4 ms·

>Not without destruction or suffering Imagine a world without humans. Every day, millions of animals that are able to feel pain die in horrible agony as they'

>Not without destruction or suffering Imagine a world without humans. Every day, millions of animals that are able to feel pain die in horrible agony as they're eaten alive; die of hunger or disease; are afflicted by horrific parasitism, or birth defects, or any of a hundred different horrors. Earth is a giant ball of suffering, and has been since the first animal with a nervous system sufficient to feel pain evolved. It seems pretty hubristic to lay that at the feet of humanity. Yeah, if we don't coordinate we might wipe out some species, collapse some ecosystems. So? Those ecosystems have beautiful parts in them, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and in any case, their beauty is built on the ongoing torture of (presumably) sentient animals. In that case, bring on the mass extinctions, I say; in fact, we should probably speed them up. Shoot or nuke animals instead of letting them starve to death or be eaten alive. Maybe we can re-introduce animals once we've made them immortal and immune to pain. (I don't actually want this, I like nature and forests. But I like them because I find them beautiful, and I perceive their value as originating from humans (and to a lesser extent sentient animals) finding them beautiful. I don't care about them for some other metaphysical reason, and nature is beautiful <=> humanity is evil isn't a viewpoint I've ended up with. )

bmitc 5y ago
Another cop out: there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? There are two points. One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. Humans are different. We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive. We simply choose to. The second point is that humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world. The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? The argument is to reduce humanity's contributions to the suffering.
- curtainsforus 5y ago
  >Humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world I don't believe that. All the animals that are alive today would die in pain in anyway, no matter what humans do. Every deer that's shot is one not eaten alive by wolves, or starving to death. Does it matter whether a bird drowns in an oil slick or thrashes in the mouth of a crocodile? Animal life is nasty, brutish, and short. Even if we killed a large fraction of the animals on the planet in a painful way, that would be a blip in the colossal historical tapestry of pain, and as there'd be fewer animals in the next generation, it would probably be morally neutral from a consequentialist perspective: the overall, average amount of suffering would be constant. >there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? No, that's not what I'm saying. If I care about suffering, I only care slightly (instrumentally) whether it's caused by humans or nature. You seem to care a lot, but I don't. If I 'm going to decide to care about the suffering of animals generally, then that's going to lead me to certain conclusions. If humans are going to take responsibility for animal suffering, we should take responsibility for all animal suffering, meaning we should reorganize/destroy the ecosphere, replacing it with something more moral. We should also become able to be wise stewards of the new world, of course. But if I put myself into the mindset of "I care about the suffering of animals", then going from that to "humans should be hippies and let nature be, man" seems pretty evil. If the suffering of animals is bad, then nature is bad and should be stopped. >For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive No, animals and plants take as much as they can get, and most of them don't get enough. The ones that don't get what they need in order to survive die, by starvation or by being got by a predator. The balance here is on a see-saw greased with the blood of living things: if I built a system like that, where little furry animals reproduced until there was no food left and then competed increasingly frantically, with some of them eating the others, and then turned around to you and said "look, they've reached a balance! As many of them die horribly as are pumped out! :)", you'd call me a psycho. You're only excusing it because it's natural. It's mathematically beautiful, of course! >The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? Wipe out the natural world: Evacuate humans and scans/genomes of all the animals we're interested in somewhere else and build a paradise there; then wreck the surface of the earth so that nothing bigger than a bacterium can survive. Maybe we could engineer runaway global warming, to turn earth into something resembling Venus? Deliberately irradiate the whole surface to the point that nothing survives? Build lots of orbital mirrors to increase the solar irradiance and boil the oceans? Grey goo? Dream big! If this sounds horrible to you, then I guess you have an aesthetic preference for forests. That's fine, but remember that forests and jungles are hell-pits of torture.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  In your vernacular, this too is a cop out : One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. It is absolutely true that animals do what they do without regard to the consequences of their actions. The western pine beetle doesn't think twice about killing a pine tree that would have lived another hundred years when it uses it to feed its brood. A beaver doesn't poll the prairie dogs that have lived in the meadow for 5 generations before destroying their habit by flooding it. If I understand your argument correctly, it is applying morality to the question, not whether or not something is "natural." And that is absolutely a fair way to go about it. One can argue that it is immoral for humans to do the things they do. That is separate from the question of whether or not it is in their nature to do those things. This statement, "We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive.", is also a problem since if we immediately restored all of the habitat we "destroyed" to convert it to agriculture then there would be a lot of "not surviving" going on. That we should be good stewards of the planet is something that I think we agree. My original comment here is that we have to consider human's impact on that planet to be just as 'natural' as the impact of non-human forces on the planet. And it helps in the debate to understand how much of our nature we, as individuals, can influence. Humans are inherently tribal/social animals and as such we are strongly influenced by the "norms" of behavior around us. A really good recent example of this is masking. In an area ambivalent about masking, masking behavior reflects what others are doing. A lot of people wearing masks? More likely to wear a mask. Few masks in sight? People less likely to wear a mask. Because of this effect, we can (and I think should) influence others to good behavior by exhibiting good behavior. And in the original article this was called out as buildings that increased wildlife diversity over buildings that did not provide habitat. That is both a good and 'moral' thing to do. To bring the conversation full circle, the original comment to which I responded included this: "Have less buildings. Leave more undeveloped land. Reintroduce predators. Remove invasive species. Allow nature to take over (it will)." We do that by creating park areas. Not by tearing down existing facilities[1]. The philosophy that we could "fix" things by removing human change is unrealistic given human nature. [1] Yes we remediate things like mines to revert them back to their state prior to mining but it is rare that a former city will be remediated back to nature. See Detroit as an an example of an opportunity to do so which was not pursued.

