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I agree. Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be

I agree. Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle. There is always a risk. Most animals function emotionally like humans, but have no good way of communicating emotions like frustration and anger except through aggression. But locking up animals in cages - those who easily have the capacity to understand what you are doing to them - is cruel and immoral. So you either have to live with them or leave them be in their natural habitat. You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else. So if you end up with an orphaned gorilla in your care, morally you are between a rock and a hard place.

krageon 6y ago
This is exactly it. The argumentation "it is still a wild animal" is fundamentally lazy and seeks to banish a random class of organism to a space where it is okay to be needlessly cruel because understanding how it works is too hard.
- ptsneves 6y ago
  I cordially disagree. I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. What understanding are you talking about? That with understanding the wild animal will not kill and maim randomly? As per other comments it seems evidence is against this reasoning. Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. I think it is quite a high grounded statement to call professional zoo-keepers and related professionals lazy. The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions.
  - naringas 6y ago
    > I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. and I further retort that humans are animals, and that classifying humans into "something other than animals" is fundamentally flawed. Why are so many humans wont on forgetting that we're an animals too? > The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions. I suppose owning humans as pets is already banned in all jurisdictions, so I think we agree on this.
    - alexvoda 6y ago
      I wonder how much religion factors into the belief that humans are a fundamentally different category. Abrahamic religions certanly rely on this idea. No idea about others.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I think it is more fundamental to human nature than can be explained by religion. Just hang around in tech circles and listen to them talk about other people and you'll see they consider themselves to be in some fundamentally different category from the rest of humanity.
    - drdeca 6y ago
      Why are humans unlike (other) animals? Because only humans debate whether they are.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    >Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. Humans who understand other humans also get killed by humans - at rates other animals will never match. In the ballpark of ~20,000 murders are committed every year in the US, yet even though there are 90 million dogs in that same country, only about 30 to 50 people are killed by dogs. It would be pointless comparing the number of fatal bear attacks, because the numbers per year are usually 0-2, and usually by wild animals, not ones in captivity. At the end of the day the most dangerous thing to a human is another human. No other animal comes remotely close.
    - ivanbakel 6y ago
      What is the point being made here? Humans are liable for themselves and their actions - animals are not. It ultimately doesn't matter if an animal has a justification for its actions; being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour.
      - chmod775 6y ago
        > being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour. That is true, but also not related to what your GP was talking about IMHO. I understood their comment as coming from a perspective of either "you should fear what you can't understand/explain - and you can't really understand animals" or "it's their nature to be violent, it doesn't matter whether you understand them", either of which I think is flawed. You made a much better point. I just have a habit of picking at reasoning even if I agree with the conclusion. Sometimes you end up with a more concise and to the point argument at the end of that, and in this case it came from you!
      - mLuby 6y ago
        Animals are liable for their actions. The punishment is usually death by lethal injection or firing squad. The stronger argument is that animals aren't as aware as humans which actions will have consequences. Animals do have customs about what's okay and what's not, but they often don't align with human society's laws. It's "ignorance of the law is no excuse" taken to an extreme.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  That is not what it "seeks" at all.
- ewmiller 6y ago
  You can call an animal "wild" without also condemning it to a cruel fate like the circus. It's not black and white. I don't personally know what the solution is, but I'm sure there's a more elegant middle ground between "let it roam free among humans" and "cage and torture it until it dies."
mechnesium 6y ago
This resonates with me. It deeply disturbs me that other animals still don’t have rights on parity with humans. I can play devil’s advocate and make the ethical argument that animal lives have more intrinsic value than human lives. For one, they are innately innocent due to their (as we currently understand) more limited capacity for reasoning. This limited reasoning dismisses blame when they do things we see as wrong (similar to the way we do for children) and also limits their capacity to cause significant harm to the planet. I will always side with other animals over man. If I could only rescue one organism from a burning building and had to choose between a human or another animal, I’d choose the other animal. If I had to choose which species becomes extinct tomorrow, it would be humans. We are a plague to this planet and solar system. Selfish humans, obsessed with self preservation, will easily disagree with this judgement.
