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This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of th

by xrd 7y ago

This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention.

ericdykstra 7y ago
I think people tend either see the world primarily through existence or experience. For those who see the world through the experience frame, they will be more worried about the negative impacts toward an individual octopus, seeing it as an intelligent creature that shouldn’t need to endure our fishing practices. For those that see the world through the existence frame, the potential genocidal and even eco-system crashing impact of overfishing or various fishing practices is more vital than what happens to any individual creature. Maybe this would be better as two articles, one that appeals to each type.
- darkFunction 7y ago
  The author should have written two different articles catering for arbitrary categories of people that you just invented?
- astura 7y ago
  I care deeply about both, though.
egdod 7y ago
The non-ethical issues raised seem no different from eating any animal.
- pavanky 7y ago
  We dont farm and eat as many carnivores. Octopus and some fish are the only exceptions. The non ethical issues raised do not generalize easily.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
    Chicken is one of the most commonly farmed meats and they're certainly omnivorous.
    - egdod 7y ago
      They may be omnivores, but they eat plants only when they’re raised in captivity.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
        Define captivity. I have chickens and even roaming on pasture, they happily eat grass and weeds.
    - zhte415 7y ago
      Indeed. And for some trivia, there are ~23 billion chickens alive in the world at any one time.
      - kgwgk 7y ago
        And tens of millions of male chicks are killed each day soon after they hatch.
undershirt 7y ago
I don’t think you meant to imply that ethics have no intersection with ecology.
bsder 7y ago
> This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention. You should point out the issue for all the tl;dr people. The issue is that farming carnivorous seafood is a net ecosystem loss. This applies to more than just octopi. In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1--you have to feed an octopus about 3 times it's weight in "other fish". Similar ratios are true for other carnivorous fish--none are less than 1. Consequently, aquaculture farming of carnivorous species causes more overfishing and ecosystem strain and contributes nothing to food security.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1 (Yawn) and this is a terrific, good, not bad, conversion rate. Better than rabbit, broilers, pork and much better than "holy herbivorous cattle" beef. And the same food gave to a human would have a conversion rate of 10:0, because the stuff would never be approved as human-grade food. But can be still feed to another animal and used to make excellent food. Octopus is a high quality human food, healthy and more expensive than the tasteless Tilapia or swimming-in-poo-nd carp for a reason. Iron scraps are cheaper than titanium also. Maybe the problem could be that some people dislike octopus by "put random reason here" (religion, virtue signaling, fear to slimy creatures, not included in tyrolean tradition or classified as alien life form in Nuevo Mexico?...) and lobby to discourage its use as human food. This people (at least many of them) are hypocritical. Most wouldn't have any problem saying that whereas munching their fried broiler chicken wings, made of young birds 100 days old. Most wouldn't have any ethical problem with the idea of killing and eating a delicious and pray-safe 20 days old lamb. ... but to eat a 3Yo adult octopus in the end of its life cycle (that will die by natural processes in a few months in any case)... this is unethical?. Nonsense
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    and now lets take a loot to the inaccuracies in the article > If octopuses of some species can be kept together in moderate numbers and in larger enclosures with significant enrichment, this might mitigate some, though not all, of the welfare problems. "Octopuses must be smart as chimps so they must be treated the same". Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished. They tolerate other sexes only in reproduction and females could ignore other females (nesting at a safe distance) when taking care of its own nest. From a young octopus to be in the same enclosure as another octopus mean only two things: dinner or imminent and stressful risk of death. To suggest that this would put more emotion in its sad lifes is like suggesting to improve the life of a zebra putting a lion in the same enclosure to play. > Such efforts are occurring despite the fact that octopus farming has the same environmental consequences as other types of carnivorous aquaculture. Consequences that include for example more small fishes using the area as nursery and sanctuary because there are not trawls anymore in the area. Or most ship noise and human activity concentrated now in a single point of the coast. The author suggests that all consequences are bad for biodiversity but this is false. Some are bad and other positive. Biodiversity around tuna enclosures is surprisingly high for example. > And, like other carnivorous aquaculture, octopus farming would increase, not alleviate, pressure on wild aquatic animals Same product. Indistinguisable taste. Two different prices. What the people will buy? Pressure will increase in the same way as having a cheap alternative of phone will made everybody buy only the model of my-phone encrusted with diamonds. Why to eat cheap and available sheep meat all the year, when you could sell your house and eat wild himalayan blue sheep meat (only in november) instead? Nine of each 10 sea breams that you can eat in your restaurant are domesticated, and you can find gilthead sea bream all the months of the year now, in all restaurants, because this fact.
camillomiller 7y ago
If you put a sentence like this in such an article you beg to be bashed on your ethics: "Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question." So we can eat stupid animals, but not the more intelligent ones, right? That's absolutely logically and ethically bonkers to just write this down as if it were a common piece of shared knowledge and give it for granted.
- kaitai 7y ago
  You're being downvoted, but I agree. If you search the word "intelligent" in this page, it is used as a reason not to eat things. It's fine if one makes this a foundation for one's ethics of death, but one must be clear that it is and that it's only one way to look at things. Moreover, one should be clear that using intelligence as a reason to justify or avoid eating an organism leads to the problem that then an assessment of intelligence is vital for decision-making -- and if we happen not to understand an organism's intelligence, then we risk making the "wrong" decision out of ignorance. It can also lead to an essentially eugenicist view in which people as well as other organisms of lesser intelligence are viewed as less valuable. To be clear I'm not saying anyone here is a eugenicist: I'm saying that in history, eugenicists have taken this view. Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there. Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.
  - carapace 7y ago
    You remind me of the old joke (based on a true story, I'm told): As the New Guinea man said to the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made us out of meat."
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  Do you think it is ethical to farm and eat humans?