bmitc 5y ago

Another cop out: there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? There are two points. One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. Humans are different. We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive. We simply choose to. The second point is that humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world. The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? The argument is to reduce humanity's contributions to the suffering.

curtainsforus 5y ago
>Humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world I don't believe that. All the animals that are alive today would die in pain in anyway, no matter what humans do. Every deer that's shot is one not eaten alive by wolves, or starving to death. Does it matter whether a bird drowns in an oil slick or thrashes in the mouth of a crocodile? Animal life is nasty, brutish, and short. Even if we killed a large fraction of the animals on the planet in a painful way, that would be a blip in the colossal historical tapestry of pain, and as there'd be fewer animals in the next generation, it would probably be morally neutral from a consequentialist perspective: the overall, average amount of suffering would be constant. >there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? No, that's not what I'm saying. If I care about suffering, I only care slightly (instrumentally) whether it's caused by humans or nature. You seem to care a lot, but I don't. If I 'm going to decide to care about the suffering of animals generally, then that's going to lead me to certain conclusions. If humans are going to take responsibility for animal suffering, we should take responsibility for all animal suffering, meaning we should reorganize/destroy the ecosphere, replacing it with something more moral. We should also become able to be wise stewards of the new world, of course. But if I put myself into the mindset of "I care about the suffering of animals", then going from that to "humans should be hippies and let nature be, man" seems pretty evil. If the suffering of animals is bad, then nature is bad and should be stopped. >For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive No, animals and plants take as much as they can get, and most of them don't get enough. The ones that don't get what they need in order to survive die, by starvation or by being got by a predator. The balance here is on a see-saw greased with the blood of living things: if I built a system like that, where little furry animals reproduced until there was no food left and then competed increasingly frantically, with some of them eating the others, and then turned around to you and said "look, they've reached a balance! As many of them die horribly as are pumped out! :)", you'd call me a psycho. You're only excusing it because it's natural. It's mathematically beautiful, of course! >The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? Wipe out the natural world: Evacuate humans and scans/genomes of all the animals we're interested in somewhere else and build a paradise there; then wreck the surface of the earth so that nothing bigger than a bacterium can survive. Maybe we could engineer runaway global warming, to turn earth into something resembling Venus? Deliberately irradiate the whole surface to the point that nothing survives? Build lots of orbital mirrors to increase the solar irradiance and boil the oceans? Grey goo? Dream big! If this sounds horrible to you, then I guess you have an aesthetic preference for forests. That's fine, but remember that forests and jungles are hell-pits of torture.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
In your vernacular, this too is a cop out : One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. It is absolutely true that animals do what they do without regard to the consequences of their actions. The western pine beetle doesn't think twice about killing a pine tree that would have lived another hundred years when it uses it to feed its brood. A beaver doesn't poll the prairie dogs that have lived in the meadow for 5 generations before destroying their habit by flooding it. If I understand your argument correctly, it is applying morality to the question, not whether or not something is "natural." And that is absolutely a fair way to go about it. One can argue that it is immoral for humans to do the things they do. That is separate from the question of whether or not it is in their nature to do those things. This statement, "We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive.", is also a problem since if we immediately restored all of the habitat we "destroyed" to convert it to agriculture then there would be a lot of "not surviving" going on. That we should be good stewards of the planet is something that I think we agree. My original comment here is that we have to consider human's impact on that planet to be just as 'natural' as the impact of non-human forces on the planet. And it helps in the debate to understand how much of our nature we, as individuals, can influence. Humans are inherently tribal/social animals and as such we are strongly influenced by the "norms" of behavior around us. A really good recent example of this is masking. In an area ambivalent about masking, masking behavior reflects what others are doing. A lot of people wearing masks? More likely to wear a mask. Few masks in sight? People less likely to wear a mask. Because of this effect, we can (and I think should) influence others to good behavior by exhibiting good behavior. And in the original article this was called out as buildings that increased wildlife diversity over buildings that did not provide habitat. That is both a good and 'moral' thing to do. To bring the conversation full circle, the original comment to which I responded included this: "Have less buildings. Leave more undeveloped land. Reintroduce predators. Remove invasive species. Allow nature to take over (it will)." We do that by creating park areas. Not by tearing down existing facilities[1]. The philosophy that we could "fix" things by removing human change is unrealistic given human nature. [1] Yes we remediate things like mines to revert them back to their state prior to mining but it is rare that a former city will be remediated back to nature. See Detroit as an an example of an opportunity to do so which was not pursued.