6 ms·

I mean, we know cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs are sentient yet we consume them. Why would we make an exception for octopods and shellfish?

adamcharnock 5y ago
I guess I didn’t know that either. I should probably read into this in more detail…
- traverseda 5y ago
  You're probably thinking of "sapient" which generally implies higher reasoning. "Sentient" means able to feel things, and it's pretty obvious that animals can feel pain.
  - forty 5y ago
    It's not obvious at all. Actually it's not obvious at all that anything else than yourself can feel pain :) I agree that it's a reasonable extrapolation though :)
    - rembicilious 5y ago
      I have stepped on a dogs foot. It made a “Yipe!” noise and leapt back. Then it approached me “submissively”, with it’s head held low and tail down. It seems rather “obvious” to me that the animal felt pain, reacted suddenly to the sensation, and then completely changed it’s demeanour towards me.
      - alickz 5y ago
        I believe the person you're responding to is referencing solipsism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
        forty 5y ago
        Yes, something like this. For all we know, everything else might just be a big chemical reaction, with no pain involved. The dog reaction might just be like a reflex. The only reason why we know it own pain exist is, well, because it hurts :) (But once again, I think the theory that other people and animals also feel pain is reasonable and probably the truth)
- slothtrop 5y ago
  Sentience is the capacity to experience sensations like pain or emotions. Insects have a nervous system and consequently feel pain, which makes them sentient. That doesn't appear to be the key metric we consider when culling/killing things, in the end. It's not clear that they have the capacity for "anguish", let alone understand it. The old practice of cooking crab and lobsters was to subject them to pain for a needlessly lengthy period of time which I think is what the statuses is meant to curb. On the other hand, pesticide use is probably painful, albeit necessary. Seems rather arbitrary not to consider insects sentient, because they exhibit the same things. Intelligence is necessary for suffering, however. We're not good at measuring this capacity for suffering, we just know that certain animals exhibit it and for that reason we (should) take care to avoid it. Are there different levels of it? I would intuit that a bee slaughtered by a wasp suffers, but is that a level of suffering that should matter to us? No easy answer but in the end I understand playing it safe in broadstrokes fashion
  - goatlover 5y ago
    > Insects have a nervous system and consequently feel pain, which makes them sentient. I'm not so sure about this. To feel pain requires consciousness. Behavior is not consciousness. It often indicates it in animals like humans with complex nervous systems. But it's very unclear when we get to something with a few thousand neurons. They likely won't any of the neural correlates of consciousness that we do. If insects or crustaceans are conscious of anything, it's not the kind of consciousness we have.
    - wruza 5y ago
      I don’t think that pain requires consciousness, but not in a way you probably think I am right now. I think that we don’t feel pain either. It’s a combination of a prediction and a sensation that assembles to pain. And when you split pain into parts, interesting things happen. First, it is a unconditional limb/muscle reaction that is hard-coded. It’s uncomfortable but doesn’t constitute “suffering”. Then there is a sensation: burning, broken, cold, etc that makes you do something in the range of acting to reduce the damage to screaming (message danger to others and maybe get help) and kicking erratically (to counteract a predator). It’s more close to “suffer”, but short episodes don’t really add up to long-term or intensive “anguish”. Some people have high pain tolerance, but it doesn’t mean they don’t feel it, they simply don’t change their state of minds so much. And then may come the understanding that you’re going to unfair die or become disabled for life, and these feelings and thoughts may be comparable to a situation of no physical pain at all, e.g. if you end up with an unfair life sentence. So basically my idea is that dying in pain is just a very negative sum of these negative components, but consciousness is not the key. It only helps to see your fate, whatever it is. Which parts of “pain” we are trying to reduce by these laws is unclear.
otherotherchris 5y ago
Shellfish aren't a massive industry so no one with political power cares to obstruct these laws. Cattle and sheep are usually treated well because cortisol reduces weight gain. Pigs not so much...
- ohyeshedid 5y ago
  What metrics are you basing that first statement on?
  - mduncs 5y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but according to this site here [0], crustaceans make up $262M or 0.64% of the agricultural export for the UK. Not small, but certainly smaller than other agriculture sectors. [0] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&product=undefined&year=2019&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&product=und...
    - ohyeshedid 5y ago
      I don't know if using exports is anywhere near the industry totals. According to NOAA, in regards to US totals[1]: "Overall, the highest value U.S. commercial species were salmon ($688 million), crabs ($610 million), lobsters ($594 million), shrimp ($531 million), scallops ($512 million), and Alaska pollock ($413 million)." [1]https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/american-seafood-industry-steadily-increases-its-footprint https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/american-seafood-industry...
      - otherotherchris 5y ago
        Most trawlers are owned by small businesses. They have very little lobbying power compared to the massive multinational agricultural conglomerates that control pork and poultry. JBS in particular is enormous, it owns almost a third of global pork processing through it's subsidiaries.
yeetaccount2 5y ago
Pigs might be as smart as 5th graders in some respects, and form complex long term relationships. Some even seem to decorate their dwellings with flowers they pick. Chickens are merciless and deserve everything they get.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
And we make a lot of them go through hell for their whole lifespan.
nemo44x 5y ago
1) Find animals (behaviors) some people eat (do) but most don’t. 2) Make an appeal to some emotion to politically limit their harvest (acceptability). 3) Expand this program to the next least popular animal (behavior), repeat, etc. 4) Congrats, you’ve changed public opinion on what animal to eat (behavior) is moral and ethical. This is the formula of progressivism.
- alex_smart 5y ago
  > This is the formula of progressivism. The process seems identical to majoritarianism.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    It's the opposite actually. It's the dictatorship of the small minority. Nassim Taleb write an interesting article detailing it [1]. 1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
    - Frondo 5y ago
      If you have convinced people to change their minds by dint of your ideas, how is that a dictatorship? No one's sending people with guns into lobster boil festivals or grocery stores.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      >> For during the Hellenistic era, Greek replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca in the Levant, and the scribes of Damascus maintained their records in Greek. But it was not the Greeks who spread Greek around the Mediterranean –Alexander (himself not Greek but Macedonian and spoke a different dialect of Greek) did not lead to an immediate deep cultural Hellenization. Right. And the Spartans weren't Greek but Spartan and spoke a different dialect of Greek, the Laconic dialect. And the Athenians weren't Greek but Athenian and spoke a different dialect of Greek, the Attic dialect. And so on. But I wonder, which is the one true Greek language that all those dialects were dialects of? And who were the true Greeks who spoke it? Or should I ask, is every bit of information in the article just as dodgy as the bit I quote above?
SyzygistSix 5y ago
We don't boil cattle, sheep, or chickens alive. They are killed quickly, by law.
- cphoover 5y ago
  you haven't seen Halal slaughter then I imagine...