by xrd 7y ago

This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention.

ericdykstra 7y ago

I think people tend either see the world primarily through existence or experience. For those who see the world through the experience frame, they will be more worried about the negative impacts toward an individual octopus, seeing it as an intelligent creature that shouldn’t need to endure our fishing practices. For those that see the world through the existence frame, the potential genocidal and even eco-system crashing impact of overfishing or various fishing practices is more vital than what happens to any individual creature. Maybe this would be better as two articles, one that appeals to each type.

darkFunction 7y ago
The author should have written two different articles catering for arbitrary categories of people that you just invented?
astura 7y ago
I care deeply about both, though.

egdod 7y ago

The non-ethical issues raised seem no different from eating any animal.

pavanky 7y ago
We dont farm and eat as many carnivores. Octopus and some fish are the only exceptions. The non ethical issues raised do not generalize easily.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  Chicken is one of the most commonly farmed meats and they're certainly omnivorous.
  - egdod 7y ago
    They may be omnivores, but they eat plants only when they’re raised in captivity.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
      Define captivity. I have chickens and even roaming on pasture, they happily eat grass and weeds.
  - zhte415 7y ago
    Indeed. And for some trivia, there are ~23 billion chickens alive in the world at any one time.
    - kgwgk 7y ago
      And tens of millions of male chicks are killed each day soon after they hatch.

undershirt 7y ago

I don’t think you meant to imply that ethics have no intersection with ecology.

bsder 7y ago

> This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention. You should point out the issue for all the tl;dr people. The issue is that farming carnivorous seafood is a net ecosystem loss. This applies to more than just octopi. In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1--you have to feed an octopus about 3 times it's weight in "other fish". Similar ratios are true for other carnivorous fish--none are less than 1. Consequently, aquaculture farming of carnivorous species causes more overfishing and ecosystem strain and contributes nothing to food security.

