7 ms·

IAASL also has one of the best (and easiest to understand) descriptions of non human sentience-when he talks about why he’s a vegetarian.

stuntkite 8y ago
I am not a vegan, but his consciousness cone is something I seem to bring up frequently with people. Usually by the end of the conversation I don't quite know why I'm not vegan aside from habit. Last time I brought it up I was eating sushi and talking about how I had decided to quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans... But then ate pork belly and just didn't really know what I stood for anymore. Pigs don't have a complex skin pattern language, but they are smarter than my cats who I would never eat. Other people's cats might be smarter than a pig, mine are pretty dumb. I need to double down on meal planning and just really quit it.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Pigs are awesome and most of them (all except for wild boar) would not be around if not for us eating them. We should strive for avoiding unnecessary hardship and unsustainably high numbers, not for extermination through total disuse.
  - kranner 8y ago
    Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for certain pigs by causing them to come into existence?
    - usrusr 8y ago
      Ending all life would end all suffering, it's one of those dangerous philosophical ideas we prefer not to think about to often. The other extreme would be "every sperm is sacred" and I firmly believe that both should be avoided, but only for pigs.
      - usrusr 8y ago
        That should be "but not only for pigs", obviously. Otherwise it would be a very interesting standpoint.
    - jpeanuts 8y ago
      Relevant comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/existence https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/existence
    - core-questions 8y ago
      Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for our children by causing them to come into existence? I mean, c'mon. The only way for there to be something good, or great, from a first-person experience, is for there to be a first person to actually do the experiencing. Caveat, of course, bringing something into an existence that is only suffering is probably not so great. This is why we need to treat our food animals well (not to mention our kids!)
      - kranner 8y ago
        My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives. This is especially true for animals. So I don’t believe we are doing pigs any favours by giving them life.
        core-questions 8y ago
        > My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives Maybe your life. I feel pretty good. Have you considered doing things to reduce your suffering? There are a lot of great options. Take a few deep breaths and consider whether it's really as bad as all that. Suffering in the human context is also very relative to tolerance. Experiencing the occasional great suffering (whether physical or emotional) puts your daily aches and pains and disappointments into proper contrast so you can tell that you should learn how to not take them very seriously.
      - schoen 8y ago
        David Benatar is the most famous exponent of the opposing view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism Edit: though several weaker views are more common in animal rights advocacy, for instance that being born in order to be raised for food is not a benefit to an animal, that being born in order to be raised for food in a factory farm is not a benefit to an animal, or that being born is a benefit but that conferring a benefit on an animal doesn't make conferring harms on the same animal legitimate or appropriate even if the benefits and harms are structured as a "package deal".
  - smhost 8y ago
    Pet pigs are a thing and have been for a while. Bit of a trend at the moment, actually.
  - ceras 8y ago
