14 ms·

Octopi I understand, but lobsters? They have less than half the nervous system of an ant [1]. Are individual ants sentient and worthy of legislating over? [1]

Octopi I understand, but lobsters? They have less than half the nervous system of an ant [1]. Are individual ants sentient and worthy of legislating over? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of...

adriand 5y ago
By this logic, humans should be given only half the consideration we give to orcas, which according to the resource you posted, have twice the neurons we do.
- lanevorockz 5y ago
  It also means that deep learning algorithms will soon deserve more rights than humans.
- yostrovs 5y ago
  Once sentient, extra neurons don't change the status of a sentient being.
- BeeBoBub 5y ago
  That’s not really the argument monkeybutton is making, the point is lobsters’ neural complexity is similar to ants, and orcas are comparable to humans.
  - lanevorockz 5y ago
    It’s still a gradation, “as complex” is obviously a stretch. The whole argument is silly, soon turning off my Deep Learning algorithms because they are more complex than lobster.
    - jojobas 5y ago
      500 years ago the argument that black people should have rights was just as silly. We'll live to see some sort of AI rights protection laws.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        No it wasn't, the argument was as silly as it is now, for a non-subjective definition of "silly". 500 years ago science was less mature, and unable to determine what was objectively silly, and what wasn't.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    Ants are intelligent enough to form civilization. (I think the only other species than humans.) Granted, ant intelligence is a hive mind.
- createunderrate 5y ago
  The ratio of neuron count to body size is the important measurement. An orca might have twice the neurons, but those extra neurons go toward motor control, not experiencing suffering and contemplating mortality.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
moeris 5y ago
Yes. The bar for sentience is quite low. It only means that one is capable of feeling sensations. (For example, Wikipedia gives the definition, "Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations.")
- agravier 5y ago
  Why are not all animals recognised as such under that law?
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of legislators lack sentience themselves...
  - The_rationalist 5y ago
    Would you say tardigrades can feel sensations? I mean yes they can detect and process inputs from the external world but given a lack of better understanding, we believe that qualiesque sentience require a decent number of neurons.
  - timClicks 5y ago
    Because at times it's convenient to maim and/or kill them.
    - ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
      Sometimes it is necessary. Pest control is inherent. We cannot allow mice, rats, etc to live in urban environments unchecked. Mice are sentient, does that mean we should only use no-kill traps and then release the mice somewhere far away? Many urban pests have population numbers that are 50-100X higher per square mile in the city than they could sustain in the countryside. So if we could even theoretically capture them and release them in the countryside, most would die due lack of sufficient food, which also seems unethical. And simply releasing a pest on the other side of the city so it isn't bothering your house clearly isn't solving the problem. Killing animals, particularly pests, seems like an inherent part of urban living. Is this unethical? I don't think so.
shakna 5y ago
The line for sentience is a very low bar to hurdle. Trees may demonstrate sentience [0]. The larger problem is that people are generally thinking of sapience, but sapience tends to be defined in axiomatic terms, so we don't have a clear understanding of what it requires or means. [0] https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03220.x https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-...
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  I don't see how your link supports trees potentially being sentient.
  - bardworx 5y ago
    Disclaimer: i don’t have a dog in the fight…or a branch on a tree, in this context. Sentient is defined as able to perceive or feel things. The paper linked discusses how trees can “communicate” and “feel” based on release of specific chemicals. An exert from the introduction: “Recent research has revealed that plants can sense their neighbours without direct physical contact; mechanisms for this include detection of a reduced ratio of red to far-red in light reflected from neighbouring foliage…” This was also a plot of a terrible M. Night Shyamalan movie. That’s the connection the poster suggested, as the bar for sentience is quite low.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      I feel like Star Trek handled the question much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience. Calling trees sentient is just nonsense. And I mean that literally. I try not to dismiss people's work out of hand, but there's a certain line of philosophical thought whose best rebuttal is to ignore it.
      - 5y ago
TeeMassive 5y ago