- nefitty 6y ago
  As an anti-speciesist vegetarian, I’d like to note that the above viewpoint probably sounds as extreme and incoherent to me as it does to most other people. Parity as regards rights should be based on interests. There is nothing special about life itself. A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child, and saving the child would generally result in the least amount of suffering. I did my best to take the parent comment seriously, but I really need to stress how ridiculous it is. Please don’t assume that that is a common viewpoint amongst vegan or vegetarians. It ultimately commits the same error: devaluing the life of an individual because it happens to belong to the “wrong” species.
  - mechnesium 6y ago
    I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, so I don't know why you're conflating my devil's advocate argument with those philosophies. > A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child For an anti-speciesist, this is a very anthropocentric and speciesist statement. I would argue that saving the child would cause greater suffering[0], not only because the human condition unto itself is rife with suffering, but because we have the greatest capacity and demonstrated ability to cause grave harm to all species and to the planet, more so than any other living being. The voluntary human extinction movement[1] is a very real movement, however ridiculous you find it to be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Arguments_in_favor_of_suffering_focused_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Argum... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...
jmkni 6y ago
I got a dog recently, and read lots of things online about 'crate training', and had lots of people advising me it was the way to go, so I got a 'crate' and tried it. What a load of shit lol, it's a cage. They should call the process 'cage conditioning', the dog was fully aware he was locked in a cage and didn't like it. Abandoned it very quickly, had a lot more success with just patience and positive reinforcement.
NoOneNew 6y ago
https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ In that video they show how far they still are from domesticated foxes compared to modern dogs. Well, domesticated pretty much means, "desirable traits for human benefit" when you think about it, the same applies to humans, but we call that civilized or sociable. Theres a joke in the comments, something like the fox goes "I'm okay with you being a meter away from me... but let's keep it that way." The dog, "you cant ignore my love!" But I fully disagree on the assessment that larger dogs are more wild. Smaller dogs tend to be complete violent assholes for little to no reason. Larger dogs tend to need more reason to become aggressive, unless they came from an abusive environment. I volunteered at an animal shelter for about a year (admittedly to pick up women originally). But I gladly hung out with pits and shepherds from abused pasts so they can be rehabilitated for new homes. I could never do the same with anything smaller than a border collie. Just never worked out. Large working breed dogs are crazy easy for me to calm down, and I am generally not a brave man. Dogs have been bred the last 40k some odd years to genetically want to be with humans. Then some assholes the past few thousand years decided to breed for looks and tiny sizes instead of companionship. That's what makes the larger working dogs great. Listen to and love humans, and have a job to do is their breeding line. Not just looks, which can breed out the friendly part. Caveat though, there are some pit lines that are a bit whack. Sadly, originally they were bred for fighting other dogs, but super strong friendliness for humans, to avoid the owner getting bit. Which is why they're cuddle bugs with people and are dicks to other dogs. This breed attracted a bunch of dipshits that bred them for just pure aggression, then add on the abuse. So yea... those are the sad cases.
- Pelic4n 6y ago
  A big reason that little dogs tends to be more violent is that they have to compensate their size by agression and appear larger than they are to fend off predators. My bodeguero (spanish terrier) is the most cuddly animal I have ever met but he will 1v1 the sun if I let him.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    My thing is, I've never been bit by a dog bigger than a border collie. I've been bit by chihuahuas, Scottish terriers and whatever those small scraggly white dogs are. I can never remember their names. And these were considered home ready dogs. I feel safer around an abused pitbull than by a "well behaved" chihuahua. I'm not being funny or macho about it. I'm dead serious. While an adult guy like me doesn't care about the little rat bite, that's going to traumatize a little kid away from liking dogs. Not to mention the breeding of extremely poor body traits that torture some of these dogs. They may look cute, but these poor things succumb to a wide range of abnormalities... I guess I'm just bias in general. That whole tea cup dog craze made me really polarized on the issue. I hate self interested, abusive breeders.