adamcharnock 5y ago

I guess I didn’t know that either. I should probably read into this in more detail…

traverseda 5y ago
You're probably thinking of "sapient" which generally implies higher reasoning. "Sentient" means able to feel things, and it's pretty obvious that animals can feel pain.
- forty 5y ago
  It's not obvious at all. Actually it's not obvious at all that anything else than yourself can feel pain :) I agree that it's a reasonable extrapolation though :)
  - rembicilious 5y ago
    I have stepped on a dogs foot. It made a “Yipe!” noise and leapt back. Then it approached me “submissively”, with it’s head held low and tail down. It seems rather “obvious” to me that the animal felt pain, reacted suddenly to the sensation, and then completely changed it’s demeanour towards me.
    - alickz 5y ago
      I believe the person you're responding to is referencing solipsism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
      - forty 5y ago
        Yes, something like this. For all we know, everything else might just be a big chemical reaction, with no pain involved. The dog reaction might just be like a reflex. The only reason why we know it own pain exist is, well, because it hurts :) (But once again, I think the theory that other people and animals also feel pain is reasonable and probably the truth)
slothtrop 5y ago
Sentience is the capacity to experience sensations like pain or emotions. Insects have a nervous system and consequently feel pain, which makes them sentient. That doesn't appear to be the key metric we consider when culling/killing things, in the end. It's not clear that they have the capacity for "anguish", let alone understand it. The old practice of cooking crab and lobsters was to subject them to pain for a needlessly lengthy period of time which I think is what the statuses is meant to curb. On the other hand, pesticide use is probably painful, albeit necessary. Seems rather arbitrary not to consider insects sentient, because they exhibit the same things. Intelligence is necessary for suffering, however. We're not good at measuring this capacity for suffering, we just know that certain animals exhibit it and for that reason we (should) take care to avoid it. Are there different levels of it? I would intuit that a bee slaughtered by a wasp suffers, but is that a level of suffering that should matter to us? No easy answer but in the end I understand playing it safe in broadstrokes fashion
- goatlover 5y ago
  > Insects have a nervous system and consequently feel pain, which makes them sentient. I'm not so sure about this. To feel pain requires consciousness. Behavior is not consciousness. It often indicates it in animals like humans with complex nervous systems. But it's very unclear when we get to something with a few thousand neurons. They likely won't any of the neural correlates of consciousness that we do. If insects or crustaceans are conscious of anything, it's not the kind of consciousness we have.
  - wruza 5y ago
    I don’t think that pain requires consciousness, but not in a way you probably think I am right now. I think that we don’t feel pain either. It’s a combination of a prediction and a sensation that assembles to pain. And when you split pain into parts, interesting things happen. First, it is a unconditional limb/muscle reaction that is hard-coded. It’s uncomfortable but doesn’t constitute “suffering”. Then there is a sensation: burning, broken, cold, etc that makes you do something in the range of acting to reduce the damage to screaming (message danger to others and maybe get help) and kicking erratically (to counteract a predator). It’s more close to “suffer”, but short episodes don’t really add up to long-term or intensive “anguish”. Some people have high pain tolerance, but it doesn’t mean they don’t feel it, they simply don’t change their state of minds so much. And then may come the understanding that you’re going to unfair die or become disabled for life, and these feelings and thoughts may be comparable to a situation of no physical pain at all, e.g. if you end up with an unfair life sentence. So basically my idea is that dying in pain is just a very negative sum of these negative components, but consciousness is not the key. It only helps to see your fate, whatever it is. Which parts of “pain” we are trying to reduce by these laws is unclear.

