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I assume that Dr Jonathan Birch, Associate Professor at LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and his team of scientists didn’t encounter t

I assume that Dr Jonathan Birch, Associate Professor at LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and his team of scientists didn’t encounter this insightful perspective when they reviewed “over 300 scientific studies” in order to arrive at their conclusions… In seriousness though, this comment is a prime example of speciesism. Even if it were true that these crustaceans were “basically bugs” how does it follow that no regard should be given to their suffering? Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? They are only being “grouped together” in that they are being granted the most basic consideration: that they have “the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm”. The fact this is somehow just dawning on modern society is a sad indictment of our blinkered and callous disregard for other species. A child could tell you that other living creatures experience pain and distress through simple observation or even based upon, dare I say, the innate understanding we all have about our fellow animals.

imgabe 5y ago
Does being an “antelope” somehow justify being torn apart and eaten by a lion? Yeah actually, it does because lions eat antelopes and humans eat lobsters. Nature doesn’t owe any being an existence devoid of suffering.
- mojomark 5y ago
  Lions don't boil antelopes alive, nor do they reportedly tear them apart while they're alive, instead they suffocate or sever their necks before eating them [1]. (Note: I had a lobster role for lunch two days ago, and I love them. However, these findings give me pause on eating them further.) 1. https://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Wildlife-travel/kruger-park-wildlife-lions.html https://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Wildlife-t...
  - imgabe 5y ago
    That’s kind of beside the point. I’m sure the process of being killed and eaten by a lion nevertheless causes “pain, distress, and harm”. These things are a part of life.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Yes, but Lions lack - for want of a better term - options, whereas we humans have plenty of options. We decide to boil living creatures alive, their feelings be damned because we like their taste better that way. But that's a very conscious choice to inflict harm. In the court of ethics the Lion was just eating, the human being was inflicting unnecessary pain.
      - imgabe 5y ago
        Who decides what's necessary? It's not really "necessary" to eat a lobster at all. Maybe we should just live in mud huts, eating the bare minimum amount of soybeans and rice to keep us just alive. That would inflict the minimal amount of "unnecessary" suffering. But then, why is it even necessary that we should be alive? All living things suffer at one point or another, whether it was necessary or not. There is no grand cosmic register that tallies up all the suffering and is going to cause something bad to happen if it gets too high. Suffering, in and of itself, is just a subjective experience that exists solely in a mind.
        jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
        We don't need to live in mud huts, I'm pretty sure houses can be vegan. Also it doesn't need to be all or nothing, we can simply reduce suffering. I don't understand the logic of "we can't eliminate suffering, so might as well maximize suffering by boiling animals to death."
        imgabe 5y ago
        If someone actually cared about reducing suffering, there are far more egregious sources of it in the world that could be addressed. Worrying about lobsters suffering in boiling water for 2 seconds before they die is the plastic straw ban of reducing suffering. If you don't want to boil lobsters, then don't boil lobsters. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that introducing a ban on it is some kind of great victory for reducing suffering in the world.
  - yibg 5y ago
    Not lions, but plenty of videos of Hyenas eating them alive.
The_rationalist 5y ago
Bugs have no central brain. They have small chunks of decentralized neurons which might or not be enough to produce qualias.
stathibus 5y ago
It's weird how use of the word "speciesism" implies that some place humans above other animals as a result of some kind of fallacy or irrational thinking, and not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other. Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Speciesism is just a word that vegans use to beat you over the head and feel superior to you with, like calling some a racist.
- adriand 5y ago
  > not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other I value my children more than I value your children, but you will likely disagree with my assessment, even though it isn’t unexpected. And I would have to admit my assessment is not objective. > Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not. That’s how speciesism works: we try to find some kind of difference between us and other creatures, and then say, because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. The other problem is that the line keeps moving, because we keep discovering how similar we are to other animals. There was a time when science claimed that animals did not have emotions, which any dog owner could tell you is nonsense. The truth is that we do not really know exactly what a lobster experiences. Shouldn’t we therefore be cautious? I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    That's why we try to deal with killings in a most humane way possible (basically a bullet to the head for larger animals, and cutting the neck for smaller ones).... not always, not everywhere, but we try, and we point the fingers at those who don't. Animals on the other side really don't care: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464
