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This is definitely not as bad as the Saudi robot that is a person. Though despite the intelligence of nonhumans I am not sure I can support granting personage t
by snagglegaggle 7y ago
This is definitely not as bad as the Saudi robot that is a person. Though despite the intelligence of nonhumans I am not sure I can support granting personage to things and property at this time.
I think the Old Testament has interesting things to say on this topic: "Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea are under your authority. "
In a lot of ways Judaism and what it evolved into is the unreligion religion. Events in it, like the plagues of Egypt, are digs at the asinine nature of contemporary customs. E.g. the frogs were a plague because the frogs were sacred and could not be killed. In general the Abrahamic God doesn't want you fettering your wealth away on complicated rituals.
In the West, you can usually see a split between people who view animals largely as property and those that don't. The latter concern me, because although I can oppose wanton cruelty -- when it comes down to it, there are people, and not people. And if I need to get rid of property because I can't maintain it, I should be able to do so.
- mellosouls 7y agoI'm unaware of the Saudi robot but as we are a long way off AI, that would be a thing with no inner life. This is a sentient creature, and - leaving aside the clear ethical questions that raises - considering our not always entirely inspirational stewardship of the planet and the creatures on it, I question your support for consigning it all to the cold classification of "property".
- snagglegaggle 7y agoIt is not intended to be cold. I still appreciate nature, enjoy the company of animals, and want to work towards conservation. But a line does need to be drawn and that is where I think it should be drawn. Giving not-people the privileges of people is a slippery slope and I think best reserved until we achieve a greater understanding of intelligence.
- mellosouls 7y agoThat's a fair argument - but I would counter that in the context of animals that behave in what appears to be clearly intelligent and social behaviour of a higher order, higher order rights should follow. They don't need to be the same level, just indicative of a special status.
- snagglegaggle 7y agoI agree, just not that the special status should be codified as law (yet). There are plenty of people problems to solve.
- mellosouls 7y agoSee the above thread in response to the poster making the same argument, tho in a somewhat more crass way.
- snagglegaggle 7y agoI saw them but am not sure they made a point. Can you add anything? They're appealing to emotion by (re)stating that bad things can happen to nonpersons and that the nonpersons have some capacity to feel bad about those things. Which is true and not really disputed. But the counterargument of the relative importance isn't being addressed. Why should we have laws on this? As an extreme example, if someone kills puppies for fun they're probably not a great person. At the same time I do not know of a good legal framework to handle this. Relying on people thinking to themselves "that guy kills puppies for fun and may not be a great person" seems the more robust solution. Even then, what is fun? People selectively breeding dogs sometimes kill litters. If you keep people from killing puppies (for potentially good reasons) you have in a roundabout way made certain animal husbandry illegal.
- mellosouls 7y agoThe comment I'm referring to is the one saying we shouldn't grant rights because bad stuff happens to humans so we should solve those problems first. There are multiple replies to that, including mine, which I refer you to. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100715
- filkatron 7y agoSo what you're saying is that we humans are above nature and we should consider animals as our slaves even though they share similar emotions to ours? Do you really think that animals are here for us and not with us? You think this is moral? And by your logic it's morally okay for an alien race to enslave us, breed us so they can eat us? Jesus fucking christ man. You religious people are the worst. Preaching about morality but behaving/thinking like savages.
- mellosouls 7y agoPlease don't generalise to religion.
- snagglegaggle 7y agoI am not necessarily religious. I included the quote from the Bible as a counterpoint that provides some kind of justification. The Egyptian army was at one point routed by a Roman(?) general driving "holy" animals before his men. Is that... normal? A state failing because of undue respect for animals? So yes, at this point I think people occupy a privileged position in ethical considerations. If you saved an orangutan over a human most people would question your motives and some locales would try you for at least manslaughter.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hos234 7y agoDon't feed the troll. Just walk away.
- ianai 7y agoIdk, I feel a lot of the current “bads” people are committing on others or suffering are due to people not standing up to trolls and bullies.
- late2part 7y agoConsider that your generalization of all religious people as same is illogical, and that some religious may be more or less worse than worst. Perhaps you meant to say that this particular person proselytizing to you is in your subjective opinion the worst. Or perhaps you are comfortable making sweeping generalizations about abstract sets of people.
- simoom22 7y ago'Authority' is a poor but common translation, 'stewardship' or 'care' is closer to the original meaning of that text
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]