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What's the SI unit for suffering? How do you calibrate your measurement instruments? If you have a genuine ethical objection to causing suffering to other liv

What's the SI unit for suffering? How do you calibrate your measurement instruments? If you have a genuine ethical objection to causing suffering to other living creatures, you can be vegan, lacto-vegetarian, or you can eat meat certified as jhatka by a trusted authority. It is never necessary for you to compare suffering ratios. If you truly want to minimize the pain you send out into the world, it's zero. That is an easily achievable number. Go vegan. Be kind to everyone. Good luck on your path to enlightenment. If you aren't going for zero, why would you bother half-assing it? For the record, I don't care whether or not my meal has ever screamed in agony. I can still respect the beliefs of those who do care. But I also don't wish to hear any of them preach to me about it, or let them trick me into enduring some sort of ideological sales pitch.

zyxley 10y ago
> What's the SI unit for suffering? You could go with millihitlers. https://www.reddit.com/comments/dlu96/new_si_unit_one_hitler/ https://www.reddit.com/comments/dlu96/new_si_unit_one_hitler...
seandougall 10y ago
> What's the SI unit for suffering? Why, killohurts, of course.
mturmon 10y ago
If you re-read the comment above, you will see that it is not preaching. It is careful to say "for people who try to ... minimize inflicting suffering" -- leaving room for those (like you) who don't care. Further, I think you are creating an unhelpful dichotomy between zero and nonzero. This dichotomy is not necessary. It is reasonable to try to reduce suffering, but not drive it to zero (whatever that might imply). Perhaps there's more to the cost function (e.g., endangered species), or perhaps one is skeptical (like you seem to be) that you can measure suffering precisely enough to drive it to zero. You say zero is easily achievable, but I doubt this. One can argue that the migrant labor that picked your carrots suffered, or that tiny insects were harmed in harvesting your vegetables (not a strawman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism). I'm not advocating that position, but I do claim that "zero" is not easily achievable, if you look carefully.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/advanced-veganism http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/advanced-veganism > I'm a sado-vegan. I only eat plants that have been proven to actively signal other plants when being killed. I've never understood why moral vegetarians seem to think that hurting and killing plants is so much better than hurting and killing fleas. Plants are well-established to react to injuries and to communicate to other nearby plants when they're under attack. If you're going to argue that you have a moral obligation not to hurt chickens, you need to at least be ready to argue that you don't have the same obligation not to hurt onions, which feel strongly enough about being attacked that they actively fight back.
  - tamana 10y ago
    Continuing your reasoning, I don't understand why people abstain from rape or murder, if they are going to eat food anyway.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      The vegetarians argue that the problem with eating animals is that they feel pain. We know that this is true of plants. They just don't care about plants. They need to make an argument on the premise "plants are morally worthless because they are plants", which would be true, not on the premise "plants are morally worthless because they don't feel pain", which is false. People abstain from murder (and rape, though that's much less analogous to the dietary debate) because society sanctions murder and rape, and where it doesn't, because the victims and their families are likely to take exception. (Compare traditional Icelandic law, where killing a person was legal under a variety of circumstances, but concealing the fact that you'd done so was criminal. Consider that the United States fully criminalized rape within marriage in 1993.) The second of those reasons does not, and will never, apply to food animals. They have no power to take retribution. The first one doesn't, but can; it is the reason Brahmins eat a strict vegetarian diet. But it is not particularly compelling; very few people are impressed by the argument "you should abstain from meat because it makes me happy when I can make other people obey my commands". And that's what leaves moral vegetarians in the ridiculous position of arguing from known-false premises. It doesn't mean I can't laugh at them for trying.

zyxley 10y ago

> What's the SI unit for suffering? You could go with millihitlers. https://www.reddit.com/comments/dlu96/new_si_unit_one_hitler/ https://www.reddit.com/comments/dlu96/new_si_unit_one_hitler...

seandougall 10y ago

> What's the SI unit for suffering? Why, killohurts, of course.

mturmon 10y ago

If you re-read the comment above, you will see that it is not preaching. It is careful to say "for people who try to ... minimize inflicting suffering" -- leaving room for those (like you) who don't care. Further, I think you are creating an unhelpful dichotomy between zero and nonzero. This dichotomy is not necessary. It is reasonable to try to reduce suffering, but not drive it to zero (whatever that might imply). Perhaps there's more to the cost function (e.g., endangered species), or perhaps one is skeptical (like you seem to be) that you can measure suffering precisely enough to drive it to zero. You say zero is easily achievable, but I doubt this. One can argue that the migrant labor that picked your carrots suffered, or that tiny insects were harmed in harvesting your vegetables (not a strawman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism). I'm not advocating that position, but I do claim that "zero" is not easily achievable, if you look carefully.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/advanced-veganism http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/advanced-veganism > I'm a sado-vegan. I only eat plants that have been proven to actively signal other plants when being killed. I've never understood why moral vegetarians seem to think that hurting and killing plants is so much better than hurting and killing fleas. Plants are well-established to react to injuries and to communicate to other nearby plants when they're under attack. If you're going to argue that you have a moral obligation not to hurt chickens, you need to at least be ready to argue that you don't have the same obligation not to hurt onions, which feel strongly enough about being attacked that they actively fight back.
- tamana 10y ago
  Continuing your reasoning, I don't understand why people abstain from rape or murder, if they are going to eat food anyway.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    The vegetarians argue that the problem with eating animals is that they feel pain. We know that this is true of plants. They just don't care about plants. They need to make an argument on the premise "plants are morally worthless because they are plants", which would be true, not on the premise "plants are morally worthless because they don't feel pain", which is false. People abstain from murder (and rape, though that's much less analogous to the dietary debate) because society sanctions murder and rape, and where it doesn't, because the victims and their families are likely to take exception. (Compare traditional Icelandic law, where killing a person was legal under a variety of circumstances, but concealing the fact that you'd done so was criminal. Consider that the United States fully criminalized rape within marriage in 1993.) The second of those reasons does not, and will never, apply to food animals. They have no power to take retribution. The first one doesn't, but can; it is the reason Brahmins eat a strict vegetarian diet. But it is not particularly compelling; very few people are impressed by the argument "you should abstain from meat because it makes me happy when I can make other people obey my commands". And that's what leaves moral vegetarians in the ridiculous position of arguing from known-false premises. It doesn't mean I can't laugh at them for trying.