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While I still eat meat, etc, at times I do think about what kind of suffering animals, etc, go through. I often come to the conclusion that we should just let t

While I still eat meat, etc, at times I do think about what kind of suffering animals, etc, go through. I often come to the conclusion that we should just let them be - their lives, much like ours, are short-lived, and they deserve their little piece happiness. All this reminds me of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher - a great read.

shrimp_emoji 9y ago
I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence. This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe our own, to eat, just to see what we taste like. That's equivalent to consuming non-lab-grown but also unconscious human tissue, I think. BUT SCARIER, this same line of thinking might lead to much-vaster-than-human intelligences deciding we don't have rights and that it's okay to eat us! Am I okay with being eaten by a hyperintelligent being to whom I have the status of a lobster or a cow? Maybe. Because I really admire a being like that. Maybe it could effortlessly convince me to surrendering to being eaten with arguments more creative and compelling than a million Shakespeares could pen up, effortlessly, like some Saruman-godthing[0], because that just goes with the territory of being that smart! But, short of that, I'd try to run away, and many people don't share my ambivalence... Ethics is difficult. But chicken is tasty. [0]: https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385 https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385
- tantivy 9y ago
  Circular reasoning. What kind of evidence can you have for some being "not smart enough" for any arbitrary experience? Nice essay though
  - shrimp_emoji 9y ago
    I have no evidence that a lobster has consciousness, and it's consciousness (particularly intelligent consciousness, like yours and mine) that, to my very crude ethics, grants "personhood". With personhood comes the right to live and my thinking that it's immoral or some great loss to the Universe to kill you. That is why I think I can eat (and cause untold suffering) to lobsters with impunity for my benefit. :o (Not, to massage your image of me, that I would enjoy harming lobsters; I'd sooner keep one as a pet or release it if it materialized in my kitchen. I don't even like killing spiders or cockroaches, and I don't even eat those! BUT. If other people kill lobsters, I don't consider it immoral, and I'd gladly eat them served to me. But not the cockroaches or spiders.) Pain is bad, but it's bad to conscious beings. A computer can be programmed to react to keystrokes much the same as a creature "with no lights on" can be programmed to react to damaging stimuli, but that reaction brooks no rational response from me. It brooks emotional responses, but acting on reasonless emotion is silly. Even if you accept my position, you could argue that maybe lobsters do have consciousness. Maybe they're even way more intelligent than we think they are. That'd be a problem. But, being scientific, you have to operate on what you have evidence for, not on what you don't. For the same reason, I don't think abortion is human murder (unless it's late term, after the brain's been thoroughly developed). Another problem, of course, is where you draw the line. Lobsters aren't intelligent enough for personhood. What about dogs? What about chimps? What about severely mentally handicapped humans? Do you draw the line at doing calculus? (Because then you exclude a lot of normal humans!) That's the problem with fascism. :B I need to rethink my ways. But it's too difficult, and meat is calorically-dense and tasty!
- nefitty 9y ago
  If we could genetically engineer animals to be intelligent enough to have conscious desires, and also have an overwhelming desire to be killed and eaten, would it still be morally wrong to eat them? (This dilemma assumes that you share my belief that the demand for meat products causes a net increase in suffering.)
  - mod 9y ago
    We're probably off-topic by now, but do you also believe that demand for meat products causes a net increase in joy/enjoyment (whatever you call the opposite of suffering)? For instance, I keep chickens and let them free-pasture until the day I butcher them. I think they enjoy their time out there as much as any animal would. Depending who or what you believe, the end is very quick for them, so the suffering is minimal. I realize this isn't the norm, though. I'm sure the "joy" experienced on many factory farms is some kind of dystopian thing, like being happy you got extra gruel last Tuesday. But it doesn't have to be that way. Just something to think about.
  - shrimp_emoji 9y ago
    That would be hilarious. Taken to an extreme, we could have those animals be humans that are somehow born masochists, desperate to get consumed by cannibals. Hmm. I think it's morally dubious to make them in the first place. Past that, we're talking about fulfilling their desires. If someone wants to die (say they're suffering from some slow, terminal illness or maybe incurable depression), is it ethical to keep them alive and deny them euthanasia? That seems like the same scenario. I say no; you should have the right to die if you want to in the most painless way possible. I think the Universe suffers a loss with the loss of your consciousness because it's an amazing thing, but your subjective suffering is more salient. I make that call on absolutely no rational ground; it's just my silly emotions. Silly emotions from a silly consciousness. :3 And it's that element of silliness that makes my position on this itself, or anyone else's, PERHAPS EVEN ALL THOSE MEAT ANIMALS' SUFFERING, seem sickeningly irrelevant in the grand, inscrutable, uncaring scheme of things. But that's morality for you. We've gotta be careful here. I'm so close to bringing up how maybe the self is a lie and how moral relativism justifies the worst levels of suffering imaginable.