It's more about how much they look like human babies. Species with more neotenic traits get more protections: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0006 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0006 Sure lobsters do not look like human babies, but more than ants.
- Rastonbury 5y ago
  You are saying lobsters look more like babies than ants? Do you mean in terms of size, because neither have any similarities to a baby...
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    Yes and no. Yes they are more of the same size. Visually ants are little dots on the ground. Lobsters also have something that looks more like hands than ants do.
ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
Octopi is not the correct plural. Octopus is of greek origin, not latin. Thus, its greek plural is octopodes. And thus, since we don't tend to use greek plurals in english, the other proper plural is octopuses. Octopi is what's known as a hypercorrection. "A hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal."[1] Now, you will find octopi in the dictionary, but only because so many people have engaged in this hypercorrection that it has become widespread and dictionaries reflect common usage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
- elcano 5y ago
  I wonder if the trend of using the 'Latinx' term falls under the hypercorrection definition or there's something else to describe it. I'm not passing judgement on the inclusiveness intention, but the English word for Latino and Latina is just Latin, which doesn't have gender. There's no need to mix linguistics with algebra and add a gender variable to the latin word.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Coming from gendered languages, most Hispanics either don’t know about Latinx at all and the ones that do, most of them think it’s inappropriate. It is a bit strange to try to remove gender from a word for people who mostly speak a gendered language. It seems mostly to be a virtue signaling thing among a rather small almost exclusively American, english as first language subculture. A bit like the bathroom I saw in a coffee shop that listed all the different kinds of people that were acceptable to use the single occupancy one toilet one sink room. Trying too hard to be inclusive can be an insult to the actual issues at hand.
    - nisse72 5y ago
      There is a Swedish expression: nobody is named, and nobody is forgotten. Usually you hear it in a workplace setting when people (often, a subset of the correct group) are being acknowleged for an acheivement of some kind. As soon as you try to enumerate all of those groups you will undoubtedly forget someone, who will then take offense at the omission. So the saying is a reminder to not single out anyone.
alatkins 5y ago
Jordan B. Peterson would support this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xvilka 5y ago
Even something small as jumping spiders can be quite smart. They certainly deserve some respect. And live boiling is common for crustaceans. Terrible practice, sentient or not.
- lanevorockz 5y ago
  Boiling is supposed to be painless and it’s meaning behind “boiling a frog alive”.
  - User23 5y ago
    A steam bath was considered to be one of the most painless forms of suicide for Roman patricians.
    - BrandoElFollito 5y ago
      I have just heard about Seneca dying in a stem bath, but that was more by accident (he committed suicide by cutting his wrists but that was taking too long so he wanted the heat to speed up blood extraction. He however died of suffocation) How was that suicide supposed to work? (suffocation like Seneca did?)
  - xvilka 5y ago
    My small experience with being burned by hot or acidic liquid tells me exactly the opposite.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      The anecdote is specific to frogs (and animals with similar sensory systems), and specific to boiling by increasing the temperature in small increments. It's also a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog Interesting that early experiments involved removing the frogs brain as well.
- goatlover 5y ago
  I don't go out of my way to kill insects, but if someone wants to boil insects for food, I'm not going to have any moral qualms with it. I don't see how crustaceans are much different.
lanevorockz 5y ago
If you want to stop the sale of Lobsters, yes. It’s one of those politics first arguments.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dundarious 5y ago
See nociception. It’s basically the scientific study of “are we being cruel when we harm or kill X?”
iechoz6H 5y ago
From the original report [1] There is no dramatic difference in the quality or volume of evidence regarding cephalopods as opposed to decapods. There is more evidence for sentience in octopods than in true crabs, but the difference is not vast, and the evidence for sentience in true crabs is slightly more substantial than the evidence for sentience in other, less- studied cephalopods. This leads us to recommend that, if cephalopods are to be included in the scope of animal welfare laws, decapods should also be included. [1] https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-in-Cephalopod-Molluscs-and-Decapod-Crustaceans-Final-Report-November-2021.pdf https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-i... (PDF)
ChrisRR 5y ago
How often do you boil ants alive for food?