bpodgursky 5y ago
> over 300 scientific studies Science is not a measuring contest where you sum up the volume of evidence. On any subject of import, it's equally easy to find 3,000 completely wrong studies as it is to find 10 valuable ones.
inportb 5y ago
> Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? It's quite a leap to go from "crabs and lobsters are basically bugs" to "being a bug justify being boiled alive." No. Please don't boil your arthropods alive. Kill your crabs and lobsters, swiftly, before cooking them. Be thankful for their sacrifice. I promise you it doesn't change the flavor or texture or nutrition.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "Kill your crabs and lobsters, swiftly, before cooking them" How do you actually do that? I mean it as a practical question
  - barsonme 5y ago
    Stick a knife in the base of the lobster’s neck. Literally.
  - ofrzeta 5y ago
    I don't know about crabs but there's something called "high pressure lobster" where the animal is killed very swiftly through very high pressure soon on the boat. While I am not sure about this is being more humane than throwing it in boiling water (cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29301843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29301843) there's also the question of keeping lobsters alive for a long time all the way from catch through the market while keeping their claws tied etc.
Sebb767 5y ago
> The fact this is somehow just dawning on modern society is a sad indictment of our blinkered and callous disregard for other species Well, lobsters eat fish and fish, as any child could explain to you, can experience distress and probably also pain. As far as animals go, both humans and lobsters are quite actually quite nice - there are species out there that poison their prey and eat it alive [0]. So this is not really a "disregard for other species", no more than it's disregard of a fox to eat a deer. Now, of course, by now we could be better than this, I fully agree with you here - but the fact that other species experience pain and distress when ending up as food was basically an universal truth until some very recent human inventions. [0] I know some humans do that, too, but that's far from the general case.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > no more than it's disregard of a fox to eat a deer Does this happen? It would seem that a fox that attacks a deer has a disregard for its own life
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    I feel like the GP probably meant to say ‘a wolf to eat a deer’, or perhaps ‘a fox to eat a chicken’.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? I'm picking on your language choices rather than the overall point of your argument, but have you ever boiled a live crustacean before (and by this, I specifically mean fully submerging the animal under water that is under a rolling boil on a high-temperature flame)? They don't writhe in agony and try to escape; they die pretty much instantaneously (I'm talking no movement in less than 2 seconds) and have no idea what's coming. Again, this isn't a comment on the sentience or lack thereof of crustaceans, but boiling them alive isn't nearly as cruel as people make it out to be. What we do to pigs, chickens or cows is far worse.
- drekk 5y ago
  What's done to pigs, chickens, and cows is a terribly low bar to clear. I suppose lighting an ant on fire with a magnifying glass isn't cruel because it happens quickly. Personally how quickly an innocent being capable of suffering and happiness is killed doesn't factor into whether I call it cruel. Morality might be subjective, but the alternative requires accepting that needless, preventable death and suffering is ethical
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    The vegan argument is definitely a legitimate one, and not something I was trying to refute. A lot of meat eaters have these strange ideas about what is and isn't cruel (the classic being "hunting is evil but eating farmed meat is totally OK"), ostensibly based on reducing unnecessary suffering but also completely devoid of hands-on understanding of what actually happens. I will disagree with you on this point, though: >innocent being I've kept yabbies in a tank before as pets. They're absolutely metal creatures and will do things like rip the legs off of live rivals one by one, then slowly tear them apart over the course of hours. I saw one spear a fish wish its claw and pull its guts out too (as if unreeling a spool), just because it could. They're supposed to be herbivorous but damn can they be cold-hearted killers. (Crabs are far more social, apparently, but I've not seen them interacting before).
    - chimpansteve 5y ago
nomorecommas 5y ago
> Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? Depends on how hungry I am. I'd have to be pretty damn hungry to eat lobster or bugs anyway.
khazhoux 5y ago
> In seriousness though, this comment is a prime example of speciesism. I would argue that your comment is a prime example of neoequicrustaceanism.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ksdale 5y ago
The fact that this is just dawning on modern society is evidence that up until just a few generations ago, people were mainly occupied with not starving to death. Indeed, some ridiculously huge number of people worries about that today as well. The fact that we're able to even contemplate not harming animals is a sign of our enormous privilege.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yep, especially since the animals are doing the same as we did in the past, even with humans: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464