pvaldes 7y ago
> In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1 (Yawn) and this is a terrific, good, not bad, conversion rate. Better than rabbit, broilers, pork and much better than "holy herbivorous cattle" beef. And the same food gave to a human would have a conversion rate of 10:0, because the stuff would never be approved as human-grade food. But can be still feed to another animal and used to make excellent food. Octopus is a high quality human food, healthy and more expensive than the tasteless Tilapia or swimming-in-poo-nd carp for a reason. Iron scraps are cheaper than titanium also. Maybe the problem could be that some people dislike octopus by "put random reason here" (religion, virtue signaling, fear to slimy creatures, not included in tyrolean tradition or classified as alien life form in Nuevo Mexico?...) and lobby to discourage its use as human food. This people (at least many of them) are hypocritical. Most wouldn't have any problem saying that whereas munching their fried broiler chicken wings, made of young birds 100 days old. Most wouldn't have any ethical problem with the idea of killing and eating a delicious and pray-safe 20 days old lamb. ... but to eat a 3Yo adult octopus in the end of its life cycle (that will die by natural processes in a few months in any case)... this is unethical?. Nonsense
- pvaldes 7y ago
  and now lets take a loot to the inaccuracies in the article > If octopuses of some species can be kept together in moderate numbers and in larger enclosures with significant enrichment, this might mitigate some, though not all, of the welfare problems. "Octopuses must be smart as chimps so they must be treated the same". Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished. They tolerate other sexes only in reproduction and females could ignore other females (nesting at a safe distance) when taking care of its own nest. From a young octopus to be in the same enclosure as another octopus mean only two things: dinner or imminent and stressful risk of death. To suggest that this would put more emotion in its sad lifes is like suggesting to improve the life of a zebra putting a lion in the same enclosure to play. > Such efforts are occurring despite the fact that octopus farming has the same environmental consequences as other types of carnivorous aquaculture. Consequences that include for example more small fishes using the area as nursery and sanctuary because there are not trawls anymore in the area. Or most ship noise and human activity concentrated now in a single point of the coast. The author suggests that all consequences are bad for biodiversity but this is false. Some are bad and other positive. Biodiversity around tuna enclosures is surprisingly high for example. > And, like other carnivorous aquaculture, octopus farming would increase, not alleviate, pressure on wild aquatic animals Same product. Indistinguisable taste. Two different prices. What the people will buy? Pressure will increase in the same way as having a cheap alternative of phone will made everybody buy only the model of my-phone encrusted with diamonds. Why to eat cheap and available sheep meat all the year, when you could sell your house and eat wild himalayan blue sheep meat (only in november) instead? Nine of each 10 sea breams that you can eat in your restaurant are domesticated, and you can find gilthead sea bream all the months of the year now, in all restaurants, because this fact.

camillomiller 7y ago

If you put a sentence like this in such an article you beg to be bashed on your ethics: "Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question." So we can eat stupid animals, but not the more intelligent ones, right? That's absolutely logically and ethically bonkers to just write this down as if it were a common piece of shared knowledge and give it for granted.

kaitai 7y ago
You're being downvoted, but I agree. If you search the word "intelligent" in this page, it is used as a reason not to eat things. It's fine if one makes this a foundation for one's ethics of death, but one must be clear that it is and that it's only one way to look at things. Moreover, one should be clear that using intelligence as a reason to justify or avoid eating an organism leads to the problem that then an assessment of intelligence is vital for decision-making -- and if we happen not to understand an organism's intelligence, then we risk making the "wrong" decision out of ignorance. It can also lead to an essentially eugenicist view in which people as well as other organisms of lesser intelligence are viewed as less valuable. To be clear I'm not saying anyone here is a eugenicist: I'm saying that in history, eugenicists have taken this view. Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there. Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.
- carapace 7y ago
  You remind me of the old joke (based on a true story, I'm told): As the New Guinea man said to the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made us out of meat."
hannasanarion 7y ago
Do you think it is ethical to farm and eat humans?