adriand 5y ago

By this logic, humans should be given only half the consideration we give to orcas, which according to the resource you posted, have twice the neurons we do.

lanevorockz 5y ago
It also means that deep learning algorithms will soon deserve more rights than humans.
yostrovs 5y ago
Once sentient, extra neurons don't change the status of a sentient being.
BeeBoBub 5y ago
That’s not really the argument monkeybutton is making, the point is lobsters’ neural complexity is similar to ants, and orcas are comparable to humans.
- lanevorockz 5y ago
  It’s still a gradation, “as complex” is obviously a stretch. The whole argument is silly, soon turning off my Deep Learning algorithms because they are more complex than lobster.
  - jojobas 5y ago
    500 years ago the argument that black people should have rights was just as silly. We'll live to see some sort of AI rights protection laws.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      No it wasn't, the argument was as silly as it is now, for a non-subjective definition of "silly". 500 years ago science was less mature, and unable to determine what was objectively silly, and what wasn't.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Ants are intelligent enough to form civilization. (I think the only other species than humans.) Granted, ant intelligence is a hive mind.
createunderrate 5y ago
The ratio of neuron count to body size is the important measurement. An orca might have twice the neurons, but those extra neurons go toward motor control, not experiencing suffering and contemplating mortality.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

moeris 5y ago

Yes. The bar for sentience is quite low. It only means that one is capable of feeling sensations. (For example, Wikipedia gives the definition, "Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations.")

agravier 5y ago
Why are not all animals recognised as such under that law?
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of legislators lack sentience themselves...
- The_rationalist 5y ago
  Would you say tardigrades can feel sensations? I mean yes they can detect and process inputs from the external world but given a lack of better understanding, we believe that qualiesque sentience require a decent number of neurons.
- timClicks 5y ago
  Because at times it's convenient to maim and/or kill them.
  - ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
    Sometimes it is necessary. Pest control is inherent. We cannot allow mice, rats, etc to live in urban environments unchecked. Mice are sentient, does that mean we should only use no-kill traps and then release the mice somewhere far away? Many urban pests have population numbers that are 50-100X higher per square mile in the city than they could sustain in the countryside. So if we could even theoretically capture them and release them in the countryside, most would die due lack of sufficient food, which also seems unethical. And simply releasing a pest on the other side of the city so it isn't bothering your house clearly isn't solving the problem. Killing animals, particularly pests, seems like an inherent part of urban living. Is this unethical? I don't think so.

shakna 5y ago

The line for sentience is a very low bar to hurdle. Trees may demonstrate sentience [0]. The larger problem is that people are generally thinking of sapience, but sapience tends to be defined in axiomatic terms, so we don't have a clear understanding of what it requires or means. [0] https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03220.x https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-...

ErikVandeWater 5y ago
I don't see how your link supports trees potentially being sentient.
- bardworx 5y ago
  Disclaimer: i don’t have a dog in the fight…or a branch on a tree, in this context. Sentient is defined as able to perceive or feel things. The paper linked discusses how trees can “communicate” and “feel” based on release of specific chemicals. An exert from the introduction: “Recent research has revealed that plants can sense their neighbours without direct physical contact; mechanisms for this include detection of a reduced ratio of red to far-red in light reflected from neighbouring foliage…” This was also a plot of a terrible M. Night Shyamalan movie. That’s the connection the poster suggested, as the bar for sentience is quite low.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I feel like Star Trek handled the question much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience. Calling trees sentient is just nonsense. And I mean that literally. I try not to dismiss people's work out of hand, but there's a certain line of philosophical thought whose best rebuttal is to ignore it.
    - 5y ago

TeeMassive 5y ago

It's more about how much they look like human babies. Species with more neotenic traits get more protections: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0006 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0006 Sure lobsters do not look like human babies, but more than ants.

