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> It surprises me that people could claim that the inverse would ever be true. As in, why would the default be to assume that animals are not conscious? It's k

> It surprises me that people could claim that the inverse would ever be true. As in, why would the default be to assume that animals are not conscious? It's known as motivated reasoning. Specimens of our species are not known for disinterested rationality. We have deep interests in doing things to animals that animal cognition could make more unpleasant or expensive. An ancestor without this talent would have been less likely to become an ancestor. Think of how much tougher it would be to put a spear into a boar if you thought it was as sentient as your mother. You'd still do it if you were hungry enough but would pay a greater price.

bunderbunder 8y ago
Though, interestingly, animism seems to be more popular among cultures that live closer to the "I need to put this spear into this boar" end of the lifestyle spectrum. Meanwhile Rene Descartes, who probably wouldn't have had much trouble surviving as a vegetarian, was the one who was doing. . . interesting. . . things to dogs in order to prove a point. Not sure exactly what that implies, but it would seem to suggest that it's hard to wrap these sorts things up with a bow.
- hirundo 8y ago
  True, in a hunter-gatherer recognition of animal cognition would improve their chances of success. "I'm getting thirsty, maybe the boar is too, let's lay for it near the water hole." Maybe labeling it "other" is enough without labeling it "inferior".
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Bingo. There is also the simple, brutal reality of the food chain. Being most aware and capable, also means seeing all of that, where the lesser beings are, and treating the world with respect. Should anyway. Our nature easily demonstrates otherwise. Animals are a lot like us. Simpler mostly.
    - henriquemaia 8y ago
      Though I understand what you mean by simpler, I would remind you that every living creature is adapted to its ecological niche, and that entails a baffling complexity that we, humans, can hardly grasp. Animals are a lot like us.
      - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
        They have different trade-offs. We're physically weak and fragile for our size. Long life and decent endurance and stupid smart, but crappy high infant mortality rates (before modern medicine), prone to food borne illnesses, sensitive to climate, have to cook our food, etc. My dog and cat and chickens are made of tougher stuff than me.
        goldenkey 8y ago
        People are soft as hell these days. Humans are not sensitive to climate any more than most animals are. We dont need to cook our food either. Physically we are not weak, we are the only animal that can throw a stone and also climb a tree. I agree with you about the infant mortality though.
        ddingus 8y ago
        It can be amazing to watch them exercize peak form.
      - ddingus 8y ago
        Right on. Agreed.
- sneakernets 8y ago
  I remember reading of an ancient Asian religious cult which held the belief that all living things are conscious (plants may have been the exception, I'm not sure). This naturally led to absurd practices such as cultists taking a broom everywhere and sweeping madly at the ground as they walked, lest anyone stepped on an ant. Lady MacBeth levels of paranoia.
  - rosser 8y ago
    It's not a "cult", it's a religion with some 4-5 million adherents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism But please, continue dismissing millions of people's beliefs as "paranoia".
    - sneakernets 8y ago
      Wait..So it's confirmed? I swear I had no idea, and had no clue on what I was supposed to Google to find it. Interesting. But I'm not budging on the paranoia statement. If your beliefs make you worry about killing random things you can't even see, say "bye" to any semblance of good mental health.
      - PavlovsCat 8y ago
        Too many people who aren't "paranoid" about killing little insects even sweep the murder of humans under the rug. We also have no real answer to the fact that in a century, there might be no more insects, with all the further extinction of other species that'll entail. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 Even when we're extremely selfish and petty, if we take too much effort to take care of ourselves, that's generally fine, as long as it's legal and not too annoying -- but when others worry "too much" about yet others, and change their own behaviour accordingly, they can't possibly have "any semblance of good mental health"? Come on.. The insects at least actually exist, what of caring about random people that don't even exist yet, wouldn't that be even crazier? > Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational. -- Noam Chomsky
fnovd 8y ago
To the contrary, we (as a society) do worse things to animals when we aren't able to actually see it happening. If I were a boar, I'd rather have lived a natural life and suffered a tragic end than have been born and die in brutal slavery. Working in a factory farm setting is known to have a negative affect on the psyche [1]. The small-time farmer who just ships live animals off and the butcher who is cutting up an already-dead animal don't have this problem. To me, this signals that we do in fact see cognition in these animals, and ignoring it causes us to ignore that cognition in humans. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1086026609338164 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108602660933816...
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  True. Factory farming and lately laser guided bombs are good ways to hide the dirty details from most people.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Well, laser guided bombs have replaced the need for carpet-bombing a city, so that seems like a net improvement.
roenxi 8y ago
> Think of how much tougher it would be to put a spear into a boar if you thought it was as sentient as your mother. I wouldn't put a spear into a boar, but from a detached and clinical perspective I don't see why its sentience would make a difference. Advanced societies like China, the Europeans and the United States don't generally have any problem fielding an aggressive expeditionary army of people nominally willing to kill sentient humans, so I suspect the blocks are more economic and cultural norms than innate. It also seems plausible that time and breeding has equipped a large number of people with limited emotions precisely so they can stab things without worrying too much about the philosophical aspects.
- shipman05 8y ago
  It takes a great deal of training to turn the average person into a willing and able killer, and during every war on record there have been significant propaganda efforts (or religious indoctrination) to make sure the enemy is seen as less than human. Furthermore, the soldiers who serve in the armies of the nations you mention who actually have to do any killing often end up with PTSD and sky-high suicide rates. Humans may be more naturally hesitant to kill their fellow human beings than you think.
war1025 8y ago
I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. From my viewpoint, our current views on the killing of animals are as much a reflection of our cultural fear of death as anything. Death used to be an ever-present part of life. Killing an animal was viewed as taking the life of something else to prolong your own. And all to often, people would die in horrific ways anyway. Now, death is a thing we try to hide away and not talk about. So we also hide away the killing of animals for meat. Death is a taboo in our society in some ways.
- blunte 8y ago
  > I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. This is clearly not the case, else nobody would be willing to work for a factory farm. The opposite appears to be true. People become desensitized - at least the ones who can handle the initial shock. Also, in some regions of the world (and in developed countries), generations have grown up with a company mentality and seem incapable of considering things from any other perspective.
  - goldenkey 8y ago
    Its different when you are slaughtering animals endlessly as a job versus hunting for food. The former will make you a morbid psychopath. The latter will give you reverence for the animal and the hunt and your position in it.
    - blunte 8y ago
      I don't disagree. However, I would argue that there are vastly fewer food hunters than factory farm workers.
- LordKano 8y ago
  I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. As someone who has recently joined that club, I agree. I have been hunting for years but this year I killed my first deer. The whole process changed something inside of me. Because of my actions, this gentle creature went from breathing, living and doing whatever it wanted to being food. While I was aiming my shot, she turned her head towards me and looked at me. I can clearly remember seeing her blink. I put the arrow through her heart and lungs. I dragged her out of the woods. I gutted her and hung her up. I packed her body in ice. These were things that I had seen done before but never did myself. As I was field dressing the body, I looked at her and apologized, then I thanked her for providing healthy meat to feed my family. In my mind, it changed venison from butcher paper wrapped meat that was leaner than beef into the flesh of an animal that was killed. I don't know what she thought but I think she was, on some level, self aware.