    I agree with you we should strive to avoid unnecessary hardship. Everything dies, and a life that ends with humane[0] slaughter is not necessarily one that wasn't worth living. However I suspect we agree some lives are so filled with suffering that the compassionate choice is to not breed a sentient being into that life. Imagine choosing to get pregnant if you had certain evidence it'd damn your future child to a life of physical and mental anguish -- you'd refuse. That's the life of pigs and chickens on modern farms: too much suffering[1], below the threshold of "worth living." Moreover, the state of the animal welfare movement is bleak[2] compared to the scope. Farm animal advocacy is a niche and regularly ridiculed. Progress is constantly on shaky ground: recent initiatives in MA and CA prohibiting animal products from animals raised in cages too small to turn around in is at serious risk of being overturned by the federal government's "King amendment," which would prevent any state-based welfare reforms. I'm passionately in support of this work, but under no delusion we're near the end of it. Given that, the strategy I advocate for is both improved treatment of farm animals and reduced breeding of them -- at least until farm animal treatment improves. Hoping that treatment will catch up soon so that it'll obviate the need for dietary change is unrealistic today, though I sincerely hope (and will support those trying) to get there[3]. [0] Caveat that slaughter today is not always humane, in particular for chickens and fish. [1] E.g. gestation crates and lifetime of small cages, genetic breeding that causes chickens to grow so fast they break their own legs, debeaking practices, and more. [2] Progress is happening, and in fact the wins we've had are hugely beneficial to animals -- but I suspect decades before we're at "enough" of an improvement. Within that time billions of animals will be raised and slaughtered for food; the scale is hard to fathom. [3] And frankly, I expect cultured meat and sophisticated plant-based meats like Beyond Burger to gain wide adoption before that.
- arunix 8y ago
  Consider that cephalopods are on the menu of other cephalopods despite their mental powers ...
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    Yeah, but I'm a weird thing that has to do very little to get food. A lot of time my meals come from a car window. I don't quite live the same oceanic experience that a pack of humboldt squid get to traverse. I guess the place that I get to with it is that I have a choice and that is a unique privilage. I have no problem with people eating animals. It's a bizarre luxury of the type of thing I am, where I don't have to kill to live and nothing is trying to kill me that I know of and/or worry about. If I have that knowledge, potentially I have moral imperative to use it. Compassion for things that I don't have to have it for might be something I'm supposed to do with my time piloting this homunculus.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I have a simple rule - I don't eat any creature that is sentient enough to choose to be vegan...
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    That's kind of you. I assume your coworkers appreciate that.
    - _jal 8y ago
      All of them? I have my doubts about the sentience of some of mine, although at first blush that appears uncorrelated with eating habits.
  - djrobstep 8y ago
    So you'll eat humans with intellectual disabilities?
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      If a logical statement is true, it does not imply the inverse is true, but the contrapositive. Here is a refresher: https://www.varsitytutors.com/hotmath/hotmath_help/topics/converse-inverse-contrapositive https://www.varsitytutors.com/hotmath/hotmath_help/topics/co... Also, who says the intellectually disabled can't be vegans?
      - stefanfisk 8y ago
        I think he’s simply saying that a subset are not able to even understand that there is a choice to be made, and that the logic then would be that you can eat people from that subset.
- jvagner 8y ago
  perhaps https://www.lighter.world https://www.lighter.world can help... i live with my own temptations in this realm, so i'm not coming from a "i've done it" POV, but from a "this is where i lean when i'm pretty sure i need to give it a real go" one.
  - copperx 8y ago
    The site is sadly broken on Firefox.
    - jvagner 8y ago
      Seems okay on my Mac OS X, Firefox versions 60.x & 61.0.1
- tbabb 8y ago
  > quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans Ahem, what?
  - seanopedia 8y ago
    Surely op's statement is hyperbole.. I hope.