colechristensen 5y ago
I don’t think crustaceans or insects have the capacity to suffer as a result of their extremely simple neurology and behavior. I do think octopus deserve the benefit of the doubt that they might, and if they had longer lifespans and different reproduction behaviors that there’s a good chance there would be octopus civilization.
robbrown451 5y ago
> “the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm”. So how about jellyfish (which have no brains), or for that matter plants? It seems odd to apply boolean terms like "sentient", rather than accepting that whatever it is, it lies on a spectrum.
lanevorockz 5y ago
At this point, I find it remarkable that people use the term “found studies” as anything but self selection. You can prove anything including that the earth is flat and that video footage in the moon landing is fake. Don’t forget that the ancient alien theory is a phd research with published papers
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Ah yes, the theory that since bad papers exist all papers are bad. Reading one study is not the same as reading (and then citing) many studies. Common sense is frequently wrong, for a lot of well-studied reasons. There's also a large difference between one lone study which finds a thing using dubious methods and a cohort of studies which independently replicate the same results. There is no shortcut for actually reading and understanding studies if you want to learn what a study does and doesn't show, but discounting science because some history is paper are bad is... tenuous.
  - jmcgough 5y ago
    Part of the challenge is that must people lack the education to differentiate between a good study and a bad one, so we just throw our hands up in the air and cede to confirmation bias.
phkahler 5y ago
>> the most basic consideration: that they have “the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm”. Those crabs can dish out some pain with those pincers. They eat their prey alive too. That's not an argument for or against treating them some way, just that they aren't some poor innocent animals either.
- adriand 5y ago
  Yes, they are in fact innocent: they are of course “free from legal guilt or fault” but it’s the second definition from Merriam-Webster that really sums it up, “free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil”.
- richardw 5y ago
  They seem innocent to me. They’re very likely not aware of the pain they cause. They don’t weigh up moral dilemmas and discuss them. They also have no ability to choose. They can’t code for a living, can’t play piano and be vegan. They just do what instinct and physical ability does. Evolution chose what they do and they can’t interrogate it. Experiments could probably be set up to test this but I’m not sure it’s worth it.
- fludlight 5y ago
  I'll go further: there are no poor innocent carnivores or omnivores. All are brutal killers without regard for the suffering of others. Nature is struggle, awful, awful struggle. But humans have the capacity to be more...humane.
omginternets 5y ago
Are we really saying “speciesism” with a straight face, now?
donatj 5y ago
I find the idea that pain is something profound and not just the reception of a signal strange and based in non-scientific beliefs. Your CPU has a temperature sensor, does that mean if you hold a flame to it and it can detect its own impending destruction, it deserves protection under the law? Just because something has sensors somehow makes it our contemporary?
- tekromancr 5y ago
  So according to your philosophy; you wouldn't object to being tortured, after all, it's just signals being registered by a biological computer in your head.
  - donatj 5y ago
    Billions of years of evolutionary survival instinct would have my body grasping at all straws, releasing chemicals and likely having negative affects on my physiology and mental state for the rest of my life. Clearly that isn’t anything anyone wants. If I had no memories of the experience, and it had no long term physical affects on me, I would be indifferent, obviously, because I don't know about it. If I were to die from it, I see no advantage to a painless death over a painful death, other than for those around me. I will have no memory of the incident.
    - msravi 5y ago
      >> If I were to die from it, I see no advantage to a painless death over a painful death... Those minutes/hours/days spent experiencing pain do count. You speak as of the after-effects but make it seem that an advantage in living the process itself doesn't count. That's like saying that we're all going to die anyway and there's no advantage to how we live our lives. So why bother with anything?
      - donatj 5y ago
        > living the process itself doesn't count What reason do you have to believe otherwise. What does it count towards? What counts is in missed opportunity. Missed abilities to affect the world around you before you leave. Pain at the very end doesn't alter that much at all.
imwillofficial 5y ago
‘speciesism’ hahahahaha good one!
xupybd 5y ago
My philosophy is humans are special because I'm human. Other animals are not the same but I'd rather not hurt them without good reason. I'm not sure it's a rational part of me, I suspect a more instinctual part that doesn't like to see an animal suffer. Sometimes the good reason to hurt an animal is to eat them. I've come to peace with hunting for food. I could be wrong but it works for me.
blackearl 5y ago
I have to assume you wouldn't counter any termites, roaches, or wasps invading your home.
pensatoio 5y ago
Our "fellow animals" eat each other. I don't see a problem here.

