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If people separate themselves from nature and do not have personal friendship and daily interaction with animals, I think it is more difficult to care about the

If people separate themselves from nature and do not have personal friendship and daily interaction with animals, I think it is more difficult to care about them generally, based on the social rule of "statistical numbing" where studies have shown that we care more about individual creatures that we know something about than groups that we don't (1,2). (1) https://bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/statistical-numbing-why-millions-can-die-and-we-dont-care https://bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/statistical-num... (2) https://www.ibtimes.com/why-we-care-more-about-death-lion-thousand-dead-children-2032381 https://www.ibtimes.com/why-we-care-more-about-death-lion-th...

giantg2 5y ago
But then the better solution is to have the people interact with useful animals, like service animals or agricultural animals. Pets would be superfluous when there are other animals that could provide interactions and another useful purpose. This would be a more efficient use of resources and more climate friendly.
- warent 5y ago
  I'm not sure how you got this conclusion, it seems like the exact opposite of what they're saying. Placing animals in buckets of "useful" and "useless" is not empathy; that's back to the point of treating them like tools or exploitable resources. Love and empathy is not intended to be conditional on what value you can reap from it. At best that's a business relationship, and at worst it's something very dark.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "...treating them like tools or exploitable resources." Everything is a resource regardless of whether it is exploited. The person saying empathy comes from having exposure to pets is in essence saying pets are a resource to cultivate empathy and should be exploited as such. The issue is resource constraints. Pets consume a lot of argicultural and pharmaceutical resources. You talk of love and empathy being unconditional, but when you live in a resource constrained world, should we spend money creating, housing, and feeding pets? Or should we care for the vulnerable humans? Should we stop keeping pets so that we don't need the agriculture that is required to support them, thus feeding people or allowing the land to return to the natural world and it's native animals? Resources are a part of the equation. It seems many people ignore the n-order impacts. It's the same as people buying their processed food or meat without ever seeing the source and process. Probably even more so with kibble since it doesn't look like food to us.
    - warent 5y ago
      Utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a form of exploitation in the same way that being kind and generous to people in order to feel good about oneself is a form of selfishness. The Dalai Lama refers to this as "wise selfishness." As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place. You could say it's a symbiotic relationship of wise exploitation. (EDIT: To clarify, the difference here is that challenges which arise in such relationships serve to grow and enhance empathy and love. Whereas with a work animal / tool, challenges in the relationship means discarding the beast and replacing it with something more useful) As far as the hypothetical situations go, it's a red herring that I don't have the time to dive into.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        You are ignoring the n-order impacts like resource allocation. You are clearly not generating empathy for the animals that your pet is consuming. It also seems any positive impact is negligible give the current status quo. "As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place." emphasis mine This is a highly speculative opinion that provides no cost benefit analysis.
  - summm 5y ago
    Yet practically all pet owners use and exploit their pets emotionally. The term "pet loves you unconditionally" used as an argument for pets is revealing: They are mostly kept to give the owner a feeling of being loved, which is much harder to get from other human beings. Ideally suited for increasingly narcissist population. Second, they are used to virtue signal, to increase social capital. The saying goes, if you cared for pets, you would be a good person, and in reverse, if you did not like pets, you would be a bad person. This is obviously wholly unsubstantiated, and there are numerous counterexamples. This is true even more for "rescues", which makes the owners feel like saviors. And as usual, because many people have incorporated the meme of pet ownership so deeply into their identity, they cannot argue about this rationally.
summm 5y ago
This is a fake argument. Owners of carnivores happily feed meat of numerous chicken, pigs and cows to their pets. Keepers of free-roaming cats accept that each of those kills 100 birds and rodents per year.

giantg2 5y ago

But then the better solution is to have the people interact with useful animals, like service animals or agricultural animals. Pets would be superfluous when there are other animals that could provide interactions and another useful purpose. This would be a more efficient use of resources and more climate friendly.

warent 5y ago
I'm not sure how you got this conclusion, it seems like the exact opposite of what they're saying. Placing animals in buckets of "useful" and "useless" is not empathy; that's back to the point of treating them like tools or exploitable resources. Love and empathy is not intended to be conditional on what value you can reap from it. At best that's a business relationship, and at worst it's something very dark.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "...treating them like tools or exploitable resources." Everything is a resource regardless of whether it is exploited. The person saying empathy comes from having exposure to pets is in essence saying pets are a resource to cultivate empathy and should be exploited as such. The issue is resource constraints. Pets consume a lot of argicultural and pharmaceutical resources. You talk of love and empathy being unconditional, but when you live in a resource constrained world, should we spend money creating, housing, and feeding pets? Or should we care for the vulnerable humans? Should we stop keeping pets so that we don't need the agriculture that is required to support them, thus feeding people or allowing the land to return to the natural world and it's native animals? Resources are a part of the equation. It seems many people ignore the n-order impacts. It's the same as people buying their processed food or meat without ever seeing the source and process. Probably even more so with kibble since it doesn't look like food to us.
  - warent 5y ago
    Utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a form of exploitation in the same way that being kind and generous to people in order to feel good about oneself is a form of selfishness. The Dalai Lama refers to this as "wise selfishness." As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place. You could say it's a symbiotic relationship of wise exploitation. (EDIT: To clarify, the difference here is that challenges which arise in such relationships serve to grow and enhance empathy and love. Whereas with a work animal / tool, challenges in the relationship means discarding the beast and replacing it with something more useful) As far as the hypothetical situations go, it's a red herring that I don't have the time to dive into.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      You are ignoring the n-order impacts like resource allocation. You are clearly not generating empathy for the animals that your pet is consuming. It also seems any positive impact is negligible give the current status quo. "As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place." emphasis mine This is a highly speculative opinion that provides no cost benefit analysis.
- summm 5y ago
  Yet practically all pet owners use and exploit their pets emotionally. The term "pet loves you unconditionally" used as an argument for pets is revealing: They are mostly kept to give the owner a feeling of being loved, which is much harder to get from other human beings. Ideally suited for increasingly narcissist population. Second, they are used to virtue signal, to increase social capital. The saying goes, if you cared for pets, you would be a good person, and in reverse, if you did not like pets, you would be a bad person. This is obviously wholly unsubstantiated, and there are numerous counterexamples. This is true even more for "rescues", which makes the owners feel like saviors. And as usual, because many people have incorporated the meme of pet ownership so deeply into their identity, they cannot argue about this rationally.

summm 5y ago

This is a fake argument. Owners of carnivores happily feed meat of numerous chicken, pigs and cows to their pets. Keepers of free-roaming cats accept that each of those kills 100 birds and rodents per year.