otherotherchris 5y ago

Shellfish aren't a massive industry so no one with political power cares to obstruct these laws. Cattle and sheep are usually treated well because cortisol reduces weight gain. Pigs not so much...

ohyeshedid 5y ago
What metrics are you basing that first statement on?
- mduncs 5y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but according to this site here [0], crustaceans make up $262M or 0.64% of the agricultural export for the UK. Not small, but certainly smaller than other agriculture sectors. [0] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&product=undefined&year=2019&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&product=und...
  - ohyeshedid 5y ago
    I don't know if using exports is anywhere near the industry totals. According to NOAA, in regards to US totals[1]: "Overall, the highest value U.S. commercial species were salmon ($688 million), crabs ($610 million), lobsters ($594 million), shrimp ($531 million), scallops ($512 million), and Alaska pollock ($413 million)." [1]https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/american-seafood-industry-steadily-increases-its-footprint https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/american-seafood-industry...
    - otherotherchris 5y ago
      Most trawlers are owned by small businesses. They have very little lobbying power compared to the massive multinational agricultural conglomerates that control pork and poultry. JBS in particular is enormous, it owns almost a third of global pork processing through it's subsidiaries.

yeetaccount2 5y ago

Pigs might be as smart as 5th graders in some respects, and form complex long term relationships. Some even seem to decorate their dwellings with flowers they pick. Chickens are merciless and deserve everything they get.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

And we make a lot of them go through hell for their whole lifespan.

nemo44x 5y ago

1) Find animals (behaviors) some people eat (do) but most don’t. 2) Make an appeal to some emotion to politically limit their harvest (acceptability). 3) Expand this program to the next least popular animal (behavior), repeat, etc. 4) Congrats, you’ve changed public opinion on what animal to eat (behavior) is moral and ethical. This is the formula of progressivism.

alex_smart 5y ago
> This is the formula of progressivism. The process seems identical to majoritarianism.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  It's the opposite actually. It's the dictatorship of the small minority. Nassim Taleb write an interesting article detailing it [1]. 1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
  - Frondo 5y ago
    If you have convinced people to change their minds by dint of your ideas, how is that a dictatorship? No one's sending people with guns into lobster boil festivals or grocery stores.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    >> For during the Hellenistic era, Greek replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca in the Levant, and the scribes of Damascus maintained their records in Greek. But it was not the Greeks who spread Greek around the Mediterranean –Alexander (himself not Greek but Macedonian and spoke a different dialect of Greek) did not lead to an immediate deep cultural Hellenization. Right. And the Spartans weren't Greek but Spartan and spoke a different dialect of Greek, the Laconic dialect. And the Athenians weren't Greek but Athenian and spoke a different dialect of Greek, the Attic dialect. And so on. But I wonder, which is the one true Greek language that all those dialects were dialects of? And who were the true Greeks who spoke it? Or should I ask, is every bit of information in the article just as dodgy as the bit I quote above?

SyzygistSix 5y ago

We don't boil cattle, sheep, or chickens alive. They are killed quickly, by law.

cphoover 5y ago
you haven't seen Halal slaughter then I imagine...