imgabe 5y ago

Does being an “antelope” somehow justify being torn apart and eaten by a lion? Yeah actually, it does because lions eat antelopes and humans eat lobsters. Nature doesn’t owe any being an existence devoid of suffering.

mojomark 5y ago
Lions don't boil antelopes alive, nor do they reportedly tear them apart while they're alive, instead they suffocate or sever their necks before eating them [1]. (Note: I had a lobster role for lunch two days ago, and I love them. However, these findings give me pause on eating them further.) 1. https://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Wildlife-travel/kruger-park-wildlife-lions.html https://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Wildlife-t...
- imgabe 5y ago
  That’s kind of beside the point. I’m sure the process of being killed and eaten by a lion nevertheless causes “pain, distress, and harm”. These things are a part of life.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, but Lions lack - for want of a better term - options, whereas we humans have plenty of options. We decide to boil living creatures alive, their feelings be damned because we like their taste better that way. But that's a very conscious choice to inflict harm. In the court of ethics the Lion was just eating, the human being was inflicting unnecessary pain.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      Who decides what's necessary? It's not really "necessary" to eat a lobster at all. Maybe we should just live in mud huts, eating the bare minimum amount of soybeans and rice to keep us just alive. That would inflict the minimal amount of "unnecessary" suffering. But then, why is it even necessary that we should be alive? All living things suffer at one point or another, whether it was necessary or not. There is no grand cosmic register that tallies up all the suffering and is going to cause something bad to happen if it gets too high. Suffering, in and of itself, is just a subjective experience that exists solely in a mind.
      - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
        We don't need to live in mud huts, I'm pretty sure houses can be vegan. Also it doesn't need to be all or nothing, we can simply reduce suffering. I don't understand the logic of "we can't eliminate suffering, so might as well maximize suffering by boiling animals to death."
        imgabe 5y ago
        If someone actually cared about reducing suffering, there are far more egregious sources of it in the world that could be addressed. Worrying about lobsters suffering in boiling water for 2 seconds before they die is the plastic straw ban of reducing suffering. If you don't want to boil lobsters, then don't boil lobsters. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that introducing a ban on it is some kind of great victory for reducing suffering in the world.
- yibg 5y ago
  Not lions, but plenty of videos of Hyenas eating them alive.

The_rationalist 5y ago

Bugs have no central brain. They have small chunks of decentralized neurons which might or not be enough to produce qualias.

stathibus 5y ago

It's weird how use of the word "speciesism" implies that some place humans above other animals as a result of some kind of fallacy or irrational thinking, and not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other. Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not.

rubyist5eva 5y ago
Speciesism is just a word that vegans use to beat you over the head and feel superior to you with, like calling some a racist.
adriand 5y ago
> not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other I value my children more than I value your children, but you will likely disagree with my assessment, even though it isn’t unexpected. And I would have to admit my assessment is not objective. > Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not. That’s how speciesism works: we try to find some kind of difference between us and other creatures, and then say, because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. The other problem is that the line keeps moving, because we keep discovering how similar we are to other animals. There was a time when science claimed that animals did not have emotions, which any dog owner could tell you is nonsense. The truth is that we do not really know exactly what a lobster experiences. Shouldn’t we therefore be cautious? I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  That's why we try to deal with killings in a most humane way possible (basically a bullet to the head for larger animals, and cutting the neck for smaller ones).... not always, not everywhere, but we try, and we point the fingers at those who don't. Animals on the other side really don't care: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464

bpodgursky 5y ago

> over 300 scientific studies Science is not a measuring contest where you sum up the volume of evidence. On any subject of import, it's equally easy to find 3,000 completely wrong studies as it is to find 10 valuable ones.