shrimp_emoji 9y ago

I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence. This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe our own, to eat, just to see what we taste like. That's equivalent to consuming non-lab-grown but also unconscious human tissue, I think. BUT SCARIER, this same line of thinking might lead to much-vaster-than-human intelligences deciding we don't have rights and that it's okay to eat us! Am I okay with being eaten by a hyperintelligent being to whom I have the status of a lobster or a cow? Maybe. Because I really admire a being like that. Maybe it could effortlessly convince me to surrendering to being eaten with arguments more creative and compelling than a million Shakespeares could pen up, effortlessly, like some Saruman-godthing[0], because that just goes with the territory of being that smart! But, short of that, I'd try to run away, and many people don't share my ambivalence... Ethics is difficult. But chicken is tasty. [0]: https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385 https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385

tantivy 9y ago
Circular reasoning. What kind of evidence can you have for some being "not smart enough" for any arbitrary experience? Nice essay though
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago
  I have no evidence that a lobster has consciousness, and it's consciousness (particularly intelligent consciousness, like yours and mine) that, to my very crude ethics, grants "personhood". With personhood comes the right to live and my thinking that it's immoral or some great loss to the Universe to kill you. That is why I think I can eat (and cause untold suffering) to lobsters with impunity for my benefit. :o (Not, to massage your image of me, that I would enjoy harming lobsters; I'd sooner keep one as a pet or release it if it materialized in my kitchen. I don't even like killing spiders or cockroaches, and I don't even eat those! BUT. If other people kill lobsters, I don't consider it immoral, and I'd gladly eat them served to me. But not the cockroaches or spiders.) Pain is bad, but it's bad to conscious beings. A computer can be programmed to react to keystrokes much the same as a creature "with no lights on" can be programmed to react to damaging stimuli, but that reaction brooks no rational response from me. It brooks emotional responses, but acting on reasonless emotion is silly. Even if you accept my position, you could argue that maybe lobsters do have consciousness. Maybe they're even way more intelligent than we think they are. That'd be a problem. But, being scientific, you have to operate on what you have evidence for, not on what you don't. For the same reason, I don't think abortion is human murder (unless it's late term, after the brain's been thoroughly developed). Another problem, of course, is where you draw the line. Lobsters aren't intelligent enough for personhood. What about dogs? What about chimps? What about severely mentally handicapped humans? Do you draw the line at doing calculus? (Because then you exclude a lot of normal humans!) That's the problem with fascism. :B I need to rethink my ways. But it's too difficult, and meat is calorically-dense and tasty!
nefitty 9y ago
If we could genetically engineer animals to be intelligent enough to have conscious desires, and also have an overwhelming desire to be killed and eaten, would it still be morally wrong to eat them? (This dilemma assumes that you share my belief that the demand for meat products causes a net increase in suffering.)
- mod 9y ago
  We're probably off-topic by now, but do you also believe that demand for meat products causes a net increase in joy/enjoyment (whatever you call the opposite of suffering)? For instance, I keep chickens and let them free-pasture until the day I butcher them. I think they enjoy their time out there as much as any animal would. Depending who or what you believe, the end is very quick for them, so the suffering is minimal. I realize this isn't the norm, though. I'm sure the "joy" experienced on many factory farms is some kind of dystopian thing, like being happy you got extra gruel last Tuesday. But it doesn't have to be that way. Just something to think about.
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago
  That would be hilarious. Taken to an extreme, we could have those animals be humans that are somehow born masochists, desperate to get consumed by cannibals. Hmm. I think it's morally dubious to make them in the first place. Past that, we're talking about fulfilling their desires. If someone wants to die (say they're suffering from some slow, terminal illness or maybe incurable depression), is it ethical to keep them alive and deny them euthanasia? That seems like the same scenario. I say no; you should have the right to die if you want to in the most painless way possible. I think the Universe suffers a loss with the loss of your consciousness because it's an amazing thing, but your subjective suffering is more salient. I make that call on absolutely no rational ground; it's just my silly emotions. Silly emotions from a silly consciousness. :3 And it's that element of silliness that makes my position on this itself, or anyone else's, PERHAPS EVEN ALL THOSE MEAT ANIMALS' SUFFERING, seem sickeningly irrelevant in the grand, inscrutable, uncaring scheme of things. But that's morality for you. We've gotta be careful here. I'm so close to bringing up how maybe the self is a lie and how moral relativism justifies the worst levels of suffering imaginable.