the article linked above implements some moral calculus where insect suffering is weighted lower, but since there is such a huge number of insects, they still end up concluding that insect suffering is a huge problem. My claim is that instead it's correct to give zero weight to insect suffering, since it's not a "difficult problem", it's a literally unsolvable problem. Well, the only way to solve it would be to exterminate all insects in order to end their cycle of suffering, and that would entail so much destruction and ecosystem collapse it would literally render the entire earth barren and lifeless. TL;DR: when someone claims we have a big problem where the only possible solution is killing all living organisms on planet Earth, I say they're wrong: that what they claim is a problem is, in fact, not a problem.