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I love animals and had dogs and cats living with my family. When I had my first kid, my wife had a large dog (a mixture between a labrador and a german shepard, and probably others - she found it as a puppy attached to a rope in the forest, left to die). The dog was extremely quiet, socialized and what not. When we brought our baby from the hospital, he was really curious. We left him sniff the baby and the dog apparently understood that the thing that was brought in was important and decided to protect it (he was sleeping in front of the baby's room and would not let any stranger approach. I had a similar case when I was a baby - my parents left me with their dog sleeping next to my crib outside and it would just do a "woof" without even waking up if someone would approach. And then, one day, I left the dog alone with my son. My son was in that sort of cage made of ropes he can wander in and the dog was outside. I came back to the room and I found ... the dog licking my son face pressed to the ropes (unexpected happy ending) I was really scared because it could have been something different (my childhood friend was bit to his face by his own dog, a normal one, not pitbull style but Great Dane IIRC). Nothing ever happended but still, this was this one time where it could have had happen and it would have been MY fault, not the dog's one. I now have a cat. Well, my family has it, we just live together. The cat does not interfere with me (except sleeping on my laptop when I am not around) and is extremely found of my younger son (14 yo). I am telling my son to never get his face that close to the cat because she will a day or another scratch him (they are running and jumping together, playing). She scratched my leg once (and would not left from under my son's bed for that day because she was probably scared of what she did) - but that could have had been my face. Accidents happen and animals are animals. This is not something bad - just something one has to be aware of.
- jdmichal 6y ago
  My parents had a husky when I was born. The moment it bit my face was the last moment it spent in the house. Lived in the garage until it was (quickly) rehomed. I don't blame it; it wasn't like it was trying to rip my face off. I think it was just trying to assert itself in the pack order ahead of me. Except the pack leaders weren't too fond of that idea. Ironically, I now love huskies. But would also never get one, because I live in Florida and would not subject such a dog to the weather here.
Spooky23 6y ago
> Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle. Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective. That's the result of traits associated with being an animal living in a pack social structure, along with thousands of years of breeding. When dog behavior crosses a line, the dog is euthanized. > You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else. We do. When humans demonstrate a lack of control that puts others at risk, we apply progressive discipline to discourage future misbehavior. Fines, probation in various flavors, jail, and finally prison. If you steal a phone from an unlocked car, it's usually misdemeanor theft, if you break down my door to steal a phone, it's a felony burglary. > So if you end up with an orphaned gorilla in your care, morally you are between a rock and a hard place. It is really a ranking of priorities. I'm not an ethicist, but generally speaking, the preservation of human life is usually a primary moral imperative.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I think you are overdoing it, what OP clearly had in mind is that we all have the capacity for harm, yet not all humans are locked up simply because of this potential. I sure do have capacity to easily kill a fellow human in various ways, so does everybody I know and presumably so do you. There are multiple reasons why this capacity is never utilized, but that's another topic. You are arguing few steps further about a person who realized this capacity and what society does to them. I don't read much more into that.
- badjeans 6y ago
  > Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective. Debatable... "In 1994, the most recent year for which published data are available, an estimated 4.7 million dog bites occurred in the United States, and approximately 799,700 persons required medical care (1). Of an estimated 333,700 patients treated for dog bites in emergency departments (EDs) in 1994 (2), approximately 6,000 (1.8%) were hospitalized (3)."
mempko 6y ago
Half the people in jails in the USA haven't hurt anyone physically. We seem to lock people up just fine without any display of harm. We are a strange animal indeed.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> But locking up animals in cages - those who easily have the capacity to understand what you are doing to them - is cruel and immoral. So you either have to live with them or leave them be in their natural habitat. I agree completely. I'll go as far as to say the idea of pets must perish.
- dTal 6y ago
  You don't have to lock up a pet. Plenty of dogs lead happy contented lives, with family who take them for walks whenever asked, or even have free range of a generous rural territory. "Pet" can simply mean non-human family member.
Chris2048 6y ago
> You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else. If a toddler could rip your hands off, I wouldn't imagine it would be free to roam society as usual.