Rastonbury 5y ago
You are saying lobsters look more like babies than ants? Do you mean in terms of size, because neither have any similarities to a baby...
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  Yes and no. Yes they are more of the same size. Visually ants are little dots on the ground. Lobsters also have something that looks more like hands than ants do.

ryan_j_naughton 5y ago

Octopi is not the correct plural. Octopus is of greek origin, not latin. Thus, its greek plural is octopodes. And thus, since we don't tend to use greek plurals in english, the other proper plural is octopuses. Octopi is what's known as a hypercorrection. "A hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal."[1] Now, you will find octopi in the dictionary, but only because so many people have engaged in this hypercorrection that it has become widespread and dictionaries reflect common usage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

elcano 5y ago
I wonder if the trend of using the 'Latinx' term falls under the hypercorrection definition or there's something else to describe it. I'm not passing judgement on the inclusiveness intention, but the English word for Latino and Latina is just Latin, which doesn't have gender. There's no need to mix linguistics with algebra and add a gender variable to the latin word.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Coming from gendered languages, most Hispanics either don’t know about Latinx at all and the ones that do, most of them think it’s inappropriate. It is a bit strange to try to remove gender from a word for people who mostly speak a gendered language. It seems mostly to be a virtue signaling thing among a rather small almost exclusively American, english as first language subculture. A bit like the bathroom I saw in a coffee shop that listed all the different kinds of people that were acceptable to use the single occupancy one toilet one sink room. Trying too hard to be inclusive can be an insult to the actual issues at hand.
  - nisse72 5y ago
    There is a Swedish expression: nobody is named, and nobody is forgotten. Usually you hear it in a workplace setting when people (often, a subset of the correct group) are being acknowleged for an acheivement of some kind. As soon as you try to enumerate all of those groups you will undoubtedly forget someone, who will then take offense at the omission. So the saying is a reminder to not single out anyone.

alatkins 5y ago

Jordan B. Peterson would support this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xvilka 5y ago

Even something small as jumping spiders can be quite smart. They certainly deserve some respect. And live boiling is common for crustaceans. Terrible practice, sentient or not.

lanevorockz 5y ago
Boiling is supposed to be painless and it’s meaning behind “boiling a frog alive”.
- User23 5y ago
  A steam bath was considered to be one of the most painless forms of suicide for Roman patricians.
  - BrandoElFollito 5y ago
    I have just heard about Seneca dying in a stem bath, but that was more by accident (he committed suicide by cutting his wrists but that was taking too long so he wanted the heat to speed up blood extraction. He however died of suffocation) How was that suicide supposed to work? (suffocation like Seneca did?)
- xvilka 5y ago
  My small experience with being burned by hot or acidic liquid tells me exactly the opposite.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    The anecdote is specific to frogs (and animals with similar sensory systems), and specific to boiling by increasing the temperature in small increments. It's also a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog Interesting that early experiments involved removing the frogs brain as well.
goatlover 5y ago
I don't go out of my way to kill insects, but if someone wants to boil insects for food, I'm not going to have any moral qualms with it. I don't see how crustaceans are much different.

lanevorockz 5y ago

If you want to stop the sale of Lobsters, yes. It’s one of those politics first arguments.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dundarious 5y ago

See nociception. It’s basically the scientific study of “are we being cruel when we harm or kill X?”

iechoz6H 5y ago

From the original report [1] There is no dramatic difference in the quality or volume of evidence regarding cephalopods as opposed to decapods. There is more evidence for sentience in octopods than in true crabs, but the difference is not vast, and the evidence for sentience in true crabs is slightly more substantial than the evidence for sentience in other, less- studied cephalopods. This leads us to recommend that, if cephalopods are to be included in the scope of animal welfare laws, decapods should also be included. [1] https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-in-Cephalopod-Molluscs-and-Decapod-Crustaceans-Final-Report-November-2021.pdf https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-i... (PDF)

ChrisRR 5y ago

How often do you boil ants alive for food?