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Its pretty moronic to assume that a feeling every animal with a nervous system avoids, is somehow not proven to be a deplorable state to put sentient life into.

Its pretty moronic to assume that a feeling every animal with a nervous system avoids, is somehow not proven to be a deplorable state to put sentient life into. You can play coy semantics but its quite apparent that even primitive mammals avoid pain. You can go ahead and spout off arguments about us being biological primal carnivores but that isn't very persuasive considering that the defining aspect of intellect has always been a higher sense of understanding of good and evil, and manipulating the environment to support the greater good. And thus, inflicting pain on beings like us, for extra entropy on taste bud receptors, seems rather low class and savage. Its one thing to kill. Its an entirely different thing to buy products from a supermarket that come from a pipeline of some of the worst acts against a conscious entity one could imagine themselves waking up in. What separates you from those animals today? Merely luck. When it is luck that decides the outcome of rather uneven circumstances, people rally against it. Intelligence presupposes that consciousness is not a choice, so is punishing someone because they sprouted into the wrong mammal type something that should be deemed okay? Do onto others as one would want done onto self. We are experiencers first, animals second, and humans third, lets not deny the absolute tragedy that is the conscious experience of millions of livestock. Death is not the enemy of moral virtue but cruel and unusual life surely is.

maroonblazer 10y ago
I agree with everything you've written except, I think, this last sentence: >Death is not the enemy of moral virtue but cruel and unusual life surely is. Are you saying that it's ok to kill animals for food as long as they are not made to suffer in the process? If so, I'd argue that depriving them of subjective experience - which is what death entails - is also morally wrong.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  That is a stronger opinion. I agree with you but I am offering a logical framework that will agree with more people.
Amezarak 10y ago
> You can go ahead and spout off arguments about us being biological primal carnivores but that isn't very persuasive considering that the defining aspect of intellect has always been a higher sense of understanding of good and evil, OK. Sounds great. Tell me more about this 'higher understanding of good and evil.' What is good? What is evil? Why? Where do they come from? We don't have any 'higher understanding of good and evil', we simply have language and (most likely) a higher capacity for abstract thought which allow us to argue about our social instincts, which are not objective truths. There's a reason why, for all of human history, 'morality' has differed wildly among cultures. The only real constant is some level of in-group altruism, because that is a biological necessity for social animals. The rest is all gravy. Some humans thought human sacrifice was good, and a moral obligation. Others, torture. Others, slavery. Others, rape. Others, pacifism. There is no rationale, there is no higher truth, there is no higher power, that you could appeal to to convince the most enlightened and rational Aztec that human sacrifice was evil. That's because it doesn't exist. That's why your whole moral argument is entirely unpersuasive to people who eat meat. You're like an Aztec come to tell us that we need to be committing human sacrifice; it's all nonsense without the cultural context and socialization and inoculation. You, based on a moral belief you did not come to through reason, are trying to convince people secure in their own moral beliefs that they are commiting evil. A simple check-in with their conscience confirms that you are wrong. So you need something other than a moral argument.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  No argument is going to work on someone who thinks its okay to torture animals for human enjoyment. Just like no description of smell is going to enlighten someone who lacks a nose. The only thing that might change your mind is watching videos of the conditions that these animals are in, solely for hedonistic pleasure, extra information/nueron firing in the form of taste. Imagine yourself in their body -- a punishment from birth to death because of bad luck on the end of some humans' excessive want for neuropathic pleasure. Any way you shape it, excess is always going to be morally dubious. When one has no choice, some things like self defense make sense. But there are plenty of choices in our modern age. A vegetarian diet with good farm fresh eggs, cheese, and milk, is plenty enjoyable and easy to do healthy. And a grass-fed free-range steak is not the worst thing to have once in a while. It can be argued that death is not a terrible thing, since we all experience it. Rather, torture is. So eating sustainable and cruelty-free meat, is sound. You seem to be bent on excusing torture and pain because no bullet-proof definition or argument can sway you. I don't know what to say, except that you are clearly in denial and lying to us and yourself.
dang 10y ago
This comment breaks the HN guidelines by being uncivil. We've asked you repeatedly not to do this. Please don't do it again.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  How is calling an opinion moronic uncivil?
- goldenkey 10y ago
  I'm going to ask again, aside from the word "moronic" which I called an opinion, not a person. What exactly is uncivil? I gave a cogent argument about the issue at hand. If you have issue with a single word as a moderator, it would fit to specifically point that out, rather than call my entire post uncivil. This is clearly a decisive issue with strong opinions.
  - dang 10y ago
    "Moronic" is a textbook example of calling names in the way the HN guidelines ask you not to: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's bad anywhere, and the worst kind of thing to lead with. "You can go ahead and spout off" and "You can play coy semantics" come across as personal jabs. Such phrases are a kind of elbowing. You may feel that you didn't mean them personally, but the person who gets the elbow typically doesn't agree. This is the path to degraded discourse, so please don't do it here.
    - goldenkey 10y ago
      Okay, thanks for the explanations. I will do my best to avoid these things in the future. Cheers.