stuntkite 8y ago

I am not a vegan, but his consciousness cone is something I seem to bring up frequently with people. Usually by the end of the conversation I don't quite know why I'm not vegan aside from habit. Last time I brought it up I was eating sushi and talking about how I had decided to quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans... But then ate pork belly and just didn't really know what I stood for anymore. Pigs don't have a complex skin pattern language, but they are smarter than my cats who I would never eat. Other people's cats might be smarter than a pig, mine are pretty dumb. I need to double down on meal planning and just really quit it.

usrusr 8y ago
Pigs are awesome and most of them (all except for wild boar) would not be around if not for us eating them. We should strive for avoiding unnecessary hardship and unsustainably high numbers, not for extermination through total disuse.
- kranner 8y ago
  Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for certain pigs by causing them to come into existence?
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Ending all life would end all suffering, it's one of those dangerous philosophical ideas we prefer not to think about to often. The other extreme would be "every sperm is sacred" and I firmly believe that both should be avoided, but only for pigs.
    - usrusr 8y ago
      That should be "but not only for pigs", obviously. Otherwise it would be a very interesting standpoint.
  - jpeanuts 8y ago
    Relevant comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/existence https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/existence
  - core-questions 8y ago
    Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for our children by causing them to come into existence? I mean, c'mon. The only way for there to be something good, or great, from a first-person experience, is for there to be a first person to actually do the experiencing. Caveat, of course, bringing something into an existence that is only suffering is probably not so great. This is why we need to treat our food animals well (not to mention our kids!)
    - kranner 8y ago
      My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives. This is especially true for animals. So I don’t believe we are doing pigs any favours by giving them life.
      - core-questions 8y ago
        > My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives Maybe your life. I feel pretty good. Have you considered doing things to reduce your suffering? There are a lot of great options. Take a few deep breaths and consider whether it's really as bad as all that. Suffering in the human context is also very relative to tolerance. Experiencing the occasional great suffering (whether physical or emotional) puts your daily aches and pains and disappointments into proper contrast so you can tell that you should learn how to not take them very seriously.
    - schoen 8y ago
      David Benatar is the most famous exponent of the opposing view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism Edit: though several weaker views are more common in animal rights advocacy, for instance that being born in order to be raised for food is not a benefit to an animal, that being born in order to be raised for food in a factory farm is not a benefit to an animal, or that being born is a benefit but that conferring a benefit on an animal doesn't make conferring harms on the same animal legitimate or appropriate even if the benefits and harms are structured as a "package deal".
- smhost 8y ago
  Pet pigs are a thing and have been for a while. Bit of a trend at the moment, actually.
- ceras 8y ago
  I agree with you we should strive to avoid unnecessary hardship. Everything dies, and a life that ends with humane[0] slaughter is not necessarily one that wasn't worth living. However I suspect we agree some lives are so filled with suffering that the compassionate choice is to not breed a sentient being into that life. Imagine choosing to get pregnant if you had certain evidence it'd damn your future child to a life of physical and mental anguish -- you'd refuse. That's the life of pigs and chickens on modern farms: too much suffering[1], below the threshold of "worth living." Moreover, the state of the animal welfare movement is bleak[2] compared to the scope. Farm animal advocacy is a niche and regularly ridiculed. Progress is constantly on shaky ground: recent initiatives in MA and CA prohibiting animal products from animals raised in cages too small to turn around in is at serious risk of being overturned by the federal government's "King amendment," which would prevent any state-based welfare reforms. I'm passionately in support of this work, but under no delusion we're near the end of it. Given that, the strategy I advocate for is both improved treatment of farm animals and reduced breeding of them -- at least until farm animal treatment improves. Hoping that treatment will catch up soon so that it'll obviate the need for dietary change is unrealistic today, though I sincerely hope (and will support those trying) to get there[3]. [0] Caveat that slaughter today is not always humane, in particular for chickens and fish. [1] E.g. gestation crates and lifetime of small cages, genetic breeding that causes chickens to grow so fast they break their own legs, debeaking practices, and more. [2] Progress is happening, and in fact the wins we've had are hugely beneficial to animals -- but I suspect decades before we're at "enough" of an improvement. Within that time billions of animals will be raised and slaughtered for food; the scale is hard to fathom. [3] And frankly, I expect cultured meat and sophisticated plant-based meats like Beyond Burger to gain wide adoption before that.
arunix 8y ago
Consider that cephalopods are on the menu of other cephalopods despite their mental powers ...
- stuntkite 8y ago
  Yeah, but I'm a weird thing that has to do very little to get food. A lot of time my meals come from a car window. I don't quite live the same oceanic experience that a pack of humboldt squid get to traverse. I guess the place that I get to with it is that I have a choice and that is a unique privilage. I have no problem with people eating animals. It's a bizarre luxury of the type of thing I am, where I don't have to kill to live and nothing is trying to kill me that I know of and/or worry about. If I have that knowledge, potentially I have moral imperative to use it. Compassion for things that I don't have to have it for might be something I'm supposed to do with my time piloting this homunculus.
perl4ever 8y ago
I have a simple rule - I don't eat any creature that is sentient enough to choose to be vegan...
- stuntkite 8y ago
  That's kind of you. I assume your coworkers appreciate that.
  - _jal 8y ago
    All of them? I have my doubts about the sentience of some of mine, although at first blush that appears uncorrelated with eating habits.
- djrobstep 8y ago
  So you'll eat humans with intellectual disabilities?
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    If a logical statement is true, it does not imply the inverse is true, but the contrapositive. Here is a refresher: https://www.varsitytutors.com/hotmath/hotmath_help/topics/converse-inverse-contrapositive https://www.varsitytutors.com/hotmath/hotmath_help/topics/co... Also, who says the intellectually disabled can't be vegans?
    - stefanfisk 8y ago
      I think he’s simply saying that a subset are not able to even understand that there is a choice to be made, and that the logic then would be that you can eat people from that subset.
jvagner 8y ago
perhaps https://www.lighter.world https://www.lighter.world can help... i live with my own temptations in this realm, so i'm not coming from a "i've done it" POV, but from a "this is where i lean when i'm pretty sure i need to give it a real go" one.
- copperx 8y ago
  The site is sadly broken on Firefox.
  - jvagner 8y ago
    Seems okay on my Mac OS X, Firefox versions 60.x & 61.0.1
tbabb 8y ago
> quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans Ahem, what?
- seanopedia 8y ago
  Surely op's statement is hyperbole.. I hope.