inportb 5y ago

> Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? It's quite a leap to go from "crabs and lobsters are basically bugs" to "being a bug justify being boiled alive." No. Please don't boil your arthropods alive. Kill your crabs and lobsters, swiftly, before cooking them. Be thankful for their sacrifice. I promise you it doesn't change the flavor or texture or nutrition.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Kill your crabs and lobsters, swiftly, before cooking them" How do you actually do that? I mean it as a practical question
- barsonme 5y ago
  Stick a knife in the base of the lobster’s neck. Literally.
- ofrzeta 5y ago
  I don't know about crabs but there's something called "high pressure lobster" where the animal is killed very swiftly through very high pressure soon on the boat. While I am not sure about this is being more humane than throwing it in boiling water (cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29301843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29301843) there's also the question of keeping lobsters alive for a long time all the way from catch through the market while keeping their claws tied etc.

Sebb767 5y ago

> The fact this is somehow just dawning on modern society is a sad indictment of our blinkered and callous disregard for other species Well, lobsters eat fish and fish, as any child could explain to you, can experience distress and probably also pain. As far as animals go, both humans and lobsters are quite actually quite nice - there are species out there that poison their prey and eat it alive [0]. So this is not really a "disregard for other species", no more than it's disregard of a fox to eat a deer. Now, of course, by now we could be better than this, I fully agree with you here - but the fact that other species experience pain and distress when ending up as food was basically an universal truth until some very recent human inventions. [0] I know some humans do that, too, but that's far from the general case.

enriquto 5y ago
> no more than it's disregard of a fox to eat a deer Does this happen? It would seem that a fox that attacks a deer has a disregard for its own life
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  I feel like the GP probably meant to say ‘a wolf to eat a deer’, or perhaps ‘a fox to eat a chicken’.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? I'm picking on your language choices rather than the overall point of your argument, but have you ever boiled a live crustacean before (and by this, I specifically mean fully submerging the animal under water that is under a rolling boil on a high-temperature flame)? They don't writhe in agony and try to escape; they die pretty much instantaneously (I'm talking no movement in less than 2 seconds) and have no idea what's coming. Again, this isn't a comment on the sentience or lack thereof of crustaceans, but boiling them alive isn't nearly as cruel as people make it out to be. What we do to pigs, chickens or cows is far worse.

drekk 5y ago
What's done to pigs, chickens, and cows is a terribly low bar to clear. I suppose lighting an ant on fire with a magnifying glass isn't cruel because it happens quickly. Personally how quickly an innocent being capable of suffering and happiness is killed doesn't factor into whether I call it cruel. Morality might be subjective, but the alternative requires accepting that needless, preventable death and suffering is ethical
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  The vegan argument is definitely a legitimate one, and not something I was trying to refute. A lot of meat eaters have these strange ideas about what is and isn't cruel (the classic being "hunting is evil but eating farmed meat is totally OK"), ostensibly based on reducing unnecessary suffering but also completely devoid of hands-on understanding of what actually happens. I will disagree with you on this point, though: >innocent being I've kept yabbies in a tank before as pets. They're absolutely metal creatures and will do things like rip the legs off of live rivals one by one, then slowly tear them apart over the course of hours. I saw one spear a fish wish its claw and pull its guts out too (as if unreeling a spool), just because it could. They're supposed to be herbivorous but damn can they be cold-hearted killers. (Crabs are far more social, apparently, but I've not seen them interacting before).
  - chimpansteve 5y ago

nomorecommas 5y ago

> Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? Depends on how hungry I am. I'd have to be pretty damn hungry to eat lobster or bugs anyway.

khazhoux 5y ago

> In seriousness though, this comment is a prime example of speciesism. I would argue that your comment is a prime example of neoequicrustaceanism.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ksdale 5y ago

The fact that this is just dawning on modern society is evidence that up until just a few generations ago, people were mainly occupied with not starving to death. Indeed, some ridiculously huge number of people worries about that today as well. The fact that we're able to even contemplate not harming animals is a sign of our enormous privilege.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep, especially since the animals are doing the same as we did in the past, even with humans: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464

colechristensen 5y ago

I don’t think crustaceans or insects have the capacity to suffer as a result of their extremely simple neurology and behavior. I do think octopus deserve the benefit of the doubt that they might, and if they had longer lifespans and different reproduction behaviors that there’s a good chance there would be octopus civilization.