krageon 6y ago

This is exactly it. The argumentation "it is still a wild animal" is fundamentally lazy and seeks to banish a random class of organism to a space where it is okay to be needlessly cruel because understanding how it works is too hard.

ptsneves 6y ago
I cordially disagree. I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. What understanding are you talking about? That with understanding the wild animal will not kill and maim randomly? As per other comments it seems evidence is against this reasoning. Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. I think it is quite a high grounded statement to call professional zoo-keepers and related professionals lazy. The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions.
- naringas 6y ago
  > I counter argue that anthropomorphizing of animals is fundamentally flawed. and I further retort that humans are animals, and that classifying humans into "something other than animals" is fundamentally flawed. Why are so many humans wont on forgetting that we're an animals too? > The only understanding i can see is that having wild animals as pets should be banned as they normally are in most jurisdictions. I suppose owning humans as pets is already banned in all jurisdictions, so I think we agree on this.
  - alexvoda 6y ago
    I wonder how much religion factors into the belief that humans are a fundamentally different category. Abrahamic religions certanly rely on this idea. No idea about others.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      I think it is more fundamental to human nature than can be explained by religion. Just hang around in tech circles and listen to them talk about other people and you'll see they consider themselves to be in some fundamentally different category from the rest of humanity.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    Why are humans unlike (other) animals? Because only humans debate whether they are.
- chmod775 6y ago
  >Highly experienced trainers who understand very well their animals end up dead. Humans who understand other humans also get killed by humans - at rates other animals will never match. In the ballpark of ~20,000 murders are committed every year in the US, yet even though there are 90 million dogs in that same country, only about 30 to 50 people are killed by dogs. It would be pointless comparing the number of fatal bear attacks, because the numbers per year are usually 0-2, and usually by wild animals, not ones in captivity. At the end of the day the most dangerous thing to a human is another human. No other animal comes remotely close.
  - ivanbakel 6y ago
    What is the point being made here? Humans are liable for themselves and their actions - animals are not. It ultimately doesn't matter if an animal has a justification for its actions; being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      > being unable to take responsibility for them, from a human perspective, is the biggest separator between human and animal behaviour. That is true, but also not related to what your GP was talking about IMHO. I understood their comment as coming from a perspective of either "you should fear what you can't understand/explain - and you can't really understand animals" or "it's their nature to be violent, it doesn't matter whether you understand them", either of which I think is flawed. You made a much better point. I just have a habit of picking at reasoning even if I agree with the conclusion. Sometimes you end up with a more concise and to the point argument at the end of that, and in this case it came from you!
    - mLuby 6y ago
      Animals are liable for their actions. The punishment is usually death by lethal injection or firing squad. The stronger argument is that animals aren't as aware as humans which actions will have consequences. Animals do have customs about what's okay and what's not, but they often don't align with human society's laws. It's "ignorance of the law is no excuse" taken to an extreme.
slothtrop 6y ago
That is not what it "seeks" at all.
ewmiller 6y ago
You can call an animal "wild" without also condemning it to a cruel fate like the circus. It's not black and white. I don't personally know what the solution is, but I'm sure there's a more elegant middle ground between "let it roam free among humans" and "cage and torture it until it dies."

mechnesium 6y ago

This resonates with me. It deeply disturbs me that other animals still don’t have rights on parity with humans. I can play devil’s advocate and make the ethical argument that animal lives have more intrinsic value than human lives. For one, they are innately innocent due to their (as we currently understand) more limited capacity for reasoning. This limited reasoning dismisses blame when they do things we see as wrong (similar to the way we do for children) and also limits their capacity to cause significant harm to the planet. I will always side with other animals over man. If I could only rescue one organism from a burning building and had to choose between a human or another animal, I’d choose the other animal. If I had to choose which species becomes extinct tomorrow, it would be humans. We are a plague to this planet and solar system. Selfish humans, obsessed with self preservation, will easily disagree with this judgement.