maroonblazer 10y ago

I agree with everything you've written except, I think, this last sentence: >Death is not the enemy of moral virtue but cruel and unusual life surely is. Are you saying that it's ok to kill animals for food as long as they are not made to suffer in the process? If so, I'd argue that depriving them of subjective experience - which is what death entails - is also morally wrong.

goldenkey 10y ago
That is a stronger opinion. I agree with you but I am offering a logical framework that will agree with more people.

Amezarak 10y ago

> You can go ahead and spout off arguments about us being biological primal carnivores but that isn't very persuasive considering that the defining aspect of intellect has always been a higher sense of understanding of good and evil, OK. Sounds great. Tell me more about this 'higher understanding of good and evil.' What is good? What is evil? Why? Where do they come from? We don't have any 'higher understanding of good and evil', we simply have language and (most likely) a higher capacity for abstract thought which allow us to argue about our social instincts, which are not objective truths. There's a reason why, for all of human history, 'morality' has differed wildly among cultures. The only real constant is some level of in-group altruism, because that is a biological necessity for social animals. The rest is all gravy. Some humans thought human sacrifice was good, and a moral obligation. Others, torture. Others, slavery. Others, rape. Others, pacifism. There is no rationale, there is no higher truth, there is no higher power, that you could appeal to to convince the most enlightened and rational Aztec that human sacrifice was evil. That's because it doesn't exist. That's why your whole moral argument is entirely unpersuasive to people who eat meat. You're like an Aztec come to tell us that we need to be committing human sacrifice; it's all nonsense without the cultural context and socialization and inoculation. You, based on a moral belief you did not come to through reason, are trying to convince people secure in their own moral beliefs that they are commiting evil. A simple check-in with their conscience confirms that you are wrong. So you need something other than a moral argument.

goldenkey 10y ago
No argument is going to work on someone who thinks its okay to torture animals for human enjoyment. Just like no description of smell is going to enlighten someone who lacks a nose. The only thing that might change your mind is watching videos of the conditions that these animals are in, solely for hedonistic pleasure, extra information/nueron firing in the form of taste. Imagine yourself in their body -- a punishment from birth to death because of bad luck on the end of some humans' excessive want for neuropathic pleasure. Any way you shape it, excess is always going to be morally dubious. When one has no choice, some things like self defense make sense. But there are plenty of choices in our modern age. A vegetarian diet with good farm fresh eggs, cheese, and milk, is plenty enjoyable and easy to do healthy. And a grass-fed free-range steak is not the worst thing to have once in a while. It can be argued that death is not a terrible thing, since we all experience it. Rather, torture is. So eating sustainable and cruelty-free meat, is sound. You seem to be bent on excusing torture and pain because no bullet-proof definition or argument can sway you. I don't know what to say, except that you are clearly in denial and lying to us and yourself.

dang 10y ago

This comment breaks the HN guidelines by being uncivil. We've asked you repeatedly not to do this. Please don't do it again.

goldenkey 10y ago
How is calling an opinion moronic uncivil?
goldenkey 10y ago
I'm going to ask again, aside from the word "moronic" which I called an opinion, not a person. What exactly is uncivil? I gave a cogent argument about the issue at hand. If you have issue with a single word as a moderator, it would fit to specifically point that out, rather than call my entire post uncivil. This is clearly a decisive issue with strong opinions.
- dang 10y ago
  "Moronic" is a textbook example of calling names in the way the HN guidelines ask you not to: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's bad anywhere, and the worst kind of thing to lead with. "You can go ahead and spout off" and "You can play coy semantics" come across as personal jabs. Such phrases are a kind of elbowing. You may feel that you didn't mean them personally, but the person who gets the elbow typically doesn't agree. This is the path to degraded discourse, so please don't do it here.
  - goldenkey 10y ago
    Okay, thanks for the explanations. I will do my best to avoid these things in the future. Cheers.