robbrown451 5y ago

> “the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm”. So how about jellyfish (which have no brains), or for that matter plants? It seems odd to apply boolean terms like "sentient", rather than accepting that whatever it is, it lies on a spectrum.

lanevorockz 5y ago

At this point, I find it remarkable that people use the term “found studies” as anything but self selection. You can prove anything including that the earth is flat and that video footage in the moon landing is fake. Don’t forget that the ancient alien theory is a phd research with published papers

Godel_unicode 5y ago
Ah yes, the theory that since bad papers exist all papers are bad. Reading one study is not the same as reading (and then citing) many studies. Common sense is frequently wrong, for a lot of well-studied reasons. There's also a large difference between one lone study which finds a thing using dubious methods and a cohort of studies which independently replicate the same results. There is no shortcut for actually reading and understanding studies if you want to learn what a study does and doesn't show, but discounting science because some history is paper are bad is... tenuous.
- jmcgough 5y ago
  Part of the challenge is that must people lack the education to differentiate between a good study and a bad one, so we just throw our hands up in the air and cede to confirmation bias.

phkahler 5y ago

>> the most basic consideration: that they have “the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm”. Those crabs can dish out some pain with those pincers. They eat their prey alive too. That's not an argument for or against treating them some way, just that they aren't some poor innocent animals either.

adriand 5y ago
Yes, they are in fact innocent: they are of course “free from legal guilt or fault” but it’s the second definition from Merriam-Webster that really sums it up, “free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil”.
richardw 5y ago
They seem innocent to me. They’re very likely not aware of the pain they cause. They don’t weigh up moral dilemmas and discuss them. They also have no ability to choose. They can’t code for a living, can’t play piano and be vegan. They just do what instinct and physical ability does. Evolution chose what they do and they can’t interrogate it. Experiments could probably be set up to test this but I’m not sure it’s worth it.
fludlight 5y ago
I'll go further: there are no poor innocent carnivores or omnivores. All are brutal killers without regard for the suffering of others. Nature is struggle, awful, awful struggle. But humans have the capacity to be more...humane.

omginternets 5y ago

Are we really saying “speciesism” with a straight face, now?

donatj 5y ago

I find the idea that pain is something profound and not just the reception of a signal strange and based in non-scientific beliefs. Your CPU has a temperature sensor, does that mean if you hold a flame to it and it can detect its own impending destruction, it deserves protection under the law? Just because something has sensors somehow makes it our contemporary?

tekromancr 5y ago
So according to your philosophy; you wouldn't object to being tortured, after all, it's just signals being registered by a biological computer in your head.
- donatj 5y ago
  Billions of years of evolutionary survival instinct would have my body grasping at all straws, releasing chemicals and likely having negative affects on my physiology and mental state for the rest of my life. Clearly that isn’t anything anyone wants. If I had no memories of the experience, and it had no long term physical affects on me, I would be indifferent, obviously, because I don't know about it. If I were to die from it, I see no advantage to a painless death over a painful death, other than for those around me. I will have no memory of the incident.
  - msravi 5y ago
    >> If I were to die from it, I see no advantage to a painless death over a painful death... Those minutes/hours/days spent experiencing pain do count. You speak as of the after-effects but make it seem that an advantage in living the process itself doesn't count. That's like saying that we're all going to die anyway and there's no advantage to how we live our lives. So why bother with anything?
    - donatj 5y ago
      > living the process itself doesn't count What reason do you have to believe otherwise. What does it count towards? What counts is in missed opportunity. Missed abilities to affect the world around you before you leave. Pain at the very end doesn't alter that much at all.

imwillofficial 5y ago

‘speciesism’ hahahahaha good one!

xupybd 5y ago

My philosophy is humans are special because I'm human. Other animals are not the same but I'd rather not hurt them without good reason. I'm not sure it's a rational part of me, I suspect a more instinctual part that doesn't like to see an animal suffer. Sometimes the good reason to hurt an animal is to eat them. I've come to peace with hunting for food. I could be wrong but it works for me.

blackearl 5y ago

I have to assume you wouldn't counter any termites, roaches, or wasps invading your home.

pensatoio 5y ago

Our "fellow animals" eat each other. I don't see a problem here.