nefitty 6y ago
As an anti-speciesist vegetarian, I’d like to note that the above viewpoint probably sounds as extreme and incoherent to me as it does to most other people. Parity as regards rights should be based on interests. There is nothing special about life itself. A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child, and saving the child would generally result in the least amount of suffering. I did my best to take the parent comment seriously, but I really need to stress how ridiculous it is. Please don’t assume that that is a common viewpoint amongst vegan or vegetarians. It ultimately commits the same error: devaluing the life of an individual because it happens to belong to the “wrong” species.
- mechnesium 6y ago
  I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, so I don't know why you're conflating my devil's advocate argument with those philosophies. > A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child For an anti-speciesist, this is a very anthropocentric and speciesist statement. I would argue that saving the child would cause greater suffering[0], not only because the human condition unto itself is rife with suffering, but because we have the greatest capacity and demonstrated ability to cause grave harm to all species and to the planet, more so than any other living being. The voluntary human extinction movement[1] is a very real movement, however ridiculous you find it to be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Arguments_in_favor_of_suffering_focused_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Argum... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

jmkni 6y ago

I got a dog recently, and read lots of things online about 'crate training', and had lots of people advising me it was the way to go, so I got a 'crate' and tried it. What a load of shit lol, it's a cage. They should call the process 'cage conditioning', the dog was fully aware he was locked in a cage and didn't like it. Abandoned it very quickly, had a lot more success with just patience and positive reinforcement.

NoOneNew 6y ago

https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ In that video they show how far they still are from domesticated foxes compared to modern dogs. Well, domesticated pretty much means, "desirable traits for human benefit" when you think about it, the same applies to humans, but we call that civilized or sociable. Theres a joke in the comments, something like the fox goes "I'm okay with you being a meter away from me... but let's keep it that way." The dog, "you cant ignore my love!" But I fully disagree on the assessment that larger dogs are more wild. Smaller dogs tend to be complete violent assholes for little to no reason. Larger dogs tend to need more reason to become aggressive, unless they came from an abusive environment. I volunteered at an animal shelter for about a year (admittedly to pick up women originally). But I gladly hung out with pits and shepherds from abused pasts so they can be rehabilitated for new homes. I could never do the same with anything smaller than a border collie. Just never worked out. Large working breed dogs are crazy easy for me to calm down, and I am generally not a brave man. Dogs have been bred the last 40k some odd years to genetically want to be with humans. Then some assholes the past few thousand years decided to breed for looks and tiny sizes instead of companionship. That's what makes the larger working dogs great. Listen to and love humans, and have a job to do is their breeding line. Not just looks, which can breed out the friendly part. Caveat though, there are some pit lines that are a bit whack. Sadly, originally they were bred for fighting other dogs, but super strong friendliness for humans, to avoid the owner getting bit. Which is why they're cuddle bugs with people and are dicks to other dogs. This breed attracted a bunch of dipshits that bred them for just pure aggression, then add on the abuse. So yea... those are the sad cases.

Pelic4n 6y ago
A big reason that little dogs tends to be more violent is that they have to compensate their size by agression and appear larger than they are to fend off predators. My bodeguero (spanish terrier) is the most cuddly animal I have ever met but he will 1v1 the sun if I let him.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  My thing is, I've never been bit by a dog bigger than a border collie. I've been bit by chihuahuas, Scottish terriers and whatever those small scraggly white dogs are. I can never remember their names. And these were considered home ready dogs. I feel safer around an abused pitbull than by a "well behaved" chihuahua. I'm not being funny or macho about it. I'm dead serious. While an adult guy like me doesn't care about the little rat bite, that's going to traumatize a little kid away from liking dogs. Not to mention the breeding of extremely poor body traits that torture some of these dogs. They may look cute, but these poor things succumb to a wide range of abnormalities... I guess I'm just bias in general. That whole tea cup dog craze made me really polarized on the issue. I hate self interested, abusive breeders.