bunderbunder 8y ago

Though, interestingly, animism seems to be more popular among cultures that live closer to the "I need to put this spear into this boar" end of the lifestyle spectrum. Meanwhile Rene Descartes, who probably wouldn't have had much trouble surviving as a vegetarian, was the one who was doing. . . interesting. . . things to dogs in order to prove a point. Not sure exactly what that implies, but it would seem to suggest that it's hard to wrap these sorts things up with a bow.

hirundo 8y ago
True, in a hunter-gatherer recognition of animal cognition would improve their chances of success. "I'm getting thirsty, maybe the boar is too, let's lay for it near the water hole." Maybe labeling it "other" is enough without labeling it "inferior".
- ddingus 8y ago
  Bingo. There is also the simple, brutal reality of the food chain. Being most aware and capable, also means seeing all of that, where the lesser beings are, and treating the world with respect. Should anyway. Our nature easily demonstrates otherwise. Animals are a lot like us. Simpler mostly.
  - henriquemaia 8y ago
    Though I understand what you mean by simpler, I would remind you that every living creature is adapted to its ecological niche, and that entails a baffling complexity that we, humans, can hardly grasp. Animals are a lot like us.
    - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      They have different trade-offs. We're physically weak and fragile for our size. Long life and decent endurance and stupid smart, but crappy high infant mortality rates (before modern medicine), prone to food borne illnesses, sensitive to climate, have to cook our food, etc. My dog and cat and chickens are made of tougher stuff than me.
      - goldenkey 8y ago
        People are soft as hell these days. Humans are not sensitive to climate any more than most animals are. We dont need to cook our food either. Physically we are not weak, we are the only animal that can throw a stone and also climb a tree. I agree with you about the infant mortality though.
      - ddingus 8y ago
        It can be amazing to watch them exercize peak form.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      Right on. Agreed.
sneakernets 8y ago
I remember reading of an ancient Asian religious cult which held the belief that all living things are conscious (plants may have been the exception, I'm not sure). This naturally led to absurd practices such as cultists taking a broom everywhere and sweeping madly at the ground as they walked, lest anyone stepped on an ant. Lady MacBeth levels of paranoia.
- rosser 8y ago
  It's not a "cult", it's a religion with some 4-5 million adherents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism But please, continue dismissing millions of people's beliefs as "paranoia".
  - sneakernets 8y ago
    Wait..So it's confirmed? I swear I had no idea, and had no clue on what I was supposed to Google to find it. Interesting. But I'm not budging on the paranoia statement. If your beliefs make you worry about killing random things you can't even see, say "bye" to any semblance of good mental health.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      Too many people who aren't "paranoid" about killing little insects even sweep the murder of humans under the rug. We also have no real answer to the fact that in a century, there might be no more insects, with all the further extinction of other species that'll entail. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 Even when we're extremely selfish and petty, if we take too much effort to take care of ourselves, that's generally fine, as long as it's legal and not too annoying -- but when others worry "too much" about yet others, and change their own behaviour accordingly, they can't possibly have "any semblance of good mental health"? Come on.. The insects at least actually exist, what of caring about random people that don't even exist yet, wouldn't that be even crazier? > Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational. -- Noam Chomsky

