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Sometimes I like to think about how historians will talk about us in the distant future where artificial meat production is the norm. I think it is quite likely
by uh_uh 5y ago
Sometimes I like to think about how historians will talk about us in the distant future where artificial meat production is the norm. I think it is quite likely that the big story about us will be our treatment of other conscious animals rather than the culture war issues dominating people's minds now.
- jm__87 5y agoHumans are still doing some pretty awful things to each other, I'm not sure our treatment of animals is really near the top of the list. We can obviously do much better with regard to our treatment of animals, but the same can be said about a lot of things.
- uh_uh 5y agoI think we have too look at the numbers. There are 600 million pigs kept worldwide, most of them in miserable circumstances. The more this number grows (and it is on a growth trajectory) the more we should be concerned about this. (Though my personal opinion is that the current number is already unacceptable.)
- EvilEy3 5y agoThere are 700 million people below extreme poverty level(less than 1.90$ a day. Tell them how concerned you are about pigs.
- MperorM 5y agoWe should be concerned about both. That said, whether to spend your energy on global poverty or abolishing factory farming really comes down to how you highly you rank animal suffering. Is a thousand chickens tortured from birth to slaughter, worse than someone dying from malaria? What about ten thousand? It's not at all obvious to me how animal sentience compares to human sentience, but it's clear to me that we should at least give it some consideration. Even when I give animals only a fraction of the concern I have for humans, it's clear to me that factory farming is an incredible source of unnecessary suffering. I hope we can learn to be considerate of not only humans different from us but other species too.
- lamontcg 5y agoLike us looking at times before slavery was abolished. We're probably on the wrong side of history. The really big issue staring us in the face though is that our treatment of animals is accelerating the pace of pandemics. Every tightly confined animal farm in the world is another lab doing serial passage gain of function experiments with zero BSL protections by the lab workers.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago> Sometimes I like to think about how historians will talk about us in the distant future where artificial meat production is the norm. Why is "artificial meat production" the norm in "the distant future"? Couldn't humans just as well re-organise their societies in small agrarian groups that produce their food without torturing animals?