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

I love animals and had dogs and cats living with my family. When I had my first kid, my wife had a large dog (a mixture between a labrador and a german shepard, and probably others - she found it as a puppy attached to a rope in the forest, left to die). The dog was extremely quiet, socialized and what not. When we brought our baby from the hospital, he was really curious. We left him sniff the baby and the dog apparently understood that the thing that was brought in was important and decided to protect it (he was sleeping in front of the baby's room and would not let any stranger approach. I had a similar case when I was a baby - my parents left me with their dog sleeping next to my crib outside and it would just do a "woof" without even waking up if someone would approach. And then, one day, I left the dog alone with my son. My son was in that sort of cage made of ropes he can wander in and the dog was outside. I came back to the room and I found ... the dog licking my son face pressed to the ropes (unexpected happy ending) I was really scared because it could have been something different (my childhood friend was bit to his face by his own dog, a normal one, not pitbull style but Great Dane IIRC). Nothing ever happended but still, this was this one time where it could have had happen and it would have been MY fault, not the dog's one. I now have a cat. Well, my family has it, we just live together. The cat does not interfere with me (except sleeping on my laptop when I am not around) and is extremely found of my younger son (14 yo). I am telling my son to never get his face that close to the cat because she will a day or another scratch him (they are running and jumping together, playing). She scratched my leg once (and would not left from under my son's bed for that day because she was probably scared of what she did) - but that could have had been my face. Accidents happen and animals are animals. This is not something bad - just something one has to be aware of.

jdmichal 6y ago
My parents had a husky when I was born. The moment it bit my face was the last moment it spent in the house. Lived in the garage until it was (quickly) rehomed. I don't blame it; it wasn't like it was trying to rip my face off. I think it was just trying to assert itself in the pack order ahead of me. Except the pack leaders weren't too fond of that idea. Ironically, I now love huskies. But would also never get one, because I live in Florida and would not subject such a dog to the weather here.

Spooky23 6y ago

> Though you could make a similar argument for domesticated animals like dogs. Especially larger dogs. Or humans! There are a lot of things that can be dangerous to humans, especially children, when they fly off the handle. Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective. That's the result of traits associated with being an animal living in a pack social structure, along with thousands of years of breeding. When dog behavior crosses a line, the dog is euthanized. > You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else. We do. When humans demonstrate a lack of control that puts others at risk, we apply progressive discipline to discourage future misbehavior. Fines, probation in various flavors, jail, and finally prison. If you steal a phone from an unlocked car, it's usually misdemeanor theft, if you break down my door to steal a phone, it's a felony burglary. > So if you end up with an orphaned gorilla in your care, morally you are between a rock and a hard place. It is really a ranking of priorities. I'm not an ethicist, but generally speaking, the preservation of human life is usually a primary moral imperative.

saiya-jin 6y ago
I think you are overdoing it, what OP clearly had in mind is that we all have the capacity for harm, yet not all humans are locked up simply because of this potential. I sure do have capacity to easily kill a fellow human in various ways, so does everybody I know and presumably so do you. There are multiple reasons why this capacity is never utilized, but that's another topic. You are arguing few steps further about a person who realized this capacity and what society does to them. I don't read much more into that.
badjeans 6y ago
> Dogs, regardless of size are safe to coexist with humans provided they are treated appropriately from a sustenance and behavior/training perspective. Debatable... "In 1994, the most recent year for which published data are available, an estimated 4.7 million dog bites occurred in the United States, and approximately 799,700 persons required medical care (1). Of an estimated 333,700 patients treated for dog bites in emergency departments (EDs) in 1994 (2), approximately 6,000 (1.8%) were hospitalized (3)."

mempko 6y ago

Half the people in jails in the USA haven't hurt anyone physically. We seem to lock people up just fine without any display of harm. We are a strange animal indeed.

vagrantJin 6y ago

> But locking up animals in cages - those who easily have the capacity to understand what you are doing to them - is cruel and immoral. So you either have to live with them or leave them be in their natural habitat. I agree completely. I'll go as far as to say the idea of pets must perish.

dTal 6y ago
You don't have to lock up a pet. Plenty of dogs lead happy contented lives, with family who take them for walks whenever asked, or even have free range of a generous rural territory. "Pet" can simply mean non-human family member.

Chris2048 6y ago

> You wouldn't lock up a human either for having the capacity to harm someone else. If a toddler could rip your hands off, I wouldn't imagine it would be free to roam society as usual.