fnovd 8y ago

To the contrary, we (as a society) do worse things to animals when we aren't able to actually see it happening. If I were a boar, I'd rather have lived a natural life and suffered a tragic end than have been born and die in brutal slavery. Working in a factory farm setting is known to have a negative affect on the psyche [1]. The small-time farmer who just ships live animals off and the butcher who is cutting up an already-dead animal don't have this problem. To me, this signals that we do in fact see cognition in these animals, and ignoring it causes us to ignore that cognition in humans. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1086026609338164 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108602660933816...

maxxxxx 8y ago
True. Factory farming and lately laser guided bombs are good ways to hide the dirty details from most people.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Well, laser guided bombs have replaced the need for carpet-bombing a city, so that seems like a net improvement.

roenxi 8y ago

> Think of how much tougher it would be to put a spear into a boar if you thought it was as sentient as your mother. I wouldn't put a spear into a boar, but from a detached and clinical perspective I don't see why its sentience would make a difference. Advanced societies like China, the Europeans and the United States don't generally have any problem fielding an aggressive expeditionary army of people nominally willing to kill sentient humans, so I suspect the blocks are more economic and cultural norms than innate. It also seems plausible that time and breeding has equipped a large number of people with limited emotions precisely so they can stab things without worrying too much about the philosophical aspects.

shipman05 8y ago
It takes a great deal of training to turn the average person into a willing and able killer, and during every war on record there have been significant propaganda efforts (or religious indoctrination) to make sure the enemy is seen as less than human. Furthermore, the soldiers who serve in the armies of the nations you mention who actually have to do any killing often end up with PTSD and sky-high suicide rates. Humans may be more naturally hesitant to kill their fellow human beings than you think.

war1025 8y ago

I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. From my viewpoint, our current views on the killing of animals are as much a reflection of our cultural fear of death as anything. Death used to be an ever-present part of life. Killing an animal was viewed as taking the life of something else to prolong your own. And all to often, people would die in horrific ways anyway. Now, death is a thing we try to hide away and not talk about. So we also hide away the killing of animals for meat. Death is a taboo in our society in some ways.

blunte 8y ago
> I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. This is clearly not the case, else nobody would be willing to work for a factory farm. The opposite appears to be true. People become desensitized - at least the ones who can handle the initial shock. Also, in some regions of the world (and in developed countries), generations have grown up with a company mentality and seem incapable of considering things from any other perspective.
- goldenkey 8y ago
  Its different when you are slaughtering animals endlessly as a job versus hunting for food. The former will make you a morbid psychopath. The latter will give you reverence for the animal and the hunt and your position in it.
  - blunte 8y ago
    I don't disagree. However, I would argue that there are vastly fewer food hunters than factory farm workers.
LordKano 8y ago
I think the closer you are to the actual killing of animals, the more you tend to revere them, if anything. As someone who has recently joined that club, I agree. I have been hunting for years but this year I killed my first deer. The whole process changed something inside of me. Because of my actions, this gentle creature went from breathing, living and doing whatever it wanted to being food. While I was aiming my shot, she turned her head towards me and looked at me. I can clearly remember seeing her blink. I put the arrow through her heart and lungs. I dragged her out of the woods. I gutted her and hung her up. I packed her body in ice. These were things that I had seen done before but never did myself. As I was field dressing the body, I looked at her and apologized, then I thanked her for providing healthy meat to feed my family. In my mind, it changed venison from butcher paper wrapped meat that was leaner than beef into the flesh of an animal that was killed. I don't know what she thought but I think she was, on some level, self aware.